Recently, I was asked about Wasteland, and the answer became complicated enough that I decided to respond to here.
In short, I’d kill for another Wasteland.
Not just because it was a post-apocalyptic RPG, but because it did so much that was refreshingly new with conventional tech, something that Fallout did as well, and there’s a big lesson to be learned there.
I’m a big fan of using non-video-card-and-non-engine-innovations to drive development, and sometimes it only requires stepping back a second and taking a fresh look at the game to pull it off – as an example, my favorite example of non-tech innovation is low-INT dialogue options in Fallout. Brilliant. Wasteland did the exact same thing, except with skill progression and location setting – it allowed your character to grow in new ways, and it took you to places in its low-rez world that I haven’t seen rivaled or done half as well in contemporary games.
So the whole Kickstarter model, Double Fine’s adventure game, and now the hopes of Fargo bringing Wasteland on-line is amazing. It’s probably no secret after Old World Blues how much I enjoyed Wasteland and giant scorpions and proton weapons, but Wasteland has a lot of my childhood tied up in it. To explain: I was in early high school, I was coming off of the Bard’s Tale series and needed another fix... and from what I saw of Wasteland on the back cover of the package, it seemed to fit the bill. I was wrong.
Why? When I booted it up, I found it confusing and not like Bard’s Tale at all - (well, beyond the combat), and the navigation especially threw me off a bit at first. Separate the party? What did all these skills exactly do? Where was I supposed to go? I was prepared for several more hours of disappointment and thought I’d wasted my money. I was used to the faux-3D corridors and environments... then a number of things happened that woke me up to what this title was doing, and I realized Interplay had made something different and well on par with Bard’s Tale.
In any event, hats off to Fargo and InXile, I’m definitely putting my money down when they start up their Kickstarter fund, and I’ll donate just as much as I did to Double Fine. Give me Wasteland 2 already.
