Please help tell others what Wasteland was

[Joby]

Let's help out those who may not be familiar with Wasteland. We've seen an incredible surge of interest in Wasteland from the Kickstarter project, but many of the supporters are not familiar or ever played Wasteland. Many supporters only played Fallout and may think of Wasteland as Fallout.

Please help add in topics to this section that aid the Wasteland newbie to better understand and see what the Wasteland world was like.

If YOU are someone who never played Wasteland, please post questions you might have about the game! You've come to the right place to find out about Wasteland and what Wasteland 2 might become!

[Vryheid]

Wasteland is a post-apocalyptic RPG which was significant due to its unique plot, open-ended environment, and for being generally considered the spiritual predecessor to the Fallout series. It developed by Interplay Production, produced by EA Games, and released for the Apple II in 1988. The game was later ported to Commodore 64, the IBM platform and at least two other later RPG collections. The basic plot is that America is struggling to rebuild in the 21st century after an apocalyptic nuclear war with the Soviet Union. You're command a group of Desert Rangers assigned to restore order and investigate the local Nevada deserts. Along the way you'll help groups of struggling civilians, fight crime and unearth a plot that could threaten the future of humanity as we know it.

The combat in Wasteland featured a turn-based battle system not unlike the early Final Fantasy games, but with several unique quirks. Ranged weapons were generally ammo based, meaning conserving ammunition and balancing their use with melee weapons was a major concern. There were no instantaneous healing items like potions you would expect in most RPGs. Getting seriously wounded was very dangerous, and required expensive doctor treatment or the use of a party medic to even begin to recover from. To counteract this, you could replace incapacitated Rangers with brand new recruits at any point in the game by visiting your Ranger base. Characters were by no means expendable, but attempting to battle your way in Wasteland without a fully equipped party with a variety of skills was a surefire path to the classic game over screen.



Wasteland was also one of the first RPGs where your allied companions were not all mindless drones- while you always maintained to control of your four core Rangers, other NPCs could join your party and would often act out on their own initiative in combat.They might refuse to equip or give up certain items and would leave or join your party as it pleased them. There were a great deal of recruitable companions in this game, giving you a lot of varied personalities to work with. This trend towards NPC independence continued in many future RPGs.

And then there were the enemies. Mutated lizards, zombie dogs, sand worms, cyborg motorcycle hybrids, robotic scorpions, and all sorts of heavily armed thugs were waiting around every corner, determined to end your existence. Wasteland was infamous for the over the top descriptions of attacks and in-game deaths, such as brutally pummeling a disgruntled dog owner to death with a book or blasting someone apart with a machine gun. It set an attitude for the game which was gritty and rather unique for that era RPGs.



The skill system was a major factor in Wasteland. There were over 30 skills in the game, varying from the practical (Picklock, Assault Rifle, Brawling) to the bizarre (Bureaucracy, Clone Tech, Toaster Repair). Needless to say, some skills were very situational. Aside from having rather obvious implications in combat, skills were also used to solve quests and progress through obstacles in the environment. A jammed gate, for example, might be lockpicked, wedged open with a crowbar, climbed over, or simply blown open with explosives. All of the potential responses to obstacles depended on individual skills of each party member, which could lead to unique strategies being implemented in every playthrough depending on how you built your team.

Amazingly enough, despite having a fleshed out story, a great deal of graphics, and and over a dozen major towns and bases to explore, the entire game could be fit in under 675 kb- less than a single floppy disk. Part of how the developers managed this was by putting all the long dialogue and description strings in the game inside of a physical booklet included with the manual. The game would refer players to specific pages during the game, at which point they would read the appropriate dialogue. To prevent people from cheating by reading through these dialogue quotes without actually playing through the game, several "decoy" quotes were added including an entirely fake (and hilarious) storyline involving the Rangers heading to Mars and dramatically fighting off alien invaders. Because these quotes are so integral to understanding the storyline, copies of the books can easily be found online.



This rather fascinating interview with Brian Fargo gives a fairly good idea of the inspirations behind the game and what role it played in the development of later Interplay titles. Licensing issues appears to be the main reason that a Wasteland 2 was never produced (until now at least) and the Fallout series was created instead. There are many references to Wasteland which can be found in the Fallout series, even the modern titles like New Vegas.

For those of you simply interested in experiencing the game without playing through it, an extremely well-made Let's Play of the game was posted on Youtube, complete with added ambient music and all of the manual dialogue read out loud. You can find it here if you're interested.

(credits to MobyGames for the pics)

[Balls Out 3]

I myself am fairly new to Wasteland, so I've been brushing up on it. Here are some useful links I've found:

The Wasteland Wiki
http://wasteland.wikia.com/wiki/Wasteland_Wiki

And two Youtube playthroughs of Wasteland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvYcu5qa ... 6E726A508F
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vDExZXB ... sults_main

[wren]

That was a pretty good intro. Reminded me of one of my peeves with Fallout--can't pick the lock, okay, why can't I beat the door down or blow it open!? And the paragraph book was cool. I still have it, lol.

[clansittingducks]

Enjoyed this game and Fallout 1 and 2. Cant wait to see it finished

[brokentool]

thanks so much for this thread! and all the useful links. just what i need, to expand my knowledge of the game. i am a huge fan of the old fallout series and i knew of wasteland, but not much about it.

things in the wastes are about to change =)

i was SO happy when i learned about this project and immediately backed it when i could. go inX!

[Gilgameš]

This has explained much, and I have decided I will pick up Wasteland once more. This time it is going to stay. If I feel creative, I might write something of a newbie's introduction to the game, that might be interesting.

[Tabakhi]

I myself am fairly new to Wasteland, so I've been brushing up on it. Here are some useful links I've found:

The Wasteland Wiki
http://wasteland.wikia.com/wiki/Wasteland_Wiki

And two Youtube playthroughs of Wasteland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvYcu5qa ... 6E726A508F
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vDExZXB ... sults_main

Thanks for the links, glad I wont be completely clueless going into W2. Not as good as playing the game myself but still enjoyable.

[Drool]

Thanks for the links, glad I wont be completely clueless going into W2. Not as good as playing the game myself but still enjoyable.

There's also a screen shot LP on http://archive.vg/ of a guy going through it for the first time. He's not done with it yet, but he's mostly done.

Also, since the original will be included in WL2, you'll be able to play it for yourself.

[johneddy]

Thanks for the tips and game info guys!...this would gonna be interesting to play...im looking forward i playing with my friends soon...

[allen05]

Simple:
1. No first person shooter plz, just stick with Camera Angle Lock to Isometric or hexagon like F1 and 2, up to you. (easy develop for you, less headache for us)
2. No cheap 3D look, goes with the Dark theme style, painted look, (tactics is too bright, too cartoonish and characters few like a robot), the demo in unity feel like a dirt cheap 3D game with sharp edges (but it's not a production version, so i'm not really complaining )
3. Turn based plz, stick with the original (again easy develop for you, less headache for us)

[Drool]

Simple:
1. No first person shooter plz, just stick with Camera Angle Lock to Isometric or hexagon like F1 and 2, up to you. (easy develop for you, less headache for us)
3. Turn based plz, stick with the original (again easy develop for you, less headache for us)

Um. Did you read the vision document, or even the Kickstarter page?

[GreggD]

So yeah, based on what I've seen in screens from the original, and the cover art from both (the single character looking at a group down a wide road), is it safe to assume that there will be judicious amounts of overgrowth in some areas of the game? I would love that to be the case, after playing all four fallout RPGs, and very, very rarely seeing any kind of greenery. Regardless, I'm looking forward to it, and I know enough about the old game from watching videos and reading wiki entries and the like to understand what the game was all about.

[Drool]

is it safe to assume that their will be judicious amounts of overgrowth in some areas of the game?

From what we've been told, it will depend on the area we're in. Obviously, there won't be evergreens in the middle of the desert, but they aren't going in the "blasted heath" style of Fallout. I expect there to be quite a bit of greenery, especially when the game moves to California. Most of the additional concept art also features greenery. There's another concept piece somewhere showing an overgrown city from above, too.

[GreggD]

is it safe to assume that their will be judicious amounts of overgrowth in some areas of the game?

From what we've been told, it will depend on the area we're in. Obviously, there won't be evergreens in the middle of the desert, but they aren't going in the "blasted heath" style of Fallout. I expect there to be quite a bit of greenery, especially when the game moves to California. Most of the additional concept art also features greenery. There's another concept piece somewhere showing an overgrown city from above, too.

I figured as much, based on the reasons you gave. Thank you for backing up my reasoning.

[Grohal]

Shortly said:

It was a best of mix (in playstyle) of Ulitima & The Bard's Tale

with an awesome amount of skills

in an rarely used setting

and it was (and still is) awesome.



In the time of release, the younger of you can't remember this of course, the cold war was still a "fresh" memory - so the possibility of nuclear war happening was not so far removed from the mind as it is today.
This gave the setting an light, uneasy undertone - like when watching a horrormovie, an you expect the worst to happen in the next 30 seconds - but far more subtle, because you explored something that could have happened - not some unlikely fantasystuff like undead or an orc-invasion.

You could experiment with situations and things (like that lone mortar for which you found some shells), and the game didn't give you (not always at least) rewards for doing so, but giving you innocents killed accident or even worse people that didn't know what hit them (and surely not that it was you), who just were dying in your arms and giving you that feeling of guilt and deep regret that no Ultima could ever give you, because in some cases you couldn't simple reload with an "Ups" on your lips - the game saved for you, right after your murder on the only savegame existing. This were consequences!

Gods, I really loved (and still love) Wasteland for this.

The other things were already written (and probadly some of the things I wrote too). This is just how I'd describe the things that made Wasteland unique in short.