Some info without spoiler:
■Toaster Repair – “People put a lot of shit in toasters. You repair them and you get a little ‘Ping!’ Out pops something good. It’s a big callback to the original Wasteland.”
■Computer Tech – “That one allows you to hack various computers and have different things happen. It may turn on a robot that now fights for you. It may turn on a security camera that you can see different areas through. Maybe it’ll open a vent to solve a puzzle or something that way.”
■Synth Tech – “Synth Tech is turning a robot on to your side in combat, or you can use it if there’s a downed robot that you want to repair and turn him on to your team.”
■Demolitions – “Break down big doors. Use it in combat as well.”
■Brute Force – “Kind of the same thing, but a little bit less reliant on money. You don’t have to purchase or find demolitions. But it’s also not as impactful for blowing down the big things.”
■Silent Move – “Stealth.”
■Salvaging – “Salvaging is kind of a looting mechanic. If you’re running around the world and I’m collecting a bunch of stuff with my guys, and I don’t like the kind of normal game mechanic of running back to a store and selling my stuff, I can salvage it right there on the spot.”
■Kiss Ass, Hard Ass, and Smart Ass – “Those are some temp names for conversation, different ways of dealing with people in conversations.”
■Outdoorsman – “You can use that on the world map. We have a water mechanic out there where you have to be able to fill your canteens to get over certain amounts of distance. It allows you to mitigate that a little bit, and also start to spot some of the random encounters that happen on the world map.”
■Evasion – “Pretty much what it sounds like.”
■Leadership – “How much the NPCs will listen to you. That one is a competing skill. You also get a little area of effect buff to your team. If they’re around the leader, they tend to do a little bit better, if they’re within a tight proximity. If there’s two leaders on the team above a certain level, then it turns out to be a negative. There’s bickering. Too many chiefs on the team. So you have to keep them away from each other in combat.”
■Cliff Calvin Backer Skill – “We just made that a quirky world knowledge skill, because players didn’t want it affecting gameplay directly. As you go through different areas, you’re going to be able to pick up really interesting stories and things happening around you that other people might not.”
■Animal Whisperer – “My favorite laughable skill in the game is Animal Whisperer. You basically can go talk to specific animal types. Like if you’re in combat with a wolf or something, you can have them run away from combat. But there are cats and dogs and goats and all that. You can lure them to follow you. They’ll just be little pets that follow you around.”
■Field Medic and Surgeon – “Field Medics are the guys who are going to do a little more of the initial healing on you. They feel a little more comfortable on the battlefield. When you get to the Surgeons, they are not great in combat scenarios, but what they can do well is, if you have some sort of a status effect on you – if you’re poisoned by something – they can work to remove that.”
■Weapon Smithing and Field Stripping – “We have a little crafting system with Weaponsmithing, where if you find weapons within the game, you can use a Fieldstripping skill on it, break it down into parts, and have a chance to find a better scope, buttstock, different things that will affect your weapons. So you can mod your weapons a little bit too as you go along, and continue to build up the current weapon that you have.”
■Perception – “Perception is both passive and active. Each character has their own perception spheres. As you build it up, there’s a small perception zone around the character that also changes based on their movement speeds. If I’m running, I don’t have a whole lot of chance to look around and understand my environment. If I go to walking, that perception sphere builds out a little bit. If I’m in stealth, it’s much bigger. It represents you walking around and carefully examining all the objects.”
■Combat Shooting – “Combat Shooting was in the original Wasteland, and it was actually something that didn’t do anything. Everybody thought it was going to be an awesome skill. It sounds great. But it had no effect whatsoever in there. In our game it’s going to be the most overpowered skill that you find. You’re going to get it near the tail end of the game. You hear the myth of Combat Shooting. Nobody knows what it really is.”
