You mean combat turn based or real time with pause (like in BG) versus real-time hack'n'slay combat? Because they still role dice somewhere hidden, I'm sure.

You know what would be awesome, if you actually had to roll dice. You know, you'd click to attack the pigrat and then it would say roll 2D4, 3D20 and then you type in the results and see if you hit or not. Now that is old school!

Actually that wouldn't be very good at all.

Well, it's not really "another" old school RPG game, because the type of game they're aiming for with Wasteland 2 is simply not being made anymore. Turn-based RPG's are not being made anymore. 2D isometric RPG's are not being made anymore. Party-based RPG's in the vein of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale are rare, to say the least... The only recent ones I can think of are Neverwinter Nights 2 and Dragon Age: Origins, and both series have now stepped away from that genre, with Neverwinter becoming an MMO and Dragon Age 2 turned into Mass Effect in Ferelden.

So that's why people want them. They remember the great RPG's from the 80's and 90's -- from their childhood -- and many fans of those games are still playing them because there's nothing comparable on the market today, because publishers think there's no money in them. And now Brian Fargo and all his backers are proving those publishers wrong, which is great.

As for new-school RPG features... What exactly are you talking about? 3D graphics? I can definitely do without those. Many of 2D isometric RPG's from the late 90's still look gorgeous to me, and 3D and the necessary camera systems have caused much more problems for the genre than they're worth IMO. Full voice over? Meh. Not necessary in my book. I have no problem with reading dialogues. "Cinematic" interactions? Overrated. I can't think of any features that have been added to RPG's over the last 10-15 years that I couldn't do without.

The system is the game in a way. One part are characters, story and the setting and the other is a complex system that you are constantly trying to beat.

I guess the folks behind JA: Back in Action kind of thought like you and that is why we got a game that is missing almost everything that made it in the first place.

I always get a warm fuzzy feeling when I play older games. These games get most things right. It's funny, the more a game tries to be a technological breakthrough, the less immersed I feel. It's like a paradox, of the virtual trying to impose itself on the real, and the more it does that, the less it achieves, IMO.

When I play JA2, and I issue commands to my mercs to get them to flank and hide and employ hit-and-run tactics, I feel very engaged, even though I know IRL things don't work this way. I feel more detached, OTOH, when I play RTSes (Supcom and TA being the only exceptions to this rule). I disagree that one should individually pick out the differences and scrutinize them that way. Gaming is an experience, and an experience is usually the sum of its parts.

The Infinity engine and JA2's engine still hold up really well. If that's what 2D could achieve about 20 years ago, then I'd rather have games progress on that level, then to go for 3D. It feels like too much work, on too big a budget, with little efficiency, because ultimately when you create 3D assets, you're just prepping them for a game with unlimited degrees of freedom of camera movement; the million dollar question is, is it really necessary for games that are best played from a TPP? With 2D, you can have changeable camera angles too, albeit with restricted degrees of freedom, but it retains functionality and the aesthetic quality, and I'd rather have that than to sacrifice so much more for a few more angles that I'd never use, outside of taking screenshots.

I'm not saying 3D assets is a bad thing to have in an RPG. I don't think I can play Gothic as an isometric RPG; nor will The Elder Scrolls be the same, because their game mechanics are highly dependent on FPP. Games like UFOEU and JA2 - IMO to change them to 3D is sort of a waste of resources, unless you're going to implement certain game mechanics that make full use of 3D.

Gaming's an illusion. Just because the game can render more polygons does not make that illusion any more real than what your screen's capable of showing, and your mind's ability to make interpretations and formulate imagery to support what you're seeing.

Couldn't have said it better myself -- 3D can work particularly well in first person RPG's like the ones you mentioned, but in my opinion it has been a big mistake to completely move away from 2D graphics for isometric RPG's. Just look at the graphics of a game like The Temple of Elemental Evil, which uses a hybrid 2D/3D engine... It looks absolutely gorgeous! Or Diablo III even, which uses a similar style of engine -- if anything, Blizzard made the right choice there and is making a great showcase for what is possible when opting for a 2D isometric style (Action) RPG.

Hi all, these are all very good opinion and I would like to share what is on my mind on this topic. I am not english speaker so if I say anything funny then please bear with me.

To answer the question above, why people want old school RPG, I think it is because old school RPG is more honest in gameplay than today RPG. Because they were more honest they become more real in the player's mind. Let me explain: In the 80's it is common to have games that are hard to play. You only have 3 lives, if you got shot even once then you lose one life. It was brutally honest. RPG in that era was more forgiving, say you can save your game anywhere (that was a luxury believe me, because it was also common to use checkpoints to save). But still it is RPG in that era was harder to play (or at least forced you to commit more fully to the game) then today RPG. Especially in the Wasteland/Fallout case, if you live in the wasteland then the hardships of living the wasteland are provided to you in full by the game designer in graphical detail. You had a newly modified gun that will blow half of your enemy's head if used correctly (and it was true the other way around) and that was just what the game shows you, flatly. Fallout 3 shows this, but in its showy, slow motion glorious way, which removes the hardship parts, and only good for, well, shows and action. Somehow you don't feel the hardship part, the brutal life of the wasteland, you are not connected to it.

To give another example. Any one of you may remember Daggerfall, TES 2. See now Daggerfall has its dungeon randomly built everytime you take a quest. What surprised you as a player is how unforgiving the dungeons were. They were massive, twisting, headache-inducing tunnels of nightmare. If you were lucky you would find scraps of map but never in full (as I can remember), and the interface for the map was terrible. Pretty much all the time if you entered a dungeon in Daggerfall you would diligently save your game at the entrance, knowing that you would get lost in it for hours, sometimes days. Sometimes you just gave up the quest. Today player will probably just whine about it and ask for changes, but players back then had no choice but to continue playing. In so doing, everything becomes more real. Teleport spell become life saver, and feels really useful than otherwise. Players will use anything to remember their path, and that's exactly what you should do in a dungeon anyway.It's a dungeon, what do you expect!

So there, more realism. I think the new Wasteland will give you just that, a gripping story and really hard choices seldom found in today RPG.

Nothing to type: a basic webcam, some form recognition system coupled with OCR, and you really roll the dices... (and if a die rolls under the table, the pigrat gets a free shot at you while you are recovering it.)

Someone would cheat by making a die with only favorable sides, and the game makers or publishers would go berserk and demand all the dice be their official always online usb-corded dice for their authentication feature. :p

/edit: noticed some silly grammar

Wasteland didn't play like that.
Yep, we win. I forgot I get my name in the credits, gotta go change my Kickstarter name (or will they ask me later?).

I'm pretty sure they will ask you later. Many people are using pseudonyms or first names only on Kickstarter.

Double Fine is going to send out a questionnaire soon, asking backers for their mailing addresses and names for the credits.

Ah sounds good:)

Then how did it play?

No one to sell things to? Or easy to sell things always? No dungeons or maze or labyrinthine areas that need to be explored and cleaned of zombies, monsters or other beings that attack you immediately? No quests telling you that you need to go somewhere and find something or kill somebody? All these things can be interesting or boring depending on how they are setup.

What did the players do in Wasteland?