Wasteland | Code Like It's 198x

In the spring of 1988 Electronic Arts shipped a role-playing game with no elves, no spells and no food to forage for. Wasteland put a squad of Desert Rangers into the deserts of the American south-west after a nuclear war, armed them with Uzis and AK-47s, and sent them to find out why the settlements were being attacked. The world it drew was strange and often funny: the ruins of a summer camp populated by mutant teenagers, fields of giant carrots infested by “large and vicious bunny rabbits”, killer cyborgs in the catacombs under a Las Vegas country club. Much of the story was not on the disk at all but in a printed book of numbered paragraphs. Computer Gaming World named it Adventure Game of the Year, and when its developer, Interplay, returned to the atomic desert nine years later, it had to call the game Fallout because it did not own the name.

Fast facts

Developer: Interplay Productions; publisher: Electronic Arts.
Designers: Alan Pavlish, Michael A. Stackpole, Brian Fargo and Ken St. Andre, as credited at Computer Gaming World’s 1988 awards; Todd J. Camasta drew the graphics and Elizabeth Danforth made additional maps. Fargo was executive producer for Interplay and Dave Albert producer for EA.
Released: Apple II in spring 1988, with the Commodore 64 version following that year; an MS-DOS version came in 1989.
Setting: the deserts of the American south-west, from the Rangers’ base to Las Vegas, after a nuclear war.
Price in Britain: £19.99 on disk for the Commodore 64.

A long time coming

Wasteland began as a Stackpole project. In January 1987, Computer Gaming World reported the following year, it was described as “a potential Mad Max type adventure game” to be written by Michael Stackpole, the author of the pen-and-paper role-playing system Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes, and programmed by Interplay. By the time EA’s quality-assurance testers had it, early in 1988, the magazine thought it “certainly superior to the original concept”, with “a unique plotline all its own” and 250K of text. The Games Machine reported that it had taken Interplay two years to develop, and Shay Addams, writing in Commodore Magazine in June 1988, said it had “practically become a legend before its time simply because it has been ‘on the way’ for so long.”

Addams credited the script to Ken St. Andre and Michael Stackpole and the programming to Alan Pavlish. Both writers had come from tabletop games. St. Andre was the designer of Tunnels & Trolls, and Computer Gaming World later described Stackpole as “of BattleTech and X-Wing novel fame”. Addams noted that the south-west in which the game is set was also “the stomping grounds of St. André and Stackpole”.

The background, as Zzap!64 retold it, was a near-future cold war. In 1998 the United States completes a space station that the Soviet Union insists is a weapons platform, the satellites vanish, and both sides fire everything. A unit of Army engineers working in the south-western deserts shelters in a new federal prison, invites the surrounding survivalists to join them, and becomes the Desert Rangers, “in the great tradition of the Texas and Arizona Rangers”. Addams summed it up more briefly: “Reagan’s SDI doesn’t work”.

Skills, not classes

A party starts with four Rangers, either pre-made or rolled by the player, and can grow to seven by recruiting characters met on the way. Instead of a class, each character has attributes (strength, intelligence, luck, speed, agility, dexterity and charisma among them) and skills bought with points. Zzap!64 found that intelligence set the limits: a character with an IQ of 3 could learn to swim or fire a rifle, but cryptology needed 16. Skills covered assault rifles, lockpicking, forgery, medicine and more, and the only way to improve them was to use them. William Kritzen, reviewing it for Computer Gaming World, liked what was missing: “there is no magic or food to deal with in this game!” It was, he wrote, “refreshing to play a game that concentrates on being skillful enough to disarm an alarm, instead of putting monsters to sleep.”

The recruits were not obedient. Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Dave Arneson, previewing it in Computer Gaming World, noted that its non-player characters “will refuse to march off to death and glory like little robots”. The magazine’s 1996 list of the 150 best games made the same point: “Ask the party to divvy up the cash and one or more might refuse. Try to get a party member to cough up his/her last clip of ammo? No way!”

A world that stays changed

“The game system in Wasteland is dynamic,” Computer Gaming World’s preview explained. “Once something on the map is changed, it is changed.” The game wrote to disk each time the party entered a new location, which is why the Commodore 64 version needed its data copied onto working disks before play; Zzap!64’s reviewer spent her first two hours doing it, because the game “constantly alters the state of the map and the position of objects and the lives of NPCs”. The party could also split into up to four groups, which opened up ranged fighting and some puzzles.

Problems had more than one answer. Kritzen found “there is always more than one way around every puzzle in the game, so you’re not locked in to any particular order of missions”, and put the whole game at 80 to 100 hours. Violence was reported in the same spirit: the preview noted that Interplay wanted the game rated PG-13, with enemies reduced to “blood sausage” or “a fine red mist”.

The paragraph book

The game’s text ran to 250K, and at least 100K of it was printed in a booklet instead of stored on disk. When the story needed more than the screen could hold, the game told the player which numbered paragraph to read. Arneson counted “200 paragraphs of text in the accompanying booklet”. The book saved disk space and served, in Computer Gaming World’s words, as “a non-technological copy protection”, since the game made little sense without it. It also punished cheats: Kritzen warned that “if you decide to peek at the paragraphs out of order, there is a false subplot hidden in them”. Earlier games had described their rooms in numbered paragraphs in the manual (see Western RPG), but Wasteland used the book to carry its plot.

Reception

The American press was enthusiastic. Kritzen called it “one of the best games I’ve ever played” and gave it his vote for “Adventure Game of the Year”. At the Gateway convention on 3 September 1988 the magazine did the same, and Stackpole watched as Russell Sipe presented the award to Brian Fargo and Alan Pavlish. The editor’s note praised “interesting encounters via invisible attribute checks, one of the cleverest uses to date of skill-based character growth, and an intriguing storyline”.

In Britain, Zzap!64’s strategy columnist Philippa Irving, who had complained about “clichéd, unimaginative and humourless” fantasy settings, was “delighted” to receive it and gave it 95%. The towns were “not the standardised cityscapes of games like Ultima, but excitingly different and unexpected”, and she called it “the best computer RPG I’ve seen for a long time”. Her one complaint was the four disks the game demanded.

The sales story was stranger. When Computer Gaming World finally put Wasteland in its Hall of Fame in February 1993, it explained the delay. The game had topped its readers’ role-playing chart for months, but faded with the Apple II; then EA sold the IBM PC version cheaply in a budget promotion, and “some gamers felt that EA had deliberately undermarketed the IBM version” because Interplay had joined a rival publisher’s affiliate programme. EA’s Fountain of Dreams (1990), made by a different team, was dismissed by most readers as a sequel. In 1996 the magazine placed Wasteland ninth in its 150 best games of all time.

From Wasteland to Fallout

Fargo told Computer Gaming World in 1997 that he liked Wasteland “for its elaborate map, its skill-based design and NPC (non-player character) code”, and claimed that it “was also the first game to offer moral dilemmas”. The same magazine credited Ultima IV (1985) with confronting players with moral dilemmas, so the claim is best read as Fargo’s own.

Electronic Arts kept the Wasteland name. When Interplay made its next post-nuclear role-playing game, Fallout (1997), its advertisements called it “the unofficial sequel to Wasteland”. In a 2010 Edge interview Fargo put it plainly: “Fallout, of course, exists as a franchise because we didn’t have the rights to Wasteland.” Wireframe’s later history of the genre described Fallout as pitched as a spiritual successor, sharing Wasteland’s influences and “the same laissez-faire approach to player morality”. Fargo told the magazine his own influences were the comic Kamandi, the films A Boy and His Dog and The Road Warrior, and the novels The Stand and A Canticle for Leibowitz.

Wasteland 2 and 3

By 2010 Fargo, then running inXile Entertainment, told Edge that he had the rights to Wasteland and wanted to go back to it. On 13 March 2012 inXile went to Kickstarter, asking for $900,000; the campaign raised $2,933,252, one of the early successes that followed Double Fine’s (see CRPG renaissance). Wasteland 2 was released for Windows on 19 September 2014. inXile raised money for Wasteland 3 through Fig, a crowdfunding platform Fargo had set up himself, and in November 2018 Microsoft bought the studio, along with Obsidian Entertainment. Wasteland 3, which moved the Desert Rangers to a frozen Colorado, came out on 28 August 2020 for Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Wireframe’s reviewer called it “buggy and somewhat flawed” but “a bloody good time”. A remastered version of the original Wasteland was released in February 2020.

Sources

Computer Gaming World issue 45, March 1988, p. 26: sneak preview (the 1987 “Mad Max type” concept; Stackpole and Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes; quality assurance at EA; 250K of text, 100K in the book as copy protection; the dynamic map; hired NPCs; splitting the party; the PG-13 violence).
Computer Gaming World issue 47, May 1988, pp. 25–26: Dave Arneson, “The Future of Computer Role-Playing” (Stackpole “assisted Alan Pavlish in the design”; NPCs that refuse orders; 200 paragraphs).
Computer Gaming World issue 47, May 1988, pp. 28–29: William “Biff” Kritzen, “Wasted in the Wasteland” (Apple II review; characters and skills; up to seven in the party; 80–100 hours; the paragraph book and false subplot; no magic or food; writing to disk; “Adventure Game of the Year”).
Shay Addams, “Adventure Road”, Commodore Magazine, June 1988, pp. 60–61: St. André and Stackpole as writers and Pavlish as programmer; the long wait; SDI and the south-west.
Zzap!64 issue 41, September 1988, pp. 56–57: Philippa Irving’s review in “Manoeuvres” (£19.99 disk; the 1998 background and the Rangers; four disks; IQ and skills; Highpool, the Agricultural Centre and Quartz; the paragraphs; 95%).
The Games Machine issue 11, October 1988, p. 75: Wasteland review (two years in development).
Computer Gaming World issue 53, November 1988, p. 21: 1988 Game of the Year awards (credits; the presentation on 3 September 1988; the editor’s note).
Computer Gaming World issue 54, December 1988, p. 28: Ken St. Andre as designer of Tunnels & Trolls and “one of the designers of Wasteland”.
Computer Gaming World issue 103, February 1993, p. 157: Hall of Fame induction (story by Stackpole, maps by Liz Danforth and St. Andre; the EA budget sale; Fountain of Dreams).
Computer Gaming World issue 148, November 1996, p. 69: “150 Best Games of All Time”, Wasteland ninth (NPCs who refuse to share cash and ammunition).
Computer Gaming World issue 150, January 1997, pp. 225 and 227: Brian Fargo interview (“the first game to offer moral dilemmas”) and Interplay advertising section (Fallout, “the unofficial sequel to Wasteland”).
Computer Gaming World issue 159, October 1997, p. 163: the five greatest role-playing games (Ultima IV and moral dilemmas; Wasteland, story by Stackpole, “of BattleTech and X-Wing novel fame”).
Edge issue 214, May 2010: Brian Fargo interview (the rights to Wasteland; Fallout “exists as a franchise because we didn’t have the rights to Wasteland”).
Retro Gamer issue 103, June 2012, p. 8: the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter ($900,000 asked, $2,933,252 raised).
Edge issue 252, April 2013, p. 114: Brian Fargo profile (the Kickstarter launched on 13 March 2012).
Wireframe issue 2, November 2018, p. 13: Microsoft’s purchase of inXile and Obsidian; Fig and Wasteland 3.
Wireframe issue 37, April 2020, pp. 44–45: “Back to the Wasteland” (Fargo’s influences; Fallout pitched as a spiritual successor).
Wireframe issue 48, February 2021, pp. 109–110: Wasteland 3 (Colorado; “buggy and somewhat flawed”).
Wikipedia, “Wasteland (video game)”, “Wasteland 2” and “Wasteland 3” (web, secondary): release dates of the MS-DOS version (1989), Wasteland 2 (19 September 2014), Wasteland 3 (28 August 2020, Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One) and Wasteland Remastered (25 February 2020). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasteland_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasteland_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasteland_3