In yet another installment of Fallout Archaeology, we bring you the following two interviews with the developers of Wasteland (Fallout's grandfather): Michael Stackpole and Ken St. Andre, from the ancient Questbusters journal from October 1988. The interviews are divided between two issues of the journal and have been published on the Web by the Museum of Computer Adventure Game History. Both concern their work on Wasteland, the relationship between designers and programmers as well as more general musings on translating tabletop RPGs into computer games.
The first interview is available in Volume V, #10 on pages 6-7 and contains, among other things, an interesting fact about Wasteland's development:<blockquote>The Wasteland you see is actually the second design. The first one was a Red Dawn scenario, with the Russians occupying bases in the farmlands of Iowa. This was back in late 1985. We spent a month drawing farmland maps and making up Farmer characters.</blockquote>The second interview, available in Volume V, #11 on pages 6-7 and 15-16, concerns general matters, but still brings interesting facts to the table:<blockquote>One of the things that kept happening in Wasteland... Ken says there's a Blood Cult in Needles, and also a Church of that Blood Cult in Las Vegas. As we were retrofitting stuff in Needles, we built a link between different religious groups and things going on. Servants of the Mushroom Cloud again show up in Needles and in Vegas; the Guardians of the Old Order are certainly a force unto themselves and very strange, but when you wander around in their Citadel, you see that these guys have been collecting artifacts from the pre-war times and you find things you recognize, and through experiencing Wasteland you can believe that yeah, 100 years ago the bombs did fall and this is what's left over - it all makes strange, perverted sense. [...] [Designing the game is about] creating that mythos and keeping you in it as opposed to saying 'you're really only playing a game '. You're not thinking about the game system.</blockquote>Thanks for this bit of history go to octavius, of RPG Codex.
On top of that, since it cannot be praised enough, if you ever wondered what that random square in Quartz could make happen in Needles, the Wasteland decryptor is the tool for you!
And last, but not least, here's a previously unseen partial render of the advanced power armour, recovered by the man that can, Barnz:
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That is all in today's episode of Fallout Archaeology!
The first interview is available in Volume V, #10 on pages 6-7 and contains, among other things, an interesting fact about Wasteland's development:<blockquote>The Wasteland you see is actually the second design. The first one was a Red Dawn scenario, with the Russians occupying bases in the farmlands of Iowa. This was back in late 1985. We spent a month drawing farmland maps and making up Farmer characters.</blockquote>The second interview, available in Volume V, #11 on pages 6-7 and 15-16, concerns general matters, but still brings interesting facts to the table:<blockquote>One of the things that kept happening in Wasteland... Ken says there's a Blood Cult in Needles, and also a Church of that Blood Cult in Las Vegas. As we were retrofitting stuff in Needles, we built a link between different religious groups and things going on. Servants of the Mushroom Cloud again show up in Needles and in Vegas; the Guardians of the Old Order are certainly a force unto themselves and very strange, but when you wander around in their Citadel, you see that these guys have been collecting artifacts from the pre-war times and you find things you recognize, and through experiencing Wasteland you can believe that yeah, 100 years ago the bombs did fall and this is what's left over - it all makes strange, perverted sense. [...] [Designing the game is about] creating that mythos and keeping you in it as opposed to saying 'you're really only playing a game '. You're not thinking about the game system.</blockquote>Thanks for this bit of history go to octavius, of RPG Codex.
On top of that, since it cannot be praised enough, if you ever wondered what that random square in Quartz could make happen in Needles, the Wasteland decryptor is the tool for you!
And last, but not least, here's a previously unseen partial render of the advanced power armour, recovered by the man that can, Barnz:
<center>
That is all in today's episode of Fallout Archaeology!
