It's the early years of the 22nd century, and Hell has frozen over — at least, that is, if Colorado happens to be your idea of Hell. It certainly looks like it in Wasteland 3: Colorado Springs was spared the nuclear holocaust at the heart of Wasteland lore, but an unrelenting nuclear winter holds the entire Centennial State in its grip. Radiation oozes through mountain valleys. Killer clowns ravage the eastern plains. A cult that worships Ronald Reagan controls Colorado's oil supply. It's a distinctively bold setting for this lengthy and often challenging isometric RPG, and it improves on Wasteland 2 in almost every way.
If you prefer your post-apocalyptic landscapes filled with snow rather than sand, no worries: You don't need to play the hot and dusty Wasteland 2 to understand what's going on now. Here you play as a duo from Arizona's Desert Rangers, an Old-West-meets-sci-fi lawkeeping outfit whose base was destroyed at the end of Wasteland 2. The Rangers head to Colorado after a leader there offers Arizona vital aid in exchange for some help on his own turf, but the mission goes south when almost the entire Ranger company gets wiped out in an ambush. You play as the only two characters who survive, and you need to fulfill your mission with a severe disadvantage. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/wasteland-3-choice-and-consequence-behind-the-scenes"] After that, the story can go in substantially different directions. Wasteland 3 does a fantastic job of tying meaningful consequences to almost every choice, and it prepared me for about 60 hours of such decisions mere minutes in. If you, for instance, convince a hostage taker to let a Ranger go she'll run away and warn her friends, who'll set up and ambush and kill other innocents. Attack her and she'll kill the Ranger, meaning you’ll have one fewer recruit for your party, but you won't have an ambush ready for you. And that's just a small taste of the choices to come.[poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Wasteland%203%20does%20a%20fantastic%20job%20of%20tying%20meaningful%20consequences%20to%20almost%20every%20choice."]Later, Wasteland 3 forced me to decide between saving a family being attacked and saving a convoy of lawkeepers transporting some power armor for the Marshals faction. I chose the power armor, but I ended up wandering through the gutted remains of the family's home for a reminder that decisions have consequences. The power armor gave a nice reputation boost, but not without making me regret my decision a bit by hearing one of the Marshals say “these refugees aren't going to punch themselves.”
These often aren't easy choices, either, as everyone you meet in Colorado is kind of an asshole. They're written well enough that they left me puzzling over which degree and brand of assholery I could live with, and it's remarkably hard to avoid being corrupted by the sketchy business unfolding around you. Adding a kicker to that, I like that I rarely saw the effects of my choices quickly, and usually not until I was well past whatever pivotal save file I'd made for backtracking. Some don't even become apparent until the later hours and Wasteland 3's wide assortment of endings. It makes "gaming" the various factions essentially impossible. (And even if it didn't, the ridiculously long load times even on my SSD made me think thrice before going back to a previous save.)
[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/the-wasteland-story-in-5-minutes"]