Wasteland 3 - Interview with Brian Fargo

Heatstreet interviews Brian Fargo about Wasteland 3 and social commentary in video games.

Fargo tells me that Wasteland isn't a world about running around shooting monsters. After all, the people are the real monsters, and that's the truth of it.

Like his previous titles, Wasteland 3 is going to be one of those games where players can choose to do bad things, and be the villain of the story. This time around, Fargo wants to make the game more rewarding for players who go down that route.

"One of the edicts for our writers, and one of the things players like, is that they like more chances to be evil and have a payoff. So that's one of the things we're dialing up for people who want to go the dark side."

In a lot of role-playing games, playing the bad guy can be unrewarding, forcing the player to go down the righteous path for the best loot and the best. Just like Wasteland 2, this isn't going to be the case with the upcoming game.

"Wasteland lives in a big grey area, and sometimes making decisions that on the surface feel really evil, there are actually good reasons to doing these things," says Keenan. "The way that we've kind of justified that is that the world reacts to your decisions. So sometimes you think you may make what you think is a good choice-that you're providing justice, and a bad outcome happens. That's also the way the world works. Sometimes, you don't always get a decision in how the consequences of any action, regardless of whether your intentions were good or not. You can't always predict the way things are going to happen whether you choose right versus wrong."

Sometimes, the right way is also the ugly way, and it's these dilemmas that make RPGs as fun as they are-that the choices you're confronted with are not in black and white. Fargo references TV shows like Game of Thrones, Narcos and The Night Of as examples of media with strong elements of moral ambiguity, citing an episode in Narcos where one of the good guys kills a kid to send a message to Pablo Escobar.