InXile Entertainmet’s final announced project from before last year’s acquisition by Microsoft finally has a release date — Wasteland 3 is coming out May 19 for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Game Pass (along with PlayStation 4). The studio made the announcement at Microsoft’s X019 event in London today, wrapping up the show and giving it one of the most high-profile spots.
Wasteland 3 is part of a landmark postapocalyptic role-playing game series, playing with the themes of surviving nuclear devastation in 1988, well before Fallout did so in 1997. And it’s the second Wasteland game from InXile, Brian Fargo’s studio. He worked on the first.
Wasteland 3 moves the setting from the Southwestern wastes to the Rocky Mountains in what was Colorado. It’s follows the Rangers as they find new allies and a new threat, learning that even the One Percent want to have it their way after the apocalypse. You’ll be exploring with a vehicle you can customize — in becomes one of your own “party members” in some respects, making attacks during the turn-based combat. The trailer showed off some of the fighting, all to the tune of Genesis’s iconic “Land of Confusion.”
Onstage, Fargo noted that it’s a standalone story — you can jump into it without playing the first (though it helps the context), though it does take place after the climatic events in Wasteland 2.
In 2016, InXile brought Wasteland 3 to the crowdfunding platform Fig, raising $2.75 million. Wasteland 2 raised nearly $3 million in 2014.