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A recent update to inXile Entertainment's Kickstarter page for Wasteland 2 revealed that the game's initial October release will instead mark the beginning of its beta testing. The delay stems from the game's Kickstarter gathering $2 million more than the requested funds.

"This feature complete playable is about 6 weeks behind where I had wanted it to be but I can't be too surprised considering the increased scope," the statement reads. "We have been able to accomplish so much in so little time by our experience, fantastic team and tools."

The next month will be spent implementing all basic gameplay mechanics, including the combat system, world map travel and AI functionality for all the characters you're inevitably going to slaughter in cold blood.

Interplay and inXile founder Brian Fargo co-designed the original Wasteland in 1988 and is leading development for Wasteland 2. Fallout 1 and 2 composer Mark Morgan, Wasteland co-creator Michael Stackpole, and Fallout co-creator Jason Anderson are all involved with Wasteland 2. Those who donated $55 or more to Wasteland 2's Kickstarter campaign will gain access to the barren, desolate wasteland in October.

In all honesty, I don’t get terribly excited about many games anymore. I mean, I still love them, but there are just so damn many all the time, skittering around in the vents of my life and eventually emerging to nest in my hair. So it is something of a significant statement when I say I’m really, really excited about Wasteland 2. I want it gracing my radiation-scorched palms right this very moment, but instead it looks like I’ll have to wait until a sooty, mysterious undetermined date. Now, there is good news here: a beta’s launching during the game’s original release month of October, but it will (at least, initially) be backer-only.

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The Kickstarted game Wasteland 2 now has a publisher—Deep Silver, who will distribute the game but concede all creative control to the developers at inXile, according to inXile.

Deep Silver is partnering with developer inXile on a distribution deal for the $3 million Kickstarter-funded Wasteland 2. Deep Silver (Saints Row 4, Metro: Last Light) will handle the game's retail release and physical goods fulfillment for Kickstarter backers, while inXile finishes the game. Deep Silver will also assist on QA testing and international localization.

"The uber-successful crowdfunding of Wasteland 2 through Brian Fargo and his team has shown how much interest for an RPG with traditional values still exists on consumers' side aside from what large publishers think the market needs," said Klemens Kundratitz, CEO of Koch Media, parent company of Deep Silver.

"This has the added bonus of allowing us to spend more of the Kickstarter funds on development while continue to retain all ownership and control," said inXile CEO Brian Fargo. "I've known the people at Deep Silver for many years and they have always been a first rate organization to deal with."

Wasteland 2 is scheduled to explore the post-nuclear landscapes of America later this year.

As a man who has spent entire days asking myself if it’s healthy to spend so much time staring at ASCII representations of dungeons and dwarves, it’s something of a shock to find something in my inbox that makes me realise just how much of my personality was plucked from the containers marked ‘nerd’ and ‘dweeb’. In this instance, it’s a video for Wasteland 2 that provides the trigger, but it does at least prove that the developers and large parts of the fan community are at least as ridiculous as me. The footage lasts for two minutes and it’s all about inventory management. Grids are discussed earnestly and I’m happy with what’s shown. Happy. About arranging imaginary pants on a screen. Bloody hell.

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It’s no surprise whatsoever that inXile’s PlaneScape: Torment spiritual sequel would hitch itself to the Kickstarter mast. Because, er, they always said it would. That Kickstarter is now live, live, live, as Torment: Tides of Numenera sings for its supper for the next month or so.(more…)

The first footage of Wasteland 2 caused the internet to grumble, even though the game hadn’t inadvertently become a third-person cover shooter. The concerned comments mostly swarmed around the keyword dialogue system and there was sense to the criticism. The keyword system remains but hovering over an available choice will now cause a preview sentence to appear, providing context before a choice is made. inXile have also clarified details about the camera system and HUD.

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Wasteland 2 is now deep in the treacherous territory of full-blown development, and the brave crew that are mapping its wild landscape have sent back a transmission to show us what they’ve been up to, as you can see below. It’s looking mighty tactical and happily post-apocalyptic. Go take a look.(more…)

Wasteland 2, in development by inXile after the studio raised over $3 million on Kickstarter for the project in April 2012, recently got its first gameplay video. The update post for the project lists off a number of elements not seen in this early trailer.

Still, Development Director Chris Keenan's guide to the agricultural area of the game is a lengthy one, as he detailed topics such as the game's customizable UI and turn-based combat. Watch the full video above for a run-down on the game's progress.

#wasteland Wasteland 2, the tremendously successful Kickstarter project that earned close to $3 million when it was funded last year, is starting to shape up. More »

In an interview to appear on this website at 1700 UK time today, inXile’s Brian Fargo reveals that a new Torment game is really definitely happening, and explains that it will be made in conjunction with RPG author and original Planescape Torment designer, Monte Cook, as well as a number of other key individuals from the original Planescape team. The game will be set in Cook’s ambitious pen and paper Numenera Universe, which was Kickstarted last year to the tune of half a million dollars. As well as explaining how this setting constitutes a new Planescape Torment game, without actually being a Planescape Torment game, Fargo says stuff like: “We won’t have faeries or devils, but we’ll have diabolical creatures from far dimensions with schemes beyond human imagination. We won’t have gods, but we’ll have creatures who have lived for millennia with the powers of creation and destruction at their fingertips, with abilities honed over countless lifetimes. We won’t have other planes per se, but we’ll have pathways to hostile worlds and bizarre landscapes and ancient machines that catapult the players into places where the ordinary laws of nature no longer apply.”

Come back at 5 for a lot more of that sort of thing.

Wasteland 2 is hosting a crowdsourcing experiment that feels more like a straight-up art contest: interested artists can create game assets in Unity, based on concept images, and inXile will review the entries. inXile will pay and credit artists to use any designs it likes in-game, with other creations that meet the requirements available for purchase in the Unity Asset Store.

The first batch of concept art is live now, and artists have one week to create something beautiful and submit it to the Unity Asset Store. inXile has a special start-up artist pack available for free here. The concept art will update weekly until inXile has all the cheap labor assets it can handle.

There’s a new reward tier for Obsidian’s Project Eternity, which has currently raised more than double its $1.1 million goal. It’s a pricey tier – $165 – but rather than receiving a sculpted miniature of a distressed bank manager, backers will receive a digital copy of Project Eternity, its first expansion and Wasteland 2. That’s one way of Kicking it Forward, I guess. There are all sorts of historical connections between Fargo and the Obsidian folks, and Nathan spoke to Chris Avellone about his contributions to Wasteland 2. Basically, it wouldn’t be surprising to find Eternity and Wasteland 2 making out behind the bike sheds. More details on the expansion below.

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#kickstarter People giving money to Kickstarter projects love games. How much do they love them? According to Kickstarter's number crunchers, over $50 million dollars over the last eight months have gone to games campaigns. That's more money than has gone to film, tech or music projects. More »

Some sneak has released footage of Fargo’s Kickstarted Wasteland 2. Blurry enough that you know they wouldn’t want it out there, but footage of Wasteland 2 enough that you’ll want to see it. Showing how the Unity 3D engine is being used to create an RPG, it demos how the camera can be pulled into a top-down view for the old-schoolers. Look below.

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#wasteland Until now, we'd only seen artwork and a screenshot of the upcoming Wasteland sequel, but here's your first look at the game in motion. More »

#pullquote Not that this is a new idea - it's where a lot of the appeal of AAA devs going indie lies - but it's nice to remember that as annoying as the endless stream of Kickstarter projects are, and as big as the risks are for both developers and consumers, there's an upshoot to the whole thing. More »

The wait for Wasteland 2 will be long, because the promise is great – but so’s the risk. We don’t really know what we’re getting at this stage, or indeed from any of that first wave of Kickstarted game projects, but an announcement that another veteran of the delectably dark Planescape: Torment (plus Fallout 2) has joined the swelling development team at Inxile adds yet greater hope. Chris Avellone is already on board, and how so’s one of his former comrades. Colin McComb was one of the designers on those Black Isle greats, and joins what’s now a dozen-strong writing team on Wasteland 2, reports bossman Brian Fargo. McComb’s also written a whole load of fantasy tomes that I can’t tell you anything about, but you can find out more on here.(more…)

The screenshot above is your very first look at the Kickstarter-funded Wasteland 2, presenting some environment and character art from the game as it's being worked on. The project hit its goal of $900k easily on the nearly ubiquitous crowdfunding service, and ended up with nearly $2.9 million.

Over on the official blog, the developers say they're releasing this early shot for feedback, and that they're also almost done with the game's main site, which is where backers will be able to update their support if they'd like to do so. The props found above are largely part of Unity's own database of in-game items, customized for the Wasteland world. As the team members learn to use the Unity engine, they're hoping this is only the beginning of the way the game looks.

Presumably, they'll will have some help: Obsidian Entertainment promised to pitch in if the Kickstarter reached at least $2.1 million.

Kickstarter continues to be a sprawling resource for game developers looking to fund their fantasy project, but it’s not clear whether the games coming out of Kickstarter will be worth their funding headlines. Wasteland 2 is one of the most successful projects, and now we have the first screen shot.

Drum roll, please?

Alpha Screenshot

That looks...great? To be fair, I haven’t played the original Wasteland, so maybe you can tell me how wrong I am in the comments, but that looks like a pretty neat top-down post-apocalyptic world, and now it’s a matter of waiting to see how it plays. That’s the most important part, but so far, so good, and i'st hard to argue with a robo scorpion.

Wasteland 2 raised nearly $3 million in April, and is scheduled for a release in October 2013.

#wasteland I'm wary of even calling this a screenshot, given (as it says at the bottom of the image) it's more useful just as a guide for the kind of art style the game will employ. But if you were wondering what kind of art a fan-funded sequel to the game that inspired Fallout would would employ, well, here you go. More »

The very first screenshot from Brian Fargo’s Kickstarted Wasteland 2 has emerged, and it’s a doozy. Click on the pic above to see it full size. Describing it as “a first pass”, the Unity game is clearly already looking splendid. Fargo also points out that it’s lacking particle effects and post-processing, and that it’s just one environment, and the camera angle isn’t fixed, and and and… Brian! It’s okay! It’s a great shot! Look at that scorpion!

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While we imagine most who are eager to play Wasteland 2 have fond memories of playing the original RPG and might possibly still own it, InXile is still tossing it in free of charge with each copy of Wasteland 2. It is due in no small part to the aid of EA, the publisher of the original Wasteland.

InXile's Brian Fargo says including the classic PC game was the biggest request during Wasteland 2's Kickstarter campaign. "Fortunately EA has continued to support us on this project and has granted us the ability to bring the original to the players," Fargo said. "It is great to be able to make Wasteland available for those feeling nostalgic or who want to experience it for the first time. It certainly will not be a pre-requisite to understand Wasteland 2, but it adds some extra flavor if you did play the prequel."

Wasteland 2 is currently on track to launch sometime next year.

John’s just been moaning that he wants a new RPG to lose himself in for hours, and so I will provide. Well, eventually. Underrail isn’t out yet – why must videogames exist before they are finished? – but if the wait for Wasteland 2 seems too torturous perhaps this could fill that turn-based, it’s the end of the world and I feel fine, hole in your life.(more…)

Wasteland 2 is one of the fathers of the now adolescent Kickstarter revolution and, in keeping with early suggestions, it looks like this is one dad who’ll be comfortable having all the necessary talks with his kids. Very open he is.

“We are not afraid of the transparency of our process and thinking and intend to share it along the way.”

That said, today not only brings the superbly redesigned artwork above but also, as spotted by Blue, the release of a “vision document” that contains a huge amount of information about the principles that will drive development. Read it in the link back there or follow me to the irradiated underbelly where selected morsels roam.

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Among many frightening visions of the future spawned by modern day paranoia – for instance, widespread environmental devastation, nuclear genocide, or roving herds of spindly, twitching spiders that evolve to reside exclusively in jars of Nutella – there’s the fear that all games will eventually bomb themselves back to the lo-fi, browser-compatible Stone Age. So when inXile head Brian Fargo announced that Wasteland 2 would be in the Unity engine‘s browser-calloused hands, knees jerked hard enough to create a small seismic event. Fargo, however, assured his panicked followers that his franchise revival has not, in fact, jumped the irradiated six-mouthed shark.

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People are ready for a new Wasteland, it would seem. The Kickstarter for inXile Entertainment's Wasteland 2 ended at $2,933,252, well over the $900,000 goal and $800,000 more than was required for Obsidian to join in on development.

Oh, and then fans kicked in another $112,089 through PayPal.

Of course, some of that money will go to Amazon, PayPal, and Kickstarter fees, and producing and shipping prizes, a lesson all Kickstarter users should remember. In addition, 5% of the total will be put into other Kickstarter projects, as part of a "Kicking it Forward" initiative. Perhaps the stimulation of the Kickstarter economy through this project will prevent the world from becoming a Wasteland-esque nightmare for another couple of weeks.

#wasteland2 The grassroots initiative to generate a sequel to old-school CRPG Wasteland wrapped up last night by getting more than triple the amount that InXile Entertainment was asking for. In addition to the $2,933,147 raised on Kickstarter, $108,803 has donated through PayPal. More »

Wasteland’s rags-to-riches-to-reuniting-Black-Isle tale has been one for the ages, but – with the Kickstarter account four days from ascending to Money Heaven, where the streets are paved with people – what happens now? If offered millions of dollars and one (1!) Chris Avellone, I’d do just about anything someone told me – so has Wasteland 2 taken on an out-of-control life of its own? Not even a little bit, says Brian Fargo. Wasteland 2 is still, first and foremost, his “baby.”

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The remarkable Wasteland 2 crowdsourcing wagon rolls on – it’s currently bagged itself $2.35m across Kickstarter and Paypal, and rising. We’ve already heard from Brian Fargo and Chris Avellone, but today returning Wasteland designer (and New York Times bestselling author) Michael A. Stackpole pens a guest post for us, detailing some of his more memorable experiences when working on the first Wasteland back in the late 1980s.

Read on for map design secrets, the unexpected side-effects of the anti-piracy systems of the time, why Wasteland endures, dehydrated cosplay and how Interplay used to scare old men.(more…)