Wired.co.uk: The original Wasteland came out in 1988. What made this the right time to bring the game back?
Brian Fargo: I think it's the sum of Wasteland and Fallout together that makes it worth coming back. People certainly remember the first game -- for a lot of people it was very important. Then there was Fallout 1 and 2. There was also a large group of people who played those two games and liked them more than the more first-person oriented games that Bethesda [have since done]. To me, it was the culmination of all those things -- people love the subject matter and wanting a certain kind of role-playing game.
There were a couple of sequels planned back in 1988, Fountain of Dreams and Meantime. What happened to them?
Fountain of Dreams was an odd project because EA said, "We're going to keep the name and do it ourselves". We had a producer come in very late in the project, the last six months we were making Wasteland for EA. He said "This is easy; I can do better than this." They said, "Great, you go make it because we're not going to work with Interplay -- they're our competitors now!" Somehow, that got turned into Fountain of Dreams and I don't know why. I don't know if they weren't happy with the final results and they changed the name.
As for us, I didn't have the rights. I'd already had all the tools and systems in place to do something skill-based, top-down, tactical. But I couldn't do Wasteland. So we thought "Let's do something else. Let's do a time-travel sort of game." Of course, this all really hurt our brains because when you start thinking about cause and effect, and you're travelling backwards and forwards in time, your head starts exploding. We put a year to a year and a half into Meantime, and I still love the idea, but it just didn't get the momentum and we ended up killing the project. It was Fallout that became a spiritual successor and there were so many similarities.
Has success of Fallout has overshadowed the original Wasteland, and perhaps what you're trying to do with the sequel?
There's no doubt that Fallout has way overshadowed Wasteland; it's a major franchise. The Fallout 1 and 2 fans have been wanting this kind of game for a long time. They like the tactical nature, the reading, the rippling effect of stuff. They've been holding the torch ever since. I think, if anything, on a net sum it's enhanced it. Fallout has shown how big post-apocalyptic can be. I think it's a net positive.
