Developer: inXile Entertainment
Publisher: inXile Entertainment
Steam Deck Compatibility?: Playable
Rrp: £30.99 (Gog.com, Humble, Steam)
Released: 28th August 2020
Available on: Gog.com, Humble, Steam
Played Using: Mouse and Keyboard
Approximate game length: 40+ Hours
The Desert Rangers are back and this time they’ve got their sights set on Colorado, which I suppose would mean they aren’t Desert Rangers anymore. Would they be Snow Rangers or maybe Mountain Rangers? It doesn’t really matter as they’re only coming to Colorado for a quick visit… right?
So, as the opening paragraph mentions, this game is set in Colorado rather than Arizona (which is where they are originally from). Which immediately puts the Rangers on the backfoot as it’s full of unfamiliar terrain, conditions and factions. The Rangers have travelled from Arizona in search of supplies that are desperately needed. Thankfully, the apparent ruler of Colorado who goes by the title ‘The Patriarch’ has offered these supplies if you’re willing to help him out.
When you start the game you are presented with five difficulty settings; Tourist, Rookie, Wastelander, Ranger and Supreme Jerk. You can also choose to enable permadeath as well as an option to make the skill checks that occur in the game more difficult. Once you’ve chosen your difficulty you get to pick your starting duo. You read that right, you get to choose a starting pair of characters from a selection of premade sets, well that is unless you wish to create your own custom duo. From there you’ll be able to find others to join your team once you establish your HQ (which is very early in the game). Speaking of your team, it consists of a maximum of six characters, that being four rangers (including your starting duo) and two companions. That being said, you can also find other companions out in the world such as animal companions if you have the right skill. Though it must be noted, that you have no direct control over those additional companions.
In Wasteland 3 all the characters have a shared inventory which I personally prefer over giving each character an individual one. This game has also done away with giving items weight allowing you to carry a near infinite amount of items. It’s a great improvement over Wasteland 2’s system as I didn’t have to try and balance the equipment out across multiple characters.
As I stated in my review of the previous game in this series, Wasteland 3 has a similar attribute system to the Fallout series except the acronym is CLASSIC (Coordination, Luck, Awareness, Strength, Speed, Intelligence and Charisma). Each of these attributes influences things like how many action points you have in combat, base health and ability to dodge attacks etc.
While playing your characters will gain experience through combat, completing quests and performing actions such as picking locks and disabling traps. As is the way with RPG’s the experience you gain eventually increases the level of your characters. Each level grants extra constitution (HP) and skill points. At later levels each level will also include an attribute point which can be spent on your main attributes (as mentioned above). You’ll also gain Perk points after level four for every other level.
Perks can be real game changers to how you play a character (or the game) both in and out of combat. For example, a high enough survival skill will grant a perk that reveals the entire world map and all the points of interest.
Skills come in four varieties; Combat, General, Exploration and Social. As these skills increase they will start to pass thresholds that will unlock perks that you can acquire, though not every skill has perks that are associated with them.
Most weapons and armour have a skill assigned to them. This doesn’t mean that a character without the required skill can’t use them, they can, but it will incur a penalty.
Like in the previous game the combat is turn based and uses AP (action points) to represent what a character can do within their turn.
Every time a character makes a successful attack a charge gets added to that characters ‘strike meter’. Once this meter is full, a button will glow that allows a special attack that is unique to the type of weapon your character has and never misses (as long as there is a chance to hit, you can’t hit something out of range for example).
One thing I really like is that this game gives an indication of what enemies will be in range if you were to move to a different position without actually having to confirm the move itself. It does this by showing visible sight lines to each enemy you could potentially attack. This removes a lot of the uncertainty of whether you should move to a position or not.
The crafting system allows you to create new weapons, armour, mods (for both armour and weapons) as well as ammunition. This can be a real boon when your favoured weapon is low on ammo. The main resource for the crafting system is scrap which was the currency in the previous game.
Similar to Wasteland 2 this game has an overworld you can explore, however this map is more zoomed in than the one in Wasteland 2. I understand it might be to represent that your characters don’t know the terrain and that Colorado is more obscured by the snow fall. But I do wish we could zoom the camera out a bit.
Unlike in most of the Fallout series passing a skill check isn’t always a good thing, sometimes passing the check can give you a worse outcome. However, all the skill checks like that are in dialogue meaning you should be able to tell that passing that check won’t be good (such as insulting the person etc).
There is a reputation system in place which will influence how your game will turn out. I do believe it’s impossible to have every faction feel positively toward you as this game loves to give you binary choices that will affect attitudes. For me, by the end of the game there was an entire faction that wouldn’t trade with me at all, but weren’t openly hostile, at least not right away.
I truly hope that Inxile creates a fourth game in this series, while I am something of a sucker for post-apocalyptic settings there is something about the world that Wasteland presents that I just love. It’s just the right amount of dark and silly at the same time. Honestly, if you have any love of RPG’s this game is a great one to play.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Wasteland 2
Fallout 1 & 2
Baldur’s Gate 3
