Wasteland (1988)

Lore & Background

Twenty-five years after the bombs fell, the United States is a patchwork of irradiated farmland, collapsed highways, and desperate communities clinging to survival in the Southwest. The federal government that once commanded the Demolition Squad has fractured; what remains of military authority operates out of fortified bases, dispensing water, ammunition, and orders to anyone who will obey. The 12th Army, once a major garrison, vanished without explanation, taking with it a depot of conventional ammunition that would be worth more than life itself in a world where bullets are currency. The player's squad is dispatched on this reconnaissance-and-recovery mission not out of idealism but out of necessity. The base they serve is running dry, and the leadership demands results. Along the way the squad encounters scavenger gangs, isolated farming collectives, religious enclaves, and remnants of pre-war infrastructure. Every settlement presents a choice: trade, barter, threaten, or simply walk past. The game's moral framework does not reward a single 'correct' path; it rewards consistency, and it remembers. The broader world of Wasteland is one of scarcity and improvisation. Pre-war technology is scavenged and repurposed; water is the true currency; and the old social contracts of nationhood have dissolved into local codes of honor, fear, and survival. The player's squad is both hero and instrument of a crumbling authority, and the game never fully resolves whether the mission serves the public good or merely one faction's power.

In Their Own Story

The dust doesn't settle. It never does out here, past the last stretch of cracked interstate. You can taste it on your teeth, a fine alkaline grit that coats the back of your throat no matter how many times you wipe your face with a sleeve. The water canteen is half empty. It was half empty an hour ago, too, but the sun doesn't care about your arithmetic. Ahead, the ruins of what the maps still call a town. The water tower is a rusted skeleton. A child's shoe sits in the middle of the road, bright red, absurdly bright, as if someone set it there as a joke. Your squad leader—yourself, technically, though the title means little out here—counts the heads. Four of you walked out of the base gate. Four of you walk toward the shoe. Somewhere beyond this ruin, the 12th Army either lives, or the ground swallowed them, or someone else found their depot and built a kingdom on it. You don't know which. You know only that the base is dry, that the orders are absolute, and that the road ahead is long and the dust is patient.

Reader's Guide

The campaign opens with your squad departing a fortified base on a reconnaissance-and-recovery mission: locate the 12th Army and secure its ammunition depot. The road to the depot is not a straight line; it threads through a series of settlements, each presenting a distinct moral and tactical dilemma. You may trade fairly, intimidate, steal, or simply bypass a community, and the game tracks your reputation accordingly—settlements you treat with respect will offer aid later, while those you plunder may turn hostile or disappear entirely. Key decisions include whether to use force or diplomacy when encountering hostile scavenger groups, whether to allocate scarce water and ammunition to allied civilians or reserve it for your squad, and how to handle factions that claim legitimacy over the 12th Army's remaining assets. Each path reshapes the late-game landscape: a squad that has been generous will find allies willing to fight alongside them, while a ruthless squad may find the depot already contested by a well-armed rival faction. [MAJOR REVEAL FLAGGED: The true status of the 12th Army and the nature of the depot's contents are not disclosed here.]

Cross-referenced elements: the player's named squad members each have distinct stat profiles and can be lost permanently; the base of origin serves as a hub for resupply and mission updates; and the various settlements along the route constitute the primary interactive locations. The game's isometric grid-based combat means positioning and cover matter as much as character stats.

Did You Know?

• Wasteland (1988) is frequently cited by developers and critics as a direct creative influence on the later Fallout series, which emerged from the same Interplay corporate family.
• The game's squad-based, grid-based turn-based combat system in 1988 was unusual for its time, predating many of the tactical RPG conventions that became standard in the 1990s.
• The game's moral-choice system, where settlements remember how you treated them and adjust their behavior accordingly, was a notable design feature for a mid-1980s release.
• The setting places the action in the American Southwest roughly twenty-five years after a nuclear exchange, making it one of the earliest mainstream video games to build a detailed post-nuclear American landscape.