inXile Entertainment have posted a humourous video about System Shock for reasons unclear. Feel free to speculate.

You mean I can jack into any site . . . at any time?

InXile is 20 years old - Congratulations!

inXile 20th Anniversary Documentary

Replying to the Xbox twitter account InXile Entertainment hints that their next game is a FPS-RPG.

According to this job offer the next InXile RPG will be a next-gen Unreal engine AAA game.

Wccftech reports that inXile may be developing an AAA RPG in the vein of Arcanum with ex-Troika Jason Anderson and Chad Moore. This should be treated as rumour for now.

A keen-eyed ResetEra user may have uncovered the game's setting way ahead of any official announcement, though, by spotting a few Pinterest Boards that are managed by inXile developers Jason Anderson and Chad Moore. These Pinterest boards contain hundreds of steampunk-themed weapons, gadgets, fashion, and other Victorian-era inspired imagery.

A coincidence seems unlikely, especially since both Jason Anderson and Chad Moore have worked on what can be arguably described as the prime example of a steampunk videogame RPG: Troika's Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. Released back in 2001, the game enjoyed strong sales and critical reception, though the studio itself was eventually forced to close after the releases of The Temple of Elemental Evil in 2003 and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines in 2004.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

@Game Reactor inXile is preparing for a major project after Wasteland 3 has released.

Unsurprisingly, it will be a next-generation role-playing game, which uses the tech Unreal Engine 4, and Houdini for procedural systems. The team has grown enormously while being at Microsoft and they are today roughly 100 people working there, which makes it a fairly big developer. Now they are looking for even more developers with experience of AAA game and working in large teams.

[...]

An update on The Bard's Tale and Wasteland remasters.

With The Bard’s Tale IV: Director’s Cut and Wasteland 3 on the horizon, it’s a fantastic time for RPG fans to go back to where it all began with The Bard’s Tale Trilogy, arriving on Xbox and PC with Xbox Game Pass on August 13 and with a major update on Steam and GOG. Later this year Wasteland 30th Anniversary Edition will also be landing, a remaster of the original classic that began the post-apocalyptic gaming genre.

Some old friends await!

The 1985 classic The Bard’s Tale, along with its two sequels, revolutionized and helped define the growing computer RPG genre. Three years later, Wasteland brought the post-apocalypse to gaming with narrative innovations that helped inspire many future games, including the Fallout series. Last year, The Bard's Tale Trilogy released on Steam and GOG to popular acclaim and now both of these classics are being remastered and are arriving on Xbox One and for PC on the Microsoft Store, and both will be available with Xbox Game Pass at launch. Wasteland 30th Anniversary Edition will also be coming to Steam and GOG as well on its release date.

The information you need to save the world!

The Bard’s Tale Trilogy features all three original games (Tales of the Unknown, The Destiny Knight, and Thief of Fate), each remastered with updated graphics and audio that still retain the 8-bit spirit of the originals. The Bard’s Tale series pioneered the ability to transfer your characters from the first game to the next, and that’s been recreated in the Trilogy, allowing you to form a party in the first title and take them on a heroic journey across all three games. Quality of life options such as automapping (put away that graph paper!), an in-game manual and bestiary, and the ability to save your game at any time make the titles more accessible than ever before. However, if you’re pining for the 1980’s experience and difficulty (take out that graph paper!), The Bard’s Tale Trilogy features Legacy Mode, a series of options that let you play the game at the original difficulty and without modern amenities.

Wasteland 30th Anniversary Edition is a remaster of the classic game that brought the post-apocalypse to RPGs, and it’s arriving later this year. For fans eagerly awaiting Wasteland 3, it’ll be the perfect opportunity to see where the story of the Desert Rangers all began.

The Storybook is now in the game!

Perhaps the biggest addition is the new localization effort, providing language support for French, German, Polish, Russian, and Spanish for both titles!

You’ll have countless hours of fantastic adventuring ahead of you with inXile’s upcoming releases: The Bard’s Tale Trilogy (August 13), The Bard’s Tale IV: Director’s Cut (August 27), Wasteland 30th Anniversary Edition (Q4 2019), and Wasteland 3 (Spring 2020)! Great days are ahead for RPG fans!

Brian Fargo spoke with GamesIndustry about why he joined with Microsoft.

"At least 50% of my time is in fundraising and we have so little room for error. It generally takes a mega hit to break you out of the cycle and that is always hard to come by. A mid-size hit is nice, but the after-tax monies from that generally support another five to six months of payroll and leave you back on the hamster wheel. It turns out that talented game developers are expensive. My friends always like to comment that I should 'just make a Fortnite or Minecraft'."

So it must be exciting to those stuck on the funding treadmill to hear that Microsoft, which has historically been only interested in high-end AAA studios, is openly acquiring mid-size game developers such as Ninja Theory, InXile, Obsidian and Undead Labs.

[...]

Eurogamer talked to Brian Fargo about the recent Microsoft acquisition of InXile Entertainment.

How long has the deal been in the offing?

Brian Fargo: I'd have to think about when the exact day was it became very real, but the conversation started back in April, and as you might imagine with Microsoft, it's an incredible vetting process you need to go through, both as a person and a company. Yeah, it takes quite a while.

Who approached who - what was the reasoning behind it?

Brian Fargo: I've known Noah Musler a long time [Microsoft business development bigwig who has old ties with Feargus Urquhart and Obsidian as well]. He dropped me a message one day and said, 'Hey, um, I have a crazy idea - you want to come up and talk about something?' I said, 'Sure, let's do it.'

For me, it's always... My goal is to always get my company in a safe harbour so we can spend as much time as possible working on our games and honing our craft. That can come if you sell 2 million units - that's a great way to get there which everyone hopes for. Or, a deal like this. But at the end of the day that's all I ever cared about.

What is the state of the studio - how big is inXile right now?

Brian Fargo: We're roughly 70 full-time people and probably another 15 contractors that we keep busy all the time, so we're a good size.

It's interesting if you think about 2012, when the crowdfunding revolution happened. You had myself and Double Fine and Obsidian shortly thereafter - and even Larian [Studios] for that matter. The budgets back then were $5m, $6m, so we'd raise $3m from Kickstarter, maybe do another couple of million in Early Access, throw in some more of our money, and you'd be pretty close to having your costs covered.

But since then, the category of what we all consider to be double-A has raised from $15m to $20m in that short period of time. The landscape has changed greatly since then.

[...]

PCGamesN reports on a tweet made by Brian Fargo that indicates he will buy back Interplay if The Bard's Tale IV sells well.

Brian Fargo was a founder of Interplay way back in 1983. The company’s impressive list of credits covers everything from The Bard’s Tale to Fallout and now, it seems, Fargo wants to buy it back. Of course, videogame companies don’t come free, and he says there’s one condition before Interplay comes back to one of its original founders – you’d better buy his next game.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

PCGamesN talked to Brian Fargo about how he survived in the industry to eventually revive the RPG.

...

Game development teams are often thrown together hurriedly around a new contract, but inXile started slowly. Fargo picked staffers he knew and trusted. Findley was one. Another was Maxx Kauffman, who he had seen do great work on Redneck Rampage.

"I brought them together," Fargo says. "But then it became, ‘OK, what are we going to do here?'. And this struggle to find a business model took nearly a decade."

That jokey card title was proving prophetic. In 2002, the ground was shifting beneath the feet of RPG developers. There was very little publisher interest in PC games. With Steam still years off, the digital sales business did not exist. And those contracts that did exist were mostly reserved for studios that were already well-established.

Fargo kept the lights on by "hustling around." He attempted, without success, to win the Baldur's Gate 3 license from Infogrames. He sold the Wizardry franchise off to Japan, where it continues to this day. For a short while, Fargo and a friend co-owned half the rights to GTA for Game Boy.

"We both did very well by selling it back to Take-Two," he says.

[...]

@Eurogamer Brian Fargo has announced his retirement will take place in 2019 with the release of Wasteland 3.

inXile boss Brian Fargo has told Eurogamer he plans to retire after Wasteland 3 ships in 2019.

The industry veteran, who founded influential game company Interplay in 1983, said he wanted to relax after a lengthy career making successful games.

"Wasteland 2 and Torment both came out great," he said. "The Mage's Tale's got a great buzz. The Bard's Tale 4 looks spectacular. Wasteland 3 is building on Wasteland 2. It seems like a good time to drop the mic.

"I love this industry, but I've been at this since 1981. I've been at it with Ken and Roberta Williams [Sierra co-founders], Trip Hawkins [EA founder], the guys from Brøderbund - I look at my friends, they have a lot more spare time than I do. It's a very intense business. It's all encompassing. It seems like I should relax for a little bit."
[...]

At gamasutra they report that InXile Entertainment is selling the 3D models from its games to other developers starting with the models from Wasteland 2. The models themselves will be available on game asset marketplace TurboSquid.

It's very rare to see a studio selling game assets it's produced on an open marketplace, and it's a line of business that TurboSquid chief Matt Wisdom (understandably) hopes will become more popular in the game dev community.

"Studios are often sitting on thousands of 3D models that were incredibly expensive to produce," Wisdom stated in a press release laying out the arrangement. "Selling the content helps offset the rising costs of development for the studio, and it allows developers around the world to access amazing, consistent, game-ready models."

The plan seems to be for InXile to start processing and uploading 3D assets from its games to TurboSquid's store in usable formats, starting with assets from its 2014 RPG (pictured) Wasteland 2.

"3D models for AAA titles are often built and used for only a single title," stated InXile founder Brian Fargo in the afore-mentioned release. "It made sense to create additional value out of our existing content by opening it up to other developers."

@Existential Gamer they interview Brian Fargo of InXile and talk about his history, InXiles games and their reception.

EG: Do you deal well with criticism? How do (the oftentimes heated) online discussions of these treasured franchises and genres affect you?

BF: I like to think I'm pretty self-aware when it comes to the faults of my games. I'll admit that I can get frustrated if a criticism was incorrect or missed the point due to a misunderstanding of particular events, but I do try to keep my cool. I love having Early Access because I can receive that criticism early on, a point at which I can actually do something about the feedback. The most difficult part about dealing with the older franchises is that we often end up competing with the memory of players' experiences rather than the actual gameplay itself. This happens mostly because people played some of these old games at a certain special time in their life.

EG: Torment: Tides of Numenera seems like a hugely ambitious project, one that aims to redefine what a CRPG can be. As it enters open beta, what would you say to a player going in without having played the original Torment? What about a hardcore fan?

BF: I would want anyone new or old to prepare for a literary experience as they begin playing Torment: Tides of Numenera. The quality of its writing and the bizarre universe it established were what made Planescape: Torment wonderful. These are the focus of this game as well. It is not a game that works if your mindset is to rush towards victory.

[...]

EG: In our interview with him, Vince D. Weller of Age of Decadence mentioned inXile as the most interesting studio out there. Who are you most excited to see pave the future for RPG's?

BF: I've always been excited to see how small Indies like Vince push the envelope of what makes an RPG. As companies acquire overhead it becomes more difficult to take risks and therein lies the opportunity for the small guy to shine.

Gamasutra reports that InXile is opening a new studio in New Orleans. This might look odd as New Orleans isn't known for being big in in the are of game development area, but the many incentives offered by Louisiana are apparently something to take into account as well. InXile is planning a studio that gorws to a size of 50 people over the next 5 years.

New Orleans is an especially intriguing choice because it's not in a region generally recognized as being a hotbed of game development -- something Louisiana hopes to change by offering incentives to inXile and other high-tech companies (including Chicago-based High Voltage, which also expanded to New Orleans this year.)

"With each new digital media investment, New Orleans is becoming a brighter beacon in the tech sector," stated Jindal in a press release announcing the deal. "Our strong business climate and highly skilled workforce are attracting innovative companies like inXile to our state, along with the great new jobs they’re creating."

Fargo told a Nola.com reporter that inXile had no plans to expand to Louisiana -- until state officials came out to visit him earlier this year and pitch him on Louisiana's tax incentive program for high-tech industry.

PC Gamer reports that Inxile Entertainment has filed a trademark for Autoduel an old Origin Systems game.

Autoduel was a racing/RPG based on the Steve Jackson Games pencil-and-paper RPG Car Wars, a vaguely Mad Max-ish game about heavily-armed vehicles doing battle in a post-apocalyptic America. The computer version was developed by the long-defunct Origin Systems and released all the way back in 1988. And now, if a trademark filing dug up by the RPG Codex is to be believed, it may be on the way back.

Fargo has tweeted some sort of confirmation by tweeting in response "Once again the Codex is first on the scene"

The Fargo connection to Autoduel isn't as obvious as it is with games like Wasteland 2 or The Bard's Tale 4, but it is there. Origin Systems was founded in 1983 by Richard Garriott (and others, including his brother Robert, but Richard is the one everybody knows) and acquired by Electronic Arts in 1992; Electronic Arts just happens to be the publisher of the original Wasteland and the original Bard's Tale trilogy.

It's a tenuous link, but given the success inXile has had with Wasteland 2 and the widespread interest in other old-school resurrections-especially RPGs-it's not unreasonable to think that EA would give him a shot at a franchise that hasn't been touched for decades. InXile said it had no comment beyond Fargo's tweet, which isn't surprising but still a bit disappointing.

Gizomodo have penned down an article about how Brian Fargo came to be where he is now at InXile.

n the summer of 1982, after finishing high school, Fargo started making games under the label of Saber Software. He roped in Cranford from his D&D group to draw the artwork and convinced another friend to help him out with some of the engine code, and together they made an adventure game called The Demon’s Forge.

When it came to promoting the game, Fargo showed off a stroke of devious genius. He had only $5,000 to develop and market the game, so he spent half of that to buy a single ad in a magazine called Softalk, one of the only nationwide computer magazines around at the time. He’d then call up retailers from his home phone and say he was trying to find a copy of Demon’s Forge, a game he’d seen in that month’s copy of Softalk. The retailer would say they’d look into it and then minutes later he’d get a call back his Saber Software line from the retailer who, not realising it was Fargo who had called before, would place an order.

Thanks Couch.

Fallout Van Buren is one of the great might-have-beens of PC gaming, but for the last few years I've felt pretty content to think that I did get to play much of its planned content in an altered form in New Vegas. InXile may not feel that's enough, though -- back in October, they trademarked Van Buren.

No detailed plans are yet available, but Brian Fargo has dropped a few more hints to Eurogamer:

I asked if Fargo was doing anything with the Van Buren trademark. "Not yet," he replied. "But there were some things, some ideas, that Chris Avellone had for doing something that made the post-apoc -- a twist on the whole what-was-being-done that we really loved. So we talked about it and we thought why not grab the rights so we can entertain this one of these days.

"But nothing now," he stressed. "We have enough on our plate to be doing that right this second."

Among the the things on his plate is Numenera. Can we expect that this year?

Fargo wouldn't commit to a 2015 release when we spoke.

"We have to get to our backers pretty soon, the beta version or Early Access or whatever you want to call it," he said, "and that is coming here late summer. The [final release] date gets determined based upon that."

I received a link today from a website called Memory Leak Interviews who had the chance to sit down with Brain Fargo to talk about his entire gaming career.

Brian Fargo has done it all. He’s created his own games, designed classic titles, and run a publishing company – Interplay Productions. Now Brian is in a unique place. As the CEO of inXile Entertainment Brian has launched two very successful crowd-funding campaigns and is looking to divorce the company from publishing deals which he feels are often restrictive. Brian and I talk extensively about game publishing, his time as the CEO of Interplay, and the current state of inXile Entertainment.

The editors at GameranX notified me they did a new interview ths week with Brian Fargo who talks about Wasteland 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera, and Bard's Tale IV.

You recently announced The Bard's Tale IV, a proper sequel to the series that got many of us into RPGs in the first place. Are you planning to modernize the game, or will it feature grid-based dungeoneering a la Etrian Odyssey, or some combination of the two?

We are going to experiment with a couple of new techniques so I hesitate to reveal too much now but I would say that locking someone onto a grid would take away from the immersion I want to get across. There are ways to have the best of both worlds.  I wouldn't want people to read too much into this answer since I have some ideas that I want to see played out first.

Can you tell us a little more about the combat system in The Bard's Tale IV? In an interview with IGN awhile back, you mentioned borrowing concepts from Hearthstone. Could you shed some light on how that works?

It’s still very early in the design phase for The Bard’s Tale IV but we have a good sense of how we want it to feel.  Heathstone is a game that does a great job at providing systems that make the player think at each turn.  Instead of simply having a battle of attrition where you spend turn after turn slowly reducing your enemies health, we want to keep the combat lively, forcing you to make tough decisions at each round.  Our focus right now is in defining the core combat variables that our designers can use to craft the enemy skill and spell books.  Many skills will have direct counters that will allow you to turn the tides in your favor based on your character choices and party make-up. We want it to move snappier than a turn based game, not be a click fest nor be too passive. Stay tuned.

Issie Lapowsky of Wired posted a new article about how Brian Fargo got other developers to share part of their profits to other kick starters with Kicking It Forward. 

The KickingItForward movement has grown bigger than Fargo ever imagined. At one point, he says, Kickstarter even began asking creators not to put the KickingItForward logo on their funding pages. “There was a point where people felt like if they didn’t support KickingItForward they wouldn’t get funded, like it’d make them look bad,” he says.

What’s unique about this initiative, unlike so many other types of digital activism which quickly flame out, is that—two years later—KickingItForward is still going strong. Now, Fargo says, at any given time there are around 60 new active projects posted on the site.

Of course, not all of them will get funded, and even if they do, not all of them will turn a profit. But some, like Wasteland 2, will. And if those successful creators can commit to support the community that once gave them a chance, then the impact that Kickstarter can have on individual inventors, artists, and entrepreneurs will multiply.

“Our ability to survive is going to be based on our ability to work with each other,” Fargo says. “This has brought me and my so-called competitors together closer than anything ever before.”

Evidence has surfaced over at the RPG Codex forums that inXile's next game may be an update of the unreleased time-traveling Wasteland 1 follow-up Meantime. It is unclear, but this may be the mystery project recently referred to in the Life Beyond Release Kickstarter update.  In said update, Chris Keenan discussed, "another RPG that has been passionately demanded of us for a while now!"

Update: It's been revealed that Brian Fargo and inXile have also filed a trademark for "Van Buren."  This is notable, as the original Fallout 3 produced by Interplay and led by Chris Avellone/Josh Sawyer was known under the code name... Van Buren.

Brian Fargo is interviewed on Digital Trends to talk about how Kickstarter is turning game development into a spectator sport. Have to say he is probably right.

Brain Fargo tweeted they are offering a new limited time bundle on the Torment website you can buy both Torment/Wasteland 2 for $60.

Not bad deal if you want both games.

"In case you missed it, we have a Torment/Wasteland 2 bundle available. I suspect it won't be there forever."

This exclusive package contains Torment and Wasteland 2 as digital downloads, as well as their game manuals.  Two awesome RPGs for the harcore RPG fan. Wasteland 2, the original crowdfunded RPG, has been released after years in the making!

Polygon interviewed Brian Fargo where he talks about his long gaming career, and also answers a few questions about his current project Wasteland 2.

Fargo is a known critic of game publishing mores. During his Kickstarter video pitch for InXile's new game Wasteland 2, he portrayed them as children. He mocked middle-level execs who sign off on new projects and who manage developers. He said many of them do not understand video games.

The worst, he recalls, was being forced to release a game he did not consider to be up to scratch. "What do I do when I'm told to just wrap it up and we're not going to have any time for iteration?" he asks. "Of course my scores are going to suffer. But I don't have control over that. Developers take the rap for having bugs in their products. It's not their QA department. The publisher runs QA. Yet the developer is taking a hit for shipping buggy products. Forever."

These days, the number of independent developers hired to work on AAA games is dwindling. Developers like InXile are seeking to take control over their own destinies and creativity via Kickstarter projects. Or they are being bought up by publishers who can wield more control over the companies they actually own.

"I know of some publishers that will purposely try to run developers into the ground so they can buy them on the cheap," he says. "That's also a strategy. Think about that."

Damaged by years of doing business with publishers, Fargo has found a way to make games the way he wants to make them, without the approval or money of large marketing-and-distribution entities.

Two years ago, Fargo raised $3 million on Kickstarter for Wasteland 2, a sequel to an RPG he made back in the 1980s. But a good fund-raising campaign is only part of his journey back from the margins.

L.A.Biz interviews Brain Fargo to talk about kickstarting the video game industry.

You may not want to admit how many hours you spend gaming, whether on a console or on your phone, but your guilty pleasure is actually fueling innovation in crowdsourcing. Brian Fargo has seen the ups and downs of the gaming business over the past 30 years and is at the forefront of the next wave of production, the ambitious, crowd-funded video game.

Brian Fargo gave a speech at the Gaming Insiders Summit on why crowdfunding trumps the traditional publishing model. Gamezebo has a new article of what he said if you're interested.

Fargo came out with ten key benefits to utilize crowdsourcing as a developer. One of the recurring themes among these points was the benefits of the freedom obtained by functioning as an independent game. Fargo explained that working with a publisher means that every few weeks, he and his team needed to show progress and defend their product. This process takes time away from the actual development. He also explained how crowdsourcing lets the team treat the game as it should be: A passion project. Without a publisher able to push the team in a certain direction, developers have a broader range of creativity.

Of course, the other big benefit to crowdsourcing is the crowd. Running a campaign on Kickstarter (or a similar service) is an excellent way to generate buzz and excitement for a product, even long before it launches. More important than that, the simple act of running a crowdfunding campaign will provide feedback when it matters most. One of the points Fargo kept returning to was that if the crowd wanted something, they’d support it, regardless of how publishers and other entities feel. This was proven by inXile’s wildly successful Wasteland 2 campaign, which began a whole new strategy of development for the company.

Brian Fargo gave a presentation at the International Game Developers Association talking his his early career, kickstarter, and more.  We can thank RPG Codex for posting this, and bringing it to my attention.

Now just a heads up the video is over an hour long, and I don't have a transcript on hand. So you have been warned.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has another interview with Brian Fargo talking about the company's publisher funded past.

RPS: Working with publishers has been kind of a bumpy ride for inXile. On one hand, you got to do Bard’s Tale, but then you also ended up doing things like porting Line Rider, having big projects canceled, and, er, developing a party game. That’s basically the opposite of a sprawling, sophisticated PC RPG.

Fargo: It’s like in all businesses, when you start them. The beginning is what you have to do. You work your way up to what you want to do. I always wanted to make role-playing games, but it was impossible until now. With Bard’s Tale, it had to be consoles. I could not get a deal unless it was console-oriented. And then, whether it was Line Rider or Fantastic Contraption, that was just me seeing talent or seeing products I thought would sell. We’ve done very well with them. But I was struggling to find a business model to allow us to make these kinds of games.

It’s easy to look back and say, “Brian, you should have just gone from Interplay and done role-playing games. What an obvious thing for you to do.” It wasn’t there. When I would talk to publishers, because there was no other way to get the money, I never got to the part where they said, “How much?” They had no interest at any price. There were no options. Once I saw Kickstarter, I said, “This is it. Here’s our chance.”

RPS: How long had you had the idea to do a Wasteland 2 before you finally could do it?

Fargo: 2002. Well, when did I get the mark? 2004. I take that back. 2004. But I’d wanted to do something with it. It was one of the first marks that I got. I thought it was going to be an easy pitch, especially because I had it, and then I was trying to get things going, but then Fallout 3 came out from Bethesda and sold like five million copies. Okay. This is fantastic. I executive produced Wasteland and Fallout. I got one of the designers from Fallout, Jason Anderson, working here. And I had Mike Stackpole, one of the original designers of Wasteland. I have the perfect pitch. I thought, based upon Bethesda’s success, that it would be easy. Nope. No way.

The A List Daily has a new article about Brain Fargo, Wasteland 2, and the indie revolution.

InXile Entertainment was quick to take advantage of the Kickstarter revolution, and now is eyeing the possibilities for consoles in the future. Wasteland II has been delayed by six weeks, but the beta will release on the original schedule. It's quite a feat for any game developer for a project of this size and scope. The [a] list daily sat down with InXile CEO Brian Fargo, long-time veteran of the industry, to discuss the pending arrival of Wasteland II and the changing game market.

Fargo wants to create a great RPG in the classic tradition, and from the appearance of the software in its current form he's succeeding. “I want to make it unbelievable,” said Fargo. “I want to show that you can make an unbelievable game without a publisher.” Fargo's lined up a top-flight team of writers and designers (including the team from the original Wasteland) along with experienced programmers and artists using Unity to build a game that looks like a very worthy successor to the original RPG.

The focus is on quality, according to Fargo. “Here's the great thing. If I take money from a publisher, what do they want at the end of the day? They want to make a profit,” Fargo points out. “If I take money from my neighbors, friends, and family, they want their money back, and probably a small profit. If I take it from a VC, they want to make a profit. Money from crowdsourcing? They just want a good game. It's the most pure form of financing you can get. Universally, people say, take your time, get it right. We've waited 20 years, don't worry about it. You know what a relief that is?”

Brian Fargo did another interview this time with gamesindustry.biz. The topics included kickstarter and the role of the traditional publisher.

The intense focus of publishers on AAA titles amuses Fargo when he considers the origins of the biggest sellers. "All of those franchises started off small," Fargo said. "I think the only franchise that I've seen that was truly built to be a billion-dollar franchise was Skylanders. Outside of that, Tomb Raider, GTA, Madden Football, they didn't start that way."

The way publishers handle risk for AAA games is to minimize innovation and stick to sequels. Given what InXile is able to build with a few million dollars, couldn't a big publisher take $40 million and make 10 bets with that money instead of one title, and have a greater chance of a hit? "Isn't that what King.com does, but at a different scale?" asks Fargo. "They made a hundred ten thousand dollar bets, or whatever their number is."

The Kickstarter method is preferable, according to Fargo. "Our game certainly has less risk because it's being pre-ordered," Fargo notes. "I specifically make the game for that audience, and then I let the chips fall where they may. I think people that like roleplaying games are going to love it. Some people say, 'How do you make it for the younger generation,' and I don't think about that. I'm just going to make something that's smart and intelligent, nuanced, and the audience will figure it out."

The ideal situation for Fargo, assuming Wasteland II and Torment do well, is to continue to do RPGs that are interesting. "I don't want to be in a situation where we finish Wasteland II and I have to hurry up and get Wasteland III out the door. I don't ever want to be in that situation," Fargo said. "You do a sequel when you have the right idea." In other words, do a sequel because you want to, not because you have to.

VG247 has an interview with Brian Fargo. He gives his opinion on fans as publishers and basically says he couldn't be happier.

“The first time around, with Wasteland 2, there wasn’t enough data to signify to me [stagnation] was normal,” inXile founder Brian Fargo told me during GDC. “So we thought we were in the middle of a drop-off, but we were wrong. We were like, ‘what happened?’ But we soon found out it’s a very natural progression.

“I read that 87% of Kickstarter projects are small, and I think that in the beginning, someone said only half of the projects were getting financed and only one quarter of those were video games. That’s insane. I mean, if you are out pitching products to publishers, maybe 1% of those are successful. This means that the successful one quarter on Kickstarter being financed brings that figure up to 20-25%. That is a huge statistic.”

“For a while all I heard about was Kickstarter fatigue or that it wasn’t going to happen or whether we should do another one,” said Fargo. “And I thought, if I can provide compelling reasons why and give people more detail – I mean you’ll notice the Torment pitch video was way more detailed than Wasteland 2 , and that’s because the expectations were different than a year ago. Just a year made a difference. But we took more time with the Torment pitch and if you are really striking the right chords and personifying and people understand why they should support a project with their money, I think Kickstarter will continue to do well.”

Brian Fargo speaks with GamesIndustry.biz in an article format, saying he would return to Kickstarter regardless of whether sales of Wasteland 2 could finance a new game or not:

Should Wasteland 2 be a great success, though, it will raise a very different question. Crowd-funding has proved to be a convincing platform for getting ostensibly non-commercial ideas into production and into the public eye, but once that has been confirmed and rewarded with commercial success, is it appropriate to go back to the crowd for more?

"Yeah, because it goes beyond just getting money to do it," says Fargo. "Even if [Wasteland 2] sells a bunch and it could finance [another game], I'd like to keep that same relationship."

"Let's assume that I'm gonna deliver the game, so my backers are going to get whatever they were gonna buy anyway. If I pitch a new idea to my Kickstarter fans and nobody wants to fund it, I'm glad I didn't make it. It builds on itself... Ultimately, it helps me that I'm spending time and effort on something that people actually want. I can't see any harm in that because I'm giving people what they want at the end of the day."

Brian Fargo has posted a Wasteland 2 update on Kickstarter - a snip:

We knew we were taking a risk by asking for the most money anyone had ever asked for on Kickstarter, but we did it because every time we have interacted with the gaming community for the last decade they have asked about getting this sequel done. Even while we have been on press tours for other products, doing press interviews and presentations all over the planet, it always comes up. When are we getting Wasteland? Well, I finally have an answer for everyone. You all get a Wasteland Sequel in October of next year! Not only did we meet the highest funding goal ever on Kickstarter, we did it in 2 days! I know… we can’t believe it either. [...]

Right now we want to be clear on a few things people are asking about:

Through the support of our amazing fan community we will be localizing the game into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Polish. For anyone in those territories that want to help with this, please look for information on our Forums.

At the $1.5 Million level we will be adding a Linux version along with the Mac OS X version. We know that the Linux community is a very dedicated and internet-active group, so we hope their support will help us make that goal.

For those of you in Europe who want to support us but don't have a credit card, please check out our FAQ for some help.

There is also an interview at Massively:

Tell us about the game. How true to the original do you plan to make it?

I want this game to be comfortable for either a Wasteland of Fallout 1/2 player to be able to step into like a comfortable pair of shoes. Obviously the graphics need to be updated, and it will have different combat systems, etc., but there is a tone, stats, and interface that come with the RPGs from that era. People are very clear about wanting that experience and none of this "re-imagining" business. The game will initially take place in the (American) southwest as you are controlling a band of desert rangers like in the first game. The game will have scope and scale like both Wasteland and Fallout; it will be open-world in the sense that we don't lead you around by the nose; it will have multiple approaches to most things to avoid the moralistic "right" solution; it will be skill-based; NPCs will join the group and not always behave like you want; and it will not require hand-eye coordination. Oh, and there will be tons of weapons so people can shoot their way through situations instead of charming anyone.

...and GameZone:

GZ: So in the Kickstarter, you were saying you were planning for six months of pre-development and 12 months of development, how far along would you say the game is now?

Brian Fargo: We were working on a lot of the storyline, and the character development and individual plot scenes, but to that extent, that work's been done. There's still a tremendous amount of work that still needs to get done. It's funny because when you talk about the $1 million you've got one group of people saying 'Wow, how can you do it for so cheap?' but then others saying 'I know an indie that made a game for 30 grand, why does it cost so much?' For making a full scale RPG, it really isn't that much, you have to become super proficient. One of the things that saves us money is not doing cut-scenes. Those are incredibly expensive and time consuming and frankly, the hardcore crowd doesn't care that much about them, so that saves us a tremendous amount of time. Really it comes down to having a template for having the perfect map, and then we send that out to six or seven designer, and they will all jump on creating their areas and then we collate it, bring it together, and then we'll be feeding this stuff out to the beta testers throughout to make sure the sensibilities that we promised, were hitting all those right notes. I feel more confident in building this product than I have pretty much any other, because of the fact that the fans were involved in the beginning on the front end to test our sensibilities and clearly they like what they've been hearing, and then we're going to deliver it to them. It's like if we say, 'We're going to have gritty writing', it's one thing to say it, but then have fans look at it and say 'This is horrible writing!' that we'll then have to tweak, so the process is really well organized.

$1.14M as I write...

...and we're done. InXile's Wasteland 2 Kickstarter has officially passed the $900k required for funding in under two days!

Brian Fargo tweets Liz Danforth, another original designer, has joined the team:

In other great news we have brought another original #wasteland designer aboard. Liz Danforth. The Highpool map was one of hers.

...and on the view:

We are leaning towards isometric but we want to show some screens in our forum for fan feedback. You guys are my new boss after all.

InXile's Kickstarter has just passed $500k. I won't keep highlighting the numbers - apart from major milestones - but over half way in a day is worth mentioning.

If you haven't pledged - give it some thought. While I think this will send a message to publishers, I don't think they'll be listening - they're too focused on blockbusters. I do, however, think this holds enormous potential for encouraging developers to try alternative methods and attempt those 'B' games that are mostly no longer made. Don't think about your $15 just buying a copy of Wasteland 2 - think of it as inspiration for those games that might now get made.

As per yesterday's post, InXile's Kickstarter campaign for Wasteland 2 is up and running and after a few hours is currently a little over $270,000 of the required $900,000 - it looks like this will be a runaway success with a over a month of pledges yet to come. Chris Avellone and Notch are among the supporters.

Here's a snip from the Kickstarter page and head over to view the video introduction and, of course, pledge:

This is your chance to influence the kind of game you want to see. With fan funding, you drive the direction of game design and development. If it is important to you, it is important to us. 

This is probably the last chance for a Wasteland sequel.  We have tried to pitch this game multiple times to game publishers, but they’ve balked. They don’t think there’s any interest in a solid, old school type of game.  This is our shot at proving them wrong. And more importantly this could help bring back an entire genre of RPGs. The power of the Indie scene continues and we see this as all part of a bigger trend of bringing control back to the developers. [...]

We’re going back to the original and building from there. No first person shooter, we’re going top down so you get a tactical feel for the situation. And we’re not ditching the party play to turn it into some hack-and-slash bloodfest. It’s turn based, tactical, with a storyline that will be deeper and broader.

We’re determined to keep the gritty, grim and satirical writing. We’re going to pitch those moral dilemmas at you. You’re going to be faced with the consequences of your actions.

We’re planning on an initial 6 months of pre-production. We’ll nail down every important element that you, our creative partners, want.  Once we have all that figured out, we buckle down for 12 month development cycle. During that time, players can get a sneak peek on a private closed beta through Steam.  In addition, we will be giving you constant updates and showing you our progress along the way. [...]

But we’re looking ahead to what we can do if you all back this project in force. At $1.25 million, the money will go primarily into making the world bigger, adding more maps, more divergent stories and even more music. 

At $1.5 million, the world gets even bigger. You’ll have more adventures to play, more challenges to deal with, and a greater level of complexity to the entire storyline.  We’ll add more environments, story elements, and characters to make the rich world come alive even more.  We will even be able to bring Wasteland 2 to OS X for Mac lovers. And after $1.5 million the sky is the limit.

Brian Fargo tweeted a few hours back the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter has been approved and will be released tomorrow. Due to timezone differences, I'll probably miss the exact launch, but you know its coming:

#Wasteland 2 update! We have been approved by #kickstarter and we go live tomorrow. I will post the link the minute I get it.

Brian Fargo has been interviewed at Rock, Paper, Shotgun about Wasteland 2. A lengthy clip on the design docs they already have:

RPS: To what extent have you got the design already, you said you had these documents you almost shelved three weeks ago, how complete were they, or are you still making it up as you go along?

Brian Fargo: We worked on it at InXile for nearly a year, and so we worked through the storyline, what the life of the ranger is, dialogue structure, social skills, party influence, character stats. We worked through quite a lot of things so we’re not starting at ground zero. We pretty much know the templates, the next step after that was to bring all the writers in, and bring the artists in, and really fill out the meat of the world. That’s the costly part and where we didn’t get anywhere.

RPS: So potentially it could happen a bit sooner than people expect I guess if you do have the nuts and bolts of the design already nailed down?

Brian Fargo: It’s still going to take a while, we’re going to spend a good five months…it’s not that it’s no money, a million dollars is a lot of money. And by the way we’re lowering it to $900, 000, and I’m going to kick in the last $100, 000 just to make sure this thing happens. That said, in order to do this and be super efficient you have to design everything up front. We’ll have a pile [of paper] a phone book high, we’ll sit around in a conference room and we’ll step through the game over, over and over again.

It kind of works like, sometimes science fiction authors all collaborate on a book, and say ‘look in my book or in your scene, make sure a plane crashes, I don’t care what else you do after that’ and so there’s a little bit of that where we will have these constant threads and let some creativity happen within the areas that we assign off to the designers. But we’ll bring that all together and step it through, and then it becomes a matter of getting it all in a.s.a.p and we’ll repeat the same monster picture a hundred times but at least we’re now playing the game, and we’ll start to fill in the assets, and that way we’re polishing, or balancing, as we go.

It’s the cause and effect that makes a true role playing game so there’s a lot of ‘what ifs’ and then we want to keep ‘hey, what happens if you walk up to this encounter and this NPC’s with you, ‘oh that’s a good one, let’s deviate that way’, or ‘how about if they’re all wearing guard costumes?’ So coming up with all these ‘what-if’s’, that’s what makes these things shine.

Brian Fargo tweets that Andree Wallin will do concept art for Wasteland 2. That's not a name I know, but a quick google search revealed a site and portfolio here. Brian's tweet:

Just received confirmation that Andree Wallin will be doing concept art for #Wasteland 2. He is fantastic! Great news! http://pic.twitter.com/NEd4C8PN

Brian Fargo has posted the proposed Wasteland 2 Kickstarter rewards for comment. I'll post the lower tiers and those planning to drop $10,000 can head over to check for themselves:

So we've said that we want the fans feedback on the actual game design and world, but we also want to hear your thoughts on the proposed Kickstarter rewards. These aren't set in stone yet so let us know if you'd rather see something else instead. We really tried to make these meaningful to the fans and hope they are better than many others you will see on Kickstarter. What do you think?

Pledge $15 (unlimited)
Copy of game free via Steam for PC. You will also get a special skill and weapon only available to those who helped fund the project.

Pledge $30 (unlimited)
Previous reward + Downloadable free digital soundtrack of the game.

Pledge $50 (unlimited)
Previous reward + Full large boxed copy of Wasteland 2, complete with cloth game map and old school comprehensive instruction manual.

A small update from Brian Fargo's twitter on their Wasteland 2 progress:

Planning to submit our #Wasteland 2 #Kickstarter page/video on Friday and then go through their approval process which we hope is short.

RPG Codex has released the second interview on Wasteland 2.  This time they have talked with Michael A. Stackpoole. They talk about the character and design system behind the original Wasteland, the puzzles in the original Wasteland, how conversations might work in Wasteland 2 as well as Stackpooles opinion on quest markers. And much more.

A quote about the rule system:

- Like many of the classics, Wasteland's rule system and design borrowed heavily from pen and paper RPGs. Given that current cRPGs seem to be influenced more by other video games instead, should Wasteland 2 be as firmly rooted in P&P as its predecessor?

MS: The fact that Wasteland was and will be a turn-based system means that P&P style rules and systems can work very well. We start from that basis and build a killer engine. That the designers with system design can do fairly easily, especially working from what we already have. After that, we have scenario designers who use those tools to create the adventures. What Wasteland had that a lot of RPGs lack today is depth and consequence. I firmly believe that's something that can be taught to designers, and encouraged in the development phases by editors. In short, designers will pick up the skills to create a game worthy of the Wasteland legacy.

Thanks Crooked Bee.

InXile has launched an official site for Wasteland 2 and also forums. The site is basically a splash page with a blog behind it and here's a snip from Brian Fargo's inaugural post:

First off, I’d like to welcome you to the development forum for Wasteland 2… after all, it’s because of you that we are even here right now. I’ve been wanting to get back to this franchise for over 20 years and the entire reason Fallout exists today is because I was unable to make a sequel back in the day, and after I cleared up the legal issues we were not able to get publishers excited unless it was a potential “billion dollar franchise” or they just didn’t want the kind of gameplay experience that classic role playing games offered. It was frustrating!

Fortunately, we are in a different era with thanks to fan based funding and digital distribution. We have a chance to move the power back to the developers, allowing us to make genres of games that publishers just would not support. I had completely given up on making a Wasteland sequel until just recently, and I can tell you the last few weeks have been a blast re-connecting with the fans and working on designs. It reminds me of why I was excited about the games business to begin with.

Thanks, Avantenor!

The core team has been put back together with Brian Fargo tweeting Ken St. Andre has joined the Wasteland 2 team:

In other Wasteland 2 news we have brought back another designer from Wasteland.. Mr. Ken St. Andre..also creator of Tunnels and Trolls.

Brian Fargo tweets they hope to get the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter up late next week:

We hope to launch Kickstarter by late next week, but there's an approval process that we're not familiar with. Could be small delay.

NMA sends word they reached out to Brian Fargo who confirmed the title of their Kickstarter project will be Wasteland 2.

In addition to announcing Mark Morgan as the composer for Wasteland 2, Brian Fargo revealed they nearly have the preparation for their Kickstarter launch ready:

I'm filming my bit for the #kickstarter video tomorrow and Wednesday. This is the last major item to prepare for our launch on Kickstarter.

Brian Fargo announced via Twitter that Mark Morgan, the man behind the Fallout 1 and 2 musical scores, will do the same for Wasteland 2:

It's official! Mark Morgan who composed the music for @Fallout 1 and 2 has signed on to help do the same and set the mood for #wasteland.

RPG Codex has done a two-part interview with Brian Fargo on Wasteland 2. You can read the first part here.  And here's something from the interview:

- The prospect of a Wasteland 2 has sparked a lot of talk amongst gamers and I'm sure you've received an overwhelming amount of feedback. What do you feel are the most common features people want to see in a Wasteland 2 and do they match up with the features you and your team envisage for the game?

Based on what I have been reading it seems we are in sync with what the players want to see. The beauty of fan funding and the internet is that we can be communicating with the fan base along the way to solicit input for the broad strokes of things. Should the art style be bleak, muted and desolate or does a Borderlands 2 look appeal to the fans. We are going to get on the same page up front. I've responded to some interviews on my sensibility thoughts and so far the fans seem to like what they are hearing. There is a definite appetite to play this more classic style of game and I certainly want to make it! To be a little more specific this is going to be a top down, party and turn based game which has always been a great formula. It will also be a larger party most likely following the same vibe of the first Wasteland with 4 player characters and 3 NPC's in your group. I always thought having just 3 players in a group didn't feel like a real party based game.

NMA has interviewed Brian Fargo on their Wasteland Kickstarter project. It's an interesting piece and Fargo confirms the planned use of a lot of material from Jason Anderson (Fallout) who spent a year developing Wasteland concepts for inXile some time back, a top-down view and turn-based combat.

Screeg writes in and asks me to emphasise the turn-based part. TURN-BASED. Got that? Here's a snip:

It's been years since the old Wasteland so no one is expecting a carbon copy. What would you say are elements in design or setting from the original that absolutely must make it back in, and what elements would you say are most likely to change?

Party and turn based combat is an absolute critical requirement for me. I like finding the right mix of Desert Rangers combined with NPC's and I enjoy the tactics that come from that dynamic. Players will spend more time doing combat than most anything in an RPG so it needs to be deep and rewarding. The skill based system is another must have to me as it opens up the world to be explored in ways that the player wants to do. You can have someone picklock the door, use demolitions on it, sneak over the back wall or try and let a rocket loose to blow the door off. A good RPG always offers many options for the player to move forward and with some of their choices may open or close off entire areas. I think the 3rd element is the way NPC's had a mind of their own within combat or game mechanics. The best storytelling often comes from the moments that happen from within the system. Almost everyone remembers when Angela Deth would empty an entire Uzi clip into a rat and completely waste hard earned ammo.

Things that will have big changes will be the use of audio and how you communicate and receive missions from the Desert Rangers HQ. I won't go into detail yet but we have some innovative ideas that will make that whole aspect of the game become more entertaining and meaningful. We also plan to dial up the things that NPC's can do or cause affect the party. We will have some NPC's that you will love in combat but be looking forward to snuffing out once you get the chance. We will also have a more cohesive story thanks to all the efforts that Jason and Mike have already put in. We have learned a lot more about storytelling than we did back in the day.

Venture Beat has an interview with Brian Fargo on crowd-funding and how it may help mid-size developers.  A quote from Fargo about this:

InXile has a variety of properties that could use funding and 15 employees. Fargo shopped Wasteland around to publishers, but they were risk averse and really wanted to games that had a chance to rake in $1 billion in sales. If he does the project on his own, Fargo can make the game edgier, with a gritty world full of moral dilemmas for the players. “The game industry has separated itself into the huge blockbuster companies and the independent developers in their garages,” Fargo said. “But it’s pretty hard to be in the middle. Is there any business model left standing for the mid-size developers?”

I get the feeling Wasteland 2  is finding some momentum with Brian Fargo tweeting that the original Wasteland programmer, Alan Pavlish, has joined the team:

More good #Wasteland news! The original producer, programmer and designer Alan Pavlish has also joined the team.

Chris Avellone has posted his own thoughts about the idea of a Kickstartered Wasteland 2 on his Obsidian blog:

In short, I’d kill for another Wasteland.

Not just because it was a post-apocalyptic RPG, but because it did so much that was refreshingly new with conventional tech, something that Fallout did as well, and there’s a big lesson to be learned there.

I’m a big fan of using non-video-card-and-non-engine-innovations to drive development, and sometimes it only requires stepping back a second and taking a fresh look at the game to pull it off – as an example, my favorite example of non-tech innovation is low-INT dialogue options in Fallout. Brilliant. Wasteland did the exact same thing, except with skill progression and location setting – it allowed your character to grow in new ways, and it took you to places in its low-rez world that I haven’t seen rivaled or done half as well in contemporary games.

No doubt he'll also be interested in terms of any possible Obsidian project, as well.

While we're at it, IGN has a feature called Fallout's Forgotten Ancestor:

As primitive as this top-down affair looks nearly a quarter of a century down the line, at the time it was the Mad Max-meets-The Terminator game of my dreams. Next to the side-scrolling platformers and shooters that littered the scene, Wasteland was comfortably one of the most ambitious titles around. By building on the groundbreaking Bard's Tale titles in spectacular style, Interplay constructed a persistent openworld environment that gave the game a credible sense of place that few others could match.

Some quick tidbits from Brian Fargo's twitter. First, while it's not a confirmation, Fargo seems positive towards turn-based gaming in response to a question from "Taxonomic":

Taxonomic

@BrianFargo as a fan of wasteland, and someone disappointed with the lack of turn based crpgs, I'd like to see a proper #wasteland2.

Brian Fargo

@Taxonomic Here here... Nothing beats the tactics of a good ole turn based party game.

Looks like Fargo is having fun with the idea, so far:

It's been a blast to only work on Wasteland this weekend. Writing docs, doing research, talking to writers, listening to music.

...and confirmation of a full box, docs and map version:

It looks like a few of you have figured out one of the tier awards. The $50 tier gets full box, docs and maps the way games used to be.

From Brian Fargo's Twitter Account comes this news:

@BrianFargo I just started playing Wasteland again a bit ago. And now I hear about this! Any idea when the kickstarter page will be live?
@JonasCalhoun We hope to get it live in the next 2-3 weeks. We are thinking through the tiers and making a video.

It seems we might get to see a Wasteland 2 game soonish.

Looks like Brian Fargo's plan to revive Wasteland is gathering strength with one of the original designers and scifi and fantasy author (Battletech and Star Wars books among others) Michael Stackpole signing on according to a tweet from Fargo:

One of the original designers of Wasteland is @MikeStackpole and he has signed on as a designer for the new Wasteland!

Kotaku briefly explains why anyone cares about Wasteland revival:

Released in 1988 on the PC, Wasteland was a pioneering RPG. Set in a post-apocalyptic future in the aftermath of a nuclear war, the player controlled a team of soldiers sent on a mission into a...wasteland. It was one of the first games to ever boast a persistent world, and also featured a rich and flexible approach to its obstacles and combat. It even tied into the real world by including documentation in the box that had to be kept tucked away and only read when the game instructed you to.

Most importantly, though, it set the tone which Fallout would follow a decade later. Wasteland was a dry, violent and smart video game. Its NPCs would sometimes bluntly refuse your requests. It revelled in the damage and pain you could inflict on your opponents, to the point where publishers EA stuck a PG-13 sticker on the box, despite the fact games didn't really need to be rated back then.

Brian Fargo has made some comments to IGN about a theoretical crowd-funded Wasteland 2, saying the Kickstarter might "go live in the next month":

He doesn't know if it'd be straight up called Wasteland 2, but he repeatedly emphasized that, despite having thought about it for only 48 hours, it wouldn't be a crazy genre change up. Wasteland, whatever its called, will be "100% faithful to its roots." This means a Wasteland game that "would be focusing on top-down, probably isometric, party based, skill based -- where if you'd just finished playing Wasteland and moved onto this you'd feel comfortable." [...]

Fargo has only been working on the project for a mere 48 hours, and he and the rest of inXile are currently working on a production schedule to see if its feasible. But he does think that it'd take at least a million dollars, and hopes that the Kickstarter will go live in the next month.

Seems everyone is suddenly interested in crowd-funding with Matt Barton reporting Brian Fargo is interested in looking at crowd-funding Wasteland 2. You may recall inXile secured the trademark many years ago but nothing seems to have happened since:

This just in from Brian Fargo: "I thought you all might be interested to know we are seriously looking at bringing a new Wasteland back with crowdsource funding. If we get enough support it could finally happen. Nothing would make me happier."

GameRevolution has made a preview for Hunted: Demon's Forge. Here's a snip:

While the plot starts you off on the familiar quest of epic lootage that fans of the genre are all too familiar with, the real point at which Hunted becomes its own game is in the gameplay. This is not a game that will saturate you with menus and character management. In fact, it seems more like a wizards and dragons version of Gears of War than it resembles any RPGs I can recall playing in the recent past. It's an oversimplification, but that's essentially what you can look forward to, only instead of chainsaw guns, you get magic spells and ice arrows, which is a fair trade-off.

German site GamersGlobal has an (English) interview with Brian Fargo.  While I'm not sure how much we'll follow Hunted: Demon's Forge, the conversation touches briefly on Stonekeep, Sacrifice, Wasteland, Bard's Tale and, of course, Hunted.  Fargo explains the RPG elements, saying there is opportunity to explore and puzzles and he likens the pacing to Bioshock.

Thanks, Grandor Dragon.

So, inXile's project to be published by Bethsoft has been revealed and it isn't Wasteland 2 - or even close.  Introducing a co-op action dungeon romp titled Hunted: Demon's Forge.

BETHESDA SOFTWORKS TO PUBLISH HUNTED: THE DEMON'S FORGE^TM

Next Gen Co-Op Dungeon Romp Being Developed by inXile Entertainment for Xbox 360, PlayStation^®3 and Games for Windows

March 15, 2010 (London, UK) – Bethesda Softworks®, a ZeniMax® Media company, today announced that it will publish Hunted: The Demon’s Forge™, a third-person co-op fantasy action game. Hunted is being developed at inXile Entertainment for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, and PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and Games for Windows.

inXile Entertainment was founded in 2002 by industry veteran Brian Fargo. During his distinguished tenure in the video game business, Fargo has been behind some of the greatest fantasy game franchises of all time including The Bard's Tale®, Baldur's Gate®, and Fallout®. Hunted’s development is being overseen by Fargo while Michael “Maxx” Kaufman serves as the game’s Director. Previously, Kaufman served as Art Director on such titles as Kingpin™: Life of Crime™, Redneck Rampage™ and the award-winning Return to Castle Wolfenstein® at Gray Matter.

“We are thrilled to be working with Bethesda Softworks on this upcoming release that takes us back to our roots,” said Brian Fargo, Founder of inXile Entertainment. “Bethesda’s track record speaks for itself and the game we are developing for them is no exception.”

“inXile has an extremely talented team and we couldn’t be more pleased to have them working on one of our upcoming titles,” said Vlatko Andonov, President of Bethesda Softworks. “We believe gamers will be really excited about what these guys have in store for them.”

You can Meet Brian Fargo at the Bethblog, read previews at CVG and Eurogamer, plus there's an interview at IGN that roams some other topics such as Fallout and Interplay.

This genre, Fargo tells us, has its roots in Dungeons & Dragons and the earliest days of computer programming. He namechecks Lord British (doesn't even think to call him Richard Garriott), Wizadry (which he personally became addicted to in the early eighties), Bard's Tale, Ultima, Might & Magic and Dungeon Master. He sprints into the nineties and notes a trend towards action in Ultima Underworld, the first Elder Scrolls game, Hexen and Heretic.

It's all useful context, if only because the game Fargo and his colleagues Matt Findley (president) and Maxx Kaufman (game director) proceed to show us bears little surface resemblance to any of the above. It's a muscular third-person action game designed around two-player co-op play, with brutal melee combat, ranged shooting through a tight over-the-shoulder camera, a clean display, scripted set-pieces and a cover system. Apart from some fairly standard dark-fantasy trappings, it looks like a lot of games Fargo doesn't mention: Uncharted, Gears of War and Army of Two spring to mind.

Blue's News points out that Brian Fargo hints, at Duck & Cover, at a possible coupling with Bethesda and it does sound like it's a new Wastelands game. Although that hint is as old as 2007.

Brian Fargo and InXile Entertainment might, in fact, be developing a game for Bethesda. Last time DAC spoke with Fargo, he informed us that he was working on a sequel to Wasteland, saying: "I am indeed looking into bringing back the game that spawned the Fallout series. Stay tuned...." 21 June 2007

Also note:

It is unknown at this time whether or not Fargo was being serious or just making a joke. Attempts were made to contact both inXile and Bethesda, but no response has been made as of yet.

Is inXile gearing up for a new Wasteland?  A new job on their site seeks to land a content designer for a next-gen RPG, with "knowledge of classic CRPGS" a "bonus trait".

After sitting dormant and out of date for a long time, inXile has suddenly revamped their website.  Of particular interest is a rather post-apocalyptic-y piece of art in the top right corner, which might be interpreted as a sign their rumoured Wasteland game is a reality.  Time will tell.

 inXile sent out a press release announcing Intergi as their in-game advertising partner for their "portfolio":

Deerfield Beach, Fla.—April 23, 2009 — inXile Entertainment (www.inxile-entertainment.com), a leading game development company focused on bringing the highest quality video games to computer, mobile and console gaming systems, today announced a new, exclusive advertising agreement with Intergi (www.intergi.com), a leading video game and entertainment advertising representation company. Under the terms of the agreement, Intergi will represent and supply advertising opportunities for inXile’s portfolio of gaming properties including Line Rider and Fantastic Contraption.

Note to Fargo: if you are making Wastelands 2, keep this far away.

Jason Anderson's recent move to inXile is discussed in a new interview with Gamasutra, although at this early stage, not much can be revealed.  Apparently Jason and Brian Fargo share a similar vision:

In what sense do you see eye to eye?

JA: Well, RPGs have been kind of in a lull as of late. But there have been a handful of good ones out there -- especially with Bethesda successfully rebooting the Fallout franchise, and generally showing that RPGs are viable forms of entertainment.

I want to get back to RPGs that are very story-driven and character-driven. Personally, I've never gotten out of [single-player] RPGs. There was the short stint working on the MMO for the past year, but that was pretty much it. I've always been about RPGs and RPG design. Even before Interplay I was a big RPG player.

Here's one out of the blue.  Jason Anderson (Fallout, Troika) was last known to be working at Interplay as Creative Director on FOOL but Worthplaying has an announcement from Brian Fargo's inXile, saying Jason has joined to lead a second team "focused on an epic game that will push the boundaries of RPGs":

Jason has an extensive resume of creating amazing RPGs over the past two decades and we feel very lucky to have his talent directed to one of our upcoming projects," said Brian Fargo, chief executive officer of inXile entertainment. "His leadership and vision will allow us to have a second development team focused on an epic game that will push the boundaries of RPGs.

inXile has been working on small games of late (Linerider for the iPhone, among others)...could they finally be moving on their Wasteland IP?  Seems unlikely but we'll keep an eye out.

Not really much of an update but there might be a handful of readers holding out hope that InXile Entertainment (The Bard's Tale, founded by Brian Fargo) might be working on an updated Wasteland game with indications a couple of years ago they had secured the rights.

As it turns out, the first significant update to their site for a long time lists a game for the Nintendo DS and an "unnannounced next gen action adventure game", so a Wasteland game doesn't seem likely.