Even though I’ve still never gotten in the mood to try and conquer the original Wasteland, as with many other cRPGs of that era, I did enjoy Wasteland 2: Director’s Cut quite a lot. Back then I said that it didn’t feel like a Fallout game not because it couldn’t be one, but because it didn’t want to be one. It had its own take on a post-apocalyptic tactical turn-based RPG that still remains enjoyable today despite some flaws.
Wasteland 3 aims to be… different? Frankly, I’m not sure what it aims to be, but the result is not great.
The opening hours of the game are actually quite good. The introduction cutscene and the initial situation you’re put in are great and just like in the previous title, you start the game feeling underpowered and scared of the harsh post-apocalyptic reality… Yet, already you’re facing some strange changes and decisions. For one, you only create 2 Rangers at the start of the game instead of a full team. You’ll still have one for the rest of the game, mind you, and you still should focus on spreading the skill set across 4 characters, not 2. But you’re not told that at the start. Possibly because of the cooperative mode? Which is probably also why the game never pauses, even when you’re in the inventory or a pause screen.
Then there’s the tone of the game that also feels off from the very start. It seems like Wasteland 3 tries to be more of a satirical title, going completely into the camp territory pretty early on. Maybe aping Borderlands, maybe just feeling like this is what public wants. It’s not like Wasteland wasn’t absurd before, it’s just that 2 focused far more on the serious “surviving the post apocalypse” side of things, while 3 often goes completely off the rails. Not a bad thing when handled well, of course, and yet again, it’s not. The game is all over the place and if it’s possible to take its world and story seriously at the start, by the end it’s hard to care. Overall, it reminded me of the 2 recent Obsidian Entertainment titles – Pillars of Eternity 2 and The Outer Worlds. Just like PiE 2, Wasteland 3 dismisses deep well-written storylines for the sake of adventuring, except Pillars handles that transition much better. And just like The Outer Worlds, Wasteland 3 thinks it is funnier than it actually is. But at least TOW had some fun ideas going for it.
It’s hard to explain what even is wrong about Wasteland 3, because it’s hard to understand what it wanted to be, what to consider an achievement and what a failure. The combat is mostly similar to the previous game, for example, with few additions and tweaks here and there. But the overall progression feels off. In Wasteland 2 you started like an almost powerless part of a bigger organization, desperately trying to bring justice and order to the dying world. And by the end you would get powerful, your team members would become specialists in certain skills with the best gear there is. Sure, you still couldn’t do everything, but you could do much more than what you could at the start. And the achievements of the Rangers, as a whole not just for your team, became well known across the world. Yet, in Wasteland 3, both in terms of gameplay and in terms of how the world feels, nothing seems to change.
I accidentally exited the first location early and got hit with the choice of two timed quests, just like in the previous game. There are more of these this time around, it seems, but they’re still uncommon. Either way – I’ve made my choice, easily did the mission and only then realized that I did it early and technically underpowered. And when I was going through the last missions in the game I’ve felt exactly as I started. My squad got more powerful, they were geared up with the best equipment, yet all encounters felt exactly the same. And every time combat started I just wanted it to be over.
There are hints of cool ideas here and there. Stealth element reminded me of how it was handled in Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, for example. Yet, the rules for stealth are inconsistent. Some actions do not immediately alert the enemies, some do. Some enemies can just ignore the stealth aspect completely and trigger combat via dialogue from across the room (you can still shoot first if outside the dialogue trigger, though). You have a vehicle now that you can upgrade and it can participate in the combat if you’re near it. Except, also not always as there are encounters that simply ignore the car with a giant gun standing right next to you when enemies attack. All container contents are mostly randomized. Why? Also probably to level everything to the player level like in a Bethesda title or Borderlands.
I was exhausted with the main game when I decided to tackle the DLCs and those made me outright hate Wasteland 3.
The Battle of Steeltown is apparently a redone version of a location and questline that was originally planned for the main game but got cut for time reasons. And I could see it being interesting if it was part of the main game. But it isn’t, it feels completely alien as a story now that it’s presented as a DLC, and the gameplay mechanics and gimmicks done here are just awful. The DLC essentially tries to introduce non-lethal combat and energy shields, except both are really tedious in practice and make combat longer, instead of more fun. Not helping is the fact that these mechanics aren’t just ignored outside of the DLC location, but they also don’t consistently work even within the DLC. The story had potential, but like with the main game, it feels messy and undercooked.
Cult of the Holy Detonation is even more tedious, though. It has its own set of gimmicks, but its main one is the idea of combat with a specific goal. You’d often enter a room with enemies that respawn endlessly until you do a set of specific actions that stop the combat. With the pace of several of the fights dictated not by your actions, but rather by when the enemies decide to participate in the gimmick or not. As a result, these fights last absolutely forever (and most of the time it’s you watching enemy and follower turns) and get boring really fast. That is unless you lose and have to redo all of it from the start, possibly with unskippable cutscenes in-between. In addition, the story is not interesting and the game often openly annoys players, as if it could become even more unlikable.
I wish I could say some positives about Wasteland 3. But apart from the soundtrack and the visuals, that are actually good this time around, there’s not much to say. There are a couple of good moments here and there, but otherwise everything that is good about the game has been done better in Wasteland 2. And most of its bad was not in that game. I started playing Wasteland 3 thinking that it would be a light recommendation, a weaker sequel to a great game. By the end I hated it. I can only hope that the next game in the series will have proper direction and won’t become such a confused mess as this.