Holy smack, Kickstarter thing finally used for something worthwile. Read all about it on NMA.
Or I cound copy and paste it here if going to NMA is too much for your fragile mindscape.
How does the original hold up these days? It's one of those games I missed when it originally came out (back then I didn't play all that many RPGs, just Bard's Tale III and Ultima V). Is it a "You had to be there..." title or is it still fun, allowing for '80s graphics and UI?
I played the original not long ago, not to the end but quite a ways (...for the first time, although I played other RPGs, Bard's Tale II & some Ultimas at the time). The thing I notice now about it (and those RPGs generally) is how sparse it is, even having a "big world", because they just don't have the disk space to have so much going on or go into detail. They really have to economize. Everything you're reading has to fit into the little view window, like "My sister! The blahblah's kidnapped her! 1: We'll save her. 2: What's it to us?", and action feels a little detached... Also the world is a little flaky, sort of like a Flash game, where you "change" something in the world but some places don't always get the memo, or it's a little garbled. That's an old issue, but you notice things like that more now. I was in an incredibly sympathetic mood though, and if you go into it like that, then it's still playable. I felt less like I was "playing a game" though and more like I was toying with a cultural artifact, if that makes sense.
Now that's news. I would really like to see mid-tier titles with a stronger authorial voice return to gaming, and if crowd funding allows it, that would be great.
Thirith: Hard to say. My hunch is that it would be hard for a modern gamer to get into. Some unintuitive design choices, the whole journal system of conveying information, and the user interface would make the experience a lot more esoteric than Fallout. The puzzles can be fairly hard by modern standards, too. It has a genuine rustic charm, though, kinda like the distilled essence of Fallout with twice the enthusiasm, and there are all kinds of satisfying sequences there like defeating the **SCORPITRON**, or storming a fortress staffed by monks and nuns toting the most destructive weaponry to be found in the game, or assembling an android and turning it into a party member, or just gunning down random NPCs you encounter. That kind of thing.
[edit]Also, it pays to have a party of crazed axe/chainsaw murderers because melee kills give double XP. That's quintessential Wasteland.[/edit]
The original Wasteland's an obtuse bunch of bullshit. Instead of a sequel, how about a remake?
Also also, all the xp goes to the party member who got the killing blow. I wasn't fond of this micromanagement and rage-inducing mechanic, and it was what made me quit.Originally Posted by Melan
It's largely the same thing at this point. You don't just make a normal sequel to a 24 year old game.
I still think Dragon Wars was a better game, but I'll happily throw cash at a Wasteland sequel if it's fairly true to the original.
It was, but I bet a lot fewer people care about Babylonian-inspired city states than a comfortable post-apocalyptic wasteland.
I played it when it originally came out, and I don't recall it being an "obtuse bunch of bullshit". It was a standard RPG for the time; stats, weapons, items, & turn based fighting. Like some of the other RPGs at the time, it was an open world where you didn't "have to" do any of the quests, and even after you finished them all you could still wander around.
There were a couple of bosses in Las Vegas who you could take a quest from, complete it, and then kill the boss that gave it to you. Though, if you went in guns blazing in certain areas you wouldn't set up certain flags that allowed you to get some items or do other quests.
The Journal was one standard for copy protection, it wasn't necessary, I'm pretty sure that the text would have fit on the floppy disks.
The game saves as you enter a new map/area, so if you screw up there is no reloading.
It looks like W2 might have a similar overhead layout like the original Fallout. I do wonder where a sequel would go story-wise.
Try playing the game now.
I've played Bard's Tale/Wasteland/Dragon Wars and Eye Of The Beholder within the last few years and they were still fairly awesome. Knights Of Legend is still fun too.
Arena/Daggerfall on the other hand are terrible, but I didn't really care for them to begin with.
If you can take Knights of Legend, though, you can take anything.I tried to play it some twelve years ago, the same time I was going through Wasteland, Bard's Tale, the Phantasie series and the ginormous Fate: The Gates of Dawn, and Knights of Legend was so unbearably slow and complex I quit a short while into it. There was a battle near the beginning which took something like four hours and I was only about half done. You could set up your offensive and defensive strategies and target individual hit locations in one of the most complex combat systems ever released, but what the designers failed to ask themselves was "sure, but do you want to?"
Here is a Youtube clip which shows some of the problems pretty well (as well as the intro animation, which is pretty great). Watch that battle with two orcs, starting a bit after the 7:00 mark. It lasts 21 minutes, most of which is taken up by repeating your moves in an overcomplex user interface.
(Not surprised there were never any sequels or extra modules published for it.)
The Magic Candle series and Bloodstone: An Epic Dwarven Tale had the same problem, but with plots: altogether too deep without gaining from it.
Last edited by Melan; 4th Mar 2012 at 04:39.
The combat was pretty much the entire point of Knights Of Legend. It was more of a tactical strategy game with RPG elements than an RPG in the style of what EA/Interplay were doing at the time.
It did have a few features I'd love to see in a modern RPG though, such as the spell-creation system (which was sadly broken in the Apple ][ version that I had) and having to fight in the arena in order to level up.
That might have been my problem with it. I expected something like Ultima, and got something closer to Jagged Alliance, whose second part I genuinely enjoyed because I went into it with different expectations. Even then, there are some serious UI problems with the game; the same could have been done better and more intuitively.
Oh my dear god, that scared the shit out of me. I opened the vid and let it buffer in the background, went on browsing other sites forgetting about it and somehow it started autoplaying.
So I am just casually reading my TTLGs when suddenly. "BEEP." The fuck? "BEEP". Ok... "BEEP BEEP BEEP." ...... oh my god. My PC speaker is sending error beeps, oh fuck did my CPU fan just die, is the voltage too high, oh fuck oh shit. It stopped but what does it mean.
*starts turning all the diagnostics tools and monitoring*
Everything seems fi- "BEEP" "BEEP oh fuck where's the mobo manual, i better shut this down. "BEEEE-KSHH-EP" wait... that doesn't sound like my PC speaker. *Ramps up volume* "BEEP" . Ok is something playing in the backgrou- oh you muther fu...
I hear in the sequel there will only be FIGHT, ITEM and FLEE.
One thing about the Wasteland that i just remembered, is that it had simple keys to do all the actions, like A then 1 would attack enemy 1, and U S P arrow, would use skill perception in a direction. I didn't have a mouse on my 8086 when I played it, it would have been a slower tedious game with it anyway. But anyway, the game had a built in MACRO function to program F1-F10 which came in real handy.
How could it have ITEM if they take out the inventory?
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2
For Wasteland 2, we’re getting the band back together again!. Brian Fargo who Executive Produced both Wasteland and Fallout will be heading the team. Alan Pavlish and Mike Stackpole—the original game’s primary designers—are coming back to put the project together, and we’re rounding up as many of the other designers, like Ken St. Andre, as we can. On top of that, we’ll have music by Mike Morgan of Fallout 1 and 2 fame. The storyline for Wasteland 2 was written by Jason Anderson who was the co-creator of Fallout. We have also enlisted the help of the amazing concept artist, Andree Wallin to help craft the Wasteland 2 world.This is probably the last chance for a Wasteland sequel. We have tried to pitch this game multiple times to game publishers, but they’ve balked. They don’t think there’s any interest in a solid, old school type of game. This is our shot at proving them wrong. And more importantly this could help bring back an entire genre of RPGs. The power of the Indie scene continues and we see this as all part of a bigger trend of bringing control back to the developers.(Seen via http://www.bluesnews.com/s/130729/do...tart-beginning )We’re going back to the original and building from there. No first person shooter, we’re going top down so you get a tactical feel for the situation. And we’re not ditching the party play to turn it into some hack-and-slash bloodfest. It’s turn based, tactical, with a storyline that will be deeper and broader.
We’re determined to keep the gritty, grim and satirical writing. We’re going to pitch those moral dilemmas at you. You’re going to be faced with the consequences of your actions.
The Kickstarter starts today.
~450 people and ~$34,000 already this morning.
This project will only be funded if at least $900,000 is pledged by Tuesday Apr 17, 8:05am EDT.
30 days doesn't seem like much time, hopefully it gets advertised in enough locations for people to know that it's even happening.
What's Fargo's track record in the last 10-15 years? I've got a better idea of what sort of game to expect from, say, Shafer; with Fargo I don't have much of a clue, and since I never played Wasteland I don't have any immediate incentive to donate anything - but I like the idea behind this, and knowing more about the man's work would help me make up my mind.
The fact that he already got his hands back on the wasteland IP before this kickstarter got started it makes it worth it.
That and we could use a proper isometric fallout style game again.
I click and it's $86k.
Average fund per person is ~$60.
That kickstarter thing will blow up sooner or later, but let's hope it will be later.
Here is a list of games he's worked on. Some noted ones: The Bard's Tale, Wasteland, Descent, Baldur's Gate and Fallout. It is, of course, your own opinion of those games that would determine what you expect.
Wasteland 2 will be a top down, turn based, tactical, game with a storyline.
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