Pre-apocalyptic backstory/setting

[MisterStone]

I was wondering...

Since the parody of 1950s/early 1960s Cold War culture was done so successfully in the Fallout series, how would this be realized in Wasteland?

Personally I would like to see the pre-apocalypse civilization resemble 1980s culture and history to some extent. So maybe the background setting would be based on a Soviet-US conflict (alternate history), or a U.S.-Russian conflict. U.S. culture might have moved towards even greater yuppieishness and selfishness before the end, and also have become corrupted by ubiquitous drug use.

Culturally, I'd also like to see 1980s or neo-'80s elements, stuff that references over-the-top 1980s action films, ridiculous New Wave haircuts, super-buff action movie hero types, idiotic sunglasses, poser-punk S/M accessories such as wrist bands and motorcycle gloves, crappy bulky tech made out of too much black plastic, crappy firearms (early on) that were popular in 1970s and 1980s films (such as uzis, huge-friggin revolvers with laser sights) and so on. Actually, I think a lot of this was found in Wasteland.

I dunno, maybe too much kitsch is not the way to go, but I might be fun if done well.

[MesmerMesmer]

Absolutely. Obviously it's to do with when it was made, but I get this strong late 80s/early 90s vibe from Wasteland. The obsession with credit cards, listening to Ratt of all bands, and robots that look like Johnny 5 and ED-209.
There's so much room for some really wacky Night of the Comet-style Valley Girls with Uzis aesthetics, abandoned malls, etc. Basically the future as imagined by Paul Verhoeven if the Cold War had continued for another ten or fifteen years and then gone hot.

I'm actually really startled to see someone else with the same sort of perspective. A few months ago when I was thinking about Wasteland I saved a bunch of inspiration photos in this vein. I'm quickly dumping them on tumblr here (still at it as of writing this):
http://scorpitron.tumblr.com/
Best viewed while listening to something like Tiffany's version of 'I think we're alone now.'

[rokahef]

Absolutely. Obviously it's to do with when it was made, but I get this strong late 80s/early 90s vibe from Wasteland.

Really? Hmmm, i didn't really read it that way.

But what I liked about the game was the way technology unfolded. When you first leave Ranger HQ, everything is super low-tech. Highpool, the farmer community, the nomads, etc. Then, as the game unfolds, you start hitting bigger cities, culminating with Vegas and its high-tech Scorpitron, androids, etc. And in the endgame, holy crap, you're dealing with cloning, energy weapons, sleeper bases, android brain adventures...

it was just a perfect build up, with each new location feeling more awesome than the last, and discovering more and more exciting tech.

I loved that, and while it might not be possible to reproduce that same feeling, now that we know what kind of world Wasteland is, I feel Wasteland 2 needs to capture a similar progression. If only so people who have never played the original can get that same wow-factor.

[The Beast Man]

I never played the original Wasteland and I'm not familiar with the backstory. As stated on another post, continuity with the original is the best case scenario, so the following suggestions for backstory on W2 should be taken with that in mind.

The quick, non-researched version: The USSR successfully takes over Afghanistan and establishes military bases in the country. In 1991, the US engages Iraq in Operation Desert Storm, which the USSR interprets as a military buildup. Tensions increase in the Middle East as Communist allies escalate military preparations for what they perceive to be an inevitable attack. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict sparks the powder keg is the Cradle of Civilization and missiles are lobbed from Communist allied countries (including communist allies in Latin American countries) to the US and its allies.

[Bonecrusher]

http://scorpitron.tumblr.com/
Best viewed while listening to something like Tiffany's version of 'I think we're alone now.'

wow, interesting collection.
futuristic view of 80s can be used on this game and therefore create a great atmosphere.

[Temaperacl]

I never played the original Wasteland and I'm not familiar with the backstory. As stated on another post, continuity with the original is the best case scenario, so the following suggestions for backstory on W2 should be taken with that in mind.

You are missing out. In Short, from the WL Manual:

1997-1993: Drug Wars. US set up many right wing governments in Central and South America

In 1998, tensions were increasing as the Citadel Station was going to go online. The world polarized into the nations supporting the US and those joining the Soviet protest to the station with only a few nations remaining neutral. Two weeks before before going online, Citadel transmitted a distress signal and most sattelites in orbit were lost, causing each to launch their arsenals.

The Desert Rangers came from a group of US Army Engineers working in the SW Deserts - they took over a nearby prison for shelter, expelling the inhabitants and inviting nearby survivalist communities to join them.

For more details, I would recommend The History Of The Desert Rangers, The Early Years by Karl Allard (2087 - Allard Press, Ranger Center).

[The Beast Man]

I never played the original Wasteland and I'm not familiar with the backstory. As stated on another post, continuity with the original is the best case scenario, so the following suggestions for backstory on W2 should be taken with that in mind.

You are missing out. In Short, from the WL Manual:

1997-1993: Drug Wars. US set up many right wing governments in Central and South America

In 1998, tensions were increasing as the Citadel Station was going to go online. The world polarized into the nations supporting the US and those joining the Soviet protest to the station with only a few nations remaining neutral. Two weeks before before going online, Citadel transmitted a distress signal and most sattelites in orbit were lost, causing each to launch their arsenals.

The Desert Rangers came from a group of US Army Engineers working in the SW Deserts - they took over a nearby prison for shelter, expelling the inhabitants and inviting nearby survivalist communities to join them.

For more details, I would recommend The History Of The Desert Rangers, The Early Years by Karl Allard (2087 - Allard Press, Ranger Center).

Sounds rad. I'll have to read up on it.

[owenmp]

The following is an excerpt from The History of the Desert Rangers, The Early Years, by Karl Allard, 2087, Allard Press, Ranger Center. Hardbound pp.293, $20 gold.

Tensions grew with the coming of 1998. The United States' Citadel Starstation was slated to be fully operational by March. Soviet charges that the space station was merely a military launching platform alarmed a number of non-aligned nations. The right wing governments in the South and Central Americas, many of them set up by the U.S. during the Drug Wars (1987-1993), pledged their support to the U.S. The NATO nations, including the new African members, also declared their alliance with the U.S. That move forced most of the remaining neutral powers to join the Soviet protest. In six short weeks, only Switzerland, Sweeden and Ireland continues to declare themselves neutral nations.

Two weeks before Citadel was due for full operation, the station transmitted a distress signal. Immediately after the message was sent, most of the satellites orbiting the planet were swept clean from the sky, leaving the great powers blind. In military panic, each sent 90 percent of their nuclear arsenals skyward. Although the destruction was tremendous, it was not complete. Pockets of civilization remained, some even oblivious to the military exchange.

On the same day the U.S and Soviet Union were attempting to extinguish each other, a company of U.S. Army Engineers were in the southwestern deserts building transportation bridges over dry riverbeds. They worked deep in the inhospitable desert valleys, surrounded by a number of survivalist communities. Located directly south of their position on that day was a newly-constructed federal prison. In addition to housing the nation's criminals condemned to death, the prison contained light industrial manufacturing facilities.

Shortly after the nuclear attack began, the Engineers, seeking shelter, took over the federal prison and expelled the prisoners into the desolate desert to complete their sentences. As the weeks passed, they invited the nearby survivalist communities to join them and help them build a new society. Because of each communities' suspicions towards one another, times were difficult at first. But as time nurtured trust, this settlement which became known as Ranger Center grew to be one of the strongest outposts. Ranger Center even proved powerful enough to repel the bands of rancorous criminals who repeatedly attacked in attempts to reclaim what was once "rightfully theirs."

The citizens of Ranger Center, after first believing they were the only ones who survived the nuclear maelstrom, soon realized that communities beyond the desert's grip had also survived. Because they had such success in constructing a new community, they felt compelled to help other survivors rebuild and live in peace.

Toward this end, the Desert Rangers, in the great tradition of the Texas and Arizona Rangers a century before, were born.

Excerpt from Wasteland Manual, Electronic Arts and Interplay, 1987 and 1988.

[Sxerks]

Pre-during-rightafter apocalyptic setting would probably work well for Wasteland Zero. 1998-2087 run-up to WL is a long time. If the kickstart and sales go well, I could see them doing a prequel.

[talkingcrows]

Eighties sounds good to me.Maybe it could be set in another part of the world,seeing as there is history in the States,you could rebuild the story with a different aspect somewhere else.Maybe further north or south to get environmental factors.Snow,rain,storms,earthquakes,drought.I would like to see a map of the new world,you know,an inner ocean in america,California now a series of islands...that sorta thing.Its a Wasteland,use your imagination.

[CoreyHaim8myDog]

The bulk of the initial audience for this project will be those who remember the game. As such, it will be those who remember the 1980s. The 80s being closer to [some] of us than the 50s, we forget the ample amount of cheese that rocked that decade. If the 50s were a bit too idealized, the 80s were a bit too idealized as well. Come on, two world superpowers going at it? Cowboy president, Cocal Cola, The Bears....? Rocky vs. Drago?

Yeah.

I think you'd be well served to tap into 80s nostalgia and to tap into gaming nostalgia. Computer games and tabletop rpgs really got going in the 80s [think Ready Player One] and nod to that decade and those wellsprings of creativity would go a long way for many consumers. What's more, the younger demo was mostly born in the 80s [if the average gamer is 37, then the young demo you might be after is likely in their 20s.]

I'd like to see a game that feels like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4UeouCo3VA

[Bonecrusher]

Maybe it could be set in another part of the world

Eastern Europe? Bratislava?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbcH_qYkeTc

[epra]

Eastern Europe with soviet architecture would be cool. Stalker games did really good job with it. Though i don't think developers would want to set their game anywhere outside US.

[infestor]

Eastern Europe with soviet architecture would be cool. Stalker games did really good job with it. Though i don't think developers would want to set their game anywhere outside US.

the thing with eastern europe is that even today it looks post-apocalyptic. i'm all for it however i think it is way outside of wasteland's context.

[Bonecrusher]

let me give an example: Half-Life 2



they used real life photos from eastern europe countries (there were some comparison photos before Half-Life 2 released)
and you can easily mix it with Detroit, to give a "Robocop" feeling to the game:









imgur tip: you can remove last "m" letter from the name of the file in the url, to see the image with maximum size (or change "m" into "l" for large size)

[Tenner]

First of all: I'm greatly in favor of the 80s/90s nostalgia setting. As many posts on the forum suggest, it's bound to be well received by the target audience.
And who hasn't wanted to play as Mad Max at some point? No postapocalyptic game has really scratched that particular itch yet as far as I'm aware.

California now a series of islands...that sorta thing.

And on that series of tiny islands, some semi-savages have built a floating pirate/raider empire a la Waterworld. Which you can visit.

[Wesser]

Ok, this is a complex topic so I divided my impressions:

Timeline.

Being a futuristic game I don't really think time to be a big asset. Sure, you need some kind of base to plot the world around but that same world should've evolved in its own way since the apocalypse. Still, if you talk about the basic setting, I'd like -as others before me- to see a '80s-'90s feel in the game. Fact is that most of the people interested in this product is familiar with that time frame, some spent childhood there, others their teenage years and some more went to college during the last two decades of the 20th century. So if you're trying to build a top-down rpg, turn-based game you'll probably find that setting as the most fitting not only to distinguish yourself from other games like Fallout, but also as a link to what would be your main public once the title is ready. From my point of view is a win-win situation for both us gamers and Wasteland's heritage.

Setting.

I think Fallout and Wasteland have already showed us what the post-apocalyptic US mid-west / west coast looks like. Maybe it's time to move to another region, yes?

Bethesda's Fallout 3 tried moving the game to Washington in which -at the time before it was released- I saw as a good effort, problem was they took everything we saw in the previous games with them.. making DC look pretty much like California. Tim Cain said that himself during an interview with Matt Chat, while he praised the game overall, he stated that "supermutants" and other stuff like that was meant to be an isolated case in the West, and that "it's a post-apocalyptic world, there're lots of stories they could tell out there". That's what Wasteland 2 needs to get right, we want a new adventure on a world we're familiar with, not the same adventure we had decades ago in a new world.

The challenge for the developing team regarding the setting should be to move it away from what we saw before, while keeping the feel of the game and giving us a whole new experience with it. My suggestion would be to try the south, or even north next to Canada. The bayous around the gulf would be my personal favourite setting for being both fresh and different from desertic wastelands like the ones we've been walking all these years.

Story

This is related to point 1. Most of the people willing to play Wasteland are mature, so i'd like the game to keep in line with that. I know that much of the team that work on Fallout 1 and 2 is around, but from what we keep seeing these days is pretty easy to fall into the trap of the "wider audiences" like so many did before. Please inXile, avoid that.

If there's one thing I loved from RPGs back in my childhood days was the fact that most of them tried to tale a real full-fledged story. My best example would be Baldur's Gate, a game so complete that you could explore and wander through the world finding new quests and characters for a long, long time. Old RPGs even gave you the chance to set up your own party, recruiting people you wanted and not people the developers wanted you to recruit. I hate the fact that some modern RPGs give you a set of companions that you'll necessarily acquire over the course of the game, whether you like it or not.

Hearing Brian talk about how Wasteland 2 would be party-based and how it would give you the chance to split and move your party as you like make me think about what a great experience could it be if you were able to set up that party the way you want.

Adventure (Setting: Part 2)

I'll like to adress the adventure factor in this last point. Games like Fallout have -IMO- lost it.

Sure, you're faced with a huge sandbox world to explore it the way you want, but that take away the feeling of progress (not to mention that most buildings looks the same, since they use the same textures and stuff over and over and over again) and once you've been in one place you can simply teleport back there anytime you want, which allows you to avoid any danger in the area nearby. Old school RPGs used a system that featured random encounters while quick-traveling, it would be nice to see the same here. Why? Because I want to feel that "hope I don't run into anything nasty" feeling I got when playing Fallout, Arcanum, and other games like them.

I think that titles like Baldurs Gate and Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura are two games that represent the perfect "huge open world / Adventure" relationship. Sure, the world isn't entirely open, but that could easily be fixed in Wasteland 2. Another important thing regarding adventure is to give us players the feeling that we're actually moving through the world and progressing into areas we couldn't reach before. Wait, doesn't Fallout 3 do that too? No, actually Fallout 3 gives you the chance to reach your father before you ever get near DC and, in case you don't want to take on the main quest immediately, you'll be jumping through different points of the wasteland until you really hate them.

The main problem with that is, from my perspective, that you never feel like your journey is progressing somehow. In Fallout 1 you could visit Shady Sands, get all the quests there done and move on. If I had to return to Shady Sands over and over after completing their quests I would've felt that "deja vu" I feel when playing Fallout 3 or NV, that "I've already been here 300 times, I DON'T WANT TO COME HERE AGAIN" feeling I got when teleporting myself around DC's or Mohave wasteland.

So basically what I'd like to see is an epic journey (meaning I won't have to go back and forward on the map all the time) through a post-apocalyptic setting, for which the developing team would have to think about memorable locations, such as the ones featured on the first two games in the Fallout series, the ones on Baldur's Gate, Arcanum, and so on.

Please inXile, feel free to handcraft the world as big or little as you want, just don't give us generic nothing-important-here locations like Bethesda like to do with their Fallout games.

If you survived reading this, I salute you

[Hiver]

I doubt that my 60 bucks can get me a big leeway on this issue but please, please.... dont do too much of the 80.
I grew up in those times... and it was horrible. Those haircuts especially... dont make me play through a game where even after apocalypse people would still have haircuts like those. PLEEEAAASE!!!!

I mean, i realize that was a sort of basics of the setting for the first Wasteland but please move away from it... atleast a bit. I mean, have references, robots and stories and whatnot but dont make me see dudes looking like in 80.
At least not the worst examples of it.

I wish it would get based more on nineties instead, which was a cool and terrible decade (for other things then fashion and looks).

[Fachoi]

Some late 80's early 90's middle eastern setting, plenty of desert and US military bases with room for comment on modern problems in that region. Of course North America makes language barrier's easier to explain, though a high tech translator could be worked in...map would have to cover quite a large area. Could be a bit too hot to touch right now, though a change from the US would be nice.

[Jim]

Admittedly, I never played Wasteland. I'm part of Gen Y, so I wasn't born in the 80s either.

But personally, I feel like the wasteland/Mad Max esque post-apoc aesthetic has become overdone.

Does everyone need to have neon green mohawk haircuts garbed in pseudo S&M gear?

I think we can go for a post-apoc 80s feel without having to go to those cliches. Not that the game shouldn't primarily be set in a desert.

The 80s were all about gritty anti-heroes and moral grays. Hell, it's the decade that spawned Warhammer 40k. Cyberpunk was a pretty plausible portrayal of what they thought would be the near (dystopian) future. Japan was slated to become a superpower and would bring us Zaibatsus (MegaCorporations). Cybernetics while having clunky cell phones that lack even rudimentary things like SMS and voicemail. The rise of Evangelicalism, Survivalism, Yuppies etc. Then you have the 'futuristic' weapons like the WA2000, Calico and HK CAWS. So, let's play all of that up.

Heck, let's have it take relatively recently after the apocalypse. That's something alot of games don't do. Inspiration could be taken from The Day After. In the midst of corporate enclaves, survivalists and biker gangs, the State still exists, only it's obviously under Martial Law. Occasionally you"ll get empty feel good messages from the President. Come across caravans of the US army sending (sparse) rations to a barely standing rural town, or a convoy being sent to suppress a riot in a FEMA camp. Speaking of which, there should be functioning vehicles.

I think Twilight 2000 would make great inspiration, since it was released in the late 80s and it does a very good portrayal of a post-apocalypse America.

One thing I'd like to see are a variety of improvised weapons and civilian firearms. Not that military firearms should be extremely rare, but they should exist and not just be a low level weapon. One of the most fun things when playing STALKER is using a Mosin Nagant or double-barrelled shotgun to take on a group armed with AKMs.

And no, the Federal govt. aren't the 'bad guys'. There's very little room for 'good' and 'bad' in desperate times.