GB Feature: Wasteland 2 Preview
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After what feels like decades of waiting (actually, it was), we've been spending some quality time with inXile's Wasteland sequel, and have put together a three-page preview of the post-apocalyptic RPG. A little something to start you off:
As Wasteland 2 starts up, you're called on to create a full party of up to four characters, or select from pre-generated ones. You'll assign points to a number of attributes - Coordination, Luck, Awareness, Strength, Speed, Intelligence, and Charisma (or the "CLASSIC system" as some have dubbed it) - as well as a number of skills divided up into Combat Skills, Knowledge Skills and General Skills. All of these operate on a 10-point scale; attributes are fixed at character creation, while skills can be advanced on level-up later on.
The character system of Wasteland 2 is a real strength. Not only does it feature substantially more skills than many other RPGs these days, but somehow the game manages to make almost all of them useful. At the same time, it's just stingy enough with the points at character creation and level-up to make you seriously consider how to build your party. In Wasteland 2, building a character that's good at everything is impossible, and even an entire party is bound to have some weaknesses even if you try to maximize the spread of skills. It's reasonably well balanced even at this early stage, and creating characters under this system is great fun.
