Wasteland 2 - Impression & New Music

IncGamers Peter Parrish shares his thoughts on the latest beta version of Wasteland 2.

The user interface is clean and functional, with (mostly) redefinable hotkeys and a simple system of dragging and dropping for things like arranging usable skills, equipping weapons or transferring items between characters. It seems a little strange that there’s no mini-map of your immediate surroundings, as this means you can’t ever really tell if you’ve exhausted a given area. But, in line with Wasteland 2‘s admirable lack of quest arrows, this may be a design choice.

Though I didn’t delve too far beyond the opening couple of quest branches for fear of uncovering more than I actually wished to experience, what I did see of Wasteland 2 was impressive. Character creation allows for a wide range of roles, which appear well catered for in quest design. Throwing the big Highpool-Ag Center dilemma at players nice and early is a great sign of what’s to come, and I know I’ll be heading off to Highpool next time through to see how that pans out instead.

So far, Wasteland 2 is looking exactly what it’s backers were hoping to fund: a traditional, party based RPG with roots in a historical important series, and not a quest arrow, quick-time event or “cinematic” cut-scene in sight. Not bad for $15.

Mark Morgan also released another battle music track last week.