RPGs tend to feature a ton of characters in the form of villagers and merchants, but many of them have only a few lines of dialogue and little personality. Wasteland 2 is aiming to be more dynamic, as inXile president Matt Findley says that characters are individually crafted to react differently to various party compositions.

Findley used one particular merchant as an example, speaking to RPS.

"The conversation that he has with you is really dependent on so many different factors--the makeup of the party. He has different lines if you come up with an all-women party or if there’s a really high charisma male. There are little flags that he’ll react to. That particular character loves all-women parties, but some characters might not give any information to an all-women party, because they might have a problem with women.

"The idea is to make each NPC unique in their world view. A guy might be more likely to give women information or more likely to give men information. This guy specifically, I think he says something inappropriate, and then raises his prices."

Findley says they're not trying to make any kind of political or social statement, necessarily, but rather to fill the world with believable characters that have their own biases. "We want to be true to the individual characters, and not try to apply some sort of global morality to all the characters in the world," he said. "We want to allow the characters to be unique and to have their own world view and to be consistent."