Describe the Wasteland world

[Joby]

Let's help out those who may not be familiar with Wasteland:

Describe the Wasteland world and how it was unique...

Go!

[Vryheid]

If Fallout was I Love Lucy mixed with Full Metal Jacket, then Wasteland was Fist of the North Star with a hint of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Wasteland universe was unforgiving, violent, and at times borderline insane. Your team is dumped in the middle of it, leaving you to try to survive all kinds of natural hazards, pummel local crooks and mutated animals in a ridiculously gratuitous fashion, and negotiate with local crackpots to figure out where to get supplies and who exactly needs saving.

The art style in particular really contributed to the overall effect. Right from the start, you'll notice a surreal, almost ghostly shading in the creatures and NPCs you encounter:



This contrast between dark, pastel colors and pale shades or grey creates the effect that the life is being drained from the very creatures who live in the Nevada deserts. It's as if the whole world was populated by shades- forgotten souls, the relics of post-war America.

It's up to you to bring some hope back to the Wastes.

[zebe]

All the maps had something to discover, and many ways to discover it. From the broken water purifier at the Highpool camp which needed a new engine, to the (working!) Howitzer cannon just waiting for you to pulverize entire sections of town, Wasteland was full of interactive choices for you to make. And those choices were persistent and had consequences. A hostage standoff in a hotel might end well for everyone involved; or one wrong move could lead to walls soaked in blood and everyone dead. A casual swim in the pool might raise your Swim skill, preventing you from later drowning in a river. And you never knew where that Toaster Repair skill you picked up back at Ranger Center might come in handy. Because you could apply skills, items, or attributes to any problem, there were vast numbers of ways to influence the world. Your intelligence, a crowbar, a clip from Angela Deth's Uzi, or even a stick of TNT. And if something didn't work, well, persistence was rewarded. Sometimes you really did have better luck next time.

[Logan_5]

And don't forget that the game was set to automatically save every time you went to a new area, and this was your only save. So if you party was beat up pretty bad in a fight, then got irradiated, and then fled the town, you were stuck in the desert and if you couldn't make it into a town for healing you were dead. I mean dead, game over, you had to start a new game. While this happened only a few times and was annoying, it generated a great fear factor. I remember slamming my computer off as the party was dying to make sure I could live again. Actually they should put this feature in the new game ...

[Drool]

You also had to figure things out for yourself. While there was a definite end goal, you had know idea what it was or that it existed when you started; you couldn't even access the final zone. You were a group of Rangers out on patrol, that's it. You were given a general direction (head to the Highpool), but that was also the closest place, so it wasn't exactly a ground breaking hint. From there, the story slowly unfolded, each encounter giving you a little scrap of information and slowly advancing you towards the end game.

The final task of ending the menace is almost out of left field, and requires trial and error and a bit of guessing or luck. Even the in-character hint book acknowledges this by have the solution be revealed to the writer via dues ex machina. Rather literally, too.

Still, the game had options. You could be a force for good, or you could be a bastard. You could get information by helping people, or just stumble around blowing everyone to hell and back. These options gave the game a lot of replayability. As did the disk swapping (Apple and C64) and the reset program (original IBM), which essentially gave you New Game+.

[Entrei]

Gritty, dirty, everyone out for themselves world where your party, the famed Desert Rangers, investigate the troubles in the region and save humans from themselves...or worse.

The gameworld was unique in how it blended a slightly western "show down at high noon" feel with towns, people, events, and places that had their own set of rules and persons of interest. It had a sense of adventure built into it...of course, always with the feel of imminent death as well since your party could be completely wiped (and your game end...literally, as in no backup save) if you were not careful or had not had clones made.