In an entirely unsurprising move, InXile has announced that they will be crowdfunding a sequel to their game that helped start off that whole crowdfunding craze in the first place. This will be their fourth crowdfunding project (passing Double Fine and tying with Harebrained Schemes,) previously having done Wasteland 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera, and The Bard's Tale IV, though this time they'll be using Fig, a service which coincidentally has InXile CEO Bryan Fargo on its board of advisors.

I guess the sweet teat of string-free money from willing donators desperate for good RPGs is too much for them to resist, huh? I thought Wasteland 2 was entirely decent, even if it sometimes felt like it drew a little too much inspiration from the clunky parts of the old RPGs it so imitated. Where it gets weird for me is that this is their fourth time back to the well despite the part where their previous two crowdfunding campaigns have not yet borne complete products, which is a discussion to be had all on its own. Torment is out early next year after being delayed a bajillion times (I played enough of the Beta to know that it seemed promising) but... maaaan, I don't know. It seems like the bar has been raised for Kickstarters recently, and if the campaign for the game suggests it's still in blatant obvious pre-production "we haven't actually started work on anything resembling a game" stuff, I'm not sure if I'll back it. Given how my backer updates for The Bard's Tale IV (funded a year ago) still are showing pretty videos of environments and nothing resembling actual gameplay, I'm... not optimistic. I'd really like it if I didn't have to wait 3 years to see a finished product.

EDIT: It's probably worth mentioning some of the proposed features that are already out there. The game will be set in the icy wasteland of Colorado and feature "Simultaneous and Asynchronous co-op" the latter of which I'll be very interested in seeing how it's implemented. I've never quite understood how anyone could wrangle another person, let alone multiple other people, to play a 50 hour long RPG together at the same time, but the idea of having separate players running around with different squads in the same game world sounds super intriguing.

I backed Wasteland 2, T:ToN, Bard's Tale 4, Pillars of Eternity (that one's Obsidian, I know) and a bunch of others. Of those that have actually been released, I've liked them all to varying degrees and thought they were worth what I paid.... but I'm off the crowd funding train. Too many delays and the fact I backed them compels me to follow them really closely, which means following all the silly drama surrounding them. It's just not worth it.

We're at the point now where inXile has cash and boutique publishers are stepping up and helping them fund their games without too much interference. If they make a good game, cool. I'll be happy to pay for it when it's ready.

Some of the stuff they're showing looks good, but I probably won't be backing it.

I think Divinity: Original Sin and Pillars of Eternity kinda soured my opinion of Wasteland 2 a bit. It was a decent game, but it didn't have nearly the same level of polish and too often got bogged down in a lot of fiddly mechanics that didn't add much to the experience. It's crazy that after years of this genre basically being dead that fans of it now have room to be picky, but these games are a very significant investment of time and focus so I feel like I can't just play every single one that comes along.

I also have already backed Bard's Tale IV, and even though I think inXile is likely capable of handling multiple projects at the same time, something about backing more than one feels irresponsible on my part.

I keep waiting on that PS4 version of Wasteland 2 to go on sale. I don't really have an opinion on it, but I hope they examine the small fonts and decide to give people the option to be able to read text as opposed to guess at whatever the hell is going on.

InXile should really be able to fund their own games at this point or at the very least find a publisher/investor that will give them the money they need. They have not only had three very successful kickstarter campaigns but, Wasteland 2 sold very well. According to SteamSpy Wasteland 2: Director's Cut has over 500k owner that are not backers.

Obsidian Entertainment managed to get a CRPG funded with out the use of crowd funding. Why can't InXile?

@colossalghost: The reason for Kickstarter over traditional funding is more than just money, it's also got a lot to do with creative control and self defined time constraints.

Wasteland 3 would have a lot to prove for me. I have been very let down by basically all these Kickstarted RPGs, storywise especially. And even with this said, Wasteland 2 was a step down from Divinity OS and Pillars of Eternity, both of which were really flawed to me but had their strengths outside their story.

I'm right there with you on this stuff. I never finished Wasteland 2 (I might give the Director's Cut a shot, now that I finally beat Divinity Original Sin after two years worth of on and off computer problems) but it's weird to think that there is an embarrassment of riches in the CRPG revival space now. Hell, they even made that new Baldur's Gate expansion thing. I'd love to play all of these games in concept, but in practice I don't quite have as much free time or resolve as I did a couple of years ago.

EDIT: @colossalghost To play devil's advocate for a second, it seems like Tyranny is definitely a smaller-scale, 20-30 hour sort of thing using a modified version of the Pillars engine. I'll be more interested to see if the inevitable sequel to Pillars gets crowdfunded or not.

@arbitrarywater: do you not feel at all that the quality is not there? These games all walk the walk when it comes to cRPGs and I've been happy to see the genre revived, but I really do not see the overall quality being there, especially in regards to story. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm just curious. I think Divinity OS is the best as far as mechanics but the story and world are just dreadfully boring and poorly executed. I know you have love for the genre. I just do not see the same quality level. If these games had good enough stories to pull you through them and didn't have the flaws each have had, to varying degrees, I think you would be getting through them.

Of course it's all taste, but I just do not see it with these games. But I go to the Steam page for Divinity OS II and people putting a main bullet point "similar great story/world as the first" and I just don't know what others are seeing.

Trust me I would love to be wrong on these. I may jump into Serpent in the Staglands soon looking for a good indie RPG story. Also hopefully Tides delivers that.

I wonder why they're going back to the crowd funding well. At some point, I would expect these business to be solvent. I get companies being risk averse, so they make sequels, but crowd funding a sequel... i just don't know. at least Fig gives an option for more than just receiving trinkets for being their bank loan.

I guess my response to that would be to question how many old-school CRPGs managed to nail the balance of interesting mechanics and good story back in the late 90s and early 2000s, because I can only think of a handful that didn't have serious problems on one end or the other.

In regards to the last few years of kickstarted stuff, I really enjoyed Pillars of Eternity's sort of subdued story and writing. It's a tad overwrought at times, suffers from the curse of lore-dumps, and not all the companions are winners, but as a whole I found it to measure up quite well. The combat in that game is sort of messy, but it's at least messy in the same way Infinity Engine combat was messy. As for Divinity, yeah, the story is pretty forgettable generic fantasy tripe (even with all the tweaking that they did for the Enhanced Edition,) but the combat and systems interaction stuff is fantastic and the intentionally goofy writing isn't terrible (though it wouldn't be enough on its own.) Wasteland 2 is the one I have the most problems with (especially in terms of overall polish and it imitating the wrong parts of old RPGs, as previously mentioned,) but I still played like half of that game before getting distracted by something else.

Maybe my standards are lower than yours, or maybe we come to these sorts of games for different things. I've always been more of a mechanics guy than a story guy, which is why stuff like The Age of Decadence left me a little cold (That game is super interesting, but I would hesitate to call it "good") but I'll be more than okay if Divinity Original Sin 2's story continues to underwhelm as long as the combat is still good.

I've played several hours of D:OS 2 early access. It's better written than the first one and mechanically pretty much the same. Might be worth your time when it releases next year.

Serpent in the Staglands I couldn't get into. Hated the combat, didn't find the story very compelling, and my tolerance for retro art hits its limit with chunky pixels and bad fonts.

Have you checked out Underrail? It's cheap, and might be right up your alley if you're willing to forgive mediocre story for interesting old school mechanics.

@frytup: Underrail is a game I have installed on my computer, basically waiting for the time when I have the inclination to play another weird indie RPG. Serpent in the Staglands too, actually. Though, if we're talking about backlog, I think that Baldur's Gate expansion comes first and foremost because of my morbid desire to see exactly just what the hell is up with that game. I played through the first act and actually kinda liked it, so we'll see where we go from there.

@arbitrarywater: I figure guys like inXile, double fine, harebrained schemes etc keep going back to the well, because the games probably do alright but not well enough to fund another game by itself. And probably not well enough to get a publisher interested at least not interested enough to offer terms that the studios might find acceptable.

And I mean if people are willing to keep giving you money, wouldn't you take it?

That being said I don't plan to back this. I like Fig conceptually a lot better than traditional crowd funders like Kickstarter, but the fine print in how it works is enough for me to not put my money into it.

I think you're definitely right saying that those old cRPGs aren't perfect. I don't mean to hold them up as such.

However, I think some of these games mechanically have not progressed (Divinity OS aside, which has simply outstanding combat and cool systems, no doubt). Beyond that I think it's story and writing where these games have really fallen flat for me. I think old cRPGs really have much better stories and writing in them that kept me going through them even when there were rough patches with mechanics or what have you. I have gone back to them as well so this is not just nostalgia speaking for me.

PoE is one that I did really not enjoy in that regard either, pretty much for the reasons you bring up. It felt very forced with the lore dumps and did not have interesting characters to pull you through the narrative really. To me it almost seemed like they based the story and a lot of the narrative around telling you about the lore of the game rather than delivering something interesting on its own. Though by the end a couple companions were interesting. Mechanically it was totally fine in an Infinity way, but in modern times the story better be there if you are basically just making an Infinity game again.

I really can go either way with story and mechanics, but I think some of these games are going back to an old style which is cool but not bringing the story focus that is key to this style most times, especially if you are making a game that looks like an Infinity engine game in 2016. I can like an RPG with a sub par story if the rest around it is good enough but for this style I think they are not remotely delivering on story which to me seemed to be a key part of the revival of this style of RPG. It was in my mind at least (hey, new RPGs are all big open world and graphics and showy, lets get back to the basics of RPG mechanics and a good story). I think I do have higher standards I suppose for this classic cRPG style given what I see out there as feedback for some of these games, like I said Divinity OS being praised at all for story and then I have seen PoE held up as well and do not agree with that.

@frytup: I will probably check Divinity OS II out either way. I hope the story is better but even if it isn't, as I said I find Divinity OS mechanically, especially in combat, fantastic. I played the last one almost as if it was XCOM or something at some point just hurrying from fight to fight because I so enjoyed the combat. Also I have seen I can make a lizard man, which I am a sucker for.

Serpents certainly looks old as hell so I see how you could bounce off of it. The developer is now making another very intentionally retro Cyberpunk game that looks really cool and it's interesting how far they will lean into that. Anyways, I am not sure I will like it either but I just find the initial story pitch so awesome. I love Greek myths about gods descending to the mortal realm and taking mortal form and have thought it'd be cool to see in an RPG.

@colossalghost: Just thought I should mention, Wasteland 2 had a free weekend back in June so I wouldn't be surprised if those numbers are not 100% accurate. And if they like the experience they've had with kickstarer/crowdfunding so far, why would they stop?

Hey all, the campaign is up, complete with a fairly cringe-worthy video where game developers attempt to act. The goal is $2.75 Million and has already been funded for half, so I guess there are people out there who really liked Wasteland 2, and they've included one of those pie charts showing where the funding is going. I got an email giving me $5 off my pledge (seemingly as some sort of concession to their previous backers) so against my better judgement I've backed it for $20. I figure that I can cancel if I decide I don't really want to go through another wave of seemingly endless insubstantial backer updates and inevitable delays, but... I dunno. There's still a part of me that finds it incredibly novel that these sorts of games are being made again, even if Wasteland 2 was probably my least favorite of the big ones I've backed.

That said, I think it's a little presumptuous to tout that they're bringing back the core writing team from Torment when that game isn't even out yet. Those guys have all done good stuff in the past, but I don't think that's quite the gimme Brian Fargo is going for.