Wasteland is a role-playing video game created by Interplay Productions and released by Electronic Arts in 1988. The first game in the Wasteland series takes place in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic America, which was destroyed by a nuclear war many generations ago. The game was originally designed for the Apple II computer and later made available on the Commodore 64 and MS-DOS systems. In 2013, it was re-released for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux through Steam and GOG.com, and again in 2014 via Desura. A remastered version called Wasteland Remastered was released on February 25, 2020, to celebrate the original game's 30th anniversary.
Wasteland received high praise from critics and was a commercial success. It was planned to have two sequels in the 1990s, but Electronic Arts stopped claiming Fountain of Dreams was a sequel, and Interplay's Meantime was canceled. The game's setting and ideas influenced Interplay's 1997 role-playing game Fallout and the Fallout series. Many years later, inXile Entertainment, founded by the game's director Brian Fargo, released two official sequels: Wasteland 2 in 2014 and Wasteland 3 in 2020.
Gameplay
Wasteland's game rules are similar to those in tabletop role-playing games, such as Tunnels & Trolls and Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes, which were created by Wasteland designers Ken St. Andre and Michael Stackpole. Characters in Wasteland have seven traits—strength, intelligence, luck, speed, agility, dexterity, and charisma—that help them use different skills and weapons. Players earn experience points by fighting enemies and using skills to level up characters. The player's group starts with four members and can grow to seven by recruiting citizens and creatures from the wasteland. Unlike other computer role-playing games at the time, non-player characters sometimes refuse to follow the player's orders, such as when asked to give up an item or perform a task. The game is known for its high difficulty. The text on combat screens, such as phrases like "reduced to a thin red paste" and "explodes like a blood sausage," led to an unofficial PG-13 sticker on the game's packaging in the United States.
Wasteland was one of the first games to include a persistent world, where changes to the game's open world are saved and remain. If players return to an area later, it will look the same as when they left, instead of being reset, which was common in other games at the time. In 1988, hard drives were rare in home computers, so players had to copy the original game disk before playing.
Another feature of the game was a printed collection of paragraphs that players read at specific times. These paragraphs described events, conversations, and provided clues. Because computer disks had limited space, much of the game's story was printed in a separate manual instead of stored in the game itself. The manual also acted as a basic form of copy protection. Players using a copied version of the game might miss story details and clues needed to progress. The paragraphs included a separate, unrelated story about a mission to Mars to trick players who read them without instructions, and a set of fake passwords to confuse cheaters.
Plot
In the year 2087, many years after a global nuclear war in 1998, a small group of the United States Army called the Desert Rangers works in the Southwestern United States. They protect other survivors and their descendants as peacekeepers. A team of Desert Rangers is sent to investigate strange events happening in nearby areas. As they explore, the rangers visit the last remaining parts of human civilization, such as a ruined Las Vegas.
As their investigation continues, the rangers find proof of a serious threat that could destroy the last humans alive. A pre-war artificial intelligence, located in a surviving military base called Base Cochise, is building armies of killer machines and humans with mechanical parts. This AI is working with Irwin Finster, a former commander of the base who has become mentally unstable. Finster has turned himself into a cyborg under the AI’s control. The AI’s goal is to complete Finster’s "Project Darwin" and replace the world’s "flawed" population with genetically perfect people. With help from a pre-war android named Max, the player gathers needed technology and weapons to confront the AI at Base Cochise. The player destroys the AI by causing the base’s nuclear reactor to melt down.
Development
In an interview with Hartley and Patricia Lesse for MicroTimes in 1987, Brian Fargo, the game director, said that Interplay Productions began working on the game in 1986. He also stated that the game was created for the Apple II computer, as it was just as important to him as the Commodore 64. Fargo described the game as a mix of the Ultima series and The Bard's Tale, with a setting after a nuclear war similar to the Mad Max movie series. He explained that the combat system was like that of The Bard's Tale and included extra strategy features, such as splitting or disbanding the player's group and changing the player's character perspective.
In later interviews, Fargo said that Wasteland was created after the success of The Bard's Tale and because Interplay wanted to make another role-playing game for Electronic Arts that was not a sequel to The Bard's Tale. He added that the game's setting was inspired by his love for Mad Max 2 and stories about post-nuclear worlds. While looking for a gameplay system, they discovered the system from Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes. The author of that system, Michael Stackpole, was named the writer for Wasteland in 1987.
Alan Pavlish was the lead developer of the game. He wrote the game using Apple II machine language and programmed it to respond to player choices. Ken St. Andre said that Fargo's idea for him was to create a game set in a world after a nuclear war where players could use weapons that cause damage over a large area and change the map during the game. Fargo said the game took five years to develop.
St. Andre said that Interplay wanted to make a game that would become a best-seller and improve the team's reputation. He noted that writing the story took more than a year because the team tested many different scenarios to see how the game would react. St. Andre and Stackpole wanted to create something new with the story.
The original plan for the game's story was similar to Red Dawn, where Russian forces occupied the United States and Americans fought to free their country. St. Andre later changed this idea and proposed a new story about killer robots trying to destroy and replace humans. He described the story as a mix of The Terminator and Daffy Duck. Fargo agreed to this new storyline. The game's locations were chosen because St. Andre knew the real-world areas well and could ensure the game's maps were accurate.
The game was copyrighted in 1986. Near its release, Interplay insisted the game be labeled "PG-13." Wasteland was first released in 1988 for the Apple II, Commodore 64, and IBM computers. It was later re-released in 1995 as part of Interplay's 10 Year Anthology: Classic Collection and included again in 1998 in the Ultimate RPG Archives through Interplay's DragonPlay label.
Reception
Wasteland sold about 250,000 copies when it was first released.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Computer Gaming World praised Wasteland for its gameplay, story, problem-solving challenges, character skills, non-player characters, and the moral choices players must make. The magazine named Wasteland the Adventure Game of the Year in 1988. In 1994, it noted that Wasteland showed how older, less advanced game technology could still support a high-quality game.
Orson Scott Card gave Wasteland a mixed review in Compute!, saying the science fiction setting and ideas were strong but that the game lacked a clear main story. James Trunzo, however, praised Wasteland in the November 1988 issue of Compute! for its non-linear design, multiple ways to solve puzzles, unclear goals, and customizable player abilities.
Julia Martin, in her review for Challenge, recommended Wasteland to fans of role-playing games and adventure games, comparing it to Twilight: 2000. She praised its combat system, choices, and how it differed from typical fantasy games with swords and magic. She criticized the need to use a specific "A" disk to play the game after copying it from four disks, the save system, and the fact that characters started with unhelpful items.
In 2000, Wasteland was ranked as the 24th-best PC game of all time by IGN staff for its innovations.
In a 2012 review, Richard Cobbett of Eurogamer wrote that Wasteland still offers a unique RPG world and experience, describing it as a fallen civilization filled with puzzles and characters to explore, all within less than a megabyte of space. In another 2012 article, IGN’s Kristan Reed noted that while time has not been kind to Wasteland, its core ideas remain strong.
Legacy
In 1990, a game called Fountain of Dreams was released as a planned sequel to Wasteland. However, it was not successful and did not share any code or staff from the original Wasteland game. Electronic Arts later claimed it was not a sequel to Wasteland in 2003. A game called Meantime, developed by Interplay, was described as a spiritual successor to Wasteland but took place in a different world. Development of Meantime was nearly complete, but the game was canceled due to the declining popularity of the Apple II computer.
Interplay later described the first Fallout game as a spiritual successor to Wasteland. According to IGN, Interplay created Fallout partly because it could not use the Wasteland brand name due to a legal agreement with Electronic Arts. Elements of Wasteland also appeared in Fallout and Fallout 2.
In 2003, Fargo's inXile Entertainment acquired the rights to the Wasteland franchise from Electronic Arts. The studio released Wasteland 2 in 2014, with original Wasteland designers working on the game. The project was funded through a Kickstarter campaign. In 2016, inXile announced plans to crowdfund Wasteland 3 through Fig, and the game was released in August 2020.
In August 2013, Chris Keenan, the project lead for Wasteland 2, announced that an agreement had been reached with Electronic Arts to release the original Wasteland game for modern operating systems. The re-released version was given for free to Kickstarter backers of Wasteland 2 and was also sold on GOG and Steam. Improvements included higher-resolution graphics, new music, updated portraits, and expanded save-game features.
In November 2013, the re-released version, titled Wasteland 1: The Original Classic, was approved for release on GOG and Steam. Based on player feedback, inXile added features like the ability to disable smoothing, include the original manual in tooltips, and ensure compatibility with Mac OS X and Linux. Supporters of Torment: Tides of Numenera who received Wasteland 2 also received the re-release for free.
The original Wasteland re-release was available for download more than 33,000 times before its general release. It was launched on GOG on November 12, 2013, and on Steam for Windows, Mac, and Linux the next day. On March 11, 2014, the game was also released on Desura.
In 2019, inXile Entertainment announced a remastered version of Wasteland to celebrate its 30th anniversary, developed by Krome Studios. During E3 2019, Brian Fargo revealed the game would be released on Windows and Xbox One. Screenshots of the game were shared, and the release date was set for February 25, 2020. The remastered version was available on GOG, Steam, and Microsoft Store for Windows, OS X, and Linux. The Xbox One version was published by Xbox Game Studios. The game featured updated graphics, new 3D models, voiced dialogue, and new character portraits. It also included cross-save support and Xbox Play Anywhere compatibility. The remastered version received a "Teen" rating from the ESRB, similar to the original game's "PG-13" content warning.