This week not having much to do beyond looking for a new gig I blew the dust off an old favorite CRPG and decided to see if it still could keep me entertained. Wasteland by Interplay is indeed a classic CRPG that should be honored as a best of breed. That does not imply Wastleand should ever be played.
Most avid CRPG players have played Wasteland or at least heard of it. It is set in a post holocaust earth where the US Army Rangers and survivalists have carved out a niche civilization in the desert southwest. But obviously all is not well and hence a small team is sent out to investigate and right wrongs.
Wasteland is the quasi-first game in the Fallout series, though perhaps it was more of an inspiration to the same design team who worked on the later titles. Many of the elements that made the Fallout series great are present, especially in character creation and combat.
Character creation is started out by a roll-till-you-get-what-you-like for statistics. The statistics are slightly more detailed than the Fallout series but needed toned down. A nifty mechanic is tying skills to a characters IQ statistic. Basically the amount of skill points is determined by that statistic as well as available skills. For example if you want your character to know metallurgy, they must have an IQ of 17. Other statistics seem to have some duplicity like Speed and Agility, which seem to be by the game’s definitions nearly the same thing.
Combat plays out very much like the later fallout games. The party jockeys for position, based on the firepower they are carrying, then choose an action. Some of the actions that can be taken: attack, change weapons, evade, move, reload/un-jam, use a skill/item/statistic, etc. The weapons play out well and while you start very modestly there are some really good options there (rifles, assault rifles, flamethrowers, etc.). Combat is lethal, but until you party gets dog piled or goes up against some of the nasty things out in the desert it is usually in their favor. Healing is done via skill to stabilize a deeply injured player, otherwise they have to find a safe spot and let time pass. This mechanic is not really realistic and is more frustrating. The scheme in the follow up games with medical kits and health boosts makes for more exciting game play. The nice thing in combat is if characters go unconscious the NPC’s will wait till someone regains consciousness and then the combat restarts. Repeat as necessary.
Game play in Wasteland is very much like the CRPG’s that come after it. There is a bigger quest but along the way there are smaller quests to build experience and add flavor. There is no journal option, so a pen and paper are required if your memory is not so swell. As well some encounters are designed badly in a mechanical sense. For example to rescue or recruit some NPC’s you have to engage in combat then use the hire command within combat commands. Also interfacing with NPC’s can be awkward in that instead of being given choices for talking to them it is driven in Ultima IV style by keywords. In the lost/rabid dog quest early on talking to the boy goes something like this: crying, dog, rex, rex, cave. For whatever reason (the low memory of PC’s at the time or copy protection) much of the flavor text in the game is hard copied and you have to look up the verbiage. Not frustrating, but seems like a 1 meg game would not have been too pressed by another 50k in text.
Technically, as compared to today’s CRPG’s, Wasteland is primitive and mired with a poor interface. But at the time it had a great interface and you could use your mouse! The standards were different given the technology and programming was not as sophisticated. The mouse driven GUI is less usable than the keyboard commands. Commands can be stored for repetitive use (ie a PC is the designated lockpicker) and the faster PC’s of today tend to do weird things when clicking on mouse buttons (i.e. 1 click equals 3).
Wasteland has a top down view, akin to the Ultima V and below. While the graphics are blocky, most items can be interacted with and a represented well enough. An annoying “features” in the game is not being able to recover dropped loot in some locations.
Given the time Wasteland was a great CRPG but turned out to be a boondoggle in trying to play it again. The game has all the aspects that made the Fallout series great but lacks the smooth design. I was more frustrated than anything else while playing, but still fondly remember the long nights playing Wasteland.
