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Wasteland 2 - On the Relation with Torment

Update number 26 of Wasteland 2 addresses the relation between the Wasteland 2 development and the Torment Kickstarter and addresses the sometimes negative feedback they received on starting this Kickstarter.

Quote:

inXile, with all of our internal employees and outside contractors, consists of enough people to be considered about the size of a team and a half. This is by design. We always want a small and efficient team (the “half team”) to design both our product and our product development plan. This is called pre-production. It is the most important time in a project’s life cycle. This is the time when we want to make sure we slow down and get it right. During this phase we don't need all the engineers and 3D Artists on the project, it is mostly concept art, design and dialog writing. When this process is completed and we are ready to roll into full production we want to have a large team of people ready to make the game. If the planning was done well during the pre-production phase we can be very efficient during production and leave ourselves with plenty of time to iterate and make amazing games. If there is no pre-production done, and the full team is trying to create the design and development plan as they go, months, if not years, are wasted. Having a full team try to start a project when the pre-production has not been completed is like stacking up a giant pile of money and lighting it on fire. This same philosophy served us quite well at Interplay in creating some of the best RPGs of all time.
The “half team” in our team and a half model consists of writers and artists as well as designers and a producer. They are the ones that define the game design, write the dialog, define the combat, the UI, the missions, and even parts of the level design. We spent about 6 months working on this pre-production for Wasteland 2 and we would like to spend even longer doing it on Torment. For inXile, this “half team” that did the pre-production for Wasteland is done, their work on Wasteland 2 is completely finished. We want to get this group into pre-production on Torment to keep them working together on a project we are all passionate about.

More information.

Project pipelining. It works decently well up until the first project slide.

engineer efficiency . like it

Theoretically I agree with the strategy. But as rjshae says if all does not go well then what. Some of these resources may be useless in construction phase but I would bet that these people could add to the overall quality of the first game at all points. If they decide that keywords for dialog doesn't quite work and need something else do they forge on or get designers back involved and put in dialog trees. Writers can refine the dialog and make it more cohesive or review others work.

Planescape was great probably because Chris was always involved and writing dialog. If they move the key designers away halfway through the game to bootstrap the next one will they be able to maintain quality is the question I have.

I suspect that they will make it work but if Wasteland 2 does have issues in design then this is one thing I'd probably point to as contributing… but there is plenty of time before that is a concern.

figment, it does not mean writers and editors are completely done. As the pre-alpha video showed, we still need several editing passes on our text, and we are in fact going to add hover-over lines to the keyword dialog. Changes and polish of that scope will not stop because of Torment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by figment (Post 1061187227)

Yeah, there's some risk. Crossing my fingers and hoping for the best… :)