Wasteland 2 Interview

Another Wasteland 2 interview comes our way, this time courtesy of the folks at AusGamers, who chatted with Chris Avellone about the Kickstarter development process, the game’s targer audience, his experiences with the original game, how out of the box the game design is, its difficulyt level, and much more. Here’s a snippet:

AusGamers: Is the original Wasteland close to your heart?

Avellone: I played it through two-and-a-half times. The half time I got killed in the sewers and dropped in a cul-de-sac no-win situation, which unfortunately was a bad game design decision in the original Wasteland, in my opinion. There was no way to win at that point. <

AusGamers: That’s something you want to avoid with Wasteland 2, then?

Avellone: Oh, yeah. It was an old-school RPG convention that we don’t do anymore, and it should never happen. But those old RPGs were pretty brutal and uncompromising. So yeah, I played it a lot, and it actually changed my design philosophy going into computer games, because the way they implemented the design systems in Wasteland allowed you a lot of flexibility in area design. They did a really simple system where you can use your strength on a lot of different objects say, I can use my strength on a door, or a manhole cover, or bashing my way through some rubble. I can use any attribute on any object. Because of the way they designed it, you could use your intelligence on things as well.

They actually designed an entire level in Wasteland 1 where you could program yourself to go into an android’s brain. You defeat this jerk sub-boss and you sever his head, but his head’s still talking, saying he’s not going to give up his secrets. So you say ‘˜well I’m going to jack into your head then, and take those secrets.’ And so you actually went to an entirely brand-new level where you were walking through the android’s memory. You can use your intelligence to solve puzzles or defeat monsters, and just because the system was designed that way it allows you to do a whole seamless level like that.

AusGamers: Do you have sequences like that in this sequel, then?

Avellone: There is a lot of fun that the designers had with creating areas that fall outside the norm but still use the same mechanics. So elements like that have been carried over, yes.