Wasteland Underrail or Wasteland 2?

[AetherVagrant]

I know the big U is still eta....but what are opinions on one to the other (preferably without graphics being a consideration)?
Especially related to overall writing, ability to immerse oneself in the world, combat, etc. I like WL2 so far but could see it becoming a slog if more of an overarching narrative doesnt pop up soon, and Underrail feels hard to get quickly immersed but if the worldbuilding and writing are good enough it could be one of those games where you completely forget the graphics suck and the mechanics are wonky because you get swept away in the story. (5 days a stranger and spiderweb games are good examples of this.)
Or just direct me to the thread i imagine must have already discussed this.

 

[Athelas]

Don't do this man.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Let's make as many Game A vs Game B threads as possible.

 

[AetherVagrant]

I noe right, as soon as i could post freely i make an a vs b thread.
what i really want to know is opinions on the writing of both games, and pitting one camp against another practically forces fanboys to respond.
at least other places. i dont know codex much yet, i never ventured into the forums despite years of fanatically page reloading for new articles.

 

[Black]

Get PoE, the proper successor to the true classics of the golden era.

 

[AetherVagrant]

got it, finished it, loved it. except that it ended just as the story picked up

 

[Orma]

When is underrail release anyway? Don't want to play early access or anything

 

[Saduj]

Underrail has much better systems - character building, combat, stealth and crafting. Really not even close. And I'm saying that as someone who enjoyed Wasteland 2.

I haven't played since the 1st update after the initial early access release. So I don't know the current status of the writing/world building.

Just based on how fun the gameplay itself is, I expect to enjoy the final version of Underrail more than Wasteland 2 but that isn't really a knock on the latter.

 

[Atchodas]

Undertail is much deeper game , the only thing WL2 has more than underrail is cringy encyclopedia like npc dialogues trees where out of 10 choices 9 are worthless and just there to dump lore , meanwhile Underrail is RPGOTY fallout reincarnation , also as mentioned all around the boards playing underrail in EA to find out whats goinh on and how to navigate is as must as reading manual in old rpgs game doesnt hold your hand at any point and you ussualy get laughed at for asking directions, also writting is arguably better in Underrail , no cringy larian/inxile stuff and no poe'ish baby souls crap

 

[darthaegis]

Underrail > WL2. However, Underrail isn't quite a Fallout reincarnation, it's more Fallout + Deus Ex.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Even the alpha version of Underrail (the one that came out in 2011) was several times more fun to play than the 2014 release of W2. And I seriously doubt that DC will change much about that.

 

[jagged-jimmy]

Yep, no contest. I spent like 60 hours just trying Underrail builds.
And i am not a WL2 hater either, i liked it.

 

[Atchodas]

yeh i completed WL2 twice , tho both playtroughs were greatly flawed due to endless bugs getting introduced with every patch , and i really liked the game and i am looking forward to DC , but it has nothing on Underrail , surprising that such small studio as STYGian Soft did way better job on everything in Underrail than inxile managed with WL2 except obvious things like GraphixLOL,Cinematic Intro Rofel , and Voice acting cringe :D:D which ofc were sacrificed for best rpg gameplay atleast in last 10 years if not ever ( i played all the classics and Underrail is serious contender to shit on them all , especially if release version polishes starting area's and adds some world reactivity where its missing )

 

[Excidium II]

Underrail is cheaper

 

[Somberlain]

I still haven't played Underrail because I'm not interested in playing incomplete games. It seems to be well liked here, however, so I believe it won't be as banal as Boreland 2.

 

[Turok]

Where is the poll?? make one, i vote.

 

[Suicidal Meat Slapper]

Sure, I enjoyed WL2 and all, but it was unpolished, buggy, and became very repetitive after a few hours. I would easily recommend Underrail over WL2 any day because, even in its current state, feels more alive and offers a rather fresh new take on the post-apoc genre. Maybe not the true successor to Fallout 1&2, but its unique blend of Fallout, Shadowrun, and Deus Ex is worth checking out much more than WL2.

 

[GJIG]

On top of what has been said about Underrail's superior mechanics...

It should be noted that Wasteland 2 has a lot more writing than Underrail. Underrail is pretty consistent in what it delivers in terms of worldbuilding: it never chews your ear off, but it's never particularly deep or anything like that either. It's there for setting and atmosphere, and it's mostly pleasant, but nothing particularly memorable. The world itself is quite excellent in terms of what you can do and the sheer amount of exploration available, but this too is a more mechanical part of worldbuilding than anything story related.

Wasteland 2 I found to have much more inconsistent writing: some of it is better than anything I've seen in Underrail, some of it is... worse --- I personally felt like parts of Wasteland 2's story were stupid as fuck. Part of this phenomenon is almost certainly a result of the fact that Wasteland 2's story tries to be much more than Underrail's --- an actual narrative, not just a backdrop. Sometimes it overreaches and gets laid on a bit too thick, sometimes it's genuinely interesting.

This might change once Underrail gets an actual ending, but I think it's likely that the scale and scope of Underrail's story will remain much smaller than Wasteland 2's, even after the full release. In terms of the average quality of writing, I don't think they're particularly far off from each other, Wasteland 2 just has bigger peaks in both directions, i.e. negative and positive.

 

[skyst]

UnderRail is going to dump all over a lot of games, past, present and future.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Even the alpha version of Underrail (the one that came out in 2011) was several times more fun to play than the 2014 release of W2. And I seriously doubt that DC will change much about that.

And it is much more cheaper. Underrail is incline incarnate.

 

[Atchodas]

It should be noted that Wasteland 2 has a lot more writing than Underrail. Underrail is pretty consistent in what it delivers in terms of worldbuilding: it never chews your ear off, but it's never particularly deep or anything like that either.

Please tell me about those "depths" of WL2 writing because i finished the game twice and dont remember anything except few side quests being well written , and i have read every Dialogue option WL2 had expecting something and never getting it .

More does not mean deeper , Underrail has a very very decent writing ( most of the stuff written in the game actually means something not like in WL2 where it means nothing ) and tbh by the time i finished EA i felt huge cliffhanger something like after watching final episode of GoT season 5 , and i cant wait to see how story plays out , i want to talk with Tunnelers and i want to find out EVERYTHING about them fuckin tunnelers man might be coolest faction in RPG's i ever met . WL2 has pathetic story plot , seriously whole game is about Repeater Units and has logical errors at every step , game is gated as hard as they could and Open World is just a smoke screen to throw you off from reality where the game is 85% linear .
YES Underrail has less writing , and i mean less useless lore dump that WL2 uses with every fuckin NPC , but writing as a story it beats Wasteland 25 times .

 

[Jaesun]

YES Underrail has less writing , and i mean less useless lore dump that WL2 uses with every fuckin NPC , but writing as a story it beats Wasteland 25 times .

Could you provide some examples?

 

[GJIG]

More does not mean deeper

One would assume this is the reason I used the word "more" first, and then went on to talk about depth to further clarify the issue. They're not synonyms, but they do correlate. Depth is not quantity, but it is complexity and/or intensity, and on a fundamental level complexity and intensity both reduce to "more things", even if not all "more things" result in increased depth.
I disagree with the notion that Underrail has more depth than Wasteland 2. As a full experience, I would say Underrail is better, and more competently written in terms of how it all comes together, but some parts of Wasteland 2 were quite intricate and in-depth, to a greater extent than anything I've seen in Underrail so far. The biggest failure of Wasteland 2 is how the underlying, "big" narrative is somewhat boring and ham-fisted. If it had been more consistently good, instead of containing its best feats of writing into smaller, specific instances... then Wasteland 2's story would blow Underrail's out of the water, as you should expect to happen when you compare a game like Wasteland 2 to the story of a game made mostly by a single person whose interests and focus are clearly more mechanical than literary.

EDIT:
Missed your edited question about specific examples.
The various factions are the first thing that comes to mind. Whether it's the Rail Nomads, Desert Rangers, any of the stuff in... California, was it? It all felt very intricate, I can't really put it better than that. They all had a clear, could-have-reasonably-happened kind of history of how they came to be, what sort of people came together to form their current and past motives, and what they were trying to do in the Wasteland. Underrail is not bad at this by any means, but I don't think it's quite as good at capturing that spirit of, the sort of various groups of people and come-togethers you'd expect to form almost naturally and inevitably in such a post-apocalyptic world, with all their unique interactions with that world.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Could you provide some examples?

Gorsky punching you in the mug for the lack of subordination.

Mysterious stones on the island with shadows - just a good sense of overall WTF and mystery.

Wyatt Pear's story, the whole conspiracy setup and a strong hint towards one of your station members.

Styg's writing can be clumsy at times in a sense that he's not a native speaker and he doesn't understand the language completely (can't blame him, though, it's pretty much impossible for a foreigner to have a really strong literature writing), but the overal setups of his scenarios are pretty cool.

Mind you, these are all from the early game - I haven't played that far yet.

 

[AetherVagrant]

Shit i knew this post was going to get resurrected. shoulda deleted, but great example of a first-time blatant shitpost.

At the time i wanted a satisfying story driven non fantasy rpg. I wound up getting and playing both, WL2 was teh best thing evah until maybe 20 hours in when i realized it wasnt going to get better, and i started to dread combat for being sooooo tedious.

good hundred hours into underrail now and its back to my main squeeze now that im done with Witcher3.
writing is better, combat is better, skill useage better, choice and consequence feels real even if its not "do x or town y will be gone"
I dont think ill ever get around to finishing WL2, not when there still SitS, Underrail, and Consortium to work on, and then Fallout 4 will be out and: no matter how shitty a fallout game becomes ill probably always at least play it. Even that atrocious xbox dark alliance game they tried to shovel off.