Wasteland 2 Kickstarter Project Coming Very Soon Courtesy of InXile Entertainment.

[CerebroDragon]

Greetings Ironworkers

I can't believe no-one has already posted this so here goes: CEO of InXile Entertainment and ex-Interplay head Brian Fargo has been reassembling his original Wasteland team in order to create a sequel to the great grand-daddy of post-apocalyptic RPG goodness and the spiritual forerunner to Fallout - Wasteland. It will be made via the crowd funding source, Kickstarter which should be up for donations next week. Alan Pavlish, Michael Stackpole, Fallout composer Mark Morgan (!!), and Ken St Andre are all on board and the confirmed game style will be: Top down and turn based! (Huzzah for all of the old-school fans!) similar enough to the original game.

For those unfamiliar with such a concept, Tim Schaefer had great success with it recently with Double Fine productions and will now create a new point and click adventure with the funds that fans have donated. This medium has the potential to change the face of game design as we know it since much of the power of design is given back to the developer and out of the publisher's hands.

For fans of Wasteland, head to the new forums now to have your say, reminisce with other fans and check out he donation tiers!

http://wasteland.inxile-entertainment.com/

http://wasteland.inxile-entertainmen...php?f=22&t=114

[CerebroDragon]

Update: The kickstarter is up: 300 K already! Fingers crossed, Post-apoc fans. It's looking good so far.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2

So go on...make a donation and help bring a sequel to one of the great games.
Here's hoping it'll be much better than the majority of the derivative MMO rubbish that permeates the markets these days.

From the website itself.

So what is Wasteland 2?

Wasteland 2 is the direct sequel to the first ever post-apocalyptic computer RPG. The original Wasteland was the inspiration for the FALLOUT series of games, and the first RPG to allow players to split parties for tactical considerations, to face players with moral choices, and to make them deal with the consequences of their actions. It was the first to provide far more than the one-key-for-one-lock style of puzzle solving. It was groundbreaking, which is why IGN named it one of the top 25 PC games of all time, Computer Gaming World named it the Adventure Game of the year in 1988, and it was short-listed for inclusion in the Smithsonian Institution’s current “Art of the Computer Game” exhibition.

Wasteland was set in a dangerous, post-apocalyptic world in the American Southwest. Over the course of adventures rangers would receive promotions, acquire new skills and equipment, then face new challenges with outcomes that changed depending on the strategy used to defeat them. The game featured a strong storyline which required painful decisions by players; and a storyline that allowed for maximum re-playability. Wasteland 2, with your participation and insights, will recapture all that and provide more. It'll finally be the game worthy to be a Wasteland sequel, as challenging and rewarding as the original, with all added capacity and dazzle of games today.

For Wasteland 2, we’re getting the band back together again!. Brian Fargo who Executive Produced both Wasteland and Fallout will be heading the team. Alan Pavlish and Mike Stackpole—the original game’s primary designers—are coming back to put the project together, and we’re rounding up as many of the other designers, like Ken St. Andre, as we can. On top of that, we’ll have music by Mike Morgan of Fallout 1 and 2 fame. The storyline for Wasteland 2 was written by Jason Anderson who was the co-creator of Fallout. We have also enlisted the help of the amazing concept artist, Andree Wallin to help craft the Wasteland 2 world.

A sample of Andree's other work can be seen below.

Brian Fargo founded Interplay Productions (By Gamers, For Gamers) in 1983 where he went on to produce and finance some of the biggest RPG's made like Bard's Tale, Fallout 1 and 2, Stonekeep, Dragon Wars, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and more. Creating a new Wasteland will be a point of pride in the long history of games.

Not a month goes by when an email doesn’t come in asking if we’ve ever considered doing a sequel. Emails from gamers who remember Wasteland fondly and want, just as badly as we do, to return to that gritty world where burning through clips might be the only thing that keeps you alive; and where running out of ammo will certainly get you killed. The fact that you, the folks who know and love and play games, keep asking for Wasteland 2 told us that there is a demand for it.

So, we’re coming to you for support.

Financial.

And creative.

After all, since you’re the driving force behind this game, we want to make sure that we’ll be delivering the game you want. Wasteland is ready for a sequel, and with your help, it’s going to happen. As for why you should want to participate, we’ll let Kotaku point out why making Wasteland 2 happen is very important: FanFundWasteland!

[Azred]

Okay--this definitely has my interest. I spent many an hour trekking through the Wasteland back in early college. The sewers under Las Vegas were the most challenging the first time through the game, even more so than the Scorpitron in the city itself.

I still have Wasteland as an executable file on the USB drive where I keep old games; it runs perfectly fine via DOSBox. I may even dig it out and let the kids see it.

[Azred]

An update to the story from The Daily What Geek shows that InXile has already raised more than their original $900,000 goal for the Wasteland 2 project.

Fargo and Co. already have plans for what they’ll do with the money they raise in excess of their original target: At $1.25 million, the money will go primarily into making the world bigger, adding more maps, more divergent stories and even more music. At $1.5 million, the world gets even bigger. You’ll have more adventures to play, more challenges to deal with, and a greater level of complexity to the entire storyline. We’ll add more environments, story elements, and characters to make the rich world come alive even more. We will even be able to bring Wasteland 2 to OS X for Mac lovers. And after $1.5 million the sky is the limit. At the rate the game is raising funds — meeting its goal in under two days — $1.5 million seems well within reach.

I rarely geek out over anything, being the calm and rational person that I am, but this is making me geek out.

edit: by the way, the project may be found here.

[CerebroDragon]

Thanks for posting that before I did Azred. You'll note that I already posted the link to the kickstarter site though. (That's cool, I can tell you're excited...)

How good is it though eh? They met the target within two days of beginning the Kickstarter. Unbelievable.

This is really an amazing story and I believe it has the potential to change the face of game's development as we know it today. It gives the power back to developers away from the suits, publishers and overall corporate scythe. Gamers have a medium and agency now to express exactly what they want to play and impact upon what they want to see made.
It really is fantastic. Fingers crossed Fargo and InXile can do it justice and get the job done.

[Azred]

I concur--this is the future of game development. Let the fans fund the project and leave the corporate producers out of the loop, especially since they usually wind up ruining anything they touch (music, movies, games, etc).

Having played enough of their stuff over the years, I know that Fargo and his crew will deliver a more-than-worthy product.

My only question now is "how much money am I going to contribute?".

[Luvian]

The kickstarter was really succesful with 3 millions gathered.

I gave 100 myself. I would have loved to give more but the kickstarter for shadowrun returns is happening at the same time and I wanted to support them too so in the end I gave them 100 each. I hope future kickstarter projects learn to better time themselves. Those two and the adventure game ones are coming close to 8 millions gathered in maybe two months. We're not made out of money.

[Micah Foehammer]

An interesting twist on the Wasteland 2 project:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012...one-condition/

[Azred]

I had pledged $250 so I could get the collector's box signed by the creators. Sure, that is a lot, but I think it was worth it.

Now all I have to do is wait until October of next year.

[Malthaussen]

I just found out about this myself. If this isn't the most exciting gaming news of 2012, if not the 21st century, I don't know what is!

-- Mal