...except it came out 5 months before Wasteland 3 did, but that's an aside.
I've previously posted about how I envision the merging of Fallout and Wasteland into one continuity. After doing a playthrough of Fallout: Sonora this week, I think Nevada Band Studios have similar ideas to my own, and I think that Fallout: Sonora works as well as a sequel to Fallout 1 as it does a sequel to Wasteland 2.
Mid-sized spoilers for a 3-year old game will be ahead. (What, you don't read Russian?)
Game World
Wasteland's first two games and Fallout: Sonora both occupy the same game world, which is Arizona and the Sea of Cortez, so there were always going to be points in common. There are only a few locations that both games visit: the town of Quartz appears in both Wasteland 1 and Fallout: Sonora complete with Scott's bar; the Davis-Monthan Airfield appears in both Wasteland 2 and Fallout: Sonora with some eerie similarities; and while calling them the same location doesn't perfectly line up, Casa Nueva is clearly inspired by the Ag Center and echoes its conflict in Wasteland 2.
Fallout: Sonora takes place in 2167, which in a combined timeline like in my earlier cited post would set it 65 years down the road from Wasteland 2, and only 5 years after Fallout 1. Much has changed: in the Wasteland games, major Arizonan cities have not been repopulated. Flagstaff, Phoenix, and Casa Grande are never visited while survivors from Tucson moved into the aforementioned airfield, building a town called Damonta. In Fallout: Sonora, these places and many more to the south of the border have been revitalized. Fallout: Sonora didn't just copy stuff from Wasteland and make it work in Fallout's setting, but the points that do connect these games feel natural, as if Fallout: Sonora was meant to progress from Wasteland 2.
People and Creatures
Deathclaws will jumpscare you in this game, only appearing on screen when you get in a certain radius just like random encounters with Shadowclaws in Wasteland. Classic Fallout doesn't have a crazy array of monsters because of the difficulties with sprite work, but the devs make things work here. Ghouls, when they're not hailing from Necropolis, tend to be monstrous and feral like they are in Wasteland.
This game prominently features the Desert Rangers as part of the major factional conflict in the region. I don't think it needs to be said how much they draw on their depiction in the Wasteland games, given that previous Fallout depictions included a total of one named character. Their General even references Ranger forts in Los Angeles and Nevada, which ties to both Wasteland 2 as well as Fallout: Nevada, which was done by the same devs.
There is a major faction called the Church of Holy Fire, based out of Phoenix. They worship nuclear power and believe the world was remade during the Great War... where have we seen this before? The Servants of the Mushroom Cloud! Not only that, but the Church has a vendetta against the Desert Rangers--which would line up with Wasteland 2 and 3, since 3 confirms that the Rangers sided against the Servants in the previous game.
This next spoiler will probably annoy people if I post it without tags, so I will put it in a little box:
I think that the most interesting tribe in Fallout: Sonora are the Tinkerers of Two-Sun. The translation sometimes renders them as Tinsmiths, but I'll stink to Tinkerer for now. They are a tribe of cyborgs from Tucson with ties to the Brotherhood and an interest in salvaging the robots that patrol the former Davis-Monthan Airfield. Everything down to their philosophy of transhumanism is a callback to Tinker, the rogue Guardian of the Citadel that was augmenting humans and reactivating robots in Wasteland 2's Damonta. The Tinkerers feel like a natural extension of Tinker's experiments: 60 years down the line, the cyborgs she created have somewhat degenerated, but still augment themselves and venerate her, trying to penetrate the Forbidden Zone from which they first came.
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I'm sure that BlackDesigner has played Wasteland and Wasteland 2. He always does his homework for the Fallout games he makes, which is why I'm a bit sad his next project won't be Fallout at all. If someone wants to know what it would look like to play Wasteland on classic Fallout's engine, this is the game to do it. It's not a perfect 1:1, but it gets pretty damn close at points. If you have a fix for more of Wasteland, play this game. If you have a fix for more Fallout 1, play this game (especially the Dayglow DLC, it's more Fallout 2 than Fallout 2 is.) Fallout: Sonora perfectly married these two series and it's a shame the translation has taken so long when we should all be enjoying this as much as we have Nevada, 1.5, and all the rest of the total conversions.
I've previously posted about how I envision the merging of Fallout and Wasteland into one continuity. After doing a playthrough of Fallout: Sonora this week, I think Nevada Band Studios have similar ideas to my own, and I think that Fallout: Sonora works as well as a sequel to Fallout 1 as it does a sequel to Wasteland 2.
Mid-sized spoilers for a 3-year old game will be ahead. (What, you don't read Russian?)
Game World
Wasteland's first two games and Fallout: Sonora both occupy the same game world, which is Arizona and the Sea of Cortez, so there were always going to be points in common. There are only a few locations that both games visit: the town of Quartz appears in both Wasteland 1 and Fallout: Sonora complete with Scott's bar; the Davis-Monthan Airfield appears in both Wasteland 2 and Fallout: Sonora with some eerie similarities; and while calling them the same location doesn't perfectly line up, Casa Nueva is clearly inspired by the Ag Center and echoes its conflict in Wasteland 2.
Fallout: Sonora takes place in 2167, which in a combined timeline like in my earlier cited post would set it 65 years down the road from Wasteland 2, and only 5 years after Fallout 1. Much has changed: in the Wasteland games, major Arizonan cities have not been repopulated. Flagstaff, Phoenix, and Casa Grande are never visited while survivors from Tucson moved into the aforementioned airfield, building a town called Damonta. In Fallout: Sonora, these places and many more to the south of the border have been revitalized. Fallout: Sonora didn't just copy stuff from Wasteland and make it work in Fallout's setting, but the points that do connect these games feel natural, as if Fallout: Sonora was meant to progress from Wasteland 2.
People and Creatures
Deathclaws will jumpscare you in this game, only appearing on screen when you get in a certain radius just like random encounters with Shadowclaws in Wasteland. Classic Fallout doesn't have a crazy array of monsters because of the difficulties with sprite work, but the devs make things work here. Ghouls, when they're not hailing from Necropolis, tend to be monstrous and feral like they are in Wasteland.
This game prominently features the Desert Rangers as part of the major factional conflict in the region. I don't think it needs to be said how much they draw on their depiction in the Wasteland games, given that previous Fallout depictions included a total of one named character. Their General even references Ranger forts in Los Angeles and Nevada, which ties to both Wasteland 2 as well as Fallout: Nevada, which was done by the same devs.
There is a major faction called the Church of Holy Fire, based out of Phoenix. They worship nuclear power and believe the world was remade during the Great War... where have we seen this before? The Servants of the Mushroom Cloud! Not only that, but the Church has a vendetta against the Desert Rangers--which would line up with Wasteland 2 and 3, since 3 confirms that the Rangers sided against the Servants in the previous game.
This next spoiler will probably annoy people if I post it without tags, so I will put it in a little box:
the Brotherhood of Steel have come to Arizona looking to siphon energy reserves back to Lost Hills as part of a recovery operation after the war with the Unity five years ago, and they've been leading the crusade against the Rangers. This just serves to continue the history of Wasteland with the Guardians of the Citadel and the Desert Rangers being arch-enemies.
I think that the most interesting tribe in Fallout: Sonora are the Tinkerers of Two-Sun. The translation sometimes renders them as Tinsmiths, but I'll stink to Tinkerer for now. They are a tribe of cyborgs from Tucson with ties to the Brotherhood and an interest in salvaging the robots that patrol the former Davis-Monthan Airfield. Everything down to their philosophy of transhumanism is a callback to Tinker, the rogue Guardian of the Citadel that was augmenting humans and reactivating robots in Wasteland 2's Damonta. The Tinkerers feel like a natural extension of Tinker's experiments: 60 years down the line, the cyborgs she created have somewhat degenerated, but still augment themselves and venerate her, trying to penetrate the Forbidden Zone from which they first came.
---
I'm sure that BlackDesigner has played Wasteland and Wasteland 2. He always does his homework for the Fallout games he makes, which is why I'm a bit sad his next project won't be Fallout at all. If someone wants to know what it would look like to play Wasteland on classic Fallout's engine, this is the game to do it. It's not a perfect 1:1, but it gets pretty damn close at points. If you have a fix for more of Wasteland, play this game. If you have a fix for more Fallout 1, play this game (especially the Dayglow DLC, it's more Fallout 2 than Fallout 2 is.) Fallout: Sonora perfectly married these two series and it's a shame the translation has taken so long when we should all be enjoying this as much as we have Nevada, 1.5, and all the rest of the total conversions.
