The Story
A dangerous global pandemic reshaped the world into a place with zombie-like disease-ridden creatures. What caused the pandemic, noone knows, but Deacon St. John, the protagonist, lost his wife because of it. A couple of years have passed and people are far fewer than the infected. While the infected do share human-eating habits with zombies, they have very little in common otherwise. They are fast and ferocious, they move in packs and even hordes, there are different types of them and they don’t require a head shot to be killed. Deacon is living as a drifter with his old biker gang buddy, Boozer. They live from day to day doing various tasks and scavenging to stay alive. But infected aren’t the only threat in the world, human gangs and bandits can be even more dangerous to deal with. The main and side quests are all presented as stories. Each story has its own progress tree and shows all the completed tasks and current progress. Certain missions and events can affect and progress several stories at once. Any active story events are marked on the world map and some remain only temporarily and will disappear if they’re not engaged in time. The main storyline features several playable flashbacks that tell more about events before the pandemic.
World Map
Initially, only one third of the map is revealed. The remaining two thirds (to the south of the initial area) become accessible as the main story progresses. The map uses a shroud of darkness and reveals only visited locations. It shows refugee camps, bandit camps, NERO checkpoints and other areas of interest. While refugee camps can work as a quick-travel points, NERO checkpoints and bandit camps need to be cleared of threat before they become available as fast travel points. Currently active missions will highlight a path to the location, whether it is pre-set or manually placed. A mini-map can additionally display items of interest, depending on the skills upgraded.
Skills & Upgrades
Deacon earns experience points by killing the infected or bandits, as well as for performing various quests. After enough experience points, the character levels up which is when a new skill can be unlocked. There are three different skill trees; Melee, Ranged, and Survival, and each tree has five tiers with three skills per tier to be unlocked. Starting at tier one, two out of three skills in a tier need to be selected to unlock the next tier. Melee skills focus on close-combat with various blunt weapons and stealth kill abilities. Ranged skills focus on handling and dealing more damage with firearms or crossbow. Survival skills focus on building traps, gathering more resources, becoming more stealthy and increasing chance of avoiding unnecessary conflicts.
Bike upgrades work a bit differently. The game has several different settlements and each has its own currency and trust levels. By selling ears collected from the killed infected, you can earn credits in the settlement you sell it at. Alternatively, by performing tasks for the settlements, both their trust level toward Deacon will increase and the player will earn more credits to spend. Each settlement has a mechanic where bike parts can be upgraded, changed or get fixed. However, each settlement has different parts to offer and only accept the currency from their own settlement, so doing a task for one settlement will earn you nothing at other settlements.
Combat & Scavenging
Deacon can carry only 4 different weapons at any given time, each of a different type. A blunt weapon can be found almost anywhere and Deacon can use hammers, baseball bats, 2-by-4 boards, stool legs, blades. Each blunt weapon has its durability and strength. They can also be fixed if Deacon has the right skill unlocked. He also carries a boot knife which is used for stealth kills or when he isn’t carrying any other blunt weapon. Pistols and small firearms like UZIs pack least damage, but are useful when other weapons are out of bullets and are also only firearms used when shooting while riding a bike. Machine guns and rifles are a balance between accuracy and the rate of fire, and are mostly used against group of enemies. And fourth weapon type is a sniper rifle or a crossbow. Sniper rifle packs the most damage, but crossbow is always silent but arrow falls at a small arc. Throwables such as molotovs can be assembled with the right materials, while grenades can only be found or purchased at the settlements.
Scavenging isn’t just about finding new weapons and objects to fight with. Other parts are required as well. To create a single molotov one would need to find an empty glass bottle, a gas can, and a piece of cloth. To make an arrow, one may need to find a specific branch type. Those things cannot be bought at the settlements, they have to be found in the wilderness and assembled on the spot. The motorcycle needs gas and it also needs repairs. Old gas stations or gas canisters can be found all around, as can the parts necessary to fix the motorcycle which are also used to fix other stuff like blunt weapons. Band-aids, bandages, medkits – some can be found while others can be created with materials at hand. Picked up materials will re-spawn in the same spot after a while, so there’s no shortage. Deacon can also use his boot knife to pry open hoods of various cars and take necessary parts from their engines.
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