Wasteland (video game)

""Your life has ended in the wasteland.""

A 1988 CRPG that was groundbreaking in its combination of a gritty post-apocalyptic setting with a nonlinear play style. The designers notably sacrificed more modern graphics for extended detail in the gameplay, as well as creating a rich false backstory that appeared in the game's copy protection, a set of 'Paragraphs' that were referenced by number at various plot points.

Celebrated on several sites, most notably at the Ranger HQ Grid, which includes info about the game as well as some surprisingly good Fanfic.

After a very successful Kickstarter support campaign, InXile Entertainment, under Brian Fargo's leadership, worked on the sequel, Wasteland 2, with Obsidian Entertainment, and Chris Avellone in particular, joining in as co-developers. The game was released in 2014.

See also Fallout, the series' Spiritual Successor.

""Ace rips a clip on the rabbit.""
 * Action Bomb: The Radiation Angels at the Temple of the Mushroom Cloud explode into a pile of glowing blue dust after you defeat. Why yes, it is radioactive.
 * Action Girl: Christina, one of the few recruitable NPCs who has a unique picture.
 * Alliteration In the southeast corner of the agricultural center's farm, there are four foot tall pears. They're pleasingly plump, and perfectly prepared to possibly plummet.
 * After the End: "Somehow, life goes on in the Wasteland."
 * A.I. Is a Crapshoot: AI research goes pretty badly awry, and is hinted to have caused nuclear holocaust in the first place.
 * AKA-47: Averted. Weapons are either real-life firearms, fictional sci-fi guns or fictional advanced versions of contemporary guns, as explained by the manual.
 * An Axe to Grind: The Proton Ax, found in a deserted building guarded by the game's most powerful enemy.
 * Anti-Hero: The player characters can be a group of these depending on the player's style - going straight into near-Villain Protagonist levels (you can, for example, choose to freely butcher the innocent children at a summer camp because some of them make fun of you).
 * Anti-Villain: Finster believes that with nuclear holocaust humanity has proven to be bad stewards of the earth, so he is terraforming it to start over. The PCs are just in his way.
 * Apocalyptic Log: A number are found and related in the Paragraphs, including actual logs from the Sleeper Base.
 * Artificial Stupidity: NPCs are only under a reasonable amount of control by the player. Often they refuse to take orders or take them too well. They also can't tell between friendly and non-friendly non-party NPCs.


 * VAX and Christina in particular will use full auto (which empties a magazine) as an attack option 90% of the time, wasting precious ammunition, especially if they're using energy weapons.
 * Back Tracking: Getting the Bloodstaff for Charmaine.
 * Betting Minigame: Vegas.
 * Big Damn Fire Exit: Big damn escape pod, actually.
 * Bloody Hilarious: Due to the graphical limitations of the game, the results of combat were described rather poetically, resulting in enemies being turned into chunky meat kibble, reduced to an undertaker's nightmare, or blown into a fine red mist.
 * Boring but Practical: Assault rifles are, short of rockets and energy weapons, the most practical weapons around.
 * Character Customization, including nationality, which doesn't affect anything.
 * Character Portrait: Seen in combat.
 * Cloning Blues: If you take the time to learn the associated skills, you can clone any of your party members. This can be used either to invoke We Have Reserves should you manage to lose one of them in battle OR to outfit your team with a carbon copy of your most badass Ranger to increase the team's overall badassitude.
 * Critical Existence Failure: Averted. Dropping below 0 hit points results in a number of progressively serious wounded states, and unless the Medic or Doctor skill is applied, the character is toast.
 * Cut and Paste Environments: There are a lot of identical abandoned buildings.
 * Dump Stat: Charisma.
 * Everything Breaks: Not really, but the furniture in the abandoned buildings is described as about to fall apart at the lightest touch.
 * Everything Is Trying to Kill You: Cacti.
 * Exposition Breaks: Conveniently broken out into paragraphs.
 * Fetch Quest: Refreshingly rare. The Bloodstaff is one.
 * Freeware Games
 * Gang of Bullies: The kids in Highpool who laugh at your troop of hardened soldiers falling on some slippery rocks. You can kill them if you choose to, although everyone hates you for it and it results in the town becoming deserted.
 * Grimy Water: The fish are biting. Ouch!
 * Hacking Minigame: Finster's virtual reality, sort of.
 * Healing Potion: One of the earliest complete aversions.
 * Hit Points
 * I Fought the Law and the Law Won: Averted. You can shoot up an entire police station.
 * Impassable Desert: In-map desert requires a canteen.
 * Insurmountable Waist High Fence: Usually averted. You can blow up or knock down virtually any door (including several that have key slots, but can only be opened with explosives) and a lot of walls, and there are a good number of walls that can be climbed, too.
 * In-Universe Game Clock: Runs at different speeds on maps of different scales.
 * Late Character Syndrome: Mort, Ralf, and others.
 * Locked Door
 * Ludicrous Gibs: Described in loving detail, due to the lack of graphics.
 * Monsters Everywhere: The whole game, but especially Finster's wasteland.
 * Ms. Fanservice / Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The bathtub girl in Paragraph 1, who exists only to remind players not to cheat by reading through the Paragraphs book.
 * Non-Lethal KO: Most enemy attacks knock you out, and you can get back up later (or even mid-combat).
 * Only Smart People May Pass: Finster's virtual reality.
 * Optional Sexual Encounter: The three-legged hooker.
 * Preexisting Encounters: The Citadel.
 * Purely Aesthetic Gender: It influences exactly one thing: which restroom you can enter.
 * Railroading: Beautifully averted. While the car takes you from city to city and there are two locations that NPCs need to reveal, but otherwise, you are free to explore the whole map, returning to any earlier location you like and even trying farther ahead ones.
 * Random Encounters: Everywhere.
 * Regenerating Health: You can get back to full health by waiting. In some versions, when your entire party is unconscious, they may recover after a few minutes. However, if you are sick or became seriously wounded from combat, you must get medical treatment or die.
 * RPGs Equal Combat: Somewhat averted. While most of your experience will come from combat, successfully using noncombat skills can earn experience as well. In at least one place this can be abused for infinite experience.
 * Saving the World
 * Spread Shot
 * Story-Driven Invulnerability: There are characters who can be attacked and those who can't. The vast majority, including people you wouldn't want to attack, are the former, but a few (like Spam Shade) are the latter. Some of these change types after a given plot trigger, such as if you complete Fat Freddy's quest.
 * Three Quarters View: The city maps; the main map is Top Down View.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: Killing the kids at Highpool.

Your mind just exploded like a blood sausage.