Chris here to announce that our re-release of Wasteland 1 - The Original Classic has gone Gold and has been submitted to GOG.com and Steam for platform approval. If somehow you’re unfamiliar with Wasteland: this critically acclaimed post-apocalyptic role-playing game was first published in 1988, and broke new ground as one of the first cRPGs to have an open, reactive world with persistent consequences to your actions.

The year is 2087, eighty nine years after an all-out nuclear war transformed the Earth into a hellish landscape where survival is a daily struggle against thirst, hunger, radiation, raiders and mutants. You take control of a band of Rangers, sent out to investigate a series of disturbances in The Wasteland and soon uncover a vast threat to all that remains of mankind.

This old school cRPG offers turn-based combat and top-down exploration, as well as tons of mood-setting texts and a colorful variety of enemy portraits. As we talked about before, we have enhanced the re-release, first and foremost ensuring the game will run on modern machines and higher resolutions. Furthermore, the game has been expanded to offer a music track from Wasteland 2 composer Mark Morgan, integrated texts from the paragraph book and manual, and additional save game functionality. It also offers many optional overhauls such as uprezzed portraits, paragraph voice-over and a choice of playing the game upscaled, smoothed or in the original resolution.

All our backers – whether through Wasteland 2’s Kickstarter, as a late backer through Paypal, or if you got Wasteland 2 through your Torment pledge – will be getting a copy of Wasteland 1 for free. You will receive your key by logging into your account on the Ranger Center (or the equivalent Torment pledge management system). They will be available as soon as the game goes live on GOG.com and Steam, which could happen as early as Friday, and we'll email our backers then. Access will be limited to backers only initially. You will be able pick between getting either a Steam or GOG.com key, whichever is your preference.

To briefly elaborate on our last update’s notes on this re-release, we got a ton of feedback based on what we showed you about our Wasteland 1 tweaks. We spent some time implementing a number of the changes our community suggested; a toggle to turn smoothing off, implementing swappable portraits, tweaking portrait art options, in-game manual text on abilities, stats and skills and ensuring it works on Mac and Linux.​

The Early Beta is not quite ready yet, but we are almost there. We’ve received countless messages from backers telling us not to release the game until it’s ready. Even though it’s an early beta, we feel the experience has to be at a base level of satisfaction to us before we release it. There will still be plenty of time for you to give input and help us craft the game once the early beta is released. We are focused on getting it to a state where we can give you a meaningful impression of the game and allow you to give useful feedback. We’re working hard to get it there, but it does need a bit more love, and we’d rather get it right than rush it to you. As the beta progresses, we’re also testing distribution mechanisms with an external set of users via Steam, all in preparation to get the first playable in your hands.

Speaking of preparation, the official forums are being restructured and reorganized to support the Early Beta launch. We are also about to roll out the Early Beta issue reporting site, which will use the CenterCode platform. This way community members will be able to directly report issues into our internal bug tracking database. While CenterCode will be our main method of gathering bugs, you guys will of course want to discuss your experiences, share different Ranger builds, help each other out with possibly technical problems, and the official forums will provide the platform for that. We’ve expanded the moderator group with volunteers that have been on the forums a long time, and they will help ensure a smooth experience and assist in ensuring feedback comes through. On top of our existing moderators, RangerBen, Sxerks, SuAside and Tagaziel, we’d like to welcome Zombra, ffordesoon, Drool, paultakeda and Woolfe.

For quick updates, we launched a Wasteland2Beta twitter account, which will keep you posted with news and status updates pertaining to the beta until it is ready for launch. As always, you can check Brian’s twitter, my own twitter, and the Wasteland 2 tumblr for our most important updates.
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