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Wasteland: Developing an open-world RPG in 1988

"Wasteland let you do anything you wanted in any order you wanted, and you could get ripple effects that might happen one minute later or thirty minutes later, a lot like [the much later] Grand Theft Auto series."

Christian Nutt, Contributor

February 26, 2016

1 Min Read

"Wasteland let you do anything you wanted in any order you wanted, and you could get ripple effects that might happen one minute later or thirty minutes later, a lot like [the much later] Grand Theft Auto series. The Ultima games were open, but things tended to be very compartmentalized, they didn’t ripple out like in Wasteland."

- Brian Fargo on the original Wasteland

An extensive new history of the classic 1988 PC RPG Wasteland has popped up at PC game history site The Digital Antiquarian, and it's worth a look for its window into the RPG development scene of the 1980s, and how a series that was recently reborn got its start 30 years ago. 

We spoke to Wasteland developer Brian Fargo himself a couple of years ago about the lessons he learned when creating Wasteland 2 after its successful Kickstarter -- and reading both articles will let you compare and contrast the development styles of two different eras.

Read The Digital Antiquarian's piece for quotes from Fargo and other core developers on the game: Michael Stackpole and Ken St. Andre.

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