Wasteland 3 - Officially Announced

[Silver]

@BluesNews At the Wasteland website they countdown to next week for further news on Wasteland 3 which has been officially announced. Expect a crowdfunding campaign on Fig and a snowy Wasteland.

What is Wasteland 3?

• A party-based role-playing game, with a renewed focus on our trademark complex story reactivity and strategic combat.
• By including vehicles, environmental dangers, and a revamped, more fluid action system, we are evolving on Wasteland 2's deep tactical turn-based combat and unique encounter design.
• Play by yourself or with a friend in story-driven synchronous or asynchronous multiplayer. Choices open up (or close off) mission opportunities, areas to explore, story arcs, and tons of other content.
• Your Ranger Base is a core part of the experience. As you help the local people and improve your Ranger Base, quests and narrative will force you to make decisions on how to lead.
• The game will be set in the savage lands of frozen Colorado, where survival is difficult and a happy ending is never guaranteed. Players will face difficult moral choices and make sacrifices that will change the game world.
• Wasteland 3 will feature a deep and engaging story utilizing a newly-revamped dialog tree system from the celebrated writers of Torment: Tides of Numenera
• Simultaneously releasing to Windows, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One
• Explore a New Frozen Wasteland
• You start the game as the sole survivor of Team November, a Ranger squad dispatched to the icy Colorado wastes. This is a land of buried secrets, lost technology, fearsome lunatics, and deadly factions. No one here has ever heard of the Desert Rangers. Your reputation is yours to build from scratch, and your choices may save this land or doom it. With a renewed focus on macro-reactivity, you'll be picking between warring factions, deciding whether locations are destroyed or saved, and other far reaching decisions that have a marked impact on the shape of your world.

Bring a Friend
For the first time in the history of the Wasteland franchise, you will be able to take a friend with you on your journey into the post-apocalyptic wastes! Wasteland 3 opens up the possibility to play through the campaign with a friend; both of you controlling your own squad of Rangers.

The core of Wasteland 3 will still be a rich single-player experience. If you play with a friend while both online together, you'll be able to share many missions, and join up to hit key story beats, but you can also split up and cover more ground. Once a game is started, you can play Wasteland 3 while your friend is offline, and do a lot of missions without them. Be aware, however, that the actions you take while your friend is off-line are not without consequence!

By making the decision to include multiplayer early on in the process, we will be able to design a game that is true to the core principles of the Wasteland franchise and our studio. Wasteland 3 can be played as an offline, single-player game, and is built from the ground up with a focus on story and reactivity that makes no sacrifices to the multiplayer experience. At the same time, co-op players will enjoy working together to change Wasteland 3's highly reactive world... or finding ways to destroy what their friend has worked to accomplish.

More information.

 

[Silver]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-09-28-inxile-announces-wasteland-3-and-its-got-multiplayer

Eurogamer has some prototype images. The funding target is 2.75 million.

 

[Hexprone]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-09-28-inxile-announces-wasteland-3-and-its-got-multiplayer

Huh. This is the first I've heard of "Fig" (which the Eurogamer article explains is an alternative to KS where backers are also investors). What do people think of that idea so far?

 

[Moriendor]

Huh. This is the first I've heard of "Fig" (which the Eurogamer article explains is an alternative to KS where backers are also investors). What do people think of that idea so far?

It was launched/revealed about a year ago and has a Wikipedia entry with lots of info and details.

Fig is a crowdfunding platform for video games. The crowdfunding platform was founded by Justin Bailey (formerly, COO of Double Fine Productions),[1] Bob Ippolito, and Freeman White. The advisory board is composed of executives from across the video game industry with previous experience in crowdfunding and investing in video game projects: Aaron Isaksen of the Indie Fund, Brian Fargo of inXile Entertainment, Feargus Urquhart of Obsidian Entertainment, and Tim Schafer of Double Fine Productions.

The biggest difference as opposed to KS is you might actually get a ROI from a successful commercial product...

Fig is offered as an alternative means for funding video game development from traditional crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter. The goal of Fig is to allow not only the traditional backing of a video game as with normal crowdfunding, but to also enable those that can invest in a game's development to receive a portion of the game's profits once it is released, in addition to other typical rewards that crowdfunded projects allow.

 

[rjshae]

Vehicles for the overland map? Or vehicles a-la Mad Max? I'd like to see horses, personally.

 

[ChaosTheory]

Positive: Really enjoyed WL2 once the Director's Cut was released (was boring prior to that).

Negative: I refuse to KS funds again to an established company to make a sequel to a game that would sell itself without guaranteed money.

I'll wait for the game to release, and if it's worthy, THEN I will financially support it.

 

[joxer]

As I've explained in another thread.
I won't back WLO aka Wasteland Online. Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Fig or something else.

Good luck Inxile.

 

[Deleted User]

Multiplayer, nice. This will be a blast to play in co-op and hopefully it has dual controller support + single screen co-op (aka couch co-op).

 

[rjshae]

It looks like the Fig funding is through a company called Stripe. I'll wait to see if they allow PayPal. Trying to keep my attack surface to a minimum.

 

[Pappy]

Nope. I KS'd with them before and now they'll have to find another way. It took a long time for them to get everything right for Wasteland 2. Now they want to bite off even more for Wasteland 3? I'm not creating a Fig account for that.

 

[ElderGnome]

Sweet. I need to play through Wasteland 2 Director's Cut; I had a game way back when and got to California and sorta lost interest when I heard the DC was coming out.

Have to revisit that. I don't really do the crowdfunding thing so I'll wait until the game is released through normal channels and play it then. Probably wait until about 3 months after release if it's anything like Wasteland 2 on release.

 

[you]

I don't mind supporting an existing company that delivers with quality. I view it as a very early pre-order at a reasonable price. Now if they had micro-transaction or left the major bugs while moving on to a new project it would be another story. However, companies that are consumer oriented I feel are worth supporting. A few examples are HB,Xile and Larian among others.

 

[Deleted User]

I don't understand how anyone on this site can really have a problem supporting developers like Inxile, Obsidian, Larian and the countless smaller ones that are attempting to make interesting RPGs and increase their funding via Kickstarter. Whether they made a profit on their past games or not is irrelevant. Wasteland 3 is going to ask for $2.75 million? That will help improve the game. I think these developers should also be able to live comfortable lives (see: make money), make games they and their fans love and continue to try and wrestle back creative control to publish and create their own games (which is a BIG plus for those developers who have used Kickstarter already).

 

[PegasusOrgans]

I never understand the utter contempt RPG "fans" feel towards developers these days. If they have such hate for a beloved hobby, I don't want to see how they treat something they dislike!!! Before the recent boom, thanks, in part, to Kickstarter/crowd-funding the same people were complaining that no one makes proper turn based, party based RPGs anymore. Basically, no matter what, they want to complain. Even if you gave them a magic lamp with an infinite wish-granting genie inside, they'd complain about the necessity of rubbing it to get wishes. Or the colour is wrong, or the shape, or, or blah blah. Without us backers, you late comers would have nothing to buy at 80% off/pirate.

I never got that idea of "well, someone else will do it, so why should I?". If everyone had that thought… such a lazy, entitled and spoiled way to think and live.


BTW, they are BASICALLY doing Divinity: Original Sin and BALDUR'S GATE style multiplayer, so I fail to see how it's "Wasteland Online" or that they sold out. Hypocrites and bullshitters are so transparent.

 

[rune_74]

This came out of nowhere for me...I will have to make a fig account to back this...still haven't beat the first one.

 

[Ripper]

I can sort of see the case for indie studios using crowd funding every time. All game projects are pretty risky, and even one significant failure can undermine a company. The crowd campaign gives them a cash injection, shows them whether there is strong interest in the game, and helps with publicity.

It's not necessarily a bad deal for the customer, if it's a reliable studio and they get a good price for what is essentially a pre-order. I do think it's a mug's game to give such a project large sums of money though - you're essentially just making an extra donation to their bank account, which is how I felt about D:OS 2.

 

[Deleted User]

I don't look at Kickstarter as a simple pre-order even if it is an established studio doing a campaign. The funds they raise go directly to adding new features to the game, improving it and you can visually see what they are adding to the game due to the amount of money raised. Getting a good price in this case is not the most important thing for everyone, since some folks go above and beyond to support the studio with higher $ amounts because they want to see a better game, believe strongly in the developers or just generally want to support the developers' work.

 

[ikbenrichard]

Got sold by:
By including vehicles, environmental dangers, and a revamped, more fluid action system, we are evolving on Wasteland 2's deep tactical turn-based combat and unique encounter design.

Great news ! LOve wasteland 2

 

[forgottenlor]

I really enjoyed Wasteland 2, so will probably fund this as well.

 

[Pessimeister]

Nice scoop Silver, amazing news really! I certainly didn't expect it to be announced so soon. I like the sound of the ice-waste setting; bit more lukewarm though on the multiplayer aspect.
Whilst I have played Divinity Original Sin and Pillars of Eternity from the first batch of successful Kickstarter projects, I'm yet to do so with Wasteland 2 - so this should give some additional motivation.