Wasteland 2 Post-funding Update #40: Beta Out

After a long wait, the Wasteland 2 beta has finally been released for backers, though inXile cautions people about the nature of the beta, which shouldn’t be taken as a demo for the full title:

PLEASE DO READ THIS UPDATE BEFORE YOU START TESTING

Creating a deep RPG is a unique challenge, in that so many elements need to be working well together, with 95% of the game’s underpinnings complete before beta can begin, which is what we’ve all been working so hard on this last month. Now, however, is the stage of development where the magic happens. With most of the mechanical issues behind us, now we can really start digging deep into the game and finding ways of taking it from good to great. No amount of prepping and planning can replace old-fashioned hands-on playing, testing and iteration time, which is why we are so grateful to have you, our backers, help us hone this process like never before. So thanks once again to all of you for giving us this opportunity to make your game in this new and open way. Your input has been, and will continue to be, critical every step of the way, and Wasteland 2 will be better because of it.

For your convenience while playing, we put together a reference card. This serves as a basic guide to gameplay and the game’s interface.

All the game’s major systems are now implemented, which allows us to expedite the amount of depth, fun and subtlety that gets in, but this is an ambitious game both in terms of scale and the amount of reactivity we have planned, so please don’t forget that we are not complete, and that there are still a host of issues that need to be addressed. I’d like to highlight some of these so you know what you’re playing and how the final game will compare.

Scope

Because this beta doesn’t include all the Arizona maps, this portion of the game will feel a bit more linear than the full experience will, particularly with the first maps being narrower locations rather than proper hubs. The final game will have a more open feel where you can poke around and check the defenses of higher level areas and perhaps snatch an item or two. So fear not, as there will be more strange areas to discover in the final, and we will be dropping more in throughout this beta phase. In addition, we’ll be adding more quests to each map as well.

A number of skills are not implemented in the backer beta, namely, Silent Move, Salvaging, Animal Whisperer, the backer informational skill and, quite ironically, Combat Shooting (ironic if you are familiar with Wasteland 1). You’ll run into a few situations where you could use those skills and we’ll work to balance and roll them out later, but the vast majority of skills are in so you’ll be able to try most possible solutions. The character system is complete but not necessarily fully balanced, many XP rewards and upgrade values will still be tweaked.

The beta is launching only for Windows PC initially. We’ll look into launching Mac and Linux versions soon, but they will need more testing before we feel secure in doing so.