What if the best RPG ever made came out a decade ago and nobody talks about it? Michael Stevens just discovered why a 2014 crowdfunded game might be the perfect blueprint for fixing everything wrong with modern gaming. Spoiler: it involves $2.9 million in Kickstarter funding and a conversation system that's older than most of today's gamers.

🎯 What You'll Learn:

• Why Wasteland 2's 80+ hour campaign beats most modern RPGs despite using 1988 technology

• How the original Wasteland literally created Fallout (and why that matters today)

• The one design choice that makes branching storylines actually matter for your choices

• Why keyword-based dialogue feels ancient but works better than today's voice acting

👤 Perfect for: gamers who remember when RPGs required actual planning and history buffs curious about how digital storytelling evolved.

📍 Chapters:

[00:00] Michael introduces gaming's best kept secret

[01:45] The $2.9 million Kickstarter that changed everything

[04:20] Why Wasteland created Fallout (the real origin story)

[06:50] Conversation trees that actually branch your story

[09:15] 80 hours of gameplay that doesn't waste your time

[11:30] What modern developers can learn from 2014

🔔 Never miss an episode:

Follow When Rome Burns on your podcast app and turn on notifications. New episodes drop daily, and tomorrow Michael's covering why ancient Rome's tax system predicted modern crypto crashes.

🔍 Topics: Wasteland 2, RPG games, game design, Kickstarter success, Fallout origins

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Keywords: fall of empires, founding fathers, cultural disasters, australian history, d-day, catherine the great, military history

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