SO quick update....Wasteland 2 was released, and I spent a lot of time binge-playing it in the last few weeks.  I finished the about a week ago.
Thoroughly enjoyed it - it really is a return to the classic RPG's of the golden era. No dumbing down and lots of freedom (also to fuck things up), and great turn-based combat and generally fun interaction with the world. I also enjoyed the relatively deep character creation, took hours for that alone. I also made an effort to write the backstories as you might have seen on Steam. 
The game isn't perfect, though. There were some bugged quests in the later part of the game, and the camera can get a bit fidgety at times. Those things will be fixed in upcoming updates I'm sure. I'm also not convinced by some less important game mechanics which (for me) can take the fun away a little by making you wait or backtrack a lot in certain areas. A lot of these things were implemented this way because of feedback the developers got from "old school gamers" on their forums, but I would argue that not everything that was old school was necessarily contributing to the gameplay. An example is the use of skills like lockpicking or demolitions etc. Each attempt will show as a bar filling up slowly, showing your character fiddling with a lock or disarming a bomb. It only takes a few seconds each time, but you have to kind of sit there and wait for it to finish to see if you were succesful or not. It's a bit of a pointless waste of time in the long run. Athough it does create a sense of suspense when you are low on skill and are hoping for a lucky break, it just isn't worth it at 70%+ chance levels.
The stats and skill system is also a little strange. While stats have their own direct influence on a lot of things and do affect most skills in one way or another, they are (to some extent) unrelated. You can be a 1 charisma character with 10 ranks in Kiss Ass (the 'charmer' dialogue skill) and do just as well as a 10 charisma character, and you can have one with 1 intelligence and 10 ranks in 'Smart Ass' (the 'clever' dialogue skill). You can see how that feels a little strange from a roleplaying perspective. I would argue that they should implement a system where you can only realistically reach a certain level in a skill based on your related stat. I think it already works that way for the 'surgeon' skill (you can't max it out with less than 10 intelligence), so it's strange it doesn't for the others.
Anyway, all of those are fairly minor problems. The game world creation and writing are solid, the characters are memorable and the combat feels really good. It's also a huge game, with around 40-50 hours of gameplay easily in one run, and offers lots of alternative solutions to most quests. Definitely recommended! If you're not in a hurry you may want to wait until they patch up some things a little bit more, but other than that I can't see any reason for not playing it.
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