General Vargas, just a few days prior, sent Ace out to investigate a strange radio signal that speaks of "man and machine becoming one" while threatening to attack and wipe out the Desert Rangers.

There they find the body of a "synth", or AI-equipped synthetic human, that attacked him, and later disturbances at the antenna will reveal a squad of murderous robots - albeit relatively low-tech ones without proper artificial intelligence.

General Vargas is disturbed to learn of the existence of the synth, recalling the artificial intelligence monsters (Finster, a deranged android, and Cochise, a malevolent AI) that he and his fellow Rangers fought years before in the original Wasteland.

The first repeater is already installed; they must go to towers in Highpool (a community based around a local dam that provides the area with water) and the Ag Center (a science commune that grows genetically modified vegetables).

There, instead of the bustling hub of activity they were expecting, they find Damonta torn apart by rampaging robots, with handfuls of survivors holed up in buildings.

In the process of rescuing the survivors, the Rangers find a synth named Tinker installing a mechanical heart in a young girl.

With the repeater unit installed in Damonta, General Vargas traces the signal to Los Angeles, and sends out a helicopter with a team of crack Rangers, including Angela Deth.

On the way, the players are forced to navigate a storm and run out of fuel, crash-landing in a crumbling factory compound in Santa Fe Springs.

Their goals are fourfold: acquire enough zeolite and cat litter to upgrade their radiation suits, allowing them passage across all of Los Angeles; fit out more radio towers with repeaters to boost the signal back to Arizona and tell Vargas that they have survived; help out the locals with their problems to promote the Ranger name; and track down the source of the suspicious signal.

The Rangers discover that the area is occupied by a number of factions of varying degrees of hostility: there are the Mannerites, who enforce politeness with excessive violence; the Robbinsons, who believe in the triumph of the powerful over the weak; God's Militia, a group of murderously pious priests and nuns; the Children of the Citadel, a group who are encouraging people to upgrade their bodies with technological augmentations, much as Tinker did, and follow a figure named Matthias; and a band of murderous robots controlled by an AI named Dugan.

The Rangers deal with the various arguments and fights in the LA wasteland while trying to stop an unknown adversary that is trying to besmirch their good name by framing them for a series of massacres.

Infiltrating the base - and doing battle with groups of partly upgraded cyborgs in the process - the Rangers encounter Dugan, who had previously seemed to be an enemy of Matthias.

In fact, he is in league with Matthias, and was merely providing a further incentive for the citizens of Los Angeles to join the church and voluntarily allow themselves to be upgraded.

For the past fifteen years they have been raising an army of cyborgs and modified humans in California and plotting to destroy the Rangers in revenge for wiping out their former faction, the Guardians.

With the aid of General Vargas and those members of the Arizona wasteland that they have helped, the Rangers kill their way down to a previously inaccessible AI core, and prepare to do battle with Matthias.

However, before the fight can begin, the Base Cochise Boss AI is revived and takes over the body of Matthias (actually erasing his mind completely), his synthetic bodyguard army, and any cyborg allies that the Rangers may have acquired during the course of the game.

It turns out that the AI plans to directly and remotely control all cyborgs and machines in the wasteland, either converting humans into its drones or exterminating them all.

[21] The "tremendous" success of the campaign made ranked number four on the Complex list of the biggest video game wins and fails on Kickstarter in 2012.

[citation needed] The first trailer for Wasteland 2 was released on February 9, 2013, showcasing some of the story, art and gameplay, with an audio commentary from the producer Chris Keenan.

[48][49] In February 2017, inXile partnered with IndieBox, a monthly subscription box service, to release a physical version of Wasteland 2: Director's Cut.

[50] This limited collector's edition included a DRM-free game disc, the official soundtrack, an instruction manual, Steam key, and various custom-designed collectible items.

Besides the visual upgrade, the Director's Cut edition featured many other improvements and additions: expanded voice-overs (with over 8,000 new lines of pre-recorded dialogue), new perks and quirks, a "Precision Strike" system allowing the player to target individual body parts to cripple or stun enemies or shatter their armour, redesigned encounters, a redesigned user interface, and controller support.