RPGWatch Forums - Wasteland 2

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Wasteland 2 - First Screenshot

As promised, inXile has released the first screenshot for Wasteland 2 (full size via their Facebook page) - and I think most fans will be delighted. This is very early work using some purchased assets and without particle and other effects but the potential is fantastic for fans of isometric-style party-based cRPGs.
The accompanying update is worth a read, so here's a sample:

Quote:

Releasing a screen shot this early in the process is a new concept for me as we typically want to hone in every element before we show it. But based on the requests and our desire for fan input, we are doing so to solicit feedback on the basic look. Please keep in mind that we have not put in the particle effects and post-processing which will have a dramatic effect on the scene, and this represents just one of the various environments for Wasteland 2 so expect to see other quite different locales. Also, this particular camera angle is on the low end of a range that the player can adjust upwards to a much more top-down view, for those who prefer that style during game play.

Quote:

As we moved into prototyping game-play scenarios and in-game environments, we wanted to keep in mind the long-term strategies we had been talking about in the press. With our small team structure and the expectation of a significant integration of contractor and fan/backer based assets, we wanted to consider the efforts that would be involved in synthesizing those contributions into a consistent style and theme. The Unity engine has this wonderfully integrated asset store, full of props, environment sets, FX and tools, and it seemed the perfect proving grounds for our first pass at this new approach of game environment creation.
Certainly, purchased or prefabricated assets are nothing new; a variety of sites are out there selling "game-ready" props, and like most developers, we are familiar with that opportunity. But Unity's Asset Store had a few distinct advantages that we found appealing. The store, being accessible from within the editor itself, along with the purchase, downloading and importing of those packages, made this surprisingly painless. Packages containing not only the models and textures, but also materials, particle attachments, and animations were ready to use and then modify immediately upon purchase. And so our goal was to purchase a variety of packages, modify them to suit our stylistic needs, and put together a scene by combining them with assets and textures generated in-house.
The big exception to all of this is of course characters, which we are developing primarily in house. RPGs have always generated strong relationships between the player and the characters they craft and breathe life into as the game progresses. And to this end, we will be working to create characters that can be read cleanly with our camera angles. Strong silhouettes and bold colors in costuming and accessories, and their animations and poses working with a camera angle (that is still being tested), seemed a tall order for this approach, and so in this shot a few examples of that effort are present.

In other Wasteland 2 news, Chris Avellone tweets that ex-Obsidian colleagues Anthony Davis ans Tony Evans are assisting in some capacity:

Quote:

Design meeting w/ 2 old colleagues tonight: Anthony Davis and Tony Evans. I never thought I'd get to work with again. Thanks Wasteland 2!

More information.

Nice shot. Better than expected. Tony Evans is also good news. I was one of the seemingly few people who appreciated Storm of Zehir. I loved their efforts to catch the essence of a travelling party.

What can be better then low-budget 3D? All those pretty faces from DS3 came to my mind.

I'm definitely not too fond of the art style, but I guess I would get over it.

Looking good! Can't wait to play it! :excited:

It looks pretty good although I think the world needs to look a bit dirtier…granted this is an early shot. It looks a little too blocky 3'd ish for my taste, I loved the 2D hand drawn art games…but still looks pretty good.

Reminds of JA3.

Colour palette is to be reworked.

Might be a good tactics game. Environment looks very favourable for that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avantenor (Post 1061153890)

Nice shot. Better than expected. Tony Evans is also good news. I was one of the seemingly few people who appreciated Storm of Zehir. I loved their efforts to catch the essence of a travelling party.

Storm of Zehir was a brilliant game.

And on topic: I like the screenshot. I'm looking forward seeing it all in action in a first video in a couple of months.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tuco (Post 1061153903)

I'm definitely not too fond of the art style, but I guess I would get over it.

About the same i was about to say.
Its to saturated and a bit cartoonish..

I am satisfied. It looks good and its not to far away from old-school.

I was also worried about the color palette and saturation at first, but then I realized - by noticing the long shadows - that it is sunset.

So all that orange is generated by the engine's atmospherics, and the desert would probably look different at high noon or sunrise.

That is a great first screen shot. My $500 big ones is going to good use. If you did not help fund this game then you are not allowed to commit on the first screens :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hastar (Post 1061153937)

That is a great first screen shot. My $500 big ones is going to good use. If you did not help fund this game then you are not allowed to commit on the first screens :)

I may have only contributed one-fifth that amount, but I too am happy with what I'm seeing.

I admit it looks a little too… smooth, in places. The textures could be a bit "rougher" to add to the "gritty" look without draining the color palette. And the character models could be a little beefier so we could see more details on them. But I like the bright colors, personally. I've played way too many desaturated games.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Saber-Scorpion (Post 1061153941)

I may have only contributed one-fifth that amount, but I too am happy with what I'm seeing.

I may have contributed 3% of that amount, but I agree: too smooth, too saturated. I mean, it doesn't have to be brown and grim, but dial it down a little bit. Also, the scorpion disappears into the terrain.

^I think it's supposed to disapear into the terrain, it's called camouflage ;)

Over or under saturation isnt really a problem in games, it takes about 20 seconds to fix it using the monitor settings or the video card settings (prefarable since you can have it set as a profile for that specific game). But again, i think it will change a lot, especially since not all shaders are finished yet.

I thought it was okay. Not sure I understand a flag being on a gas station, but just because there aren't any on the gas stations in America today, doesn't mean that the flag wasn't moved sometime in the past. Now if the graffiti has some meaning, we could try to figure out what the ship's wheel is supposed to signify. I also hoped this was the most zoomed out camera mode because the party looked like ants in the piccy.

It looks good for a first iteration. I agree more "granularity" in the textures (especially in the ground textures ) would be better. This should be fairly easy to address. As to the saturation - Unity is pretty flexible in the shader department, so it seems very possible they could have user settings that switch between different looks (saturated, more muted, etc.) depending on player preference.

It's way too zoomed out to make a judgement on the characters yet. I'm sure they'll release more progress shots of characters in the future.

Saturation and cartooning aside, the pic looks promising.
No apparent tiling in sight and there´s a promise of good kind of tactical combat in there.
Also, I didn´t enjoy Storm of Zehir much, but the dialogue system was cool, hopefully that´s one of the reasons why Anthony Davis is on board.

This was quoted by a commentator on FB:

"Please keep in mind that we have not put in the particle effects and post-processing which will have a dramatic effect on the scene"

So yes this is an early itteration and vast improvement is still to be expected. IMHO that means the graphics are beyond good enough. No more resources needed and everything else can go into content and mechanics.

Disappointing, what is up with all the cartoonish-style graphics trend in rpgs lately, first the divine divinity sequel, now this. I vastly prefer the realism look in the graphics style, hopefully this is in no way representative of the final product.