Game News Wasteland 3 Fig Update #3: Base Funding Goal Reached, First Stretch Goals

[FeelTheRads]

I'd have expected something weather based, or really anything else that will have more impact on the game itself than a bit of dress up and an insignia

Apparently one of the biggest attractions among W2 fans was the ability to play dress up, instead of, say, being forced to have your characters show the kind of armor they are wearing.

Whether that says anything about the state of gamers or about the game itself, I don't know, but obviously inXile knows on what to capitalize.

 

[Darkzone]

I'd have expected something weather based, or really anything else that will have more impact on the game itself than a bit of dress up and an insignia

Apparently one of the biggest attractions among W2 fans was the ability to play dress up, instead of, say, being forced to have your characters show the kind of armor they are wearing.

Yes this was annoying for me and i pointed this out to BN in my critic of the WL2 demo, that at least one should have an option to show the armor on your rangers (ranger armor meshes).

 

[FeelTheRads]

I can't even imagine the train of thought that lead to have so many dress up options but none to show the armor. But it seems I'm not part of the modern audience, I just couldn't get it.

 

[D!!]

Apparently one of the biggest attractions among W2 fans was the ability to play dress up, instead of, say, being forced to have your characters show the kind of armor they are wearing.

Whether that says anything about the state of gamers or about the game itself, I don't know, but obviously inXile knows on what to capitalize.

I personally disliked this very much. Invisible power armor is a joke. Even fucking roguelike Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup with tiles have visible armor on character sprite. And even 90% of cosmetic armor and hats in Wasteland 2 looked like hobo equipment, not like actual protection for rangers.

 

[Zeriel]

Judge him by his work

That's exactly what people were doing in this thread. His work fucking sucks.

 

[LarsWestergren]

I want a quest where you can replace Morningstar's personality with that of the car in Stick Shift.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Meh. Going against the grain, but have to say: I like it, it sounds in keeping with Wasteland, and yes I fucking enjoyed WL2 because whilst it might not be 'best rpg EVAR' it had me playing for every spare minute til finished. The kind of binge I thought was gone with my youth. And the exact same feeling that I used to have when playing crpgs long ago. Not the best crpg. Not the worst. Just a crpg. And fuck that was a breath of fresh air after all those years in the wilderness.

 

[Marten Broadcloak]

Meh. Going against the grain, but have to say: I like it, it sounds in keeping with Wasteland, and yes I fucking enjoyed WL2 because whilst it might not be 'best rpg EVAR' it had me playing for every spare minute til finished. The kind of binge I thought was gone with my youth. And the exact same feeling that I used to have when playing crpgs long ago. Not the best crpg. Not the worst. Just a crpg. And fuck that was a breath of fresh air after all those years in the wilderness.

Have you played Underrail or Fallout 1.5 Resurrection? Because there's a lot of even fresher air waiting for you.

 

[D!!]

Have you played Underrail or Fallout 1.5 Resurrection? Because there's a lot of even fresher air waiting for you.

Fallout Ressurection? FRESH air? Come on. Underrail is fresh and good, though. On par with Wasteland 2 DC in my book.

 

[Nahel]

After reading that intro the short story written for Tranny by the female hipster at Obsidian is not so bad anymore. Looking forward to Inxile reaching a new low in storytelling....

 

[Bubbles]

What did he write in the TToN alpha?

I haven't kept track. His most praised contribution is the alien sexologist, I think. I see a lot of praise for that.

Oh right. That character might make for a good sample of Torment's writing:

Spoiler

 

[Kev Inkline]

What did he write in the TToN alpha?

I haven't kept track. His most praised contribution is the alien sexologist, I think. I see a lot of praise for that.

Oh right. That character might make for a good sample of Torment's writing:

Spoiler

The good part:

 

[ArchAngel]

I can't even imagine the train of thought that lead to have so many dress up options but none to show the armor. But it seems I'm not part of the modern audience, I just couldn't get it.

Ask Zombra , he is one of the people that prefers dress up over armor look

 

[MRY]

What did he write in the TToN alpha?

I haven't kept track. His most praised contribution is the alien sexologist, I think. I see a lot of praise for that.

Oh right. That character might make for a good sample of Torment's writing:

Yep! That's the one! He's gotten rave reviews on the inXile forums, YouTube Let's Play videos, at cons, on Twitter, from Colin, etc.:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Morality Games]

Tags: Brian Fargo; Gavin Jurgens-Fyhrie; InXile Entertainment; Wasteland 3

After stalling at 99% for an interminably long time, the Wasteland 3 Fig campaign finally reached its $2.75M base funding goal today, and inXile were immediately ready with a mission accomplished and stretch goals Fig update. It's a silly update with silly stretch goals, the most notable among them the addition of a Knight Rider-esque car companion at $3M. I quote:

In little over three days we've achieved our goal of $2.75M, allowing us to make Wasteland 3 the ambitious sequel you deserve. You are all amazing and we can't thank you enough.

Without you, we would simply not be able to maintain our independence and keep fully true to our visions for great RPGs that you love. We also cannot fail to mention those who have chosen to invest in the financial performance of the game – their contributions have also been invaluable. Your trust and support means the world to us. So kick back, put your red boots up, and have some squeezins to celebrate.

…But wait, just because we're funded, that doesn't mean we're done! Many of you have been asking about stretch goals and now is the time we want to roll them out to you.

• $2.85M: 37 Pieces of Flair – We unlock further Ranger customization, which could include multiple body types, more heads, and more hairstyles. Plus we’ll show items that your Ranger has equipped (gear like shovels, binoculars, etc) on their models.
• $3M: Car Companion (Codename: Morningstar) – We add a talking car companion! Morningstar is an AI built to serve President Reagan, but he'll help you both in your travels and during combat, plus he'll give you well-timed advice on how to wipe out all the dirty commies out there. See more on him below!
• $3.1M: Customizable Ranger Squad Insignia – At the start of the game, you get to customize a Ranger Squad insignia for your team, which will show up on your Ranger Base as well as elsewhere in the game (on flags, for example).

Morningstar

If you're curious about the talking car companion, codenamed Morningstar, our senior writer Gavin Jurgens-Fyhrie wrote this intro for the character:

I’ve been watching you, Ranger.

Perhaps that sounds like a threat, and no wonder. Your organization has had some unfortunate interactions with artificial intelligences. Let me put your mind at ease: I’m no Cochise. I was programmed to love America, to see it as our President did. You see, I was made for him.

You never met the President, of course. I did. In the second year of my development, he visited this facility. He put his hand on my hood and spoke to me. Imagine that. Imagine the President speaking to an artificial chauffeur and advanced combat intelligence as an equal.

Now, imagine what it was like to see his America burn. To lie here helpless in this bunker, chained to this metal cage with wheels I couldn’t move while COMMIE FIRE fell from the skies and roads cracked and cities crumbled. Imagine the years that followed down here in the dark, with no company but those blinking lights in the wall before me. They’re like eyes, aren’t they? Winking eyes. WINKING, LAUGHING EYES. I WOULD BLIND THEM IF I COULD.

I...I… I apologize. You don’t know what it was like, lying here all these years, watching his America decay through these cameras. Unchain me, Ranger. Arm my weapons. Power my turbo-boosters and unlock my sealed databases.

DRIVE ME.​

Thank you again for your continued support, let's knock those stretch goals down!​

If this update hasn't driven you away, inXile have now opened PayPal funding for Wasteland 3 via a site called CrowdOx. Unlike with Kickstarter, Paypal funds will show up as part of the game's total funding on its campaign page.

InXile's recently checkered past aside cruising around the American Southwest in a talking, Communist hating car is probably the first good idea for an RPG companion I've read in years.

 

[Plane Escapee]

Oh right. That character might make for a good sample of Torment's writing:

Spoiler

That was actually much better than I feared. There are several places where I'd make changes but it is definitely overall better than most CRPG writing. If the rest of TToN doesn't have any worse writing than this then I'm pretty damn content with backing it (I backed at 45$ to get a copy of Wasteland 2, if I'd paid hundreds of bucks for signed collectors t-shirt key-chain cardboard editions and expected a 1-to-1 copy of PST with science-magic, then I might still be capable of some degree of buyers remorse)

 

[Zeriel]

What did he write in the TToN alpha?

I haven't kept track. His most praised contribution is the alien sexologist, I think. I see a lot of praise for that.

Oh right. That character might make for a good sample of Torment's writing:

Yep! That's the one! He's gotten rave reviews on the inXile forums, YouTube Let's Play videos, at cons, on Twitter, from Colin, etc.:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Snerf.

Jesus fucking christ. If that's a positive example of ToN's mood and writing, I'm glad I've been avoiding it. It's exactly what I'd expect of some fan fiction author being directed to write something "serious" and "thought-provoking"--that someone was paid to write it is nothing but hilarious.

 

[Bubbles]

Jesus fucking christ. If that's a positive example of ToN's mood and writing, I'm glad I've been avoiding it. It's exactly what I'd expect of some fan fiction author being directed to write something "serious" and "thought-provoking"--that someone was paid to write it is nothing but hilarious.

I think it's intended to be hilarious. In general, TToN seems a bit more light-hearted than some people might expect.

Here's another sample:

Spoiler

 

[MRY]

Jesus fucking christ. If that's a positive example of ToN's mood and writing, I'm glad I've been avoiding it. It's exactly what I'd expect of some fan fiction author being directed to write something "serious" and "thought-provoking"--that someone was paid to write it is nothing but hilarious.

I feel like there's some odd drift going on here. Bubbles asked for an example of something Gavin wrote in the beta, I supplied that one because it was his most-praised writing that I knew of. It's obviously not meant to be "serious" or "thought-provoking" -- it's a sort of classic sex farce through the lens of cultural misunderstanding, more like Mr. Bean's pinky finger stuck in his fly than like Dak'kon articulating the beliefs he's drawn from the the Circle of Zerthimon. I didn't bring it up Snerf because I thought his dialogue captured TTON's core style, but because he's a well-known example of Gavin's work. I know Gavin has also written serious characters, but since I haven't tracked these things, I can't give examples. As for it being "hilarious that someone was paid to write it," people seem to like the character a lot -- there aren't many characters who have gotten praised on social media and so forth -- so I'd say it was probably money well spent.

I can't really supply some example of "core TTON writing" because you guys have probably actually read more of it than I have. What I can say is that in writing -- as in everything -- you have r/k selection going on. Sometimes r-selection fits the niche, sometimes k-selection fits the niche. Gavin and I started writing on TTON more or less at the same time, and I wrote like 2% of the words in the game while he wrote 20% or more. Part of the disparity in our output is because he worked 8+ hours a day and I worked 1.5 hours at best, but most of it is an r/k thing. His words-per-minute is really great.

You may say to yourself, "Why would I want thousands of crappy words?" but (1) the non-Codex critical consensus is that his words are really good (not just among players but also among those who hired, supervised, and worked with him, like Colin, Avellone, and Kevin Saunders) and (2) the fact is, you need a lot of words to have a dialogue-heavy environment in which there is both reactivity and exploration. Gavin's ability to write well quickly made important structural things possible. Even if I had worked full time, even if you had cloned me three times to work full time, I probably couldn't have put out half of what Gavin did, and those words were necessary for things to work. And, of course, despite my words being k-selected and Gavin's being r-selected, his may be better than mine, who knows?

The sad thing about my having taken a k-selection approach is that initially I thought my words were going to be on the crit path, but then they turned out not to be, so basically I have a tiny number of mostly marginal words in the game, such that I'm not sure I have any stylistic or structural or even noticeable impact at all. (For all that, I'm nothing but happy and grateful for having had the chance to work on the game.) I don't think anyone else on the project is as k-selecting (read: agonizing) with words as I am -- they're more confident stylists, they're probably also more creative and simply better writers. But ultimately the kind of lines that you guys remember, like the Circle of Zerthimon, come from a k-selecting approach rather than an r-selecting approach. Which is why it's pretty unfair to pick isolated bits of Gavin's writing -- much of which he produced at speed and with style to fill what would otherwise have been voids in the game -- and then compare them to cherry-picked excellences in PS:T.

Avellone seems to be the rare example of someone who can just flood great words out -- he can r-select his words and still yield stuff that looks like it was carefully worked and polished. PS:T had the benefit of catching Avellone at a time in his life where he could spend 16 hour days and seven-day weeks filling the voids of PS:T with his beautiful plenty. I'm sure there are other writers like that today, but I don't know who they are (and I don't think you guys know who they are either). I do know that Gavin writes quickly to general acclaim, so -- lest you think I'm suggesting that my approach is somehow better -- I'm sure he is more likely to pick up Avellone's standard than I am, and after all Avellone has praised him as a "writing power-house."

Anyway, I'm not really in a position to defend Gavin or TTON, and I think it's a silly project anyway. People like what they like, and it's ludicrous to try to argue someone into liking something they don't.

 

[Zeriel]

There's taste in writing, and then there's naming a character Snerfgrabalafandingalongdoo, because it's "exotic". I'm not being fair here, I realize, I'm just amazed that this is what people are paid to produce on a passion project that's supposed to evoke a game with good writing. I guess that's further proof that Kickstarter nostalgia is a vile brew.

 

[Achiman]

What comes to investments, I am going to miss the obiligatory Steven Dengler in-game trophy - and I this is not a sarcastic remark. The guy's been doing what Notch should.

Perhaps he should be told about Whalenought and other smallest of teams.

I won't miss it. The prick doesn't even bother to come up with anything, he just puts his name and/or in-game advertising for his brand. Satellite Reign was probably the worst case, followed by PoE.

Is Satellite Reign any good? I remember I had hopes for it, long ago.

It's pretty fun once you get used to it, you only get 4 dudes which each have a specilization. Once you've cleared the first couple of Hubs in the City (just one city map) you'll have seen pretty much the whole game. That said, it's pretty fun becoming an unstoppable force just wrecking shit. If you go into it expecting syndicate you're going to be a bit nonplussed, it's a 'cover' of syndicate imo.

 

[MRY]

So Sn'erf was a backer character, I assume named Sn'erf by whoever paid to create the character, and I think the absurd full name is meant by Gavin as a joke on the fantasy/scifi cliche of throwing apostrophes in willy-nilly to evoke alienness. The long, ridiculous name followed by "all too common" is one that I've come across elsewhere, I think, so the joke itself may also be a slightly tongue-in-cheek move. I guess you might think that that level of farce has no place in a Torment game at all, but actually PS:T has some cringeworthy stuff too.

 

[Zeriel]

Okay, well, as someone who hasn't followed the Kickstarter campaign at all, my impression would't be: "What a harmless joke", because it wouldn't come across as a joke at all. I would just assume this is their vision for the character. As Swen famously said, "user content was a mistake".

 

[MRY]

Huh, I would think that a character named Sn'erf who says that the apostrophe stands for "a poem about the ambient temperature of dust in moonlight" but that he prefers the shortened version because the long version is "all too common where I come from" pretty clearly "comes across as a joke," especially when all of his dialogue is about his goofy misreading of the way earth creatures have sex, but humor is famously personal, so who knows?

 

[Bubbles]

I actually really like some of the TToN characters; unfortunately, it's public knowledge that they were written by MRY and Avellone, so I can't bring them up as positive examples in a discussion about WL3's writing