Characters

Reconstruction is underway

My crew and I had an exceedingly rough time after leaving the Ranger Citadel for the first time. We talked our way out of our first run-in with a group of Mad Max rejects hanging around an antenna station we were supposed to hook some gizmo up to, but our second run-in with a far less agreeable gang of cutthroats left us bruised, battered, and running low on meds and ammo alike.

We managed to limp back to Ranger HQ nursing our wounded pride as much as our wounded everything else. And after spending our last dollar replenishing ammo, trauma kits, and med-packs, I had to face the grim realization that there would be no coming back from another disaster like that. But what else could we do? We started scavenging around the HQ, looking for anyone and anything that might increase our odds of surviving the next journey outside the Citadel’s walls.

That’s when we spotted a tall woman in her early forties, standing alone and forlorn near a row of makeshift grave sites. She wore the garb of an experienced ranger, and her scars testified to her having earned it. We approached her and started talking. She was hesitant at first, reluctant to engage us, but when the topic of our mission to recover one of her fallen Ranger brethren came up her eyes shone with a terrifying fury. With gritted teeth, she did not request, but instead demanded that she accompany us.

Not many people turned out for the big speech

The difference between the seasoned vet, Angela Deth, and us scrubs couldn’t have been plainer. Taking a single shot would almost always result in one of us coming awful close to taking a dirt nap, but it just seemed to make Angela mad. She was a one-woman killing machine, and that machine let us blaze through whole tribes of raiders with impunity.

As we carved our way through the wastes I began to suspect that Angela didn’t quite respect my authority as team leader. She seemed to take exception to my preference for asking questions first and shooting later, and when the shooting did start Angela had a habit of flying into a frenzy and disregarding my orders completely. I didn’t want to seem weak in front of the other scrubs, but we couldn’t afford to lose Angela either; instead, I doubled down extra hard on improving my leadership skills, and eventually won Angela’s respect, and thereby her obedience.

I hope the above vignette gives some insight into the sorts of wonderful character interactions you can expect from Wasteland 2 (I say “sorts”, because your interactions will not be the same), because they took me completely by surprise. After clicking New Game for the first time and learning that I could create four characters of my own I gave up any hope of adventuring with characters who had their own dialogue, backstories, and so on. Fortunately, Angela proved me wrong on that count, and I later learned that there a lot of other recruitable characters out there, and up to seven of them could be in your party at any given time.