Bingo

inXile Entertainment said it had plans for Nintendo Switch and as we now know, those plans include porting over the post-apocalyptic RPG Wasteland 2: Director's Cut. That might not be the precise game you were? hoping to see pop up first, but it'll certainly bolster the Sw??itch's library.

Here's a?? quick glimpse from i?nXile CEO Brian Fargo.

How about a little tease... pic.twitter.com/Zwh8gL8cQL

— Brian Fargo (@BrianFargo) December 12, 2017

In a follow-up tweet, Fargo confirmed that the team behind the mobile ports of The Bard's Tale will handle Wasteland 2 for Switch. "I have to give props to Nintendo owners for your love of the machine," he added. "[The photo] had the quickest traction ??of most anything I've ever tweeted."

Brian Fargo [Twitter]

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Wasteland 2 free this weekend on Steam

Wasteland 2: Director's Cut, 2014's Kickstarter RPG from inXile Entertainment, is this we??ekend's free game on Steam. From now until Sunday at 1PM pacific, you can download and play the game through Steam free of charge. 

Should you not be able to power through the roughly 40-hour main quest, you can also buy it for $20 (half off). That deal is good until Monday at noon, so you can wait until after you've had som?e time playing for free to make the deci??sion.

You play as an Irishman out in the fields, where he fights for his meals and gets his back into his living. Thanks to robust dialogue options, he doesn't need to fight to prove that he's right, but even if he does, he doesn't need to be forgiven??.

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Target individual body parts!

Come this summer, you won't want need a PC to play Wasteland 2. inXile Entertainment is bringing its harsh post-apocalyptic role-playing game to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One with an expanded Game of the Year Edition. Existing players aren't being left behind, though -- the new content will arrive as a free update for the Windows, Mac, and Linux versions of Wasteland 2.

First off, the game is going to look and sound better. It's being updated to the Unity?? 5 engine, with improved textures, character models, and lighting, plus "thousands of lines of new voice-over." There are mechanical upgrades, too, like the Precision Strike system that allows players to attack specific body par?ts in combat. Cripple those limbs, rangers!

Perks & Quirks, a system for individualizing characters with bonuses and trade-offs, will help bolster squad customization. The go-to example right now is "Raised in the Circus," which grants agility during fights but makes you look like a ??clown. inXile is "also overhauling game balance, item drops, and reworking the majority of combat encounters throughout the game."

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Releasing this summer with improvements

[Update: On top of the Xbox One release, Wasteland 2 is also coming to PlayStation 4 this summer, inXile confirmed today. CEO Brian Fargo noted that "if you are backer of Wasteland 2 or have already purchased?? it on PC, fear not. We w??ill announce great news for you later."]

I wouldn't have thought a game like Wasteland 2 would leave its PC roots but if it works, it wo??rks. inXile Entertainment is self-publishing its deep, unforgiving turn-based RPG on Xbox One "soon."

T??he traile?r out of this week's Game Developers Conference lists several upgrades:

• New quirks and perks system
• New precision strike system
• Complete art and lighting overhaul
• Updated character models for all party members
• New voice-overs for all major speaking parts and CNPCs

What about current players? Tracing back to the last Kickstarter update, inXile says it's "not done yet" with the Steam version of Wasteland 2. The team is moving its code base to the new Unity 5 engine, so besides "...visual improvements, we have quite a few quirky tricks up our sleeves. The character system is getting perked up and will include some new elements to ??modify gameplay."

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This Kickstarted RPG delivers exactly what was expected

_{[Disclosure: I backed the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter and as such received an Early Access copy of the game.]}

Wasteland 2 is one of the projects that saw success in the wake of Double Fine's Broken Age. Just a month after Tim Schafer's adventure game project blew past its funding goal, Brian Fargo and inXile E?ntertainment also saw? their Kickstarter pull in millions of dollars.

Despite the original Wasteland dating back to 1988, there were more than enough fans who wanted to see a sequel made. So Wasteland 2 exists in a strange position where the fans who remember the original played a? very different game than the one that's been delivered in 2014.

While PC RPGs have changed a lot over the years, Wasteland 2 is still very old-school in a lot of ways -- some good, some bad -- and? remains t?rue to its intentions and origins.

Wasteland 2 (PC [reviewed], Mac, Linux)
Developer: inXile Entertainment
Publisher: inXile Entertainment
MRSP: $39.99/£29.99
Released: September 19, 2014

inXile head Brian Fargo has talked at length about how Wasteland 2 was rejected by numerous publishers over the years. It's a traditional, old-school PC RPG in almost every way -- so much so that it feels like a follow-up to the original Fallout games. 

The world of Wasteland 2 is still the irradiated wastes of a post-apocalyptic USA??. The only form of law enforcement is the Rangers, a group of former military engineers opera?ting out of a base called The Citadel. Starting with a party of four characters, players will roam the the Southwest, initially hunting for clues to solve the murder of a Ranger but gradually uncovering a new enemy.

What's interesting about the Rangers is that they're not universally liked; despite your best efforts, you won't always be able to change people's attitudes about your specific team or the Rangers in general. Not everything is black and white and your crew is going to have to make tough choices to achieve its goals. The wasteland is a dangerous, unforgiving place. Although the Fallout series has always had some dark humor to it thanks to the retro-futuristic setting, Wasteland 2 is? mainly played straight -- there's not a lot of joy to be found in t??he irradiated wilderness.

At the start, you'll get to select a team of four characters that you can either pick from a pre-set group or design on your own. All the named characters have a predefined set of skills to suit certain roles, like a medic or sniper, but you're free to generate a custom character and choose their skills as you please. As with a lot of role-playing games, you're shown many stats, abilities, and attributes when you pick a character and it's hard to know what to invest in. Wasteland 2 is the ty?pe of game where after a few hours of playing, you'll ??realize you've got a bad or otherwise ineffective combination of skills and will want to just start over.

That's echoed with a lot of the quest design where there's often the urge to reload a much earlier save because you've either missed something or your party didn't pick up a vital piece of equipment from an earlier mission. You're not going to see everything ?on the first playthrough so don't be disappointed when there's some unresolved loose ends in the story when the credits roll. However, certain early missions just seem to lead into other ones without feeling resolved and you're left with unfinished business in your log. The game could do a better job of keeping you informed of where the most pressing mission is happening or let you know before you leave an area that there's still things to be done.

Eventually, you can recruit for your team and add up to three extra party members. They all have their own attributes, gear, and stats but are prone to losing their cool under fire and ignoring your commands. Most of the time this actually works out fine as they charge into battle, shooting enemies as they go but sometimes they'll walk into a ??tra??p and just cause trouble. Early on, it's worthwhile to take an extra teammate or two with you just to at least have another person for raiders and mutants to focus on instead of you. One way the game could stand to improve is sharing resources between party members; dragging and dropping items to a member's icon more often than not led me to just dump items on the ground instead.

Combat is based on action points that the player can spend to do things like move, shoot, and reload. Positioning and use of cover is key but it can be frustrating when you've got party members who are armed ??with melee and short-ranged weapons fighting in a big open area. An action queue is displayed at the top of the screen, showing the order of characters and who will act first, which is based on their initiative?? skill.

Action point usage is displayed pretty clearly -- like when you hover over an enemy to see how much AP it will take to shoot them, or to throw a grenade, for ??instance. Keeping characters out of harm's way is a good idea as you can roll some unused action points over into that character's next turn. While it's possi??ble to just push your way through early battles, you'll need to make good use of your party's skills to beat large groups of enemies. 

It's easy to see where Wasteland 2's fairly modest, Kickstarter-generated budget has gone. Close up, the character models are basic, even compar??ed with previous-gen co??nsole games. They're almost PlayStation 2-era graphics -- but they're not the reason you're playing the game.

A few darker areas could have used some extra user-interface prompts to help p??layers pick out their party and traps, and there's a strange lack of consistency with character's painted portraits and their actual 3D model in the game. One of my custom characters had a picture portraying him as a clean-shaven black man even though the actual 3D model showed him being white and having a grey beard. It's not a major problem at all, but it was jarring every time it popped up.

Someth??ing else that's noticeable is the voice acting, or lack thereof. While your main contact General Vargas is fully voiced and you'll hear plenty of radio chatter with other characters, more often than not it's only the first and last line of a conversation that has spoken dialogue -- the rest is just text. Again, not a problem in the larger scale of things, ??but it's noticeable.

If these sound like nitpicks, then it's because they are really the only problems that are due to how the game was made. Other issues come from the fact that this is a real old-school RPG, the kind that most developers haven't made made in a while (Divinity: Original Sin is a recent exception).

It's the type of game that sticks with the "dice rolls in the background" mechanic and there will be t??imes when you ha?ve a 99% chance to succeed and you'll still fail. There are separate skills for lock picking, safe cracking, and bypassing alarms. That's been part and parcel of the genre for years so if that kind of thing doesn't put you off, you're going to enjoy your time here.

Wasteland 2 ?is an expansive game that demands to be replayed again and again to get the best out of it. While a lot of the detailed mechanics feel somewhat archaic, they're not going?? to hold back dedicated players who want to micromanage and really role play their group of characters. It has all of the familiar elements and even if some aspects of its presentation are not quite up to modern standards, its design and gameplay are timeless and welcome.

The post Review: Wasteland 2 appeared first on Destructoid.

Full game headed for release August 2014

Wasteland 2 is poised to ship at the end of August 2014, and you can play it right now via the Wasteland 2 Steam Early Access beta. Well, you can play the entire Arizona area of the game. That's still playing, kind of. Right? Sounds good enough for me.

inXile Entertainment's projected launch window means there isn't too much longer to wait before you can get your hands on the sequel to the predecessor to the Fallout series, and that's great news. Because I've been waiting for something to really scratch that Fallout itch, and nothing's ??been hitting ?the spot thus far.

Wasteland 2 is a turn-based RPG that follows an elite squad of desert Rangers who trek across a post-apocalyptic wasteland of a fallen America to come to the aid of the remaining human survivors of a world wracked with decay and radioactivity. A projected 50+ hour game with a word count "greater than the Lord of the Rings novels" sounds like something I want to get my hands on, so I'm tempted to see if the game, in Early Access form, lives up to the expectations set by the original Wasteland.

What do y??ou say we check it out and report our fi??ndings, dear readers?

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A new map and retooled combat animations are all included

Typical, just when you mention how inXile was taking its time updating Wasteland 2, the studio releases a big update to its game. There's a lot of additions and changes in this up??date -- way too many to list here -- but they all add up to a hefty 3.5GB update on Steam. The addition of a new Prison map will give players some more areas to explore and it looks like there's been a big overhaul of the combat mechanics and animations.

Of course, a lot of the fun of reading through update notes is the odd little things you find that have either been fixed or added. Two of my favorites are "Strange noises ha?ve been added" an "an unclickable hidden cache can be clicked."

Still, I've been waiting for a reason to try out some more Wasteland 2 after playing a few?? hours at the end of last year and this big update looks a good reason to dive back in.

Wasteland 2 Early Beta Update #34046 Notes [Wasteland]

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Parternship lets inXile concentrate on making the game

The publisher of Saints Row IV, Metro: Last Light, and Dead Island will be working with inXile Entertainment on the crowdfunded Wasteland 2. Deep Silver will be responsible for the role-playing game's release at retail, quality-assurance testing of the localized international version, and fulfillme?nt of physic??al Kickstarter rewards -- a bigger task than it might initially seem -- while inXile is free to "focus on all creative aspects" of development.

"This has the added bonus of allowing us to spend more of the Kickstarter funds on development while continue to retain all ownership and control," said inXile CEO Brian Fargo. "I've known the people at Deep Silver for many years and they have always been a first rate organization to deal with." Seems like a good collaboration, then. If nothing else, it's an excuse to bring up Wasteland 2, which is coming along slowly but surely. Check out that HUD!

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A video of Wasteland 2 has be?en leaked onto YouTube. The video is in Russian, but thanks to my excellent knowledge of Google's translator, I was able to deduce that this is supposedly from a talk given by Brian Fargo to other developers.

Brian Fargo, head of inXile Entertainment, began working on Wasteland 2 with funding provided by a Kickstarter campaign back in March.

What do you guys think? Can a modern RPG succeed while using this in-the-sky camera angle? Or do all games these days need to be first-per??son in order to be popular?

Wasteland 2 Footage Leaks, Robot Scorpions Roar [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

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