History VideoGame / Wasteland2

* ProveIAmNotBluffing: The Servants of the Mushroom Cloud may or may not [[spoiler: possess a live Titan [=II ICBM=], but nobody is insane enough to check if that's just a bluff]], while the monks do their best to maintain the ambiguity. [[spoiler: For the record: yes, they do have a live nuclear missile. And yes, they ''are'' willing to blow it up if another group takes control of Titan's Pass.]]

* PocketProtector: You can find a specific item on the body of a guy with bullet holes everywhere but under his protector. Useful!

* PocketProtector: You can find a specific VendorTrash on the body of a guy with bullet holes everywhere but under his protector. Useful!

* UnstableEquilibrium: It's ''very'' easy to completely break the economy by selling specific VendorTrash to traders paying premium prices for it. This can be achieved as soon as getting inside Ranger Citadel, allowing you to equip your Rangers with top gear and tons of spare ammo.

* VendorTrash: There are a ''lot'' of things you can pick on your way have no purpose but to provide some FlavorText and sell for scrap. There is even a button during barter to sell items classified in-game as "junk", along with whatever you've personally marked as such.

* WorthlessYellowRocks: Pre-war dollar bills are not only worthless VendorTrash, but also their purpose or who this Franklin guy is are completely forgotten.

** Ralphy is [[InformedAttribute considered as one]] by all the Rail Nomads, which is the only reason he is allowed to join Echo Team. Even his mother consider this as having one mouth less to feed. He also has many flavour texts presenting him as a somewhat wide eyed tribal kid. However, [[GameplayAndStorySegregation he is one of the best and most reliable recruits you can get]], while also saving you a lot of trouble with Toaster Repair skill.

* LipstickLesbian: Magee, married to Hopi, in Damonta. Take Chisel with you, and he will hit on her, leading her to rebuff his advances on the ground that a) she is lesbian and b) even is she wanted to be with a man, she would take someone younger (Chisel is 72).

* OnceDoneNeverForgotten: In the first game a lot of players either accidentally or purposely shot a kid in a town that was unarmed (Bobby), his dog (Rex), and one that only had a BB gun (Red Ryder). 15 years later, Highpool still doesn't like the Rangers. It goes even further if you decide to help Agricultural Center instead - the radio operator from Highpool will instantly chew Rangers for putting Highpool always in the end. If Ag Center is left alone, they will only send desperate calls for help rather than chewing Rangers.

* OvershadowedByAwesome: Rose starts with an unique gun - a flintlock tinkered to fire buckshot in ''really'' wide cone. Being a tier 1 weapon, it gets completely obsolete halfway through Ag Center. Unfortunately, since it's flagged as a personal item, Rose will never part with it, so it will clutter her inventory for the entire game[[note]]If conducting business with Diamondback Militia, all weapons are temporarily confiscated when starting negotiations - that's the only time Rose's Thorn can be ditched[[/note]].
* PocketProtector: You can find a specific VendorTrash on the body of a guy who was shoot everywhere, but not in the place he got himself covered.
* PopulationXAndCounting: Next to the entrance to Rail Nomad Camp there is a sign stating current population. How low it will get is directly tied with players' action.
* PracticalCurrency: Scrap metal is the currency of both Arizona and California now: in a post-apocalyptic world, various bits and bobs that can no longer be manufactured in large amounts are much more valuable than paper. In fact it's lampshaded when you go into Prison Valley, where the inhabitants had to exchange all their scrap for 'scrip' which is worthless outside of Prison Valley, and you can find a cache of 'Greenback' - hundreds of dollars in paper money which are ''completely worthless''. And heavy, too. Flavor text has you asking just who this 'Franklin' guy is.
* PressXToDie: Go ahead. Press the BigRedButton on the well maintained Davy Crockett.

** There's a guy in the Ranger Citadel who's selling cheap guns on the sly. They have a 95% jam chance (as if a weapon with a 4% jam chance doesn't jam often enough)[[note]]They can be still stripped into gun parts and accessories, but that's literally the only use you can get out of them[[/note]].
** The BigRedButton on the Davy Crockett nuclear launcher is so blatant, there is an achievement to goad people into still pressing it.

* TeethClenchedTeamwork: Few ''[[BittersweetEnding better]]'' ways of ending conflict between Desert Rangers and Red Sckorpion Militia will lead to such situation, with different delay for InevitableMutualBetrayal. [[spoiler: With extra effort and a [[TheFace gifted negotiator]], Rangers and Militiamen may put their differences aside and turn instead into FireForgedFriends, bringing order to Arizona]].

** Red Scorpions call it "Happy Valley", but the locals call it Prison Valley. It's a honeypot trap designed to attract farmers from around into coming and then take their land and put them into slave-like servitude. The farm itself is very smooth, clean and efficient, but it's more like a slave plantation than the envisioned "demo version" of what homesteaders can achieve there.

* DeathbringerTheAdorable: The Night Terror, if you ignore his ... er ... ''unusual'' dietary preferences.

** To a lesser extent, if [[spoiler: Rail Nomads Camp is rushed, there is a weapon stache containing unique Farsight sniper rifle. It is perfectly capable of killing early game enemies in single shot and only gets outdated once Canyon of Titan is reached. And there is ''another'', even easier to find stache containing regular Karabiner sniper rifle on regular basis, still giving a massive edge]].

** Red Scorpion Militia are a gang of organised raiders that took Ranger Center after Rangers moved to the Citadel. They are styling themselves as another law-abiding group of protectors, but they are also brutal, extortion-based thugs who rule with heavy hand over their "turf". They say they provide protection but they don't even provide that, when Highpool is attacked by the Wrecking Crew.

** The truth is a tad bit more complicated: [[spoiler: yes, the Servants are suicidal and trigger-happy, and they would more likely used that nuke eventually... but the explosion is caused by doctor Sidney Kyle, a plant of the Children of the Citadel, dispatched into the area to cause as much chaos as possible. Everyone assuming it was the Servants make things so much easier for her]].

* FeudalFuture: Red Scorpions act like feudal overlords combined with mafia, "owning" everything and everyone in their territory. In return they provide protection from other raiders.

** Commander Robert Danforth of Red Scorpion Militia, [[spoiler: aka Bobby from the first game]] has a well-justified grudge against Desert Rangers, since [[spoiler: he was almost killed as a kid and his dog was shot without a sigle word by Snake Vargas]].
** Angela Deth joins Team Echo and breakes almost all possible regulations in the process, since all she cares about is finding out who and why killed her beloved Ace. The only reason Vargas allows for any of that is because he's Angela's best friend.

* MeaningfulName: Red Scorpion Militia currency is literally named 'skrip', i.e. scrip, the worthless currency used in company towns to prevent workers building up enough cash reserves to find a less abusive employer.
* MinmaxersDelight: Director's Cut introduced quirk and perk system similar to ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}''. With right set of starting quirk, skills and perks it is possible to make rangers ''far'' stronger than they would normally be for minimal or no real trade-off.

* TeethClenchedTeamwork: Few ''[[BittersweetEnding better]]'' ways of ending conflict between Desert Rangers and Red Scorpion Militia will lead to such situation, with different delay for InevitableMutualBetrayal. [[spoiler: With extra effort and [[TheFace gifted negotiator]], Rangers and Militiamen may put their differences aside and turn instead into FireForgedFriends, bringing order to Arizona]].
* TheComputerIsALyingBastard: The percentages listed for recovery of gun mods upon stripping a weapon are often wrong, and vastly overstate the likelihood that you'll get something useful. There were a number of complaints on this, and [[https://forums.inxile-entertainment.com/viewtopic.php?t=14438&start=20 one member of the Dev team came on to state that everyone was wrong]], it was just confirmation bias, etc. People called him out on it, he checked and it was confirmed that the coding was wrong and didn't match the tooltips. It was noted to be fixed in the next patch....which never happened.

* YouWouldntShootMe: The diary found around prison ends with the farmer writing it asking what are the Scorpions gonna do - shoot him? [[ThatWasTheLastEntry That's the final entry in the book]].

* MeaningfulName: Red Scorpion Militia currency is literally named scrib.
* MinmaxersDelight: Director's Cut introduced quirk and perk system similar to VideoGame/{{Fallout}}. With right set of starting quirk, skills and perks it is possible to make rangers ''far'' stronger than they would normally be for minimal or no real trade-off.

* MutuallyAssuredDestruction: The Servants of the Mushroom Cloud adhere to this as a ''religious'' doctrine, on both a micro and a macro scale. The leadership threatens to detonate a nuclear warhead to wipe out the entire area if any other faction tries to take over.

** If you can persuade a goat to follow you, you get a Perception buff. You also get a constantly bleating goat following you.

* ProveIAmNotBluffing: The Servants of the Mushroom Cloud may or may not [[spoiler: possess a live Titan [=II ICBM=], but nobody is insane enough to check if that's just a bluff]], while the monks do their best to maintain the ambiguity. [[spoiler: For the record: yes, they do have a live nuclear missile. And yes they ''are'' willing to blow it up if another group takes control of Titan's Pass.]]

* TheRemnant: The Desert Rangers are the remnants of a US Army division that was in Arizona when the bombs fell. [[spoiler: A bunch of mutants still follow Finster... Well Finster before he went insane with the Android Body.]]

* EnemyChatter: Often happens when you sneak behind enemy position instead of knocking to the front door. In some cases it's advised to shoot them before they finish their talk, or they can do something stupid, like triggering a trap on container, destroying it's content in the process.

* NonstandardGameOver: Tampering with [[spoiler: the Davy Crockett nuclear launcher]] in Ranger Citadel will lead to [[spoiler: it's detonation, literally wiping out the Rangers]]. It also comes with a very spoiler-heavy endgame card, describing events and characters that player at this point of game couldn't even know.

* OvershadowedByAwesome: Rose starts with an unique gun - a flintlock tinkered to fire buckshot in ''really'' wide cone. Being a tier 1 weapon, it gets completely obsolete halfway through Ag Center. Unfortunately, since it's flagged as a personal item, Rose will never part with it, so it will clutter her inventory for the entire game[[note]]If conducting business with Diamondback Militia, all weapons are temporarly confiscated when starting negotiations - that's the only time Rose's Thorn can be ditched[[/note]].

* UnstableEquilibrium: It's ''very'' easy to completely break the economy by selling specific VendorTrash to traders paying premium prices for it. This can be achieved as soon as getting inside Ranger Citadel, allowing to equip your Rangers with top gear and tons of spare ammo.

* FiveManBand: Invoking this trope is a viable strategy in this game; [[TheLeader Good leadership skills]] are useful for making sure [=NPCs=] go rogue less often, you need an {{Ambadassador}} to get the best results from dialogue, [[TheSmartGuy scientific skills can avoid combat in certain situations or at least make them easier]] while [[TheLancer other skills have their uses in various locations]] and, of course, [[TheBigGuy having someone to lug around gear and carry heavy weapons]] is useful especially against tougher enemies. [=NPCs=] can fall under TheSixthRanger.

* RealityEnsues:
** Pistols aren't penalised in close range, but that's their only range. They are best as a secondary weapon for Snipers - if you can spare points for training. While ammunition is plentiful, that ammo is also used for [=SMGs=], which are generally better at close range than pistols. There's very, very few reasons to specialize in pistols instead of another weapon (usually due to weight concerns).
** Three of the companions you can pick are a raider who only wants to join you for the killing, a drunk hobo who only wants to 'live a life of danger', and an old wannabe-badass with delusions of grandeur. Unsurprisingly, none of them are team players, and require a high leadership level to stop them going rogue and wasting ammo every turn.
** The game starts out implying that you're out to make the Wasteland a better place, and you are. But then you have to choose whether to respond to Ag Center or Highpool first, and no matter what happens, one of those places will be overrun and destroyed. Turns out being the heroes still doesn't let you be in two places at once.

** There's a guy in the Ranger Citadel who's selling cheap guns on the sly. They have a 95% jam chance (as if a weapon with a 4% jam chance doesn't jam often enough).

* SniperPistol: It's entirely possible to outfit a pistol with a long barrel and a scope, giving them the range of a medium-tier rifle, [[RealityEnsues while retaining pistol stopping power]].

** Savvy players will forgo Luck. Contrary to claims, it ''[[https://forums.inxile-entertainment.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=10819&p=139805&hilit=luck+loot#p138152 does not]]'' affect item drops. Its actually effects are numerous bonuses normally provided by other stats/skills, but they're generally so diminished (or worthless in the first place) that even their cumulative effect is negligible.

* ArmorIsUseless: Damage reduction from armor is based on how much its AC exceeds an attack's penetration value. While this can theoretical reduce damage by a lot, armor that is not [[DiscOneNuke way above your current enemies' place in the power curve]] tends to reduces damage by about 0-20% for light armor and 0-30% for heavy armor - ''if at all'', since the enemies can in turn have [[ThisIsGonnaSuck weapons multiple tiers above currently worn armor]]. The downsides to using armor are often far more severe: it's expensive, makes you ''far'' more vulnerable to energy weapons, and the movement penalties for heavy armor are crippling even when you meet the strength requirements. ''Director's Cut'' reworked energy weapons so they only do extra damage to metallic armor (the heavier kind in a given tier). The removes the downsides to wearing light armor (although it still doesn't ''help'' much) and makes metallic/heavy armor even ''worse''.

* AnyoneCanDie: The game just opens with Ace's funeral and the cementary is full of graves of important characters and potent recruits from the previous game. [[spoiler:Not even the "main" characters from first game are safe. The squad can find out Hell Razor was murdered, while upon trying to reach California, Angela Deth will seem to die, too. Trasher is then killed when Matthias invades the Citadel. It is even possible for Snake Vargas to bite it in a suicidal mission, but in this case this is left to player's decision and the game will chew you for doing so]]. Hell, there are even replacements waiting in the Citadel, recruitable only if any of your four starting recruits die.

A third game, ''[[VideoGame/Wasteland3 Wasteland 3]]'', was successfully funded in November 2016, and is currently in development [[https://www.fig.co/campaigns/wasteland-3/updates/922 for a Spring 2020 release]]. Its most commonly known change is an ''icy'' apocalypse, where you're more likely to be killed by hypothermia than dehydration - in the frozen wastelands of ''Colorado''.

* AnyoneCanDie: The game just opens with Ace's funeral and the cementary is full of graves of important characters and potent recruits from the previous game. [[spoiler:Not even the "main" characters from first game are safe. The squad can find out Hell Razor was murdered, while upon trying to reach California, Angela Deth will die, too. Trasher is then killed when Matthias invades the Citadel. It is even possible for Snake Vargas to bite it in a suicidal mission, but in this case this is left to player's decision and the game will chew you for doing so]]. Hell, there are even replacements waiting in the Citadel, recruitable only if any of your four starting recruits die.

A third game, ''[[https://www.fig.co/campaigns/wasteland-3#about Wasteland 3]]'', was successfully funded in November 2016, and is currently in development [[https://www.fig.co/campaigns/wasteland-3/updates/922 for a Spring 2020 release]]. Its most commonly known change is an ''icy'' apocalypse, where you're more likely to be killed by hypothermia than dehydration - in the frozen wastelands of ''Colorado''.

* LateCharacterSyndrome: Unfortunately, due to the way most non-combat skills are useless if redundant, picking up characters past the first third of the game or so isn't usually worthwhile unless you just like the character's personality, since you have no option to re-spec a character's skill points once they're spent. That's not to mention that many of the recruitable companions have terrible attribute allocation. To add insult to injury, the shrines that you encounter throughout the game will give a one-time skill point or experience point bonus based upon the ''party'' visiting them, not each individual character. Brother Thomas may be an [[AvertedTrope aversion]], as he has high intelligence and his non-combat skills are both in First Aid and Surgeon, the few skills where it pays to have a little redundancy.

* PlayerPunch:
** Go ahead, pick in the very begining of the game which settlement will be completely destroyed and its population killed. Oh, and don't forget this choice will also have a great impact on all other communities in Arizona. [[spoiler: And no, you can't save both. The wasteland is harsh, Ranger. Live with your choices.]]
** No matter how hard you try, you just can't save everyone. Some deaths are scripted. Some are inevetable. But the most gut-wrenching ones? All the dead bodies during random encounters, making you feel guilty for arriving just few minutes too late to save the day.
** [[spoiler: [[AllForNothing Doctor Tidemann, the one you could cure from his cancer]], is scripted to die regardless during Matthias attack on Ranger Citadel]].

** The BigRedButton on the Davy Crockett nuclear launcher.

* ButterflyOfDoom: A DummiedOut ending has the Rail Nomads camp utterly wiped out by robots if and only if the player's party turned over a turtle that was stuck on its back.

* ShortRangeShotgun: Played with. Shotguns have relatively short range in general, slightly better accuracy at near-point range. On the other hand, they fire a cone of uniform damage up to their ArbitraryMaximumRange, hence the tutorial box mentioning to use them at the edge of their maximum range to hit more targets with one shot.

* SmallSecludedWorld: Much more present than in the first game and for a good reason. When clouds of radiation changed their patterns, Arizona became completely cut out from the outside world. Some even believe there is ''no'' outside world now. The plot begins when Radio signals from outside the cloud starts broadcasting. [[spoiler: Eventually, your team will make its way to California, which is...starkly different from the desert wasteland, to say the least.]]

* KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter: To an extent. Energy weapons are no longer pretty much ''required'' to beat the game like in the original ''Wasteland'', and tend to have a high AP cost. The game seems to run on the premise that an energy pistol is easily better than a kinetic one, but an energy rifle is too costly to use compared to a regular rifle. Energy weapons, though, are by far better to use against enemies with high AC than kinetic weapons, especially in vanilla game.

** Ralphy is [[InformedAttribute considered as one]] by all the Rail Nomads, which is the only reason you he is allowed to join Echo Team. Even his mother consider this as having one mouth less to feed. He also has many flavour texts presenting him as a somewhat wide eyed tribal kid. However, [[GameplayAndStorySegregation he is one of the best and most reliable recruits you can get]], while also saving you a lot of trouble with Toaster Repair skill.

* MasterOfAll: Although Assault Rifles are second to most other weapons in every category (single-round damage, ability to do burst damage, range, penetration, etc.), their versatility and availability of ammo makes them a great all-around weapon, with the exception of energy weapons against heavily-armored foes.
* MasterOfNone: Attempting to give a character too many different skills will result in low skill levels in each category. Your best bet is to have each character specialize with different weapons and skills.

* CrowbarCombatant: Crowbars are mid-tier blunt weapons and when they show up, they rock in their class. Even more so when modded.