Wasteland 2 beta testing starts in October; to be feature complete in the next month

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It’s hard not to think Wasteland 2’s producer, Brian Fargo, is pointing fingers when he writes “we remain well financed for development, thus allowing us to ship a product without compromise” in his latest Kickstarter update.

Yes, unlike Double Fine’s game, InXile’s RPG is set to as advertised and without having to be slashed in two, or with elements of its campaign separated as DLC. They’ll even have the game feature complete within the next month and have the game’s beta out to backers in October.

Feature complete means that all the work on building the game’s underlying systems will be finished, everything from “the combat system” to “character creation, radio support, world map travel, logbook, inventory, loot drop system, save games, AI functionality and much more.”

Though, despite not currently being fully-featured artists and level designers have begun their work: “all of the game maps are in and we have been in the process of making art and reactivity passes already,” Fargo writes. “The basic building blocks of each level are in and the artists are fully propping them out, and the progress on this front is staggering. The hallmark of a great RPG is how reactive the world is, so our scripters are busy focusing on increasing this aspect of the game. We have encounters that look at the gender makeup of the party, the health of the party, the NPCs who have joined you and so many of the various world states. This is the kind of subtlety I love and makes the games both deep and re-playable. “

InXile will be showing Wasteland 2 to the press at GamesCom next month so we’ll have coverage of the game following our impressions.

There’s no current release date for the game as the team will be re-assessing their release schedule during the beta.

Cheers, PC Gamer.