Pre-production helps games immensely, because once the developers actually get to the production stage they have very specific instructions and they don't have to make up anything as they go along. Planescape: Torment afaik was in pre-production for some 12 months until Fallout 2 was finished and the team moved on. Of course games change once the developers actually get into the gritty details of constructing them, but I wouldn't be surprised if Torment's long pre-production period actually made production proper go more smoothly and quicker. WL2 obviously seemed to have quite a rapid pre-production.

Not to go off the subject of WL2 too much, but how has Torment been 2 years? The kickstarter ended on 5 April of last year, and they had a release of Dec of this year. It may have slipped back another year, but I do not see how that is that damning. Once this gets to the three years without Beta then I can see bitching about it. I want a complete and bug-free game, and as long as they don't go Duke Nukem Forever on us I will be happy if it gets released by the end of 2015. Maybe with age comes patience, because I have it in spades.

All that being said, I can't wait to try out the new beta of Wasteland 2. The new character creation screen look great, and hopefully the new Dialog UI is in this release. I really can't wait to finish that prison map.

Downloading 3.6GB update now on my laptop, next up the desktop.

That bunch of papers mean alot for the game, I actually think it's the most important part of a game especially for a story, writing heavy game in the Planescape Torment line. I mean who plays Planescape for its combat? (Not that I want Torment's combat to suck). Not sure about you, but I really hope they nail the story in Torment. Once you're in the middle of production with the environments, programming and characters in mid status, it's hard to change the overarching story or plot anymore. I might be selfish, but I hope they focus and finish one game then start the other with the same focus instead of being divided here and there, that's just me though.

Brother None of Gamebanshee, RPGCodex and now working as line producer for inXile, guess you'd best ask him? :D

I though the overall story was done a while ago (even before the project was founded) but I guess I was wrong on that, if the time that they are spending is worth it then it's fine but too much time doing the same thing is never good. It's nice to hear it from a member of the team itself, in the kickstarter comment section Colin from time to time speaks about the progress of the game but he is not very explicit about what they are doing just that they are making progress...that's why I'm so sceptic about the whole situation.
Torment was one of the first kick projects that I backed and with a good amount of money because I believe they can deliver a great game, I'm just a little annoyed about the delay and sometimes the lack of communication from their part on the backers.

Not saying its been already two years but by the time wasteland 2 gets released and the team starts working on torment 2 seems it will be around that amount of time, at least 1 year and half.

Question, how long has this WL2 beta been going on for? (seems like an awful long time)

If you are referring about when it entered Steam Early Access, that's on December 2013.

http://wasteland.wikia.com/wiki/Wasteland_2_Development_Timeline :)

from october I think and it was released on steam on december

Looks like Beta testing actually started in October... i remember that news... and it was just internal beta for weeks before proper beta was released to backers. Is this length of beta testing normal?

It's pretty OK I would say. Planetary Annihilation entered Steam Early Access in June 2013 and there is still no end in sight (Yes, they did say sometime in 2014, but almost half the year is gone).

To be honest when they first released the "beta" it felt more like a late "alpha".

From the Gamespot Early Access review:
"I wish the dialogue system were implemented so that side characters got more attention from time to time; individual party members’ personalities are typically overshadowed by the character you designate as your primary conversationalist."

Shoot. I was keeping my fingers crossed this wouldn't be the case, but apparently it is. I was hoping that the other characters would "interrupt" the conversation if they could make, for example, a successful Smart Ass check if the initial person (leader) couldn't. But apparently the character you use will be doing all the conversations, which leaves few options: either
- creating the team spokesman who's good at all the social skills (I believe there's three or four of them), or
- miss out on some of the dialog options.

I'm really bummed about this. It's not a gamebreaker, not at all, but still something that would've been awesome to see properly made. As it is, I see no reason to give the three other characters any social skills, if they're never going to get to use them.

I might have to leave a notice of this somewhere, like the ranger forums or whatever it is, if I can access that. I'd really wish they'd fix this.

They've been calling it early beta, but yeah, it has been more or less an alpha version. This latest update has really brough it closer to "real" beta, though I still think it is missing some stuff, like location overview map.

I thought you could change the character involved in the dialogue via the portrait itself?

I really wish it weren't so trendy to conflate alpha with beta and beta with release software. Granted the categories are somewhat subjective, but it gets kind of annoying to have that be used as an excuse to improperly label software.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to having them post the system requirements, hopefully my rig can handle it because I can't afford to upgrade.

Feel free to toss some blame towards the developers of Planetary Annihilation. They have named their current early access version as Gamma.