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The folks at RPG Codex have posted the third in a series of interview about Wasteland 2, this time again with Brian Fargo on community feedback and design decisions:<blockquote>How do you strike a balance between a professional design vision and the desires of a diverse audience? Do you believe that the nature of this project will have a significant impact on the game's development process?
BF: Every project that I have managed has started with a vision document that calls out the important things we must deliver on. In conjunction with those call outs I make the team deliver examples of such things. If we say great characters with interesting dialogue then I want to see a sample. If we think gorgeous character portraits are important then I want an artist to show me one. It is one thing to promise a feature, but another to deliver. So instead of my relying on my instincts or team meetings I am able to solicit the feedback from the fans to make sure we nail what is important. The process now is very similar but actually better than ever since I don't have to be flying in the dark. We are not going to try and satisfy EVERY desire of EVERY fan, or it would be a mess. My instincts for this game have been pretty much in line with what I have seen, but there have been new ideas or priorities that were not intuitive to me and I was thankful for having the input that has been supplied. And there will be an extra step soon where I post the vision document based on all these things, but I have not had a second to type something up that communicates well. I don't think there will be any big surprises on it... we all know what we want to see here.
(...)
Fallout is often cited as the spiritual successor to Wasteland, even though there are some fundamental differences between the two games. A lot of people want to see features closer to those in Fallout. Do you feel that it is important to preserve the differences between the two franchises? Even though it's understandable that many younger gamers missed out on Wasteland, can you assure us that Wasteland 2 will feel more like a Wasteland sequel than an alternative Fallout 2 successor?
BF: There will be zero need to have played Wasteland 1 in order to slide into the sequel. We will obviously take elements of both games into account on the sequel. There are so many similarities in the two worlds that it is difficult for me to say what is spiritual to what. But again I will share more specifics via our vision document soon.</blockquote>
BF: Every project that I have managed has started with a vision document that calls out the important things we must deliver on. In conjunction with those call outs I make the team deliver examples of such things. If we say great characters with interesting dialogue then I want to see a sample. If we think gorgeous character portraits are important then I want an artist to show me one. It is one thing to promise a feature, but another to deliver. So instead of my relying on my instincts or team meetings I am able to solicit the feedback from the fans to make sure we nail what is important. The process now is very similar but actually better than ever since I don't have to be flying in the dark. We are not going to try and satisfy EVERY desire of EVERY fan, or it would be a mess. My instincts for this game have been pretty much in line with what I have seen, but there have been new ideas or priorities that were not intuitive to me and I was thankful for having the input that has been supplied. And there will be an extra step soon where I post the vision document based on all these things, but I have not had a second to type something up that communicates well. I don't think there will be any big surprises on it... we all know what we want to see here.
(...)
Fallout is often cited as the spiritual successor to Wasteland, even though there are some fundamental differences between the two games. A lot of people want to see features closer to those in Fallout. Do you feel that it is important to preserve the differences between the two franchises? Even though it's understandable that many younger gamers missed out on Wasteland, can you assure us that Wasteland 2 will feel more like a Wasteland sequel than an alternative Fallout 2 successor?
BF: There will be zero need to have played Wasteland 1 in order to slide into the sequel. We will obviously take elements of both games into account on the sequel. There are so many similarities in the two worlds that it is difficult for me to say what is spiritual to what. But again I will share more specifics via our vision document soon.</blockquote>