Wasteland 3 is a game which will be happening, assuming inXile can raise the desired $2.75 million USD through crowdfunding site Fig. If you’re wondering why inXile have switched crowdfunding platforms, it’s probably because Brian Fargo sits on the Fig Advisory Board.
The title will, once again, be a party-based RPG largely controlled from a hovering, isometric viewpoint. You’ll start the game as a sole survivor of a Desert Ranger squad dispatched to snowy Colorado, a land “of buried secrets, lost technology, fearsome lunatics, and deadly factions”. Hopefully you remembered to pack thermal socks.
Wasteland 3 will be fully playable as an offline, single player game, but, in a first for the series, will also be including a co-op option. The full campaign will be possible to play co-op, with a friend controlling a second squad of Rangers. You can either share missions, or split up to cover more ground. It’s possible to continue the campaign in single player with your friend dropping in and out, which means you may well have made some decisions that have serious consequences for the returning co-op squad.
Away from co-op, inXile are making noises about expanding the systems found in Wasteland 2. The sequel will “build and polish” on the combat from the prior game, and add both “team-focused abilities” and vehicles. The latter can be used for travel and storage, or even (once upgraded) as moveable cover in combat. Add a turret, and it’ll become even more useful.
Wasteland 3 will also be nabbing the expanded dialogue tree conversations from Torment: Tides of Numenera (another inXile production), and promises even more complexity in how the story reacts to your choices and decisions. The crowdfunding campaign is not yet live, but judging by the countdown on Fig’s site it’ll be up on 5 October.
