WASTELAND 3
Make friends with weirdos in cold Colorado in WASTELAND 3
The Wasteland games have always mixed grit with silliness, offsetting slavery and cannibalism with mutant killer bunnies and the like. That’s one of the things that hasn’t changed in Wasteland 3, which is still an RPG where malfunctioning toasters can be cracked open for loot if you’ve got the Toaster Repair skill, and my squad of hardened wasteland warriors is joined by a goat, a swearing parrot, a cyborg chicken, and a cat who wears a hat.
What’s different is the setting. The endless sand of Arizona and California has been traded for the endless snow of Colorado. Your Desert Rangers are way out of their depth here, sent north to cut a deal with the prosperous local leader for supplies your home desperately needs, which means helping the patriarch of Colorado Springs round up his rebellious offspring. Each of his three large adult children have sided with different bizarre factions, from Reagan worshippers to Hispanic murderclowns, and you’re thrust into this political shitfight with only your wits, an AI car, a bunch of guns, and those three points you probably shouldn’t have put in Toaster Repair.
Wasteland 3 is also less old school than Wasteland 2. That was a game where you’d find a loot container then have the character with Perception check it for traps, then a character with Alarm Disarming or Demolitions render it safe, then if it
was locked use Lockpicking or Safecracking or Brute Force to open it. Now some of those skills have been excised and if you click on something the character who has the right skill will just automatically interact with it.
The turn-based combat has been streamlined as well. When you mouse over a position before moving it’ll highlight who you can attack from there just like XCOM 2, complete with revised percentages over their heads. Gone is the tickertape full of text describing your attacks in favour of a UI that’s less diegetic, but easier to get to grips with.
The combat stayed interesting even as I got near the 50-hour mark, which I can’t say of Wasteland 2. I enjoyed it all the way through, both due to fights that had more twists to them – sometimes you get to bring your car and its mounted cannon, and often you can stealth into position, crouching behind cover before attacking with your character who has the Sneaky Shit skill for bonus damage – and also because the story held my attention.
ICE TO MEET YOU
The Wasteland games tend to have some interesting factions but not interesting characters. Here I felt a little more attached to NPCs like Scotchmo the alcoholic and Vic the taunting serial killer because I’d seen them up close. It feels more personal.
While most conversations play out from a slightly zoomed-in version of the isometric view, some major characters get first-person scenes with mocapped performances full of expressive interactions. They reminded me of the theatrical NPCs of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, which is high praise.
That said, I struggle to remember the name of the cyborg gang leader or the green-skinned Ranger I recruited. Only a few of the members of your own party get much personality, as there’s no way to talk to them except by wandering around hoping to stumble over a conversation trigger. Even the pre-generated pairs of PCs you can choose from if you don’t want to make your own aren’t chatty.
Like its predecessors, Wasteland 3 is the kind of game where the most interesting story is the one you make, usually thanks to that juxtaposition of seriousness and silliness. Maybe you created a character who dressed like a clown and inflicted certain status effects on enemies by throwing yellow (it’s piss) snowballs at them, or maybe you went into battle with a herd of vicious mutant animals – at least until you got sick of them and abandoned even the swearing parrot to bleed out in the snow.
Only a few of the members of your own party get much personality.t6
A strange setting explored through a predictable but enjoyable RPG that’s been streamlined just enough.
VERDICT 84