Wasteland 2 Kickstarter Update #7

[WorstUsernameEver]

For the seventh Kickstarter update Brian Fargo clarified on the potential role of Obsidian Entertainment in the development of Wasteland 2. In short, the code will be inXile's responsibility while Obsidian will help with tools and Chris Avellone will join in for some design and writing work:<blockquote>We have announced a major piece of good news today that inXile has reached an agreement with Obsidian for potential design assistance for Wasteland 2. What that means is that Obsidian’s Chief Creative Officer, Chris Avellone, is going to work with our team on the design and writing of the game! It is important to note that we say "potential" as they will come aboard assuming we hit $2.1 million in funding. The good news is that we have already seen a spike in just the few hours since this was announced in a press release this morning.

For those of you who don't know who Obsidian or Chris Avellone are, they are the bulk of the brains who worked on Fallout 1&2, Icewind Dale and Planescape Torment when I was back at Interplay. More of the band is back together to make sure we bring you a fantastic RPG. Chris is going to help push the density and literary content of the game.

The original Wasteland was an important game to Chris as he recently stated, "Wasteland is one of my favorite RPGs of all time, and when Brian asked if I wanted to work on the sequel, I jumped at the chance. While I've worked on Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas, getting the chance to work on the spiritual predecessor to the Fallout franchise is a honor."

While the programming work will remain with us here at inXile, we are looking to use a host of tools that Obsidian has created which will help us get assets into the game faster. The faster we can implement and iterate on content, the deeper the game and the more varied choices the gamers can make.

That’s more good news for all of you that put your faith in us.

Brian Fargo</blockquote>

 

[Rev. Layle]

If inXile is going to use an engine that Obsidian has, I hope it can be used to make something that works on not-the-latest-and-greatest-PC-hardware.

 

[Bab5crusade]

If inXile is going to use an engine that Obsidian has, I hope it can be used to make something that works on not-the-latest-and-greatest-PC-hardware.

Agreed, that is the only reason why I didn't donate. I don't have a very good machine to run.

 

[FearMonkey]

If inXile is going to use an engine that Obsidian has, I hope it can be used to make something that works on not-the-latest-and-greatest-PC-hardware.

Depends on how scalable the Onyx Engine is if they even end up using it at all.

EDIT: It seems to me it is pretty scalable. It was used to make this and is also being used to make this. So scalability and flexibility should allow it to be able to run on low-end PCs just fine. But this is just guesswork on my part. *shrug*

 

[DemonNick]

Onyx supposedly emphasizes stability, scalability and optimization over everything else. So if they do use it for Wasteland 2 I don't think it'll be a huge deal.

It seems like the engine was kind of developed specifically in response to the most common criticisms of Obsidian games. It's a shame that the only game it's been used for is a fairly disposable thing like DS3.

 

[Rev. Layle]

If inXile is going to use an engine that Obsidian has, I hope it can be used to make something that works on not-the-latest-and-greatest-PC-hardware.

Depends on how scalable the Onyx Engine is if they even end up using it at all.

EDIT: It seems to me it is pretty scalable. It was used to make this and is also being used to make this. So scalability and flexibility should allow it to be able to run on low-end PCs just fine. But this is just guesswork on my part. *shrug*

I'm also curious on how portable Onyx is? Is it a Direct X only technology? If so, how is that going to work for Mac/Linux, unless the base level graphics API access is abstracted so it can be swapped out with other APIs (like OpenGL, for example).

 

[TorontoReign]

This sounds pretty good to me. I Hope it happens.

 

[Sobboth]

I just come to think that while MCA has great writing skill, the way Wasteland manage the "adventure" was much more by exploring the world, not a ton of dialogues and even less "side quest given by NPC system".
I know it was a result of the limitation of the time but the "structure" of the game was very different than in modern cRPG.
The focus was more about exploration and discovery than NPC giving you quest . A bit like in the last Wizardry games, excellent dialogue but not that much quests given by NPC.
Well i guess he knows his job and he is as least as aware as me of the difference