Wasteland 2 first look video released, update

The camera... it's good but... it seems to be the type that, if zoomed in, is a bit isometric, but if zoomed out, turns into more of a top-down.

I think they should give the option to be flexible between iso and td, player's choice, and both with their own zoom (in and out, preserving the perspective).

TL;DR = I want full isometric camera, with zooming in/out not turning it into top-down perspective


Other than this, everything looks great. The fact that so many features are not even shown makes it even more awesometastic!

 

Could come in handy, Solar. As said, what we saw is only about halfway to the finish line. It'd be pretty archaic of them not to have a static camera option for those who don't want to bother with it.

 

Fuck yes... I couldn't be happier

 

The point is, now that you can freely rotate the camera and "explore" the rooms/areas, you have to make sure the levels look good in all angles and waste time/ressources on it, instead of making a static camera but with more detailed things you can see on the screen. He even said it in the video. I'm pretty sure now that this is in, the player is supposed to turn the camera all the damn time to explore if there is something behind that corner, some loot laying there etc.


I can't think of a single 3d RPG from this perspective where gameplay with freely rotatable camera was fun. Neverwinter Nights 2 probably the worst example.

 

Yup, pleasantly surprised.

Still, there are more then enough places that could hinder immersivness (inventory, quest realization, AI behavior, skill tree details, some other combat situations now shown here, gross over-simplification in a effort to escape micromanagement, etc...), but overall, I really think they are on the right track, so fingers crossed.

I'm especially pleased that I have no doubt in a stories told in the game. I know (well...) they will be for a grown-ups and mind-narcotizingly (is this even a word ) good. That alone cheers me up to no end.

 

It does sort of make you wonder whether he's going to be shelling out any money for this terrible, horrible, no good very bad game.

 

I'll buy it when it comes out, missed to pledge back then. Sorry that I don't take everything for granted and express my concerns of certain gameplay elements that I find very annoying (the camera) - because some of the stuff in the video was indeed nice.

 

Looks great. But I have concerns about the quality of the writing, particularly the descriptive text. It frequently read as, well, bad writing - grammatical mistakes ('like' instead of 'as if' is a pet hate) and, well, just bad writing. Kind of like those german RPGs that get badly translated.

Hoepfully it's first draft.

The rest though looked great, though the camera looked fiddly; would rather it was more fixed.

 

Overall it was much better than i expected.
Graphically it looks perfect.
I hate having moving camera, always a big problem.
It seems to me it was more or less manageable in the video though.
If they are very careful with this aspect i hope it will not be too annoying as it's too late to do otherwise.
I"m kind of disappointed by some reactions about the dialogue system.
I love it because it will allow to ask a lot more to every NPC and also to do some detective work, going back talking to some NPC latter when we know more about the setting. It could be much more dynamic too and introduce game play in dialogue rather than just choosing the winning option.
Combats i'm not sure...it looks fun but totally broken because we see everything and the opponent see nothing. Lot of balancing needed here but well it's a demo and otherwise on the right track.
Atmosphere perfect too with the right amount of cheesy being a Wasteland game.

 

No offense meant. You seem like a reasonable enough guy. It's just that expressing nothing but concern, frequently and bitingly, sort of makes it look less like a critique and more like doomsaying. At this point, I had actually become genuinely curious as to whether or not the game held any interest for you. I'm sure that when it comes down to it you're hoping as much as anyone else that your misgivings come to nothing.

I'm with you on concern over the camera, but I'm reserving judgment until things are a little further along. I've seen that sort of thing done well before-- more often in strategy games than action RPGs, but Wasteland sort of blurs the line there. So far, I've seen and heard more to keep me happy than to get me worried, and if (and granted, this is a big "if") the rest of the development process proceeds to bolster the pros and sand down what could end up being the cons, we'll be looking at a better game than we've had in this vein in many a long year.

 

Loved most of it though there are a few things I disliked.

First up, item glow, I don't like that items are announced like that to the player, it should be up to the player him/herself to look around for things to pick up, announcing what items are lootable means you'll never be surprised you missed something. An example is in Fallout 2, Reno at one of the casino's; on the 2nd floor with the boss in the middle room there is a bathroom in the northern part with a closet right next to it, in this closet there is a chest which has some goodies in it. You would never find this unless you actually looked in that room yourself. With item glow you can instantly see what is lootable and it destroys any kind of surprise future playthroughs might hold. Then again, maybe there are items to loot when you [Examine] desks and stuff like that. One might argue that it's tedious to have to look around everywhere, like when going through a dozen lockers in a game like Fallout. But I feel like that's the point of it, you either spend time and patience looking through a lot of things then you are going to be rewarded for it, and if you don't you won't.

Then we have the dialogue, I don't like the use of topics like that as it makes it seem like there isn't a conversation going on, it's more like it's a vending machine with dialogue and all you're doing is pushing the buttons.

Finally, the end enemy, why did it roar?

 

This video makes me happy in my pants.

 

Looks like fallout 3 to me

 

Text parser, indeed! BN, you rarely lie

Anyway, as opposed to dialogue trees with lines, this system allows for far more flexibility, IMO. Just imagine the possibilities you can ask an NPC... Most probably he'll answer "Never heard of it" most of the time, but if player follows clues in the game, he may get a nice answer or hint about something, that otherwise would be missed. And that allows for more exploration options, loot, secret areas, hidden NPCs, additional quests... Or maybe even something like:

Player: "Fighting"
NPC: "Fighting the Good Fight!"

 

I can't say I'm too pleased with the "Oblivion"-style one-click conversation trees, though I do like that it's possible to open (and close!) more options through diligence. To me, the "Tell Me About" function, highly reminiscent of the first Fallout, covers a lot of ground towards making up for it, though.

 

The atmosphere is bleak and the music is spot on.

Combat is great.

Never liked keyword based dialog systems . . .

 

Holy crap this looks waaaaaaaaaaay better than I thought a million dollars would buy.

 

I watched the video in full screen and constantly caught myself trying to move the camera with my mouse. I want to play this now, it looks fantastic.

 

The game looks so much better than I thought it would. Very happy I backed this on Kickstarter.