With Wasteland 2 and the upcoming Wasteland 3 gaining such a wide fanbase online, it's clear the post-apocalyptic, top-down RPG franchise is finding more traction than ever before. However, a lot of the series' current fans have never gotten to experience its first entry, with the original Wasteland releasing all the way back in 1988.
Luckily, players eager to see where the franchise first started are in luck, as Wasteland Remastered is slated to release late next month on Xbox One and PC. There's also a brand new trailer for the title, which sets the scene for the game's main narrative as well as showing some small clips of the title's signature tactical gameplay.
The trailer, which clocks in at one minute and fifty seconds, follows a widespread bombing of earth, showing a futuristic satellite raining missiles down on a number of heavily populated locations from space. The trailer then advances time and shows viewers the fallout of this attack, with some lines of text describing how the radiation left by the missile's has swept the land leading to random storms and mutations. As franchise fans will know, these events depict the fall of humanity that happens many years before the beginning of the Wasteland series.
Brief gameplay is then shown, highlighting some of the game's combat, dialogue scenarios, and character designs. It's clear that the original title's visuals and gameplay have been expertly preserved for this long-awaited remaster, with the game still retaining the signature charm it was praised for when it released back in the late 80s. With seemingly tons of retro flair, it appears to be a fairly authentic time capsule for both Wasteland fans and players looking for a classic RPG experience.
As fans of Wasteland will no doubt know, the development team behind the game, Interplay Studios, went on to be a fairly prolific developer that worked on a number of classic games. It developed the Baldur's Gate series, which is getting a third entry this year, and, perhaps more famously, was the original creator of the Fallout franchise. Although Interplay eventually sold the IP to Bethesda, Fallout would go on to be the team's crowning legacy, with the studio developing the first and second titles in the franchise to near-universal acclaim. Wasteland Remastered will no doubt be yet another reminder of Interplay's revolutionary contributions to the RPG genre when it releases at the tail-end of February.
Wasteland Remastered will release on February 25 for the Xbox One and PC.