Wasteland 2 Review - Classics Never Die
After 26 years, a very successful Kickstarter campaign which raised nearly $3 Million and a few delays here and there, the sequel to Wasteland, the beloved 1988 classic, is finally upon us. Wasteland 2, in fact, is very proud of its origin and tries to incorporate all the elements which made the RPGs of the late 80s and early 90s landmarks of the genre, whilst updating and improving some of the more tedious aspects to meet the modern standard. The result is the best of both worlds: a deep and challenging RPG, rich in story and content yet carefully built from the ground up to be more accessible for gamers in 2014.
You take control of a small squad of Desert Rangers, an organization of vigilantes and peacekeepers trying, against all odds, to maintain some form of civility and humanity in a world which seems to have lost all sense of sanity when to bombs dropped a long time ago. If you are getting flashbacks to Fallout, that’s not a surprise. The original Wasteland is considered the godfather of post-apocalyptic RPGs, and Fallout is heavily inspired by its world.
Right off the bat, the first task is to build your 4-man squad; you can either pick between a large selection of pre-made characters and edit their skills to your liking or you can create a completely new character from scratch.
Regardless, your goal is to have a team of characters which has a broad skill-set at their disposal. After a lot of thought, my team ended up looking like this: Franci, my custom character, isn’t a combat oriented character and therefore would be the one to handle all the talking to get the group out of sticky situations. In order to offset his lack of combat skills, I invested a lot of points into leadership, as it makes his allies within a certain radius more effective in combat. Next, I picked out Big Bert from the pre-made characters. He’s the muscle of the group, specialized in hitting people with a heavy weapon or beating other objects with it.
My next choice was Fade, an infiltrator who can pick locks, open safes and kill whoever gets close enough with his SMG. Last but not least, Pills, my field medic and surgeon who also happens to be skilled with handguns.
Overall, I felt like this team might have lacked a bit in the combat department, but we had enough skills to avoid some tough fights or at least gather some extra help or equipment to help us get through them.
The game begins with a high ranking member of the Desert Rangers, Ace, being found dead. His mission was to set up two radio repeaters in different locations to help boost the signal of the Desert Rangers and increase their jurisdiction in hope to keep a larger area safe from bandits and other dangers. Obviously, the murder smells fishy, and your team is sent to investigate and finish off his mission. Sooner or later, whilst avoiding spoilers, you’ll realize that the people behind Ace’s death were worried about much more than just a few extra radio repeaters, and that a lot more than you initially thought is at stake.
According to the developers, the game’s story takes about 50 hours to complete, and this isn’t even including all the side quests and optional content. Throughout the campaign, you’ll travel to numerous memorable locations ranging from small villages populated by gangs with crazy hair to labs where experiments have gone horribly wrong. Naturally, depending on your skills and choices, the game plays out completely differently. Even from the beginning you’ll be asked to make some tough choices: who gets your attention first in a crisis? Should you use these resources to help others or be greedy and help yourself? The choices are rarely black and white, so making a decision without having it come back to bite you or having you kicking yourself about it is going to be pretty rare. In many ways, Wasteland 2 reminds me of XCOM when having to handle crises; there are always more than one happening at the same time, you can only help one of them and, regardless of what choice you make, you’ll still end up in a bad situation. There is no right answer, only a less worse one.
Speaking of XCOM, the combat in Wasteland 2 is also very reminiscent of it. When you run into a mob of enemies, the game switches to a turn-based system where each unit takes their turn in order of their initiative. You can move your team members into cover to provide them with extra protection from enemy attacks, you can leave your unit in ambush mode, which grants them an attack of opportunity whenever an enemy moves in range, and you have to position your units according to their optimal weapons ranges. For example, pistols are good in short and medium range, even if targets are harder to hit as you move away, whereas shotguns fire in a cone, therefore it’s best to stay closer to your enemy to make sure to hit it while avoiding friendly fire (which can also occur with other, more standard, weapons if you have allies in the line of sight).
A shot destined for a creepy enemy mutant may instead find its way onto your ally who was standing behind him. It makes positioning and firing all the more tactical and important during fights.
There is a lot to take into account during fights, and with weapons jamming and misfires happening quite frequently, it can make for some infuriating moments; however, it’s also more rewarding when you finally get past an encounter which had you outnumbered simply by outsmarting the enemy and being careful with your positioning.
I’ll be honest, I’ve always had trouble getting into this older kind of RPG. I could only handle an hour or two of Baldur’s Gate and Fallout 1 and 2 between the unfriendly user interface, the dated graphics and some now archaic game design choices. Instead, with Wasteland 2 I was able to truly enjoy myself without feeling frustrated enough to stop for good. The game never holds you hand, but it tries to ease you in as much as possible to all the more complex parts. The UI, from the inventory to the quest log, is easy to use and finding what you need isn’t a chore. Whilst not the best looking RPG out there, Wasteland 2 manages to make everything in the world clearly visible and understandable, as well as adopting some more recent game design choices to help with the quality of life without sacrificing the more hardcore aspects of the genre.
The attention to detail is also staggering; as a player who likes to read up on every little bit of info on the characters and world, and click on every single dialogue option, I was pleased to see that this game offered a lot of content in this regard. Conversations not only offer crucial information to your quest, but also give you a lot of background on pretty much everything. It makes the whole world feel more alive and believable by fleshing out the story; it’s rare to find a game which does it as well as Wasteland 2.
Throughout my time with the game, I encountered a number of bugs and, whilst none of them were game-breaking, they were very annoying and a bit too frequent for my liking. However, this is only a small stain on a near perfect experience. Regardless of how many times I cursed at my team for missing what seemed like the simplest of shots or wondered around aimlessly trying to figure out where to go when the place was right in front of me, I always came back, and I know I’ll keep coming back.
For fans of the classic RPGs of the late 80s and early 90s, you will be thrilled to know that Wasteland 2 is exactly what you’ve been waiting for. For fans of RPGs like me, who couldn’t get into some of these older titles, Wasteland 2 might bridge the gap enough to make it more accessible and, if you are scared about the combat being too tough, the Rookie difficulty makes it so that you’ll be able to see the end of the story.