Fallout - Origins, Part 2 @ NMA

[Dhruin]

R. Scott Campbell continues his memories of The Origins of Fallout with Part 2 now online at NMA:

The team was still trying to find the perfect genre for our first (of hopefully many) GURPS role playing games. We had discarded high-fantasy, since most every role-playing game in the market was filled with spells, swords, orcs, and elves. Because you could do so much with GURPS, we wanted to do something different. We kicked around the idea of making a science-fiction planet exploration game, potentially using Tim’s galaxy generator as the seed. However, that seemed to overlap with the Star Trek license that Interplay was already developing. Drat.

Then inspiration hit: Why not remake Wasteland!?

The Wasteland franchise had ended tragically in 1990 with EA’s abysmal sequel Fountain of Dreams. Why not resurrect that incredible game and give it the justice it deserved?

Everyone immediately loved the idea. Tim even mentioned that Steve Jackson Games was working on GURPS: Survivor; a role-playing sourcebook with rules for post-apocalyptic adventuring. What a perfect fit!

The ball was in motion; our first game was going to be GURPS: Wasteland.

More information.

 

[CraigCWB]

I seriously doubt more than a few of Fallout's current fanboys were even born yet when Wasteland came out. I sympathize with Mr Campbell's feelings of nostalgia but the time for going on a crusade to save the PC gaming industry from being trivialized was more than 10 years ago. That's what I was doing, and as far as I can recollect the Interplay folks on usenet at the time were talking about how disappointed they were with Fallout 1 & 2 and how they thought they needed to move towards "Grand Theft Auto" with their future releases.