In preparation for the Wasteland 3 expansion "The Battle of Steeltown" scheduled for June 3, InXile Entertainment has outlined the next free update, patch 1.4.0. An upgrade to the animal companion system is part of it, which means that Polly, the swearing parrot, will have an even dirtier mouth. Anything goes.

Polly will gain the ability to lose her will to fight to take advantage of her swearing, and all animal companions will have a kennel to return to. Also, all animal companions will now return to their kennels. There is no longer a species limit, and instead of having only one of each animal, you can have multiple goats, cats, and chickens, and the character portraits of party members will show an icon and health bar indicating which pet they have.

As for companions, a bug that sometimes caused human and robotic followers to disappear during the game has finally been fixed. I noticed that Provost was missing deep into my playthrough, and I didn't want to reload an hours-old save to resurrect him.

Listen to the parrot's cries in InXile's feature preview. There's also a separate preview of the crafting system included in patch 1.4.0, which allows you to turn scrap into gear. With this and a party full of cats, the wasteland will be even more of a wasteland.

Here are the best character builds for Wasteland 3.