Wasteland 3 (WL3) puts players back in the boots of the Desert Rangers, this time in an effort to save a post-nuclear war Arizona from the increasing savagery that plagues the world, a hundred years after the bombs dropped. Continuing where Wasteland 2 left off, after the demise of the Cochise AI, you’re tasked with creating a Ranger team to take into turn-based battle, exploration, and through the muddy waters of morality and difficult, consequence-laden decision-making. The main narrative has players navigating the wasteland, attempting to reach three children of a mysterious character known as the Patriarch, but there are many dozens of side paths and quests available to explore and many game endings to support the multitude of paths you might take.
So I enjoyed Wasteland 2 a few years ago, and still have Wasteland Remastered in my backlog. The setting of these games is appealing, and I love the idea of getting immersed in such a rough, open, wild world where decisions matter. InXile does a great job in many respects creating such worlds and opportunities for immersion, but like WL2, the latest offering is tainted with severe bugs that mar the experience significantly. Several patches, some pretty large, have been released already since the game’s release two weeks ago, but players can still expect full-on crashes from to time and stiff load times that counter your enjoyment and immersion. I hope the patches keep coming; nevertheless, there is a great game underneath the rough edges as is right now, just save often and be prepared for some setbacks as you try to work your way through this massive CRPG.
The game begins with creating your first two rangers. There are several presets to choose from, but none of them appealed to me. You know, if I am going to try to spend a minimum of 50-60 hours with these two core characters and try to keep them alive, I want to feel connected with them. To that end, I spent about a half hour creating two characters. Customization options are quite deep as you would expect, with a variety of skills to spend points on, appearance options, and even Quirks that give your player a permanent boost in one regard, but a significant set back in other regards. For example, the medical marvel Quirk allows a player to be great at healing others, but unhealable themselves, if memory serves. You don’t have to choose a Quirk, but out of the twenty or so available, there are several intriguing options to consider. There are a lot of decisions to make, not just in the course of the narrative, but in how to manage your characters, and just like those narrative decisions, you’re often going to be torn on how to upgrade and manager your characters. You can’t choose everything, so be ready for plenty of tough, lip-biting decisions.
Players are thrown right into combat with an opening encounter that pits the Rangers against blood-craving savages. These savages are nuts; having butchered the detachment of Desert Rangers that arrived just before your characters. The optional tutorial walkthrough gives you plenty of insight into how combat in WL3 works. For those familiar with WL2, it’s similar, but a little more verbose in giving you a clear understanding of how far you can move given how many Action Points you have available to spend, if you will be in the line of fire of any bad guys when you move, etc. I found this very helpful, as were the other tips along the way that greatly cleared up a lot of misunderstandings I would have had about the gameplay otherwise.
Combat is a major part of WL3, obviously. I remember grinding my way through battles in WL2, and struggling mightily at times. This time, I had no qualms about playing the game on Easy, which also has friendly fire off. I realize this isn’t the “true” way to play — but two major reasons I chose to do so right off were the bugs and long load times I knew about and expected the game to have. Secondly, combat is not why I play Wasteland; rather, it’s for the dialog and story, as well as the wide assortment of crazy characters (NPCs and playable) and places you get to encounter. Every corner of the game world is worth exploring to see what the writers at InXile came up with, their creativity is impressive, manifesting itself in intricate scenarios with crafty dialog and lots of tough, interesting decisions to make.
WL3 also includes a co-op mode but I haven’t been able to test this yet. From what I have read, there are some issues with it as well, including save game glitches and the like, that will hopefully get patched out quick. I don’t think WL2 ever got completely fixed up, though, so if history repeats itself some of these glaring frustrations with WL3 may continue.
In summary, Wasteland 3 is an excellent experience, but it’s marred by some pretty cantankerous bugs, and I don’t mean the Scorpitrons. That’s a least the state of things at the time of this writing on my PS4 Pro. I’m hopeful and expecting that continued patching will smooth out these rough edges in the weeks to come. There is an absolute gem of a game to be had outside of the bugs. I heartily recommend Wasteland 3 if you’re as optimistic — or at least as forgiving and patient — as I have been thus far about the playability of the game.
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