Making its debut in 1988, the Wasteland series had escaped me for whatever reason, making Wasteland 3 my first foray into that world. Sure, some of the more obscure references may have been lost on me, or perhaps my prejudgement of the game was not what it should have been; but none of that changes the fact that Wasteland 3 is one of the best games I have played this year, if not my game of the year so far.
Set in the post-apocalyptic, snow covered Colorado; Wasteland 3 follows the struggling Desert Rangers who are in desperate need of supplies and support. After encountering the leader of Colorado Springs, a man called the Patriarch, the rangers are offered his support if they help him return his runaway children.
The Right Words
Everything from the item descriptions and loading screen tool tips to the important dialogue moments are impeccably written and ooze character throughout the experience. The themes in Wasteland 3 are of course grim and dark but they are handled with a perfectly balanced amount of wit to help sell the characters and the general experience. Even with so much dialogue that you will may never hear, every line is voice acted with expert delivery.
Despite the wit that is laced into most of the dialogue and text, the game is full of frighteningly accurate representations of today’s world with tonnes of political intrigue and existential topics explored very well.
One of my favourite one liners in the game is “my bullets are like skull nukes!”
Choices and Consequences
Your choices not only effect certain narrative beats throughout the game but create huge chain reactions across every aspect of the experience. Parts of your game will just be wholly different to that of others or NPCs will say things relevant to your recent actions.
You can really feel a unique and personal attachment to your own playthrough and characters. This gives the game incredible replayability and attachment to your story. Not to mention the interesting discussions with other players to be had.
Everybody who you meet will have questionable motives, meaning that the choices you make are not always black and white. The most you have to go by is your own character’s motives that you have made up, or even the general way that you feel about the Desert Rangers. To play the game in a certain karmic way, you must truly consider your options and the very real consequences that they will end up having on your experience.
I definitely didn’t sit and ponder one of my decisions for 30 minutes – I promise.
Party in the Wasteland
Party management is excellent in Wasteland 3. You are first tasked with creating a custom pair of characters, or you can choose from some awesome premade ones. Then you will eventually gain access to a barracks, where you can build your squad.
With a full squad size of 6 rangers, the game forces you to choose 4 custom characters that the game has generated for you and then 2 actual written characters that you can chop and change as you meet more people. This makes for some excellent party politics, as well as some truly unique dialogue moments which is all dependent on who you bring with you at what time.
One of my custom characters is a 7-foot-tall woman called Big Mama. She likes flamethrowers. Come back here after you create yours and let us know about them.
[Requires Level 7 Kiss Ass]
Your general party management will see you deeply immersed into the experience thanks to the unique abilities of each character, which are then intricately woven into the game in lots of different ways. The abilities themselves range from common RPG tropes like “Explosives”, “Lockpicking” or “Small Guns” – to more unique and witty abilities like “Nerdy Stuff”, “Weird Science” or “Hard Ass”.
There will always be an opportunity to use one of your characters abilities outside of combat, whether that is unlocking certain dialogue choices depending on who is in your party; or allowing you to picklock safes or hacking into robots. These ability checks show up very frequently, which shows just how multi-path this game really is and forces you to pay attention to what you are levelling up.
Nobody likes a kiss ass, but the ability seems to unlock many important dialogue choices. Keep it in mind…
Survive!
General survival is a large part of the gameplay loop. Ammo is scarce and healing items are vital; you often finding yourself dipping into your more riskier healing items that can have side effects just to get by. This helps keep combat interesting, forcing you to experiment with your inventory, but it also adds a layer of immersion within your characters, their abilities and what they have acquired along your journey. No ability or item will go unchecked.
Bartering is also a large part of the survival aspect of the game, with ammo and important healing items scarcely found, it is up to you to trade these items for your cash. You will accumulate “junk” along the way which you can then easily sell in bulk for cash, but you will also find yourself picking through your ammunition that you don’t use or that has higher worth, just to get a few first aid kits.
When looting, keep an eye out for the “creepy dolls” – they will give your party permanent stat increases.
Totally Vehicular
Travelling the world map is done via your vehicle which doubles up as another character in your party. This adds a cool dynamic to getting from location to location and it helps separate the game’s many factions and offers for some fun random encounters along the way.
There may be a point where travelling to your next mission is impossible because your vehicle needs a certain upgrade, so you must go and complete a few other missions to save up money to upgrade it.
This kind of subtle game direction is present throughout and makes choosing your next mission stress free and engaging; meaning you are always on route to doing something important.
Keep an eye out for traders on the road – sometimes you can save a buck by stealing all of their stuff!
Spilling Blood
Combat is decent, it works as you’d expect a tile-based strategy game to work. Characters take turns to spend their action points, where they can move around, shoot baddies, or interact with things.
Whilst the intricate game design behind all the interlinking systems, does make combat inherently well designed; it’s also where I faced my only real issues with the game. Certain things can seem unresponsive and unsophisticated at times, making it sometimes feel like the game is trying to catch up with you.
There were also some bugs that forced me to reload a save or skip a turn, but I imagine these will be ironed out in the coming days. It also falls victim to the classic ‘unfair’ RPG feel at times down to the RNG based nature of the game’s combat, but it’s no worse than any other games in the genre.
Verdict
Wasteland 3 is an incredible experience which will leave a lasting impression on all who play. The writing is utterly fantastic and expertly executed, and the game has so many different systems and features that I could honestly write pages about it all.
Despite some minor frustrating moments during combat, Wasteland 3’s RPG elements are some of the best I have ever seen. InXile have cemented themselves at the very top of this genre and game writing in general – this game is the one to beat.
