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deviilsbaneSo, uh, we finished Wasteland 2 and 3. yipee! Not about to play the first one though (yet, maybe,) because I wanna move onto other games in my backlog...(ówò_),,, The eternal curse of Steam sales....
Just for context, I did play WL3 before playing WL2 so I was spoiled on a LOT of plot points lol. That and further discussions of the OCs who I decided to play as and the plotholes that I accidentally made for them are also explained by this.
Chucking the rest under a readmore, beware of unmarked spoilers for both 2 and 3. And I suppose 1 as well, since playing WL2 and 3 will immediately spoil you for some WL1 plot points.
Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised that both games allowed the player to fully customize a few of their units. IIRC WL2 makes the player make 4 at the beginning (with presets; though I don't remember if you could just make one dude and then start the game with one guy...) and WL3 makes the player make 2 at the very beginning, with the ability to make even more after the prologue. Though like WL2 you can only roll with a party of 4 custom characters, the rest consisting of in-game recruitable NPCs. You can make more, though, but you gotta swap out one of your custom dudes in return. Otherwise they just stay benched.
Kind of nice because most CRPGs I've encountered tend to only encourage the player to make one custom character cuz otherwise you'll end up missing out on NPC companion quests/storylines. That and sometimes "mercenary"/custom recruits tend to be kind of gimped compared to the recruitables, but not for every game lol. I think in some games people would roll with a fully custom team for the sake of minmaxing lol.
As nice as it is to go through well-written NPC storylines, I am the type of bozo who was too invested in making up fake paper dolls since I was a kid and as a result I will, at any given moment, will prioritize OCposting if I could, lol. Sorry.
Moving back to Wasteland, though, I wil say that the game was definitely more geared towards the custom PCs because the NPC storylines tended to be not as fleshed out compared to, like, idk, Baldur's Gate 3 (for the sake of comparing it to a more contemporary game that a lot of people are aware of.)
For reference's sake: In WL2 I went with the following NPCs: Angela, Ralphy, Scotchmo, Chisel, Pizepi, Corran, Lexcanium, and Neil. My "final" team setup was with Chisel, Pizepi, and Corran.
In WL3 I went with the following: Kwon, Lucia, Scotchmo, Cordite. "Final" setup was with Lucia and Cordite.
Like, for example, in WL2 the recruitable NPCs tend to be more of a companion that you got mostly for flavor text and dialogue purposes, and from the top of my head none of them really had, like, a questline to follow. Like maybe at best they were tangentially related to a quest but were ultimately not vital for completing it. (i.e. Ralphy, you could finish the Rail Nomads questline regardless with or without him but I think you do need him to be with you to get the "good" ending. That being said it's not *his* questline, he's just one of the NPCs related to it. He ultimately doesn't really "progress" as a character after that quest, and other recruitable NPCs are pretty much the same.)
WL3 was a bit better in this regard, or at the very least the guys I picked for my team were lucky enough to have their own questlines lol. Lucia had a really good part in the overall story of WL3, and is arguably the only one who I could distinctly recall having any sort of dynamic character development througout the story.
Either way it does encourage the player to "make shit up" as they went on with the game, espcially for your custom-made characters. In 2 you even got to write your own little bio for your custom characters, as well as to set their age, nationality, religion, cigarette preference, etc... Though it's all fluff that had little gameplay effect, and was dropped for the third game. Either way it IS a nice touch, though!
In both games you also got to customize their portraits! There are defaults but on the PC versions it's super easy to put in your own DIY portraits. So I ended up drawing them, lol.
All this yapping aside, when I first played WL3, I decided to go with the classic OC gang: Viktor, Eilhart, Karin, and Theo. Viktor and Eilhart 'cus they're pretty fitting picks for military settings imo (with both of them being knight-themed and all...or, well, Eil is, and Viktor is straight up a king lol. Which also implies military involvement anyway.) Karin and Theo are there to balance them out for goofiness' sake.
Here are their portraits! Their outfits are based on whatever the fuck their in-game models were wearing, so I did have to start the game and use the premade portraits for a bit, lol.
So, Vicky is the leader/charisma guy running with bladed melee, Eilhart ended up being the glass cannon sniper with a mechanics expertise, Karin was a shotgunner with hacking and lockpicking capabilities, and Theo was the team medic who also doubled as the second sniper + demolitions guy. Pretty decent spread tbh, served me well even through both of the DLCs.
I had a blast with the game with these four + Kwon, Lucia (then later Kwon was replaced with Scotchmo, then Cordite.) Constantly kissing ass to bypass fights with Viktor's high social skills were fun, and for anything else that we couldn't handle we just ended up shooting down like good ol' murderhobos. Oh, also pretty much stole everything that wasn't nailed down because I imagine Karin and Theo to be kind of loot-goblin-y.
This game had a surprisingly good soundtrack, complete with remixes of a few classic(?) songs here and there. Some of them aren't even my genre of choice but this is one of the few games where I did not turn the BGM down to listen to my own playlists, lol.
I also really liked the gameplay; though not much to say about it outside of the fact that it was easy to get the hang of and also really fun to work with. Though compared to WL2 I feel like it was way easier to cheese stuff sometimes, but it did offer way more build variety since almost every weapon was reasonably viable to invest in, imo. Loved using shotguns and explosives here, not so much in 2. Also deployables were fun but I did not use them until the DLCs 'cuz I didn't want to waste them T___T ...
There's a decent amount of toilet humor and sex jokes in game, ranging from *checks notes* throwing piss-soaked snowballs to robotfucking to goatfucking. You also get a decent buff if you decide to bone the goat, iirc. lol. On the other hand the robot gives you an STD </3
I really enjoyed the Monster Army stuff, while they were kinda pointless in the grand scheme of the overall story they had a fun questline + I like their associated BGM lol. The Dorseys surprised me as well because I really thought they'd just be a bunch of murderhobo hicks but turns out their leader was 1. fucked over by the Patriarch 2. shit got out of hand 3. he's kinda hot tbf... >__> Also the Machine Commune was nice, even if you knew what was up with the robots from the first two games. Though it definitely does seem like they've broken free from Cochise's influence, at least... Definitely did not help that the adjacent factions were, like, really unlikeable. AKA the Gippers (annoying) and the Godfishers (lol no).
As for the ending, I ended up going with the ending where you depose the Patriarch because 1. I did not like his vibes 2. I think Viktor would be the type who'd try to yoink the position of power from someone else for himself. Let's just say that the gang just agreed to it because he was able to convince them that it's totes better guys, I won't be a tyrant! (eyebrow waggle) (yes he will) (oh brother)
But on a more serious note I fucked up early on and pissed the Marshalls off so I couldn't get November Reigns, and, like, the Patriarch was on his deathbed anyway so I might as well steal his stupid little throne, no? On the flip side we may have fucked over Arizona, though, since in my ending the Rangers moved from AZ to Colorado instead. But I suppose someone else could take up the mantle instead (but also lol gg considering the other murderhobo raider groups over there)
Now, the DLC...They were OK, lol. Steeltown was fun, and I loved the nonlethal combat aspect of it. Holy Detonation I liked more for the story, but also it ended way too fast and all the fucking battles were *infinite spawn* gimmicks that got old super fast. It was first introduced in Steeltown's final battle but I could at least justify it because it was for a grand finale type of thing, but in Holy Detonation that was, like, EVERY damn battle. Got old super fast snzzz. The final battle was a bit more fun at least, but also meh. Also the stackable radiation thing got annoying fast.
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So, Wasteland 2. I didn't plan on playing the second game after finishing the third because I got spoiled big time, but I saw four (4) custom characters and brought the gang back. And immediately realized that I caused a huge plothole for them because the two guys you make at the start of WL3 were meant to be rookies, and therefore makes these four re-apprearing in Colorado make zero sense. But I will persevere and explain it away....somehow. Later.
So here's the gang! I had to redo their starting attributes multiple times because holy shit their starting attributes actually matter in this one, unlike in WL3 where building a character was way more forgiving. Comparatively older game jank, I suppose. I say comparatively 'cuz this came out in 2014, and it's...not that old, lol. (Side note: I consider 6th gen and older as "old", whereas anything from the 7th gen is "recent", and 8th gen and newer as "new". Sorry to the older gamers reading this, I am unfortunately a zoomer.)
As mentioned above, you got to customize a lot more stuff about your custom Rangers all for the sake of fluff here. So...I did some digging on the wiki (idiot gets spoiled -- joke there's not much to get spoiled on because WL3 already did for some important plot points COUGH ANGELA COUGH)
So, we ended up with this:
Viktor: The ex-leader of an independent military group that fell apart due to "administrative problems" (heavily implied that he was involved in its downfall, heh.) Joined the Rangers for the simple fact that he likes the fame that it brings. Generally speaking I do imagine him to be somewhat of a corrupt guy who could be whipped into shape as long as he's beneftting from it, which would also explain why he ends up deposing the Patriarch later in WL3 for his own gain. He's Theo's dad here (as usual; his mom was an independent merchant who left Theo in his care 'cuz she wanted to go off north and it was too dangerous to take him along.) and also Karin's...adoptive guardian, I suppose. More detail in Karin's section.
Eilhart - Former member of God's Militia, one of the factions in WL2 that could be summed up as gun-toting Christian extremists who kill everyone they don't like. Big hypocrites too. Anyway the idea is that Eil probably was a high-ranking member who had a big slip up and got his team killed/maimed, which in turn made the other leaders turn on him. So he goes into a self-imposed exile, reevaluates everything he's known about his faith, and realized that he's a massive fucking hypocrite! An awful fucking person! Goes off from L.A. to A.Z. because he thought that the radiation would kill him on the way but luck was on his side and picks up the Rangers' radio signals. Decided to join as an act of atonement for all the blood he's shed. Which explains why he's a very lethal sniper :3 hehe.
Theo - Mousey kid who grew up in the horrors of the wastes. He's super desensitized to violence and as a result he's a surprisingly decent field medic (despite his age), but he does yearn for independence...He joined his dad with the Rangers 'cuz it was a nice starting point + he ends up training under Eil with regards to how to shoot. So he's sniper 2!
Karin - Originally raised in a doomsday cult that worshipped the (supposedly) dead Cochise AI, which was eventually targeted and wiped out by the group that Viktor led in exchange for scrap ('cuz the group was also terrorizing another group, so they ended up getting targetted...) So anyway, everyone's pretty much dead except for her, and for some inane reason Viktor takes her in. She grows up as Theo's pseudo sister, and uh, stuff gets weird between her and Viktor. lol. hehe.
ANYWAY, WL2 proper. So in this one I am following the narrative that the gang are new recruits, and it pretty much plays out exactly how WL2 plays out. The gang saves Highpool over the Ag Center (I mean, if I had to prioritize then I'd pick saving the water system in a fucking desert because no water = no irrigation = Ag Center would be useless without it. Inb4 there are oases in-game: yeah good luck building new infrastructure to support them, lol. (Sorry I got so tilted that some of the NPCs get mad at you for letting the Ag Center die while you save Highpool but, like, come on man.))
Didn't like Danforth but we did end up saving his dogs and getting him to cooperate (but goddamn he had the stupidest motivation known to man + bro ended up starting a warcrime raider group over it...) yadda yadda, and the gang ended up disarming the nuke because I don't think they'd trust the DBM or the MAD Monks. That being said the Monks were cool though, but also I wanted Corran as a follower, lol. I really needed a Demolitions guy >__< (Theo was fully spec'd to be Medic/Sniper and didn't have enough extra points to waste)
Got the Rail Nomads to cooperate because I liked the questline a lot, and got Chisel and Ralphy as well. I really liked Chisel, he gave off "Vicky, but horribly geriatric" vibes, and I think him and Viktor would have been good drinking buddies. Much to Eil's irritation, lol. He also had really amusing one liner dialogue in the team. Ralphy felt like a fun add-on to complement the younger members, with him being the more naive of the three, but I did end up losing him in the fight against Tinker in Damonta. RIP, you were my best AR guy until I managed to max Karin out. I also picked up Pizepi and the Night Terror (the latter after a buttload of save scumming), and, well, Pizepi was a lovely team member. She's...super cute!! She has this spunky fish-out-of-water vibe and she gives me the urge of, like, "I want to see her enjoy the wonders of the outside world" type of thing. If romance was a thing in-game I'd go for her, lol. That and maybe Neil but I'll talk about him later. Oh, and Lexcanium was there. No comment on him 'cuz he got replaced by Corran the moment I got him, sorry.
So, L.A. I can definitely tell that they began to rush stuff here but also L.A. had a lot of meat on its bones. You get introduced to way more factions and the main antagonistic force of the game, and I loved the massive change of scenery from (endless sand) to (postapocalyptic L.A.).
Saved Rodia because the Leather Jerks were stupid + I wanted to wipe them for EXP (I was horribly underleveled for the rest of the map but they were easy enough to deal with). Didn't agree to the COTC because...WL3 spoiled me with what they were planning to do, lol. Then I kicked Heidi out of Hollywood + got the God's Militia to stop murdering the Hollywood folk because I really liked the questlone between Veronica and McDade. That and I wanted the EXP and this route let me mow down the Salt dudes and a portion of the Militia.
That being said, the Militia had really good outfits. Hard to beat "nuns with guns" as a concept visually, tbh. But at the same time you have to mow 'em down so you can steal their drip...hehe. Two birds with one stone, I guess.
So here I managed to recruit Pistol Pete, Ertan(?), and Neil Thomas, but I really didn't get to use them as much because Chisel and Corran had outleveled them at that point. I REALLY wanted to put Neil in my team because he reminded me of Eil a lot and I wanted to imagine Eil getting real tense around another ex-member of God's Militia, especially someone who would have probably thought that Eil was a pathetic hypocrite before his exile. (Neil left because he realized that the Militia were a bunch of, well, hypocrites, and ended up killing his way out of Griffith Park.) Unfortunately I got him way too late in-game, and literally unlocked him right before the final boss fights. Sadge. Would have loved to hear his bantz.
Anyway the ending: we got Vargas to detonate the nuke but I did want Corran to do it instead. However the final fight was a SLOG + I was cursed with bad positioning so I ended up persevering and it wound up with Corran dying. </3.
Anyway, gameplay wise WL2 was more punishing than WL3, it way more stats that you had to manage and you didn't really get as many level up bonuses as you did in WL3. As mentioned earlier, bad beginning stats can fuck you up later in the game and you can't really "fix" it with the NPCs 'cuz their stat spread tends to be...bad, lol. Also positioning was harder IMO, and a lot of weapons weren't viable. Everyone and their mom was either running Sniper Rifles or Assault Rifles, because everything else sucked. Blunt was good though, but pretty bad early game IMO. Endgame it's pretty good, though, especially with the strongest hammer being really, REALLY good against the COTC guys. Oh, it also has permadeath and carry weight management. Yipee!
WL2 also felt a lot more "open" than WL3 in a lot of ways, with far more interactive storylines (in Arizona at least, in L.A. stuff gets janky lol and there's way less alternative options to finish a given questline at times...) but at the cost of Way More Jank. WL3 in a sense was more "streamlined", which did make for a better gaming experience, though. Like the stats for example, a lot of skills in WL2 got condensed in WL3 because... a lot of them were redundant, honestly. Like safecracking vs. lockpicking, surgery vs. field medic. Then there's the fact that EVERY weapon type had its own skill, so you really had to spec someone to one specific weapon unless if you wanted to waste precious skill slots on another weapon type. In WL3 they were condensed to weapon groups instead. So you had a bit more flexibility there, lol. But also the questlines in WL3 didn't feel as convoluted as some in WL2. Which I suppose could be a blessing in disguise sometimes...
WL2 had a lot of...junk in-game (i.e. missable bonus items that had One Specific Use Case or consumables that were there for fluff purposes) but the item descriptions and stuff were a treat to read through. I suppose the jank could be excused by the fact that the game was apparently a kickstarter-funded thing. I don't mind it, though. A lot of games that I love and have loved were janky pieces of shit (Dragon's Dogma I am looking At You, with both the original and the sequel being janky as hell in their own regards) and that gives them charm, lol.
OC-only yapping time:
...Eventually Theo and Karin decide to go on a soul searching thing after the events of WL2, which left Viktor and Eil alone in AZ. I like to imagine that Vicky and Eil get closer during this time period...just two dudes on patrol in the middle of the lonely , lonely dessert...hehe. Meanwhile Karin gets to travel and Theo becomes invested in researching prewar artifacts. They end up north, in Colorado. Convenient!
They ended up being one of the members of Team November (as support) but then the team gets wiped out in the WL3 prologue...but then Karin and Theo were in Colorado anyway for business and then Viktor, was, like, "👉👈 hey can you help us out again"...and, well, the two of them can't say no to free room and board.
But it does leave the fact that 1. Angela doesn't recognize Team November in WL3, nor does Scotchmo or Pizepi. I will simply pretend that they did, lol. Also the last two surviving members of November were supposed to be new recruits, but again, shhh. Lol. I didn't plan it thoroughly enough...:'3
Anyway, that concludes the WLposting. For now. Maybe I'll make another post just to "finalize"/ponder about the AU specifics (because of course), but I did cover some of them here.
Just for context, I did play WL3 before playing WL2 so I was spoiled on a LOT of plot points lol. That and further discussions of the OCs who I decided to play as and the plotholes that I accidentally made for them are also explained by this.
Chucking the rest under a readmore, beware of unmarked spoilers for both 2 and 3. And I suppose 1 as well, since playing WL2 and 3 will immediately spoil you for some WL1 plot points.
Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised that both games allowed the player to fully customize a few of their units. IIRC WL2 makes the player make 4 at the beginning (with presets; though I don't remember if you could just make one dude and then start the game with one guy...) and WL3 makes the player make 2 at the very beginning, with the ability to make even more after the prologue. Though like WL2 you can only roll with a party of 4 custom characters, the rest consisting of in-game recruitable NPCs. You can make more, though, but you gotta swap out one of your custom dudes in return. Otherwise they just stay benched.
Kind of nice because most CRPGs I've encountered tend to only encourage the player to make one custom character cuz otherwise you'll end up missing out on NPC companion quests/storylines. That and sometimes "mercenary"/custom recruits tend to be kind of gimped compared to the recruitables, but not for every game lol. I think in some games people would roll with a fully custom team for the sake of minmaxing lol.
As nice as it is to go through well-written NPC storylines, I am the type of bozo who was too invested in making up fake paper dolls since I was a kid and as a result I will, at any given moment, will prioritize OCposting if I could, lol. Sorry.
Moving back to Wasteland, though, I wil say that the game was definitely more geared towards the custom PCs because the NPC storylines tended to be not as fleshed out compared to, like, idk, Baldur's Gate 3 (for the sake of comparing it to a more contemporary game that a lot of people are aware of.)
For reference's sake: In WL2 I went with the following NPCs: Angela, Ralphy, Scotchmo, Chisel, Pizepi, Corran, Lexcanium, and Neil. My "final" team setup was with Chisel, Pizepi, and Corran.
In WL3 I went with the following: Kwon, Lucia, Scotchmo, Cordite. "Final" setup was with Lucia and Cordite.
Like, for example, in WL2 the recruitable NPCs tend to be more of a companion that you got mostly for flavor text and dialogue purposes, and from the top of my head none of them really had, like, a questline to follow. Like maybe at best they were tangentially related to a quest but were ultimately not vital for completing it. (i.e. Ralphy, you could finish the Rail Nomads questline regardless with or without him but I think you do need him to be with you to get the "good" ending. That being said it's not *his* questline, he's just one of the NPCs related to it. He ultimately doesn't really "progress" as a character after that quest, and other recruitable NPCs are pretty much the same.)
WL3 was a bit better in this regard, or at the very least the guys I picked for my team were lucky enough to have their own questlines lol. Lucia had a really good part in the overall story of WL3, and is arguably the only one who I could distinctly recall having any sort of dynamic character development througout the story.
Either way it does encourage the player to "make shit up" as they went on with the game, espcially for your custom-made characters. In 2 you even got to write your own little bio for your custom characters, as well as to set their age, nationality, religion, cigarette preference, etc... Though it's all fluff that had little gameplay effect, and was dropped for the third game. Either way it IS a nice touch, though!
In both games you also got to customize their portraits! There are defaults but on the PC versions it's super easy to put in your own DIY portraits. So I ended up drawing them, lol.
All this yapping aside, when I first played WL3, I decided to go with the classic OC gang: Viktor, Eilhart, Karin, and Theo. Viktor and Eilhart 'cus they're pretty fitting picks for military settings imo (with both of them being knight-themed and all...or, well, Eil is, and Viktor is straight up a king lol. Which also implies military involvement anyway.) Karin and Theo are there to balance them out for goofiness' sake.
Here are their portraits! Their outfits are based on whatever the fuck their in-game models were wearing, so I did have to start the game and use the premade portraits for a bit, lol.
So, Vicky is the leader/charisma guy running with bladed melee, Eilhart ended up being the glass cannon sniper with a mechanics expertise, Karin was a shotgunner with hacking and lockpicking capabilities, and Theo was the team medic who also doubled as the second sniper + demolitions guy. Pretty decent spread tbh, served me well even through both of the DLCs.
I had a blast with the game with these four + Kwon, Lucia (then later Kwon was replaced with Scotchmo, then Cordite.) Constantly kissing ass to bypass fights with Viktor's high social skills were fun, and for anything else that we couldn't handle we just ended up shooting down like good ol' murderhobos. Oh, also pretty much stole everything that wasn't nailed down because I imagine Karin and Theo to be kind of loot-goblin-y.
This game had a surprisingly good soundtrack, complete with remixes of a few classic(?) songs here and there. Some of them aren't even my genre of choice but this is one of the few games where I did not turn the BGM down to listen to my own playlists, lol.
I also really liked the gameplay; though not much to say about it outside of the fact that it was easy to get the hang of and also really fun to work with. Though compared to WL2 I feel like it was way easier to cheese stuff sometimes, but it did offer way more build variety since almost every weapon was reasonably viable to invest in, imo. Loved using shotguns and explosives here, not so much in 2. Also deployables were fun but I did not use them until the DLCs 'cuz I didn't want to waste them T___T ...
There's a decent amount of toilet humor and sex jokes in game, ranging from *checks notes* throwing piss-soaked snowballs to robotfucking to goatfucking. You also get a decent buff if you decide to bone the goat, iirc. lol. On the other hand the robot gives you an STD </3
I really enjoyed the Monster Army stuff, while they were kinda pointless in the grand scheme of the overall story they had a fun questline + I like their associated BGM lol. The Dorseys surprised me as well because I really thought they'd just be a bunch of murderhobo hicks but turns out their leader was 1. fucked over by the Patriarch 2. shit got out of hand 3. he's kinda hot tbf... >__> Also the Machine Commune was nice, even if you knew what was up with the robots from the first two games. Though it definitely does seem like they've broken free from Cochise's influence, at least... Definitely did not help that the adjacent factions were, like, really unlikeable. AKA the Gippers (annoying) and the Godfishers (lol no).
As for the ending, I ended up going with the ending where you depose the Patriarch because 1. I did not like his vibes 2. I think Viktor would be the type who'd try to yoink the position of power from someone else for himself. Let's just say that the gang just agreed to it because he was able to convince them that it's totes better guys, I won't be a tyrant! (eyebrow waggle) (yes he will) (oh brother)
But on a more serious note I fucked up early on and pissed the Marshalls off so I couldn't get November Reigns, and, like, the Patriarch was on his deathbed anyway so I might as well steal his stupid little throne, no? On the flip side we may have fucked over Arizona, though, since in my ending the Rangers moved from AZ to Colorado instead. But I suppose someone else could take up the mantle instead (but also lol gg considering the other murderhobo raider groups over there)
Now, the DLC...They were OK, lol. Steeltown was fun, and I loved the nonlethal combat aspect of it. Holy Detonation I liked more for the story, but also it ended way too fast and all the fucking battles were *infinite spawn* gimmicks that got old super fast. It was first introduced in Steeltown's final battle but I could at least justify it because it was for a grand finale type of thing, but in Holy Detonation that was, like, EVERY damn battle. Got old super fast snzzz. The final battle was a bit more fun at least, but also meh. Also the stackable radiation thing got annoying fast.
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So, Wasteland 2. I didn't plan on playing the second game after finishing the third because I got spoiled big time, but I saw four (4) custom characters and brought the gang back. And immediately realized that I caused a huge plothole for them because the two guys you make at the start of WL3 were meant to be rookies, and therefore makes these four re-apprearing in Colorado make zero sense. But I will persevere and explain it away....somehow. Later.
So here's the gang! I had to redo their starting attributes multiple times because holy shit their starting attributes actually matter in this one, unlike in WL3 where building a character was way more forgiving. Comparatively older game jank, I suppose. I say comparatively 'cuz this came out in 2014, and it's...not that old, lol. (Side note: I consider 6th gen and older as "old", whereas anything from the 7th gen is "recent", and 8th gen and newer as "new". Sorry to the older gamers reading this, I am unfortunately a zoomer.)
As mentioned above, you got to customize a lot more stuff about your custom Rangers all for the sake of fluff here. So...I did some digging on the wiki (idiot gets spoiled -- joke there's not much to get spoiled on because WL3 already did for some important plot points COUGH ANGELA COUGH)
So, we ended up with this:
Viktor: The ex-leader of an independent military group that fell apart due to "administrative problems" (heavily implied that he was involved in its downfall, heh.) Joined the Rangers for the simple fact that he likes the fame that it brings. Generally speaking I do imagine him to be somewhat of a corrupt guy who could be whipped into shape as long as he's beneftting from it, which would also explain why he ends up deposing the Patriarch later in WL3 for his own gain. He's Theo's dad here (as usual; his mom was an independent merchant who left Theo in his care 'cuz she wanted to go off north and it was too dangerous to take him along.) and also Karin's...adoptive guardian, I suppose. More detail in Karin's section.
Eilhart - Former member of God's Militia, one of the factions in WL2 that could be summed up as gun-toting Christian extremists who kill everyone they don't like. Big hypocrites too. Anyway the idea is that Eil probably was a high-ranking member who had a big slip up and got his team killed/maimed, which in turn made the other leaders turn on him. So he goes into a self-imposed exile, reevaluates everything he's known about his faith, and realized that he's a massive fucking hypocrite! An awful fucking person! Goes off from L.A. to A.Z. because he thought that the radiation would kill him on the way but luck was on his side and picks up the Rangers' radio signals. Decided to join as an act of atonement for all the blood he's shed. Which explains why he's a very lethal sniper :3 hehe.
Theo - Mousey kid who grew up in the horrors of the wastes. He's super desensitized to violence and as a result he's a surprisingly decent field medic (despite his age), but he does yearn for independence...He joined his dad with the Rangers 'cuz it was a nice starting point + he ends up training under Eil with regards to how to shoot. So he's sniper 2!
Karin - Originally raised in a doomsday cult that worshipped the (supposedly) dead Cochise AI, which was eventually targeted and wiped out by the group that Viktor led in exchange for scrap ('cuz the group was also terrorizing another group, so they ended up getting targetted...) So anyway, everyone's pretty much dead except for her, and for some inane reason Viktor takes her in. She grows up as Theo's pseudo sister, and uh, stuff gets weird between her and Viktor. lol. hehe.
ANYWAY, WL2 proper. So in this one I am following the narrative that the gang are new recruits, and it pretty much plays out exactly how WL2 plays out. The gang saves Highpool over the Ag Center (I mean, if I had to prioritize then I'd pick saving the water system in a fucking desert because no water = no irrigation = Ag Center would be useless without it. Inb4 there are oases in-game: yeah good luck building new infrastructure to support them, lol. (Sorry I got so tilted that some of the NPCs get mad at you for letting the Ag Center die while you save Highpool but, like, come on man.))
Didn't like Danforth but we did end up saving his dogs and getting him to cooperate (but goddamn he had the stupidest motivation known to man + bro ended up starting a warcrime raider group over it...) yadda yadda, and the gang ended up disarming the nuke because I don't think they'd trust the DBM or the MAD Monks. That being said the Monks were cool though, but also I wanted Corran as a follower, lol. I really needed a Demolitions guy >__< (Theo was fully spec'd to be Medic/Sniper and didn't have enough extra points to waste)
Got the Rail Nomads to cooperate because I liked the questline a lot, and got Chisel and Ralphy as well. I really liked Chisel, he gave off "Vicky, but horribly geriatric" vibes, and I think him and Viktor would have been good drinking buddies. Much to Eil's irritation, lol. He also had really amusing one liner dialogue in the team. Ralphy felt like a fun add-on to complement the younger members, with him being the more naive of the three, but I did end up losing him in the fight against Tinker in Damonta. RIP, you were my best AR guy until I managed to max Karin out. I also picked up Pizepi and the Night Terror (the latter after a buttload of save scumming), and, well, Pizepi was a lovely team member. She's...super cute!! She has this spunky fish-out-of-water vibe and she gives me the urge of, like, "I want to see her enjoy the wonders of the outside world" type of thing. If romance was a thing in-game I'd go for her, lol. That and maybe Neil but I'll talk about him later. Oh, and Lexcanium was there. No comment on him 'cuz he got replaced by Corran the moment I got him, sorry.
So, L.A. I can definitely tell that they began to rush stuff here but also L.A. had a lot of meat on its bones. You get introduced to way more factions and the main antagonistic force of the game, and I loved the massive change of scenery from (endless sand) to (postapocalyptic L.A.).
Saved Rodia because the Leather Jerks were stupid + I wanted to wipe them for EXP (I was horribly underleveled for the rest of the map but they were easy enough to deal with). Didn't agree to the COTC because...WL3 spoiled me with what they were planning to do, lol. Then I kicked Heidi out of Hollywood + got the God's Militia to stop murdering the Hollywood folk because I really liked the questlone between Veronica and McDade. That and I wanted the EXP and this route let me mow down the Salt dudes and a portion of the Militia.
That being said, the Militia had really good outfits. Hard to beat "nuns with guns" as a concept visually, tbh. But at the same time you have to mow 'em down so you can steal their drip...hehe. Two birds with one stone, I guess.
So here I managed to recruit Pistol Pete, Ertan(?), and Neil Thomas, but I really didn't get to use them as much because Chisel and Corran had outleveled them at that point. I REALLY wanted to put Neil in my team because he reminded me of Eil a lot and I wanted to imagine Eil getting real tense around another ex-member of God's Militia, especially someone who would have probably thought that Eil was a pathetic hypocrite before his exile. (Neil left because he realized that the Militia were a bunch of, well, hypocrites, and ended up killing his way out of Griffith Park.) Unfortunately I got him way too late in-game, and literally unlocked him right before the final boss fights. Sadge. Would have loved to hear his bantz.
Anyway the ending: we got Vargas to detonate the nuke but I did want Corran to do it instead. However the final fight was a SLOG + I was cursed with bad positioning so I ended up persevering and it wound up with Corran dying. </3.
Anyway, gameplay wise WL2 was more punishing than WL3, it way more stats that you had to manage and you didn't really get as many level up bonuses as you did in WL3. As mentioned earlier, bad beginning stats can fuck you up later in the game and you can't really "fix" it with the NPCs 'cuz their stat spread tends to be...bad, lol. Also positioning was harder IMO, and a lot of weapons weren't viable. Everyone and their mom was either running Sniper Rifles or Assault Rifles, because everything else sucked. Blunt was good though, but pretty bad early game IMO. Endgame it's pretty good, though, especially with the strongest hammer being really, REALLY good against the COTC guys. Oh, it also has permadeath and carry weight management. Yipee!
WL2 also felt a lot more "open" than WL3 in a lot of ways, with far more interactive storylines (in Arizona at least, in L.A. stuff gets janky lol and there's way less alternative options to finish a given questline at times...) but at the cost of Way More Jank. WL3 in a sense was more "streamlined", which did make for a better gaming experience, though. Like the stats for example, a lot of skills in WL2 got condensed in WL3 because... a lot of them were redundant, honestly. Like safecracking vs. lockpicking, surgery vs. field medic. Then there's the fact that EVERY weapon type had its own skill, so you really had to spec someone to one specific weapon unless if you wanted to waste precious skill slots on another weapon type. In WL3 they were condensed to weapon groups instead. So you had a bit more flexibility there, lol. But also the questlines in WL3 didn't feel as convoluted as some in WL2. Which I suppose could be a blessing in disguise sometimes...
WL2 had a lot of...junk in-game (i.e. missable bonus items that had One Specific Use Case or consumables that were there for fluff purposes) but the item descriptions and stuff were a treat to read through. I suppose the jank could be excused by the fact that the game was apparently a kickstarter-funded thing. I don't mind it, though. A lot of games that I love and have loved were janky pieces of shit (Dragon's Dogma I am looking At You, with both the original and the sequel being janky as hell in their own regards) and that gives them charm, lol.
OC-only yapping time:
...Eventually Theo and Karin decide to go on a soul searching thing after the events of WL2, which left Viktor and Eil alone in AZ. I like to imagine that Vicky and Eil get closer during this time period...just two dudes on patrol in the middle of the lonely , lonely dessert...hehe. Meanwhile Karin gets to travel and Theo becomes invested in researching prewar artifacts. They end up north, in Colorado. Convenient!
They ended up being one of the members of Team November (as support) but then the team gets wiped out in the WL3 prologue...but then Karin and Theo were in Colorado anyway for business and then Viktor, was, like, "👉👈 hey can you help us out again"...and, well, the two of them can't say no to free room and board.
But it does leave the fact that 1. Angela doesn't recognize Team November in WL3, nor does Scotchmo or Pizepi. I will simply pretend that they did, lol. Also the last two surviving members of November were supposed to be new recruits, but again, shhh. Lol. I didn't plan it thoroughly enough...:'3
Anyway, that concludes the WLposting. For now. Maybe I'll make another post just to "finalize"/ponder about the AU specifics (because of course), but I did cover some of them here.
