When I got the chance to play a pre-release copy of inXile's post-apocalyptic RPG Wasteland 3, I jumped at it. As a huge fan of RPGs in general and a backer of Wasteland 2, getting to play the next game in the series for my job was an obvious no-brainer. For those who aren't already familiar with the series, it's a darkly humorous tactical battler, set in an alternate-universe post-apocalyptic America divided into widely separated fiefdoms and sprawling chaos.
If you're thinking "like Fallout, but turn-based?" you're not too far off—there are a lot of similarities between Wasteland's and Fallout's versions of post-WWIII America, including some hilariously retrofuturistic touches. But where Fallout's world seems to have sprung from the late '50s, Wasteland's setting branches out from somewhere in the '80s. The HUD includes an Alpine-style cassette deck with obnoxious graphic equalizer, the clubs have Discobots, the CPUs are "overclocked to 66MHz," and so on.
Wasteland tries to take itself a little more seriously than Fallout does, too—its humor is a little less over the top, its ethical choices are harder, and it tries more frequently to get you to feel the gravity of the plights its characters find themselves in, up to and including brutal murder and cannibalism. It's a fine line to walk, but the tongue-in-cheek cultural references and silly jokes keep the player from slipping into despair at the awful situations faced by the game's characters.
It may be a dark world and a trying experience at times, but we've enjoyed 40+ hours of navigating Wasteland 3 so far. To that end, we're strenuously avoiding plot spoilers in this review from here. Read on without fear of spoiling your own post-apocalyptic journey ahead.
Character creation
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Wastelander 3 can be played at any of four difficulty levels—Rookie, Wastelander, Ranger, or Supreme Jerk. We played in Wastelander mode.Jim Salter
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After selecting your difficulty level, you'll need to pick your first two Rangers. You can take a pre-rolled pair, or customize your own.Jim Salter
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Picking a fun background is one part of character customization. We went with "Bookworm" for the level bonuses, but "Goat Killer" was hard to resist. Bleat, bleat.Jim Salter
At its heart, Wasteland 3—like all good RPGs—is about character development. The game encourages you to invest in your characters by giving you plenty of customization options, from their looks, clothes, and physical size and shape to their background stories and personal quirks. Thankfully, you begin the game with only two Rangers—this helps combat the "customization fatigue" many players can experience in feeling the need to create six or eight separate characters and backstories all at once.
Although you get pretty thorough control of your characters' appearance, the customization is a long way from perfect. There's a giant color palette to choose from for clothes, skin color, and hair color, but many of the sample choices in the palette don't look the same once they're applied to the character. The result often looks downright bad. Hair color was a particular issue—your choices boil down to "jet black, incredibly unnatural blond, wrong red, or something dyed."
There are also some outright bugs in some fashion combinations. Hats tended to make my male character go completely bald on the sides, for instance. The process works well enough, though—you likely won't be perfectly happy with the outcome, but you won't be deeply upset, either. More to the point, you won't see this level of detail on your characters again; in actual gameplay they're rendered small enough that the nagging little details aren't a big deal.
You also get to choose your characters' dialog style up front: you can be a nervous recruit, a wisecracking veteran, or an aggressive jerk in either male or female vocal style. You also don't have to match your character's vocal gender with their visual gender—I accidentally created a female melee tank with a very, very male voice and didn't realize it until an hour or two in the game.
Later in the game, you'll have the chance to "recruit" more Rangers—which boils down to creating more characters as randomly or deliberately as you like—as well as the chance to put two or more Companions in your party, for a total of six playable characters. Companions can be directly controlled in battle, but they will have their own opinions about your actions in the world, and they inject their own words into your team's dialogue with the world. If you piss them off enough, they may also desert you at an inopportune time.
Listing image by Jim Salter
Gameplay, choices, and consequences
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Wasteland 3 is all about difficult decisions, and eases you into it in the opening sequences. Will you tell your dying CO to face it like a Ranger, or will you tell her sweet nothings and OD her on morphine?Jim Salter
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The voice work in Wasteland 3 is fantastic—Jarett Dorsey's voice actor got "deranged hillbilly" in the notes, and by god he went for it. Glorious.Jim Salter
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The flavor in Wasteland 3 isn't limited to cutscene animations and voice acting. This (very accurate) warning about an upcoming danger that should be stealthed around, not fought directly is one example.Jim Salter
You'll spend roughly equal amounts of time in Wasteland 3 both in and out of combat. We'll get to the combat later; first let's talk about "the other stuff."
The overall plot of Wasteland 3 is a bit on the cartoonish side—there's a lot of murderin' to do, and yours is just the crew to do it. The Heroes will have their Journey, the very landscape changes around the actions of this small band, etc, etc. But while the game glosses over the larger arc, it makes up for it in the detail along the way. Your little crew is going to get embroiled in a lot of drama between larger factions, and it's going to resolve their conflicts messily.
Where things get really interesting is just how murky those resolutions are. The Colorado Wasteland is a complex, Machiavellian nightmare. The Rangers can't make everyone happy—they're going to have to make choices guaranteed to piss off one side or the other. And there will rarely be a clean, obvious "good" choice, or a clean, obvious "good" side either. By the time you're 20+ hours into the game, your own choices will have gotten you in with some factions you're really dubious about. You'll also have pissed off some other factions, despite really wishing you hadn't had to.
Wasteland 3 tries to ease the player into this right off the bat by making you choose how your commanding officer dies during the intro level. Actually saving her isn't an option, mind you—but it's up to you to decide how she dies. Comfortably? In ignorance? Determinedly, like a by-god Ranger? It's up to you, but it's probably not going to feel entirely right no matter what. And later, you'll realize this is a much, much easier ethical decision than the ones you'll be faced with once you're out into the game proper.
The game's plot is largely linear, although your party's not on a literal railroad. You're free to take on or ignore subplots, tackle storylines somewhat out of order, and roam the Wasteland kind of at random. At Wastelander difficulty or above, however, the game's own toughness will constrict your choices significantly. If you take on a Level 9 arc when your characters are Level 4, things are going to get very real, very quickly. Plot devices also restrict you from getting to certain areas of the World Map before you're ready for them.
In most situations (plot or combat), there are multiple ways to resolve a conflict. Some will be easier than others, some will give better rewards, and some will just "feel" better. One early conflict warns you—up front and colorfully—about the difficulty of tackling a particular enemy head-on, which saves you from struggling pointlessly in a near-impossible combat before finding a different way around. Unless, of course, you're into near-impossible combat. If that's the case, go ahead and top up your life insurance policy, and call that Warbot's mother a broken toaster.
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Wasteland 3 isn't afraid to take things over-the-top. Dig this guy's gigantic, Old Glory wrapped fist-hammer. Subtle!Jim Salter
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His chair isn't afraid to make fun of itself, either. Game of Thr—er, Mutants, anyone?Jim Salter
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The flavor text on random inventory items is worth reading and appreciating. It's just a prank, bro!Jim Salter
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More flavor text. We like the way it feels like the game is sharing a joke with us in a person-to-person way. "It's red-orange."Jim Salter
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If the flavor text on inventory items is too subtle for you, perhaps you'd enjoy hearing an audio tape of sex with a goat hooker?Jim Salter
The inXile reviewer's guide for Wasteland 3 stressed to us that all of these choices can have major impacts on the overall storyline, with a handful of ways to resolve the final conflict. There are reportedly hundreds of possible endings. inXile asked us to play all the way through the Denver area before reviewing—but that turned out to be impossible in advance of today's embargoed deadline. We've put in 42 hours of thorough play so far, and we haven't even gotten to Denver.
Combat
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When Lucia moves forward to take cover behind that concrete barrier, she'll have a bead on four of those five asshole slavers—the fifth is out of range of her revolver.Jim Salter
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Hawk—my accidentally-trans-woman, Optimus Prime-looking, extra-stabby melee hulk—is about to unleash her fully-charged special move on that knot of jerks.Jim Salter
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BZZZZT. I would say "sucks to be a slaver," but three of those jerks each have more than ten times the hit points my team does—one special move won't decide this battle.Jim Salter
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The main villainess at ground zero seems to be taunting poor Hawk after her Thundering Strike. "I've had worse cuts in the bath, while shaving my legs."Jim Salter
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Each weapon skill has a charging special attack. For melee weapons like Hawk's, it was the Thundering Strike. For sniper rifles like Blackadder's, it's an aimed shot with special debuffs and damage multipliers. Can haz armor break, pls?Jim Salter
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Downed characters in Wasteland 3 are neither dead nor cleanly "unconscious" waiting for battle to be over. They're bleeding out, man, with graphics and sound that makes you frantic to rush over and stabilize them.Jim Salter
Combat in Wasteland 3—at least, on the Wastelander default difficulty we played on—is satisfyingly tactical, and it will punish you if you take it lightly. If you're looking to sail semi-effortlessly through the game, you're advised to head straight for the Rookie difficulty. Very few fights we experienced on Wastelander difficulty felt simple.
The mechanics of combat are entirely turn-based and reminiscent of X-Com. There's a deep focus on finding cover, flanking the enemy, and avoiding being flanked yourself. Unlike Wasteland 2, the entire team gets to take a turn before the enemy team gets to respond, and vice versa. While this might be less "realistic," we found it to be a more immersive and enjoyable experience, which lets players focus more on team-level tactics.
Nearly every tactical decision has consequences. Both ammo and medical treatment are limited and hard to come by, and playing the game melee-only isn't very practical. The game's economy isn't fixed—you can "grind" random battles to get extra loot or experience if you need it—but this isn't a safe process. Wasteland fights range from "challenging" when your characters get the drop on the enemy, to downright brutal if the Rangers are the ones on the wrong end of the ambush.
Averaging many fights together, a careful player can earn more scrap and loot more bullets than they shoot—but any one battle could easily prove to cost more in ammo and medpacks than it provides in looted gear and cash. This is especially true for parties that have been stingy with buying weapon upgrades. If your low-level rifle takes three times as many rounds to drop a baddie as that higher-level, expensive upgrade, you're going to find yourself in a hole it's hard to climb back out of.
This uncertainty gives each individual battle a constant, desperate edge that keeps you focused and serious. If you don't keep a close enough eye on the ammo, you might discover that half your characters just became useless targets in the middle of an extended battle. We found ourselves panic-spending a few skill points on unplanned Melee or Brawling combat skills late enough in the game that it felt like a distinct derailment of career plans.
As your characters get higher in level and their enemies get tougher, you'll start relying on chargeable special moves to advance the combat. Once gun-toting characters get the full charge for a targeted attack, the high-damage Head shot might be tempting—but the Body shot, with its armor-breaking debuff, ends most battles much faster, and with less waste of precious ammo.
Warts, bugs, and disappointments
Although we thoroughly enjoyed our time in the Wasteland—and fully intend to invest another probably 80-ish hours in finishing it in style—it's not without its problems. Some of the outright bugs we experienced will likely be fixed by the time you're reading this. Others, if inXile's previous titles are any guide, will be fixed a few weeks in. But there are also some non-bug-related rough edges that aren't likely to go away.
Awkward combat transitions
The most dangerous enemy in the game isn't one who stabs or shoots at you—it's the unreliable, awkward transition between the exploration engine and the combat engine.
If you've invested in high Awareness for your characters, you can almost always spot the enemy before they spot you. But that won't help if there's a scripted, unskippable conversation trigger that catches your characters wildly out of position and keeps them frozen there for a few enemy taunts before combat begins.
Even without conversation triggers, it's difficult to pull off a satisfyingly executed ambush. You can't drop into combat mode until the first shot is fired, and your characters don't "snap" to cover until the grid drops. Far too often, you may do your best to arrange your characters only to discover that when the balloon goes up, they're badly out of position and ripe for the enemy to swarm and pick them off before you can correct.
Ultimately, the best tactic is to initiate combat with a sniper rifle, from as far away as possible. Although this means combat won't start with your enemy flanked, it gives you time to get dug in and receive them in style.
Slow zone load times
Our test rig, currently outfitted with a Ryzen 9 3900XT, 64GiB RAM, an RTX 2060 Super and a Samsung 960 Pro SSD, was much, much more than fast enough for the actual gameplay of Wasteland 3. There were no issues with frame dropping, stuttering, etc. either in combat or in exploration. The visuals and the audio are lush, smooth, and inviting.
Loading a saved game—or transitioning from one world area to the next—is another story entirely, typically requiring between 45 seconds and a minute and a half on the test rig. Those times will likely be considerably longer on slower hardware.
This can be agonizing when you're really deep into the game and just want to keep playing. Save scumming players will especially hate this. But even without save scumming, you'll likely end up trying to convince yourself "this is OK, I needed a reason to get up and move around anyway" just to keep yourself from getting upset about it.
Occasional random bugs
In our 40+ hours of actual gameplay, we encountered a few annoying bugs. The most common bug we saw was a sudden refusal for the cursor to change from pointing mode to interaction mode, making it impossible to open chests or doors. Occasionally, pathfinding might break and force us to deselect the entire party, select an individual character, and move them (after which pathfinding was fine again).
Most of these bugs could be shrugged and worked around just by deselecting and reselecting a character, or similarly nudging the game's metaphorical elbow. It's not worth getting too worked up about in the grand scheme of things. But if you're looking for an absolutely flawless experience that never breaks the fourth wall with a buggy interface, you'll be disappointed.
One or two of these bugs required saving and reloading the game to clear the wonkiness—and once, an audio bug during a "cassette" playback locked the whole game up, and we needed to force-close the game and re-open it.
Finally, we deliberately left the game running all night once—partly to try to avoid the lengthy game open and load times, and partly to look for memory leaks. The next morning, it was noticeably creaky and stuttery, with long pauses during what should have been instantaneous mouseover transitions from "pointing" cursor to "interacting" cursors, and similar issues. In this instance, we had to save, close, and reopen the game (which solved the problem).
Conclusions
When inXile describes Wasteland 3 as a deep game with "80 to 100 hours" of gameplay before completion, they're not kidding. Although we fall on the "play through slowly and experience everything" side of RPG gaming, we'd guess we were no more than 25 percent through the game at 40+ hours in.
Despite some faults, the strength of the tactical combat kept us engaged and interested, and the tough ethical choices along the way kept us guessing and motivated. The scenery is compelling, the soundscape and voice acting are incredibly lush, and the humorous touches scattered throughout landed more often than not.
We think tactical RPG fans will be very pleased with Wasteland 3, warts and all—and if you're not a tactical RPG fan yet, this just might be the game that converts you.
The good
- Tons of gameplay—80 to 100 hours, even for fast players. Methodical players might get even more than that
- Great visuals, with wonderfully tacky "future of the 1980s" themes taken to their limits
- Lush audio, with top-notch voice acting, well-done sound effects, and good incidental music
- Difficult plot decisions—everybody's an asshole, but which faction will be your assholes, and will you live to regret it?
- Compelling, tactical combat with limited resources, focus on terrain and cover, and challenging enemies
The bad
- Long, immersion-destroying game load and zone transition times
- Awkward transitions from exploration to combat that preclude satisfying ambushes
- Occasional, mostly-minor bugs
The ugly
- The Linux version isn't ready yet, so I had to run the game on a Windows test rig, in a less-comfortable chair. The horror!
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