Wasteland (video game)

A screenshot of an encounter with mutated "Drools" in the DOS version

Wasteland's game mechanics are based on those used in tabletop role-playing games, such as Tunnels & Trolls and Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes created by Wasteland designers Ken St. Andre and Michael Stackpole.[6] Characters in Wasteland have seven attributes–strength, intelligence, luck, speed, agility, dexterity, and charisma–that allow the characters to use different skills and weapons. Experience is gained through combat and skill usage to level up, or promote, characters.[7] The player's party begins with four members and can grow to as many as seven by recruiting citizens and wasteland creatures. Unlike other computer role-playing games of the time, these non-player characters might at times refuse to follow the player's commands, such as when the player orders the character to give up an item or perform an action.[8] The game is noted for its high and unforgiving difficulty level.[9] The prose appearing in the game's combat screens, such as phrases saying an enemy is "reduced to a thin red paste" and "explodes like a blood sausage", prompted an unofficial PG-13 sticker on the game packaging in the U.S.[8]

Wasteland was one of the first games featuring a persistent world, where changes to the game's open world were stored and kept.[9] Returning to an area later in the game, the player would find it in the state the player left it, rather than being reset, as was common for games of the time. Since hard drives were still rare in home computers in 1988, this meant the original game disk had to be copied first.[10]

Another feature of the game was the inclusion of a printed collection of paragraphs that the player would read at the appropriate times.[11] These paragraphs described encounters, conversations and contained clues. Because disk space was at a premium, it saved on resources to have most of the game's story printed out in a separate manual rather than stored within the game's code itself. The paragraph books also served as a rudimentary form of copy protection; someone playing a copied version of the game would miss out on story elements and clues necessary to progress. The paragraphs included an unrelated story line about a mission to Mars intended to mislead those who read the paragraphs when not instructed to, and a false set of passwords that would trip up cheaters.[9]

In 2087, generations after the devastation of a global nuclear war in 1998, a remnant force of the United States Army called the Desert Rangers operates in the Southwestern United States, acting as peacekeepers to protect fellow survivors and their descendants. A team of Desert Rangers is assigned to investigate a series of disturbances in nearby areas. Throughout the game, the rangers explore the remaining enclaves of human civilization, including a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas.[12]

As the group's investigation deepens, the rangers discover evidence of a larger menace threatening to exterminate what is left of humankind. A pre-war artificial intelligence operating from a surviving military facility, Base Cochise, is constructing armies of killer machines and cybernetically modified humans to attack human settlements with the help of Irwin Finster, the deranged former commander of the base. Finster has gone so far as to transform himself into a cyborg under the AI's control. The AI's ultimate goal is to complete Finster's "Project Darwin" and replace the world's "flawed" population with genetically pure specimens. With help from a pre-war android named Max, the player recovers the necessary technology and weapons in order to confront the AI at Base Cochise and destroy it by making the base's nuclear reactor melt down.[13]

Brian Fargo in 2011, the game's director

Michael Stackpole at the 2017 Phoenix Comicon

In an interview with Hartley and Patricia Lesse for MicroTimes in 1987, game director Brian Fargo said that Interplay Productions started work on the game in 1986. He also said the game was created on the Apple II, as it was equally important to him as the Commodore 64. Fargo described the game as a hybrid of the Ultima series and The Bard's Tale, with a post-apocalyptic setting similar to the Mad Max film series. As to the combat, Fargo stated that it resembled that of The Bard's Tale and contained additional strategy elements, including the ability to split or disband the party and change the player's character point-of-view.[14]

In later interviews, Fargo said Wasteland came about after the success of The Bard's Tale and Interplay's desire to make another role-playing game for Electronic Arts separate from a sequel to the game. He added that the setting was inspired by his love for Mad Max 2 and post-apocalyptic fiction.[15] While searching for a gameplay system for their new game, they came across the system of Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes.[16]^{: 200–201} Its author Michael Stackpole was announced as the writer for Wasteland in 1987.[17][18]

Alan Pavlish was the lead developer of the game, writing it in Apple II machine language and programming the game to react to player choices. Ken St. Andre said Fargo's pitch to him was for a post-nuclear holocaust game that allowed for weapons capable of inflicting area effect damage to be used and the map be modified "on the fly".[16]^: 203-204 Fargo said the game was in development for five years.[19][16]^{: 200–201}

Writing

Ken St Andre in 2014; he served as a writer and designer

St. Andre said that Interplay wanted to make a best-seller that would elevate the team's reputation. He said that the story-writing process took more than a year, mostly due to feeding various scenarios into the game to see how it would react. According to St. Andre, he and Stackpole wanted to create something new with the story.[16]^: 202-203

The original plot was supposed to be similar to Red Dawn, with Russians occupying the United States and fighting against Americans engaged in liberating their nation. St. Andre eventually decided to change this and pitched a new story involving killer robots wanting to wipe out and replace humanity, calling it a sort of cross between The Terminator and Daffy Duck, with Fargo accepting this new storyline. The game's location was chosen due to St. Andre's familiarity with the area and ability to ensure the locations of real-world places were accurate in the game.[16]^: 202-203[20]^{: 193–196}

Wasteland sold approximately 250,000 units on release.[16]^: 201

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Computer Gaming World lauded Wasteland for its gameplay, plot, problem solving, skills system, non-player characters, and the moral dilemmas players face.[24][25][26] The magazine named Wasteland the Adventure Game of the Year in 1988.[27] In 1994, the magazine cited Wasteland as an example of how "older, less sophisticated engines can still play host to a great game".[28]

Orson Scott Card gave Wasteland a mixed review in Compute!, commending the science fiction elements and setting, but stating that it lacked a meaningful overarching story.[29] However, James Trunzo praised the game in the November 1988 issue of Compute!, citing its non-linear design and multiple puzzle solutions, the vague nature of the goal, and customizable player stats.[30]

Julia Martin's review for Challenge favorably recommended the game for those into RPGs and adventure games, comparing it to Twilight: 2000, praising its combat system, choices and for differing from the usual sword-and-fantasy genre. She criticized having to insert the primary "A" disk in order to play the game after copying it from four disks, the game's save system, and characters starting out with useless items.[31]

In 2000, Wasteland was ranked as the 24th-best PC game of all time by the staff of IGN for its innovations.[12]

According to a retrospective review by Richard Cobbett of Eurogamer in 2012, "even now, it offers a unique RPG world and experience ... a whole fallen civilisation full of puzzles and characters and things to twiddle with, all magically crammed into less than a megabyte of space."[11] In another retrospective article that same year, IGN's Kristan Reed wrote that "time has not been kind to Wasteland, but its core concepts stand firm."[9]

• Wasteland at MobyGames
• Wasteland can be played for free in the browser at the Internet Archive