Back in the old days it was all isometrics, random encounters and big choices!
Nostalgia, ‘the good ol days’, the ‘when I was young’ time,
call it what you will, no matter who you are I reckon that there are some days
or periods in your life that you would love to revisit and relive, but with all
that you know now. It seems that for a number of us this would include playing
some of the old computer games we used to love because ‘they don’t make ‘em
like that anymore’ and now thanks to kickstarter it looks like they might start
‘making ‘em like that’ again, but where will this road take us?
I am nostalgic, one of the strongest memories I have to this
day is the first time I booted up Fallout 2 and heard those epic words ‘war,
war never changes’, I can also clearly remember marvelling the sheer number of
discs that the original Baldur’s Gate came on. It’s therefore no surprise that
I own the Baldur’s Gate enhanced edition and was excited to see the progress
being made on Wasteland 2, in many ways the precursor to the fallout series.
However as I watched the latest video on the game, which looks brilliant by the
way, and heard them talk about the exciting features of the game I found myself
asking ‘well what’s actually new’? Don’t get me wrong, in many ways a big part
of my craves a new top down RPG to be that new fallout 2 with up to date
graphics and will almost certainly buy it on that basis alone, however part of
me wants something more.
It is around this point that the analogy that titles this
piece began to form within my head and yeah at first glance it looks a bit
weird, particularly if you hate Take That! Now when they were first formed Take
That were THE boy band in many ways and were incredibly successful. So the
distress caused by Robbie leaving and then the splitting of the band were only
to be expected, for the sake proving a point we are ignoring boyzone here! When
the band reformed, they did not do it in order to do a greatest hits tour of
their old material, they had become a new entity. Yes they did perform a lot of
old favourites, but the focus was on the new material which reflected the
change within the band themselves from a boy band to a man band. The new songs
they performed resonated with old and new fans alike, building on what each of
them had learned from their time apart. It would have been easier to just do
that greatest hits tour and give the public exactly what it wanted, however
they chose to give fans something they didn’t even realise they were lacking.
I guess that’s my one concern with Wasteland 2, I don’t just
want a greatest hits of their previous material. Yes, I do want it to have that
feel which satisfies my nostalgia, but I want them to show me something different
(although I’ll admit it I am not sure exactly what I want). In their
kickstarter video they mention that there will be weighty moral choices, well
that’s cool but sort of par for the post-apocalyptic course (see the decision
about megaton in fallout 3). I am particularly interested to see how they
execute this, I want to have to agonise over the ‘correct’ choice (and those
who it will affect) and want to see constant reminders of my choice and its
impact.
So that’s the gauntlet in front of Wasteland 2, don’t just
give us an updated fallout 2, surprise us, amaze us and show us something new
that will have a future generation looking back and saying ‘they don’t make
‘em’ like that anymore!’
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