Wasteland (video game)

A screenshot of an encounter in the DOS version of Wasteland

Wasteland's game mechanics are based on those used in the tabletop role-playing games, such as Tunnels and Trolls and Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes created by Wasteland designers Ken St. Andre and Michael Stackpole.[6] Characters in Wasteland have various statistics (strength, intelligence, luck, speed, agility, dexterity, and charisma) that allow the characters to use different skills and weapons. Experience is gained through battle and skill usage. The game generally lets players advance using a variety of tactics: to get through a locked gate, the characters could use their picklock skill, their climb skill, or their strength attribute; or they could force the gate with a crowbar or a LAW rocket.

The player's party begins with four characters. Through the course of the game the party can hold as many as seven characters by recruiting certain citizens and wasteland creatures. Unlike those of other computer RPGs of the time, these non-player characters (NPCs) 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.[7] The game is noted for its high and unforgiving difficulty level.[8] 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.[7]

Wasteland was one of the first games featuring a persistent world, where changes to the game world were stored and kept.[8] Returning to an area later in the game, the player would find it in the state the player left it in, 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, as the manual instructed one to do.[9]

Another feature of the game was the inclusion of a printed collection of paragraphs that the player would read at the appropriate times.[10] These paragraphs described encounters and conversations, contained clues, and added to the overall texture of the game. Because programming 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 much of the story and clues necessary to progress. The paragraphs included an unrelated story line[8] 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.

In 2087 (one hundred years after the game's development), generations after the devastation of a global nuclear war in 1998, a distant remnant force of the U.S. Army called the Desert Rangers is based 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.[11]

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 "Project Darwin" (which Finster was in charge of) 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.

Brian Fargo in an interview with Hartley and Patricia Lesse for MicroTimes in 1987 said that Interplay started work on the game about a year ago. Fargo further stated that game was created on Apple II as it was equally important to him like the Commodore 64. He described the game as a hybrid of Ultima games and The Bard's Tale, while being post-apocalyptic and in a similar vein as the Mad Max films. He described the combat as being similar to The Bard's Tale though also containing strategy, players being able to disband parties or split up party members for exploration, selecting the point-of-view of different members.[12]

It was stated in January 1987 that Michael Stackpole, who authored Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes and Batman's sourcebook for DC Heroes, would be involved as the game's writer. Close to release, Interplay insisted that it be labelled PG-13.[13][14]

Fargo in an interview with Patrick Hickey Jr. has stated that the genesis of Wasteland came after The Bard's Tale was a hit, as they wanted to make another role-playing video game for Electronic Arts asides from a sequel to The Bard's Tale. He added that due to his love for Mad Max 2 and post-apocalyptic fiction, he chose a post-apocalyptic setting for this new RPG. While searching for a gameplay system for their new game, they came across the system of Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes.[15]

Ken St. Andre described to Hickey that they wanted to make a game-changing computer role-playing game that will be better than any other at the time, hating the limitations other CRPGs put on gamers. According to him, the process of creating the story of the game took over a year, though it was mostly due to them feeding various possible scenarios into how the game should react at a given time. Wasteland's different story was mostly because of St. Andre and Stackpole who wanted something new.[16]

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 as well as replace humanity, which he called a sort of cross between The Terminator and Daffy Duck, and Brian accepted this new storyline. The location of the game was chosen due to St. Andre living in the region and his familiarity with the area, while making sure the locations of real-world places were accurate in the game.[16][17]

Alan Pavlish had been chosen to be the lead developer of the video game, writing the game in Apple II machine language and programming the game to react to player choices. Per St. Andre, Fargo's pitch to him was of a post-nuclear holocaust game which took advantage of Pavlish's coding, which allowed for weapons capable of inflicting area effect damage to be used and the map be modified "on the fly".[18]

The game was copyrighted in 1986.[19] Said to be in development for five years,[20][15] Wasteland was originally released for the Apple II, Commodore 64, and IBM compatibles. The IBM version added an additional skill called "Combat Shooting" which could be bought only when a character was first created.

Wasteland was re-released as part of Interplay's 10 Year Anthology: Classic Collection in 1995,[21] and also included in the 1998 Ultimate RPG Archives through Interplay's DragonPlay label.[22] These later bundled releases were missing the original setup program, which allowed the game's maps to be reset, while retaining the player's original team of Rangers. Jeremy Reaban wrote an unofficial (and unsupported) program that emulated this functionality.[23]

Computer Gaming World cited Wasteland's "ease of play, richness of plot, problem solving requirements, skill and task system, and graphic display" as elements of its excellence.[24] The magazine's Scorpia favorably reviewed the game in 1991 and 1993, calling it "really the only decently-designed post-nuke game on the market".[25][26] In 1992 the magazine stated that the game's "classic mix of combat and problem-solving" was the favorite of its readers in 1988, and that "the way in which Wasteland's NPCs related to the player characters, the questions of dealing with moral dillemas, and the treatment of skills set this game apart."[27] In 1994 the magazine mentioned 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 "mutant bunnies can get boring, too ... This is still a kill-the-monster-and-get-the-treasure game, without the overarching story that makes each Ultima installment meaningful."[29] Another writer for Compute! praised the game, however, 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 called the game well done and stated it offered hours of fun. She also 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]

The game was a hit and at its time of release, it sold around 250,000 units.[32] Computer Gaming World awarded Wasteland the Adventure Game of the Year award in 1988.[33] The game received the fourth-highest number of votes in a 1990 survey of the magazine's readers' "All-Time Favorites".[34] In 1993 Computer Gaming World added Wasteland to its Hall of Fame,[35] and in 1996, rated it as the ninth best PC video game of all time for introducing the concept of the player's party "acting like the 'real' people."[36] In 2000, Wasteland was ranked as the 24th top PC game of all time by the staff of IGN, who called it "one of the best RPGs to ever grace the PC" and "a truly innovative RPG for its time."[11]

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."[10] 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."[8]

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