Wasteland 3
It's a telling sign when a video game opens with a warning that the events it depicts might be a little too close to life.
It's a telling sign when a video game opens with a warning that the events it depicts might be a little too close to life. That's what happens in Wasteland 3, a squad-based tactical role-playing game whose bleakly funny take on post-apocalyptic politics acts as a satire of 2020 America.
The game puts you in control of a group of guns for hire scouring the snowy peaks of Colorado after America has gone to hell. The territory is controlled by a ruthless warlord known as the Patriarch who puts people in stocks, enforces poverty on the helpless masses, and runs his fiefdom for the benefit of himself and a group of elite families.
He too has a family—a trio of offspring you're expected to track down and deal with. Exactly how is up to you, and the choices you make about who to ally with will prove consequential, altering not only the game's ending but much of the action along the way. That action manages to be both surprisingly politically sharp-edged and also kind of goofy, as when you encounter a faction called the Gippers, a cult that worships a Reagan A.I., which you're expected to help give human form.
But don't worry: Any relationship to real life is purely coincidental. The game starts with a proviso from the gamemakers that it's merely "a work of fiction, ideas, dialog" and that "stories we created early in development have in some cases been mirrored by our current reality." Like so much real-life politics, it's just a game.
