Wasteland 2 Interview
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InXile Entertainment wasn't that lucky in the gamedev field after ressurection of The Bard's Tale. There was cancelled Hei$t, Hunted: The Demon's Forge that received not very favourable reviews. A lot of people are worrying about the fate of Wasteland 2. What went wrong with the previous projects? And why anything similar isn't going to happen this time?
Those were two excellent examples of me not being left alone to do it my way. The thing is that every producer of games has a different style and way to manage the process. I can assure you mine is quite different than the next one yet sometimes a publisher will try to force me into making decisions I disagree with. They will hold money over your head and you get stuck between game integrity and getting your people paid. The best developers have the clout to avoid such things. My games are far better when I am left alone to do it the way that works for me. I think the assets we have shown and the fast paced of development of Wasteland 2 should give most people some reassurance.
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As far as we know, the game is getting at least a «Mature» rating. How is it reflected in the aesthetics of Wasteland 2? Are you letting player to shoot little kids in the game?
Certainly all of the writing in mature in that it deals with violence, drugs, prostitution, cannibals etc since that is how we envision a dark future. It isn't like we are trying to get a Mature rating but we are not pulling punches for the harshness of the universe. We are letting the players behave the way they want without putting rules around behavior so I'm sure there will be many dark scenarios.
What about the characters? Will players be able to customize them or are we going to choose from several pre-made characters with their own dispositions and preferrences? Are the conflicts within the team possible? Are NPCs going to react on different characters in different ways? Or are all those promised kilobytes of text going to be simple «you got the job, now go fight»?
Players will be able to create a character from scratch or choose a military occupational specialty (like corps of engineers) which will set the base stats and skills. But even then the player can continue to tweak the skills and attributes the way they want. There will be over 30 different skills that the player uses to customize themselves with. The ranger squad that the players creates are wholly under the control of the player. This is more classic role playing however the NPCs that join the party will not be under full control which means they waste ammo, steal from the party, open fire on people and potentially cause havoc for the rangers. Players won't always quite know what they are getting when someone joins up.
