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Interplay Ex-CEO Brian Fargo Kickstarts Wasteland II
New submitter 0111 1110 writes "Attempting to emulate Double Fine's success to fund another currently dead genre of computer game, Brian Fargo of Interplay fame has started a kickstarter project for a sequel to Wasteland, his1988 post-apocalyptic RPG which inspired Fallout. It will be turn-based and party-based, with a top-down perspective and 2D graphics. Fargo has managed to attract many of the original developers, such as Alan Pavlish and Mike Stackpole, as well as Jason Anderson, who was a designer for Fallout, and Mark Morgan, who did the music for Planescape: Torment and both of the original Fallout games. Fargo's goal has been set at $900,000. Anything above that will be used for additional game content. At $1.5 million he will offer an OS X version. An interview with Fargo by Rock, Paper, Shotgun provides some additional insight into what he and his group are planning, as does a video interview with Matt Barton."
Attempting to emulate Double Fine's success to fund another currently dead genre of computer game...
Considering Double Fine were only after $400,000 and they've already passed the $3,200,000 mark, I'd say point and click adventure games aren't dead in the eyes of their customers.
Linux support is the typical response: "We are initially going to develop and release through Steam for PC. However, depending on how funding goes (*hint* *hint*) for the Kickstarter project, we are more than open to releasing it on other platforms too!" Sadly, when this is stated, it rarely comes to fruition.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Anyone who's not familiar with Matt should definitely check out his podcast. He has a lot of great interviews with real elders of gaming. The names range from Scott Adams to John Romero. And he just lets them reminisce. If you're interested in the development of your favorite classic games, or the personal histories of game design greats, or way the game industry has changed over the past 30 years, you'll get some great perspectives from watching Matt Chat.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
it seems that in american games anyways, the true RPG has gone the way of the dodo, and all we get now are FPS-RPG hybrids. while fallout 3 was fine, it was no fallout 1 or 2. i LIKE turn based top down gameplay. It's relaxing, and i can see everything thats going on easily.
i am VERY interested in seeing where this goes.
There is a reason that Starcraft 2 took about 12 years to show up.
Any given game (and this probably applies to movies and to TV to some extent) will have an initial title that proves the concept as being worth pursuing, followed by a title that effectively represents the pinnacle of the genre. For 3d Shooters you had Wolfenstien which led to Doom. For MMO's you initially had Ultima online, which gave way to Everquest, and in turn gave way to World of Warcraft. And for RTS games you had Dune which led to Warcraft 2 which led to Starcraft.
Once you have that definitive product, competitors start to back off, realizing that they have no chance to dethrone the reigning king of the genre. The expectations of the fans keep escalating, and since you can never please everyone, you have fans of the genre start to splinter off, or perhaps just get bored. Since sales fall off, the resources for sequels fall off, and that basically buries the genre.
The endgame is that the creators of the 'pinnacle' product eventually stop making new iterations, and that the competitors have usually abandoned that pursuit some time before that point. Eventually no one is making new games in that genre. Metaphorically, the challengers stopped playing the game when it was too difficult to win at it, and the champion stopped only because the rewards for victory were no longer enough to justify the effort.
But the market for that genre still exists, and after about 10 years, a new generation is available to exploit. If the original concept was strong enough, the fans are probably hungry enough that a new iteration should be successful.
END COMMUNICATION
without a commitment to support Linux at release. I don't run Windows, and hoping to use wine as a kludge isn't something I'm willing to pay for.
Hear hear!!
I miss good ol' fashioned turn-based role-playing games, like the old SSI ADnD-based games (Pools of Twilight, Pools of Radiance, etc).
"RPGs" nowadays are more hack'n slash, mouse-button mashfests than anything else (WoW, Diablo, Icewind Dale, etc).
I don't want to play a twitch-reaction game. I want to control a party of characters and take my time thinking about how to use their various skills together against large groups of enemies. I want turn-based action.
If I wanted a FPS (which I don't, can't stand them), I'd buy one. But I want an RPG. When was the last time you played a paper-n-pencil RPG where it was "whoever can roll the fastest gets to attach"? It's all turn-based.
Bring back the turn-based RPGs!!
I've played Wasteland through probably half a dozen times, and I will continue to every few years when the urge strikes. It was one of the best RPG's of it's time, with a really great story. If this sequel happens, it's definitely worth playing if you like this sort of thing.
I don't respond to AC's.
I miss the writing from Fallout 2, the presentation was secondary for me, though I did like turn based combat over twitch/Diablo mashing. That said, when I hear "Interplay" I hear Python's "Run away! Run away!" line. They run projects like everyone at the top has the programming skill of Jobs, the design asthetic of Gates and the management style of a helicopter parent.
Better than isometric is the upcoming XCOM from Firaxis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uHHmTSDCvA
You might also be interested in my short post on Temple of Elemental Evil the other day:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2719507&cid=39323731
I had no idea they were remaking xcom, holy crap. i am giddy with excitement. now i just need someone to make another game like planescape:torment and the triumvirate will be complete...
Their willingness to support Linux (and Tim Shafer's offbeat and silly style) is one of the reasons I became a backer of the Double Fine Adventure. Linux support makes me about 10 times more likely to spend money on a game, and I haven't bought a PC-only game in about 6 years because I don't run Windows. Seriously. Now this guy comes in, wants more money, and only grudgingly offers the possibility of an OS X port if they get enough money.
Nope, sorry.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Better than isometric is the upcoming XCOM from Firaxis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uHHmTSDCvA
Oh wow. Oh yeah. Hell yeah!
Thanks!
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
It seems like they're keeping the gameplay and just adding some shiny graphical elements... ... which is totally fucking awesome!
My laundry list for a remake would also include multiplayer (2 squads going after aliens or one player is the aliens one is the human, or x number of players where each player controls one soldier and one is the base commander) oh god I want this game now please.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
It was called Fountain of Dreams. I remember playing it and found that the quality was much lower than Wasteland, but I was glad to have any sequel to begin with. My memory is not as clear as back then, but was that the one where you played a bunch of rangers and could mutate as you wandered the wasteland?
(Wasteland was followed in 1990 by a less-successful intended sequel, Fountain of Dreams, set in post-war Florida. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasteland_(video_game)#Legacy )
Not saying that I wouldn't appreciate another sequel if it was done well... *cough*
Look at Civ or Galactic Civilizations. Those non-FPS/RTS games were turn-based and required thought and planning. Old RPGs are the same way. People like me who grew up with Wasteland and its contemporaries miss the engagement and cleverness. I'm not interested in a fast twitch game and am willing to pay for a game that makes me think and spend time to beat. It's merely a bonus that it's a sequel to one of the all time greats that we're talking about. I'm contributing tonight and then I'm going to fire up my old copy of Wasteland and go see how little firepower I can beat Guardian Citadel with this time. Exploded blood sausage ftw!
I went in for $50 on this because I bet I'd enjoy the hell out of it.
For those wondering how the funding works it is all through Amazon.com. You authorize a payment in a given amount and Amazon will tell you the valid dates. If the funding goal is reached, Kickstarter tells Amazon to collect the payments, and they charge you account. If not, no charge is made. So no worries about CC fraud or any of that, Amazon is handling the payment auth.
Only real risk would be that the developers would never deliver the final product. However given that the people on the project are people with many games to their name (Fargo has like 30 games he's delivered on), real good chance they deliver as promised.
For one, I'd say that this concept of the second game being the "pinnacle" is very flawed. The best example is MMOs. Ultima wasn't the first MMO, nor was EQ the pinnacle. If anything is to be called the pinnacle it would be WoW. Also it isn't like all genres die out either. Turn based strategy games are still going strong. Heard of Civilization 5? AAA title, released last year. How about Total War: Shogun 2. It is not nearly as large a genre as shooters, but it isn't dead by a long shot, and isn't even a "just indie" market.
For that matter sometimes things will have a pinnacle, and then another later. Many TBS fans said Civ 2 was the pinnacle. They didn't care for Civ 3 as much, nor many other games that came after Civ 2. Then Civ 4 hit and man. Best. Civ. EVAR. Another pinnacle, better than the last. It isn't as though things peak and then are on a death spiral after that.
Some genres die out, but often that is just due to the companies that are involved in them sucking. Many companies will have run off to some new things ignoring it. The companies that stay and try for the niche do a shit job, release games nobody likes, and that leads to a feedback cycle where nobody wants to back the projects because they perceive them as making no money.
In terms of this game, I think it has quite a good chance at success. People have shown a love for old school type RPGs, and for TBT games (Frozen Synapse did quite well, indy TBT title all combat). The people behind it are people who know what they are doing, they are people with real successful games to their credit.
Also Starcraft 2 took so long because:
1) Blizzard is really slow at development, for a number of reasons.
2) They got even slower because of WoW, which was all consuming with them for awhile.
There have been a bunch of RTS games since Starcraft 2, many of which have done real well.
Would much rather have seen a sequel to Starflight!
And with none of this 2D grassroots bs, either. But I would settle for Oolite grade 3D space travel as long as it has decent storyline and atmospheric reentry sequences with super-fine planetary exploration missions.
I lost way more than 40hrs to both Starflight and the sequel each.
She blinded me with science, she tricked me with technology. ~ Thomas Dolby
What's left of Team Torment is thinking about it. Chris Avellone, the mastermind behind PS:T, would like to make it. You might want to let him know yourself how you feel. I would guess that the success or failure of Brian Fargo's attempt will affect their decision on whether or not to do their own kickstart funded sequel-in-spirit to Planescape: Torment.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Make it open source. Use cross-platform tools and libraries. Then you can sell the other game assets (art, music, scripts). If the game is any good, people will assist with the port to other OSes and will probably even fix a lot of bugs for you. Then for Wasteland 3 all you will have to do is create new art assets.
I have been developing a turn based strategy RPG for the last few months using C# and XNA 4. I am making good progress and I certainly enjoy seeing that people still want this type of game. I developed MUD(s) for a decade and just recently turned my attention to graphical based games and been having a blast developing it. It gives me hope that people will play and enjoy what I create.
Hey Brian, how about re-releasing the original c64 version free without the copy protection (i.e. in a d81 image file), so gamers old and young can play it on an emulator. It would be great press and make people interested in the project.
You said it. I miss the old styles of games in general - more complex, more challenging, and really imaginative. It's really interesting what's happening with indie games now, since the market is letting people do well by going back to these roots.
I'm interested to see where this will all lead. The market just made a huge statement that we still want adventure games, and it's now showing that we want isometric, turn-based RPGs. Hopefully this will lead to widespread awesomeness.
Don't get too giddy. They're limiting max deployment size to six members. No more mowing down a destructible level with fourteen squaddies armed with laser pistols and rocket launchers (nothing better than shooting blindly into the dark and hearing a Sectoid death groan). And one base. I'm okay with the time unit change, and the cinematics, but 4-6 squaddies and no robot tanks? If I down an alien craft in America, and my one base is in Turkey, I have to let the enemy craft go due to time constraints? If I lose my one base, it's game over? It's X-Com for preschoolers.
This was mentioned just a few days ago right here on slashdot I believe, in the classic RPG games article. I first learned of Wasteland there and will definitely pitch in on this.
It seems strange to criticize FPS-RPGs, as being "not true RPGs" since from the ancient history of RPG lots of the successful ones have been FPS: Bard's Tale series, Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back, Wizardry series, Might&Magic series, Black Crypt, Eye of the Beholder series, etc. True, they only had a pseudo 3D, reduced degrees of freedom, but those were the technical constraints of the time. I always liked the top down RPGs, like the Ultima series, but Fallout 1 and 2 do not fall under that category, they are isometric, and in isometric games there is always the problem of a number of planes that are not visible. All in all, these are technical details that a good game can overcome through different means, but it seems ridiculous that people are complaining today about the technology they used to dream of having in RPGs ten or twenty years ago.
Fallout 3 is a good RPG game, very enjoyable, and keeping incredible amounts of the "feel", "atmosphere", and game mechanics of Fallout 1 and 2 (maybe you forget that like Fallout 3, Fallout 1 and 2 were real time not turn based, except for the battles), especially when you consider that the team that made it was not exactly the original team.
2k Games (Borderlands, Bioshock) + Firaxis (Civ). I really, really cannot wait. I love the idea of the 'glam cam', I think it will blend the lines between action FPS and tactical turn based. The youtube vid looks so slick. If they keep a lot of the research, manufacture and soldier development in, and add in more tactical (like their example of different types of cover) options, I'll be buying this game on day 1, not waiting for sales, or second hand copy.
This is one of those games that is so rare, in that it's build upon a great game system, and not a movie franchise, voice acting or eye-porn graphics. That's why I love Borderlands and Bioshock so much, along with Civ.
Not arguing with your point but you have a pretty liberal definition of 'nowadays'.
Icewind Dale was released twelve years ago, as was the last iteration of Diablo (not that I'm claiming the new one would be much different).
WoW, Diablo, Icewind Dale
Er, what? Icewind Dale has the same gameplay as Baldurs' Gate, i.e. you issue orders while paused then let time run until either it auto-pauses at the next event of interest or you auto-pause it. Which isn't really much different from a turn-based game.
Wasteland, though fun, was not really the best game. It took a while to figure out how to leave the starting area. It had a large map that you would spend time wandering around fairly aimlessly. Along the way you would find clues as to what you should do, but it was not something that could form a coherent story. Mostly it was level up characters to handle the next more powerful area that you can find.
PS: "thin red paste" FTW!
Back in the early 80's (probably 82-83), there was some sort of future science fiction game for the Apple ][ that I remember as being Wasteland. Looking at videos, definitely not the case. It was set in some sort of large mega-city. Graphics based, higher-resolution(?) than Wasteland, and I remember having to avoid robots and solve puzzles. I swear it was an RPG, though single-character. Anybody have any ideas? It was probably
The pseudo-real-time auto-pause mode in Icewind Dale is crap, especially with large groups of enemies. It's not turn-based in the least. A real turn-based combat system lets you select the movements/attacks of all your characters. Then everyone (yourself and the enemies) plays out there attacks (thus completing one turn). Then you select all the movements/attacks for your characters. And then they all play out.
Icewind Dale's auto-pause setup was no better than twitch-fest button mashing since it kept pausing things every 2 seconds, freezing all the graphics with effects everywhere. It's like trying to watch a movie with a 2-year-old chewing on the remote constantly hitting play/pause with every bite. There was no flow to the combat like in a real turn-based system.
I gave up on RPGs on the PC after Icewind Dale, and haven't seen/heard anything since to make it worthwhile trying anything.
[turn-based out of combat? what a pain that would be!]
with few exceptions, the old games you speak of were turn based, so while they are FP, it would be a far stretch to call them S - there are no shooter / fast paced / twitch elements to them.
fallout 3, oblivion, skyrim - the combat in those is actually FPS in nature. yes, VATS was a nice option to get the tactical feel back, and i'm not saying fallout 3 was a bad game - i enjoyed it quite a lot - but the gameplay definitely had a very different feel, for obvious reasons.
Holy god damn Mike Morgan is going to be making the music for this! His soundtracks for Fallout I and II were the most atmospheric and appropriate soundtracks for any games ever.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
If you've never read the Fallout Bible (pdfs here), I highly recommend it. It's pretty much a giant FAQ about the development of the game done by Chris Avellone, one of the designers of Fallout 3 and the defunct Van Buren (what was supposed to be Fallout 3). Lots of cool bits of trivia and ideas which didn't make it into the game.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
I'm pretty sure you're looking for 2400 A.D. I played it on the Apple ][c, too.
I checked out good old games and they don't have the title. Is there a good/easy/legal way to play this on a modern system? I was a huge fan of bards tale 1 and 2 and fallout 1/2/3 but somehow I managed to miss wasteland back in the day. I'd love a crack at it before the new one comes out.
FPS means first person SHOOTER.
Even though Bard's Tale & Wizardry (the only ones I'm very familiar with) have first person viewpoint (wireframe 3D in Wizardry in the dungeons), the gameplay is turn-based.
BTW, I realize it wasn't done by Interplay, but by Brian Fargo, the PS2 Bard's Tale "reimagining" was very fun to play. (It doesn't fit with the turn based gameplay, however.)