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.

inXile Xplained in a Kickstarter update:

“One of the unique aspects to our crowd funding campaign is that we greatly overfunded which is wonderful in allowing us to create a larger experience, one that is in fact quite epic in size. Of course there is an inherent struggle with the original date hovering despite our greatly increased budget and design… A 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. We have been able to accomplish so much in so little time by our experience, fantastic team and tools.” “Once the beta testing begins in October and once we have enough feedback from testing, we can evaluate where we’re at and set a new release date. By that stage, over ten thousand of our backers will have gotten to play the game with us. In the end, quality comes before everything and fortunately the backers have been in line with us to make sure we get it right.”

So basically, it’s a bit behind schedule, but it’s also gone up a good many mutant roach bootie sizes. I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely fine with sacrificing timeliness for scope and quality – especially when inXile’s promising a highly reactive world and encounters that take into account everything from party health and gender makeup to the state of the wasteland itself.

All that’s left now is to wait, first for the beta and then for a new release date based on how the test goes. Me, I’m not sure if I’ll face the beta’s onslaught of bugs and giant bugs or not. Wasteland 2 is the sort of experience I want to throw myself into fully, and I feel like unwrapping an unfinished version might scuff some of discovery’s intoxicating sheen. I don’t know, though. I’m still mulling it. How about you?