Wasteland 2, Baby!

I'm not going to have any info on Wasteland 2 that you won't find (or have found) anywhere else, but in case you don't know a thing about it, read on. (All are invited to read nonetheless!)

Rewind back to 1988. A game called Wasteland is released to an unsuspecting public. (How trite, blog author!) Interplay developed the game, while Electronic Arts published it. Set in an unforgiving post-apocalyptic (ahem) wasteland, the game found success in the PC gaming market in which it spawned. It's been seen as a classic ever since.

A sequel of sorts was released, titled Fountain of Dreams. It was not advertised as a sequel, and Interplay did not develop it. It was poorly received. Onward.

Fast forward to 1997. Fallout was released, developed and also published by Interplay, who stated that it was a spiritual successor to Wasteland. Interplay could not use the Wasteland name since it was owned by Electronic Arts. Needless to say, Fallout met with huge success, spawning several sequels and spin-offs.

Now fast forward to 2003. Brian Fargo is no longer the head of Interplay (he resigned after Titus Interactive bought the company and shifted its focus to console games), and recently founded InXile Entertainment. He bought the rights to the Wasteland name, which had been acquired at some point by Konami.

After several years, Brian tried to find a publisher for Wasteland 2. None of them were interested in funding a sequel to such an old game. In February of 2012, Brian announced that he had assembled all the key team members of the original Wasteland game, and was going to try to gather funds for the project, using a crowd-funding website called Kickstarter.

On March 13th, 2012, the Wasteland 2 page on Kickstarter went live. The goal for funding was $900,000. The project met its goal in 42 hours. At the time of this writing, over $1.5 million has been donated. What does this mean? More stories and quests, more maps, more music, and a more complex story. Plus, the game will be available for Mac and Linux!

$1.5 million... and 24 days of funding to go! I wonder how high this will go? I knew that Wasteland had a sizable cult following, but this? Wow!

Personally, I'm going to try to donate $75 to this project. It's not completely altruistic, especially given the fact that I'd really be scraping the barrel for this - if I can do it at all. For $75, you'd get:

• A mysterious "unique and quirky" skill for your party in the game. Hmmm.
• A DRM-free digital copy of the game.
• A digital soundtrack.
• A Wasteland 2 art book.
• A Big boxed copy of Wasteland 2, with cloth map and old-style game manual! Oh, drooool...
• Parts 1 and 2 of an early release novella with hints and such on the game world and story. Yay!!!
• You'd get signed up for an early-release beta of the game, playable on Steam. Exciting!

Oddly enough, I've never played the original Wasteland game. However, I have experienced the game in a way, first by watching the excellent Let's Play by mynameisnotlilly. (Click here for that.) Secondly, through the bloggy musings of The CRPG Addict. (Click here for the first post.) I highly recommend both!

Click here to go to the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter page.

Click here to read the Wasteland 2 blog.