Wasteland 3 Squad choices, frozen consequences

From there, you decide who to trust. Cults, gangs, warring factions and bitter sibling rivalries all want something, and the decisions you make ripple across Colorado, its people and the story you get. There are rarely clean good-or-bad options, just competing interests and moral grey areas, and your reputation grows out of them. One run can end with you as the territory's savior; another, its worst nightmare. The story is dark and often grim, but it keeps a dry, dark sense of humor running underneath, and the writing knows when to land a joke.

You create up to six Rangers with no fixed classes: attributes, skills, perks and quirks combine into whatever specialists you want, from a sniper with a quirk that refunds action points on a kill to a medic who talks their way past trouble. Perks mostly add new mechanics rather than raw damage, so a build changes how you play, not just how hard you hit. Between missions you build up a new base from scratch and train recruits. And you get a battle truck, upgradeable into a hardened, weapon-bristling war beast that mows down enemies on the frozen wastes.

The whole campaign works in online co-op, and it suits the game: turn-based fights leave room to talk tactics, argue over dialogue choices and decide together who lives. Sharing decisions with someone else makes the ethical dilemmas sharper, because now you have to agree on them. Build complementary squads, split the skills between you, and roll up to the cult compound in one shared battle truck. It is a relaxed way to play a heavy game: coordinate, take your turns, and laugh at what the wasteland throws at you next.