Wasteland 2 to get a graphics facelift
And more.
InXile's wonderful post-apocalyptic role-playing game Wasteland 2 will receive a graphical facelift as part of a move to a better version of its game engine.
Wasteland 2 was a Kickstarter that raised just shy of $3m back in April 2012. It had asked for $900,000.
The game released on Steam in 2014, and so far inXile has released six major patches. "Part of the newfound freedom we've gained from being an exclusively crowdfunded company is that it allows us to offer a high level of post-release support," project lead Chris Keenan wrote in an update on the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter page.
"While this is normal practice for an active multiplayer game, we believe that the ongoing improvements to the single-player experience in Wasteland 2 are worth the time and money. The game truly continues to be a passion project for the team here at inXile."
Now, inXile is preparing another major update that includes more balancing and improvements, as well as a graphics boost.
The developer is working on migrating the Wasteland 2 codebase from the Unity 4.5 engine to Unity 5, Keenan revealed.
Modders will be particularly interested in the news. Unity 5 includes many of the tools from Unity 4.x Pro, which inXile used during the development of the game. These will be made available to modders without having to pay for a Pro Unity license. So, inXile should be able to release better tools for modding to the Wasteland 2 community in the future.
But it's the graphical facelift that will interest the most players. While Wasteland 2 ticked all the right boxes fans of old-school, turn-based and party-based had called for, it was hardly a looker. So news of a visual upgrade is sure to cause more than a few to dip back into its post-apocalyptic world.
"Unity 5 offers physically based shading, which is already starting to look amazing in the scenes we've touched up," Keenan teased.
"As well as visual improvements, we have quite a few quirky tricks up our sleeves. The character system is getting perked up and will include some new elements to modify gameplay."
Expect more information in the future. While we wait, here's our Wasteland 2 review.
Meanwhile, most of inXile is working on fantasy role-playing game Torment: Tides of Numenera, and inXile boss Brian Fargo has announced plans to work on a The Bard's Tale 4.
