Wasteland 3 up from 11

"Never really knowing why, they wont understand
As you hang from that tree with that look of despair"

The Dead South - Gunslinger's Glory


We now return you to The Bizarre, part Scooby Doo joke, part pigsty, part food court, part live parody porn show, part monument to indiscriminate killing. Home to, in decades past, an army of hooligans who decided to ape the disproportionate violence of B-grade horror flicks, were after spanked into submission by daddy Saul and now peddle trinkets out of a disaffected mall. Features the third museum in the game, this time a museum of geekdom promising us a copy of Wasteland 4. Oooh, I can hardly wait until it lands in the clearance bin.

In the mall's former toddler prison holds court the Monster Army's leader, Flab the Inhaler, who though he looks like a mall Santa at first glance is upon closer inspection straining the seams of a Dracula costume.
It would be remiss not to remark here on the missed opportunity to actually work the Claus costume in as sinister leader of the Monster Army. Sure, the evil Santa schtick's been done before, but this "supernatural monster among monsters" setup was just begging for it: handing out giftwrapped grenades as mission rewards out of a splotchy blood-colored bag, his lurid wheezing voice trickling over the loudspeakers, reminding his followers he knows when they are sleeping.

Still, old Flab holds the most potential yet, playing the psychotic impoverished aristocrat with all the juxtaposed macabre squalor and dignity a Dracula role entails: "I am calm because I must be, friend, so is the burden of leadership."

Interesting.
Apparently the Monster Army is an official faction with their own reputation bar. Here I thought it would be difficult to choose a side in this story. It's decided, rangers: we're doing the monster mash.


Level 12
For now, it's time to polish off this starter quest chain and return to the city. Finding the mechanic's kid sister turned demented cannibal, while potentially a dramatic moment, falls flat in execution. At least it gave me a chance to snack on a finger. Though, to be honest, the finger food was tastier in Divinity: Original Sin 2.

The refugee smugglers looked positively terrifying at first in their reinforced position, but their AI doesn't leash to said reinforced position, so they're trivially easy to split off onto the bridge. Basically an extended tutorial in pulling mobs, but we really should be past that stage of the game by now.

Canines were in scarce supply around The Bizarre, so Patches 2.1 was of the long-eared, long-incisor, cottontailed variety, and died valiantly drop-kicking mutant porculverines. Patches 2.5 also came with some bugs in the form of horns instead of fangs and unusual howls that sound almost like bleating. He acquits himself well in the fight against the smugglers, but it's just not the same, y'know? Lucky the Hoon family homestead which I failed to rescue from mass murder and arson is now over-run with waste wolves, so Patches 3.0 is live and all was well in the land (unless you got mass-murdered and arsoned.)

A quick romp through the wastelands reveals them to be mostly wasted land; random encounters make my underlings look better than me.

Shadow the armorless little knife-happy ninja's evasion stack's already in the 40s, and that's after three attacks per round or dashing across an entire battlefield with maxed out speed, or opening a fight with a rocket AoE before closing the distance. The even littler Pokey's been cashing in his action point bonus with some regularity for a second high-damage, max-range sniper shot per round. As for me, my INT/CHA build's not yet yielding the wide array of support abilities I prefer. The potential for rapid-fire energy weapons to stack armor-destroying "strikes" is there alright, but not quite gelling yet, the extra healing is all overflow and debuffing enemies' offense tends to take a back seat to trying to pierce their armor and drop them faster.


Fucking hell.
As I was writing this, I died and lost fifteen minutes' worth of gameplay for exiting that mutant random encounter into a cloud of radiation because this game with its AAA ambitions LACKS PAUSING for some unfathomable unreason, including on zone transitions. Not to mention the radiation clouds are so vague you'll never discern their edges (but you'll take full DoT no matter how shallowly you edge through.)
Le sigh.
Anyway:


Level 13
Ah, the denouement of the refugees mission. A sympathetic old mother of several was sneaking the invading superfluous simians into town with no regard for the ecosystem's carrying capacity or the welfare of its existing inhabitants, instead of taking the more logical route of dispersing the burden to more settlements, so let's haul the self-righteous bitch off to jail. (Where she's still given the last word, because prosocial shortsightedness is all the rage soft cooing reassurance.)

Aaaaaand, yup, called it, the blatantly obvious main plot "twist" begins to unfold.
The notably female Angela Deth radios you to tell you the man in charge is evil, evil, evil, then sends you to rescue a hostage to "help you with Liberty" - that being of course The Patriarch's female offspring. Woman good, man bad, other woman... redeemable to good? (ugh, I just had a sickening thought - in the spirit of Dragon Age: Origins, what if they intend to put your party member Lucia (being a member of the nobility) in Saul's place?)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I've gone ten levels without finding any "companion" NPCs (you need 2+ of them in your group of 6) meaning the developers are apparently forcing your hand to bring along both the starter mook Kwon (who's fairly bland) and much worse their bereaved pistoleer prodigy Lucia. Unsurprising for a Mary Sue, given one of their main traits is monopolizing screen time.
Now, finally, Scotchmo from Wasteland 2 shows up, but as his small arms, sneaking and lockpicking are already covered by my own characters I'll likely be replacing him as soon as I find an ass-kissing brawler / heavy gunner. Had this exact problem in Wasteland 2: as building more than one specialist per group rarely offers any benefit (doubling up on animal tamers or robot wranglers might help) the only way not to wind up with redundant, wasted skills is to cheat and look up companions' specialties online before ever starting your campaign.
Still, I'll take a piss-soaked, vomiting drunkard for a neighbour over a feminist mouthpiece anyday.

La Perla, the slaver foreshadowed as the sinister "smiling lady" in previous dialogues, wants me to trick a refugee into capture. As this would involve both dishonesty and restricting freedom for no particular reason, I'd rather tip off the victim. Run along, ya sweet lil' thang. *butt pat*
(It is unusual, however, that they made the slaver female.)

Got my Canyonero tricked out with a rad clown head and some rad resistance, so it's time to go a-venturin'.

Northwards! Oh, hey, some friendly cannibal cowboys. Why of course I'll track down your targets for you, pahdnahs! Have to say I'm enjoying the slow tempo renditions of old songs, but are these out of copyright, licensed, legitimate parodies, or does Microsoft own all rights to the wanging of chungs?
Seems a bit cheap driving around in circles with no time limit, waiting to be ambushed for EXP points. Thought single player RPGs left that sort of stupidity to "action" games over the past decades.
Southwards! At least in all these random encounters and the Monster Army bunker, with all the nasty armor-plated robot fights, my investment in energy weapons starts paying off.
Back at The Bizarre the parody porn theatre mistress is willing to accept Scotchmo as a star for her next production. Not that you have more than two choices. Of course, if you really wanted to be edgy, it would've been Lucia walking back out bowlegged and shellshocked.


Level 14
Time to defend monsters from mobsters, for the glory of rubber masks everywhere! A formation preset or two would be nice, to prevent my melee and SMG from winding up in the back. Also, while "pulling" is an integral part of cRPG mechanics, it does get a bit repetitive to back behind the nearest choke point every single fight. Most games will endlessly aggravate you by locking you in tiny arenas with no cover or forcing you to bullrush a reinforced position; Wasteland 3 edges slightly in the other direction, prodding you too obviously to constantly bait the idiot AI around corners. I'll still take option 2 over option 1, but some more 1.5 might be nice.

Guess it's on to Denver now.
-with a quick stopover to save innocent women from evil men, because of course. It's a more interesting fight, against well-armed mercenaries who outnumber and out-position you, but easily cheesed with mechanic consumables and a liberal dose of support fire from your country-fried truck endorsed by a clown('s head.)

After tearing through the mercs, it turns out one of the women borrowed a lifetime's worth of money and lost it all gambling. Her religious sister helped her skip town. You can pay off their ludicrously high debt, pass a skill check to let them pay in installments or take the evil options of killing or placing them in indentured servitude for seven years to pay off their debt. Throughout all this, their male creditor is given a harumphing, grunting, grating, low-class voice, sputtering insults at the women (and at Jesus for not being good at staying alive) while the two females demonstrate care for each other, are given clear, earnest, heartfelt, put-upon voices with words like "innocent women" worked into your own lines even after they confess the debt.

Granted, at least they gave the debtor one line about being a fuck-up who just wanted to spend the money on dumb shit (made to sound like redeeming repentance) but let's put the situation to the usual test: reverse the polarity. A male borrows from a woman, loses a fortune gambling, his fundamentalist brother helps him skip town and their radio distress call weaponizes one of the legal authorities in the area, the rangers, to kill nine people (did everyone forget about the mercenaries?) ((They're not dead, they're just pining for the fjords.)) Would the writing and voice acting paint the two fugitive men as innocent, harried victims and their pursuer as a drooling, cackling, sadistic bitch? Would the religious angle be painted as salt-of-the-earth lovingkindness or as self-serving or bloodthirsty fanaticism? Could we draw a parallel to another example of debt in this game, like, say, the indebted male drug dealer at the nightclub whose stash you recover, painted as a whiny, pathetic, jittery, drug-addled lowlife, beneath contempt and beyond redemption? Would anything sell this little plot as morally upright, absent the limitless conceit of female entitlement? Am I asking rhetorical questions?

For bonus intersectional purity test points, the women were endowed with far-east names while the man's name is "Moss." Good night, everybody!


Level 15
What else we got? An "act stupid for your reward" encounter at the abandoned well, a free stash of loot guarded by a badger (throwback to Wasteland 2) and a random encounter with yet another crazy religious sect, the Godfishers. Oh noes! Hang on Patches 3.0! Daddy (and his 53 max HP) is a-comin' ta save ya!

Recruited Fishlips the road warrior cannibal, once again 3/4 skills wasted for redundancy or insult (I refuse to invest in "toaster repair") and therefore useless to my team. Is there any reason not to move with the times and let players build up these "companions" (with some defining bonuses/weaknesses) from level 1 to current party/leader/location level at the moment of recruitment? Or am I meant to reroll new ranger characters whenever I find a new companion?

Also, limited quickslots are pointless if it doesn't cost AP to shuffle items in and out of them.


Level 17
(that doesn't sound right - bug or did I gloss over a level? no matter)

A minor villainess? Color me surprised. That's two counting La Perla the slaver. They beat Deadfire's grand total of one!
Wait... why does equipping my rocket launcher boost my speed up to 11 instead of decreasing it by 0.5 as advertised?

Did I just stumble into counter-Counterstrike? Run with your nukes out? (edit: Not that the penalty makes sense in the first place if you can ignore it by simply switching weapon-hands with no AP cost)

 
I'd hit the Hard Heads' hideout in the first place in response to a distress call from a "government agent" who will obviously turn out to be some kind of android or robot or Cochise beta version. Yes, we get it. Your hints are not subtle. *sigh* You can write entertainment fit for mass-market IQs, or you can try to sound clever, but you can't do both at the same time.
A-yup, it's... Ronald Reagan's unborn talking nuclear urban combat car secret admirer.
Alright, I'll concede I did not see all of that coming.

Schleppin' on over to the tellurium mine...
Gotta say, Wasteland 3's atmosphere and storytelling looked half promising at first, but while less nonsensical than its predecessor, it's still gotten bogged down in forced, telegraphed gimmicks. Ok, so Trudy's a dog. Why belabor the point? Null Stack's talk of robots finding religion's a bit fresher, but still weak compared to Horatio Nullbuilt the Man-worshiper or "oy this guy" from Futurama. Nothing much seems to be happening all through the middle game. We're learning nothing new about the world, no new companions are showing up, the main factions aren't interacting with each other and "episodic" would be too long a word to describe map encounters. (Of course, I did also follow cRPG standard operating procedure in clearing side quests before main quests, instead of obeying InXile's mission level guidelines.)

Finally made it to Denver and the Reagan-worshippers, a group I'll have no problem pissing off. The Book of Bonzo finally got a chuckle out of me after the pervasive dead air of the past few levels; love that the oil-money Reaganauts are led by a bunch'a "Nancies" - in addition to the deserved slap in the face to macho patriotism, along with The Wyman's dialogue it makes up for a bit of the feminist pandering.
"Why don't you marry it" - heh, classic.
Getting tired of hearing yuppies try to fake downhome upstate backwoods accents though. Would it have killed you to toss your country cousins a few bucks for a recording session?


Level 18
Godfisher fights: feel suspiciously like filler, but I do like the continued integration of noncombat skills and alternate angles of attack. Too bad the lack of pausing makes reaching alternate angles more a matter of luck and repetition than planning.

Machine commune: re: last comment under level 6 in previous post:

Fine, so you beat me to the punch-line. Well played, sirs. I tip my ears to you.
The airport has obviously benefited from both more work hours and more inspiration than other zones. I'd start listing each robot's campy yet still hilarious gimmicks, but I'm pleasantly impressed with the workmanship here all around.
Unpleasantly impressed by the fembot emancipating herself from her oppressive parental manbot, accompanied by a female vocalizing Genesis' Land of Confusion - emphasis on the line "there's too many men, too many people making too many problems" - for fuck's sake, you just had to put a feminist spin on the damn tinkertoy brigade?


Back to the Gippers. Cash in my free medical reward, blow up a talking statue, all in a day's work. The ensuing swarm of mutants... yeeesh, had to reload my save. One of the few challenging encounters in this game (along the Payasos' big top finale) plus it gave me a chance to do this:

Today is a good day to 'doze.
Unfortunately this was a defensive fight and my pet Leeroyed in to die as soon as it started. Patches 3.0 had a pretty good run, but it's time for an upgrade. We added some improvements to Patches 3.5: lower center of gravity, stockier frame, spikes on his back. Truly an exemplar of wolfdom.


Level 19 (and a half, that last fight was a big one)
(If this game caps your advancement at 20 I'm gonna be pissed.)
More mutants.
Aaaaaand more mutants.
And even more mutants.

Time to buy some ammo from the Gippers and then Iran their Contras like the commie bastard I am. No subterfuge. Make my demands and shoot my way out.
My reward? The Party Pal, a chipper young disco bot. Blech. It is way too late in the campaign for that sort of cutesy bullcrap. I'll do without the extra healing. Go 'way, kid, ya bother me.

I'd been hoping the main story would pick up once I start meeting the Buchanan youth, but Valor seems to lack any personality aside from a sniveling nebbish as per the ironic naming scheme. Hell, even his captor Mother Nancy the walking political farce had better dialogue.


Level 20
Lo, I am unto a GOD!

Yep. Werwolfe the shepherd.

I really should be playing this on a higher difficulty. Even with my distaste for optimizing combat builds I've found little trouble so far. I'm looting more consumables than I can consume, amassing enough cash even with no barterer in the group, and I've only had to buy ammo twice so far. Hell, I don't think I even needed to reload my guns until the Bizarre. Lack of melee engagement and sparse status effects make trying to control the field a wash. Just pop 'em as they close in. My melee speed demon Shadow sneaks up and opens fights, then pulls mobs into the others' ambush at a choke point. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Is this game actually going anywhere?

-and on that note I'll see you next whenever for the exciting conclusion.

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P.S.: The rather dull conclusion.