Story

The city has been reclaimed by the green.

Wasteland 2 begins at the end, the end of human civilization following a global nuclear war in 1998. The survivors of the nuclear holocaust were few, and mostly confined to Earth’s more remote regions.

The Sonoran Desert was one of the few regions on Earth that was spared enough of the nuclear destruction to remain somewhat habitable for human life in the aftermath. But even though the region did not suffer the worst of the radioactive fallout, the already-inhospitable conditions were magnified to such an extent that the pre-war survivalist communities living there were forced to seek shelter in a newly-constructed prison in order to survive.

Of course, the prison’s existing population had to be expelled, and that’s where a company of U.S. Army Engineers came in: They stormed the prison, drove the inmates out, and invited the survivalists in.

Over the years, the two populations merged and began trying to rekindle some small flame of civilization in the wastes. But there were wolves both within and without those walls, and someone needed to defend the flame: The bravest among them stood up and dubbed themselves Desert Rangers.

The bugopalypse

In the last game, the Desert Rangers put down a fiendish AI that was trying to wipe out the remnants of humanity with its army of homicidal machines and inhuman cyborgs. In so doing, the Rangers pulled humanity back from the very brink of destruction, but their own numbers were depleted in this, and other operations.

Some fifteen years on, you take control of four new recruits to the Rangers’ cause, and are promptly dispatched to investigate the source of a radio broadcast that seems to indicate a new threat to mankind in general, and the Rangers in particular.