[Disclaimer: Copy is purchased from GOG; free-weekend time on Steam.]
The comparison that best comes to mind about Wasteland 2 as a player-driven experience is how it resembles a tabletop campaign. As someone who has experienced this game as my foray into CRPGs as well as classics such as Fallout and Planescape, returning to the Wasteland has brought a refreshing perspective to what is still my favorite role-playing experience. It may not offer multi-layer quests as New Vegas nor may its narrative create a new standard, yet what Wasteland 2 does get right few games can hardly boast. Perhaps its most notable achievement is how the game is tailored to respond to potential consequences, and even if you complete the game twice you never get to see everything, especially if you never accept failure, whether of your own or of bad luck, to see the fallbacks in store. Consequence isn’t the right word, which implies your actions are a punishment; the world of Wasteland 2 feels reactionary like a dungeon-master who makes your game tough yet lenient enough to reach the end either with broken bones or casualties buried in your tale.
The C.L.A.S.S.I.C. Tale of the Old World Meets the New
Similar to Fallout, the real prelude starts not out in the game-world but the numerous choices made when creating your four-man squad. Taking inspiration from the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system, C.L.A.S.S.I.C. offers far more robust, diverse and viable builds to make characters’ backstories more tangible. This aspect is made possible because very few benefits without good reason are exclusive to one stat such as Accuracy, Ability Points per turn, Evasion and Critical Chance. Strength, Intelligence and Charisma are exceptions as they offer benefits ranging from, respectively, skill-points per level to hit points, carrying capacity and heavy armor requirements as well as leadership radii, XP gains and follower requirements. None of these major stats are exclusive to a build for the sake of gameplay; however, these stats do flesh out the characters’ stories you can create as well as their many, many quirks.
Quirks are perhaps W2’s greatest feature, and if there was casual mod-support or in-game tools to create your own variables like the character biographies it would make this game nearly endless with replay value. Similar to traits found in the classic and the new Fallouts, Quirks offer both benefits and defects to add character to the gameplay. While traits did not ruin the newer Fallouts, the classic Fallout system was inhibited by the fact you only control one character. Choosing traits could either make the gameplay too easy as with Gifted or insanely frustrating like Skilled or Kamikaze, and the effect was hardly noticeable. In contrast, Quirks range from simple, balanced benefits like having larger fists results in stronger melee attacks but no critical hits to more absurd ones like the ability to dodge attacks by fainting, suffering attribute penalties and bonuses as a result of your bipolar nature or because you hate odd numbers, or the fact that being an asshole negates any Smart Ass or Kiss Ass responses. Having a party of quirky characters who can balance out the defects actively encourages players to go nuts, and the difficulty curve is about as fine-tuned as it can be to make most outcomes plausible.
When it comes to difficulty, however, the game can be surprisingly unsure of itself as sometimes the party combination and their skillsets can make sections of the game easier or unbelievably difficult—or more tedious. You usually expect this consequence in RPGs, and in the case of W2 it mitigates this issue for the most part by having stats not influence damage values but the accuracy to use weapons more proficiently. As far as adding to the game’s tedium, the plethora of explosive traps can become grating to disarm them one-by-one until you decide to shoot them or blow them all up. However, what does contribute to the spikes and the troughs of challenge is its artificial nature. Supreme Jerk mode should be the intended experience as it encourages using more cover, consumables as well as precision strikes along with crouching to gain evasion and accuracy bonuses. Unfortunately, the mode defines challenge by decreasing the player’s output by 50% and increasing the damage done to the player by 200%. This makes certain fights at the beginning more troublesome than they were meant to be as well as costing more ammo, which is proven when you can tone it down any time and the outcome will be drastically different. (You can also mitigate this problem another way, which is to use the “secret” ending and restarting the game as a level 6 – 8 character.)
Honestly, as much as it innovates the classic Fallout formula, the lame attempt at challenge would have been more interesting had the mode forced players to choose quirks and defects similar to the trait system in Stellaris. Balancing out the mode this manner would encourage players to make more suboptimal builds needed for a squad instead of min-maxing characters to overcome the challenge. In addition, the lack of an iron-man setting makes it harder to resist not loading a previous save, forcing players than hoping they break the habit of living with their consequences.
You're Entering A Wasteland of Similar Sounds, Sights and Time...
The latter two aspects, encouraging suboptimal builds and forcing players to accept failure, are also perhaps the most underappreciated value to Wasteland 2’s narrative few players will ever find. More so than any other RPG, perhaps to a fault, backstories and attachments are emphasized for long-term investment into the world. Although you are newly recruited Desert Rangers, the game encourages you to be liberal with what squadrons you can create with the stat system as well as the biographies you can write. It’s more than simply adding to immersion as it will also influence what companions you bring and why, and it will subconsciously determine who of your group responds to a given scenario. This can create explanations in-game such as why a mother figure who lost her family takes in an eighteen-year old recruit or why someone with an exceptional interest in computers would tag along with a cyborg who often stutters from his invasive lexicon program. You can create backstories based on the world of Wasteland 2 or you use outside media like the Chosen One who somehow wandered through time-and-space from one Wild Wasteland to another with different, yet similar names.
Until playing Vampire the Masquerade, W2’s tone always confused me because I never understood what it wanted to be, and that is a tabletop adventure that borders the line of absurd. Similar to Bloodlines, the narrative and the world is chalk full of self-aware or lewd jokes and pop-culture references that takes away from what makes the world horrific. In addition, the amount of parallels to the Fallout universe—both old and new—makes most factions like Guardians of the Old World and creatures like Scorpiontron feel right out of a page of Mad Libs. Originally, this problem felt like some weird Twilight Zone of copyright where it was hard to determine who copied who, especially when you compare the main threat of W2’s Synths to the simpler Synths in Fallout 4, but after the third run the factions and the characters began to show more distinctions. While it may suffer more tone-whiplash than F4, the threats in this world and the consequences are taken more seriously and the smart writing comes across more subtly when it’s not too excessive.
When it comes critiquing the actual narrative, there are several criticisms others have said that I do not share. The first and more often popular belief is that Arizona is a twenty-hour slog of a tutorial, and that L.A. is the real showstopper of the game. Arizona is a highly-explorable map with various objectives and locations, some of which are completely optional, that can be visited out of order if you can make it through the radiation clouds. There are still numerous choices, quest variety and other incentives that makes the first twenty hours as great as the next, and the first area serves as a premonition of what will come. Second, the main objectives are simple fetch quests; the first is to attach three Radio Repeater units to triangulate the source and the second is to fetch 42 pounds of cat litter to make stronger radiation suits. Similar to the Water Chip quest, the main quests are quests within a larger chain of quest-lines and stories that build naturally with one another, only this time there are actual diverging paths that will change how you play future events out. Lastly, there are some who hate how “goody-goody” you are as a Desert Ranger as well as not liking how the main antagonist is handled, and both of these issues require a little more explanation.
While, yes, you are a Desert Ranger, what type of Ranger you are and how you conduct your business is left up to you and your squad, and there is even a choice to turn against the Rangers if you so desire. The title of Ranger is very much like the Courier in New Vegas; it’s a backstory set-up vague enough in specific details, yet strong enough to build character from that canvas. If you decide to act out violently for no reason, then you should expect to be a reprimanded as you are a marshal figure—the game doesn’t stop you from shooting anyone, but it will punish you. This complaint also ties into the supposed criticism of there not being an “evil” outcome to the game, or not a satisfying one as in other games. In reality, there are several morally questionable choices throughout the game as well as a bad ending scenario with its own stages of grief in the finale. People seem to forget that all CRPGs from Fallout, Baldur’s Gate, etc. do have strong antagonists that while you may sympathize with them they are still your enemy, and you either can choose to submit to them like the Master or you are forced to confrontation like Irenacus. Matthias comes to a nice middle-ground where there are multiple ways his finale can play out based on several factors throughout the game, including an option to submit to him—but like with the Master, you know that is a scenario that will doom humanity, and perhaps you have your own reasons to watch the world burn.
The Cries of a Dead World Following ”What Does this Button Do?”
Ever since the first time I stumbled across Wasteland 2 and set the world afire with a nuke by accident of a shiny button, there is no game I have played that comes close to its brilliance. Despite its many small, annoying issues with its core gameplay, there is something remarkable underneath the hard to love exterior and interior of a masterpiece of role-playing. Pillars of Eternity may be my favorite Infinity Engine style game and challenge; Divinity Original Sin 2 may be my favorite modern take on role-playing games; New Vegas and Bloodlines perhaps are tied as great role-playing experiences into other genres; however, Wasteland 2 remains the pinnacle of role-playing out of all these titans that remains invigorating as the first time setting the world on fire as the hundredth if you approach it with a new perspective on the world each time.
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