Wasteland 3 is a post-apocalyptic RPG created by inXile Entertainment, in which the struggling Arizona Rang🅠ers are invited to Colorado by an enigmatic ruler named the Patriarch to do a job for him in exchange for supplies. In a world where every game calls itself an RPG, Wasteland 3 is a GIWYARP – Game In Which You Actually Roleplay. Wasteland 3 aims to make a reactive world that can be explored in many different ways, and it succeeds at that wonderfully.
Familiar But Fresh
Many elements of Wasteland 3 might feel familiar to players who are fans of post-apocalypse RPGs, or even RPGs in general. Partly, this is because the Wasteland series 🃏practically invented the post-apocalypse RPG, and arguably the computer RPG in general. If it seems l🔥ike Wasteland 3 is copying another game, it’s probably the other way around.
Even so, most elements that seem familiar now in the genre are explored in unique and nuanced ways. Fans of the post-apocalypse might be the most surprised by the game due to how much players can 🌄interact with the basic background elements of the genre.
Building A Team
Wasteland 3 lets you build a team of rangers. There are a variety of pre-built characters, but with the roleplaying options the game offers, building rangers from scratch is genuinely wonderful. Players who don’t have experience building characters in video games or tabletop RPGs might want to use the pre-built duos – ther🌱e are a lot of options that can be daunting for new players. However, for veteran players the customization is fantasti🦋c.
As players progress, they can add a combination of up to six ranger🅘 characters (both prebuilt and customized) and companions to their team, up to six. This is the best of both worlds. Custom rangers can round out a party by co๊ntributing whatever combination of missing skills the team needs, but companions add extra story elements and dialogue. It’s useful to have a companion or two to give context to the world, but be warned – they have their own biases.
Home Sweet Home
Wasteland𒉰 3 recognizes the instinct to want a cool place to return to at the end of the day. However, unlike other games that make you work or pay for a player home, Wasteland 3 gives you a base right away. Of course, it’s a bit of a dump at first – alarms blaring, haywire robots, a surprising amount of corpses, and a random man subsisting off of mushrooms and drain water in the brig.
The chꩲallenge comes in fixing it up൩ and staffing it. There are numerous ways to get all the specialists needed for your different facilities, and some of them will have agendas of their own, good or bad. Getting a fully staffed base can give you a place to put prisoners, access to weapons and armor, a way to mod your vehicle, and most importantly, free medical treatment.
The rangers get a vehicle as well, with mods and enhancements that🤡 are important to its combat and def🐼ense capabilities, but not nearly as important as adding a wicked hood ornament.
Tactical Combat
The combat of Wasteland 3 hasn&rsq🐈uo;t strayed far from its isometric roots, but it remains engaging and fun even today. There are so many different ways to build viable combat options that it will likely take multiple playthroughs to experience them all. It’s possible to make a lucky sniper who nearly always crits, a gunslinger who can fire six revolver shots per round, or a tech guy who can throw out robot minions and hack turrets. Even better, they can work together, setting up combos and synergizing with teammates.
Combat is intuitive at first, especially with tutorials enabled, but as combat ramps up, it forces players to learn and make decisions that change the tide of battle. It changes seamlessly from a game where battles can be won by taking cover and shooting at the enemy to a game where they can’t. It forces players to play smarter, not harder. On the other hand,🐬 this makes pulling off a really strategic move feel really good.
There are a few points in the game where you move from combat to combat right after one another, and it can feel like a bit of a slog, but overall it is fairly streamlined. A🐼 few weapons can only be used in or out of combat, which limits some options, especially getting the drop on people. It’s a minor criticism, but sometimes it would be useful to throw a live grenade i🐈nto a crowd of unsuspecting guards.
A World You Live In
Customization and combat are nice, but the writing is where Wasteland 3 really shines. The world feels like it really reacts to the rangers being there, even in the smallest ways. Even if the rest of the writing were terrible, this design philos🅺ophy would set the game ahead of most RPGs. Every decision you make reverberates throughout the rest of the world, sometimes through one-off mentions by other characters, sometimes through large plot changes.
However, the rest of the writing isn’t terrible. Wasteland 3 supplements this reactive world with interesting characters, funny dialogue, and well-explore♏d themes. A lot of char🌟acters speak in a very “90s RPG” way, but that’s part of the charm. Little dialogue moments became some of the more memorable moments.
Dialogue also further emphasizes the roleplaying aspect of the game. Skill-based dialogue options abound, even outside of the two designated “dialogue skills,” Kiss Ass and Hard Ass. A character skilled in technology or mechanics might have more options talking to a robot, for instance. Also, not all dialogue options are necessarily only dialogue. Training in stealth or💎 other skills can unlock other “dialogue” options outside of just words. The game’s dialogue really rewards players for balancing party skills in their squad.
The themes of the game are both coherent and well-written. The first act of the game is, for better or worse, obsessed with questions of law and order. However, you can, and sometimes are encouraged to, push back against the narrative the plot initially presents. You can kill every criminal you see, or you can show leniency. You can even run the ranger base as a rehabilitative prison. You can draw the ire of the local law enforcement if you run interference against thei🍸r harsh version of justice.
After leaving the “safe” area of Colorado Springs, the game truly blossoms into some of the best political satire out there. Of particular note is the Gipper faction of Denver, who worship a fanatical, homicidal AI of Ronald Reagan (or, an AI of 🧸Ronald Reagan). The rest of the game combines its reactive world with some amazing commentary and produces some of the best ๊moments in an RPG in a long time.
There are valid critiꦓcisms of Wasteland 3, but they are relatively minor, and too much nitpicking of individual issues would detract from the overall impression of the game – it is fun to play and enjoyable to experience. Wasteland 3 attempts to make a world that the player exists in rather than just moves through, and it is a complete success.
A PC copy of Wasteland 3 was provided to TheGamer for this review. Wasteland 3 is available now for PlayStation 4, Xb🅘ox One, and PC.
The third in the RPG trilogy from inXile Entertai🐻nment, Wasteland 3 puts you in charge of Aꦆrizona Ranger Team November, who must survive a harsh world after an ambush.