It might just be a couple of crafting ingredients, but some zones will have NPC interactions yielding more useful items or more quests These zones all have the chance to reward you for your time, but death is often the result for the unprepared. Almost every location, whether it be an abandoned car or a couple of buildings, beckons you to make a side trip to see what is there. Besides the towns and quest locations, there are also plenty of other points of interest scattered across the map.

These encounters can be as simple as wandering merchants and bandit attacks, with more interesting encounters awaiting those lucky (or unlucky) enough to find them. NPCs will also mark any quest locations on the map for you, but without any form of quick travel you will have to hoof it across the map to get to your destination.Īs you journey into the wastes you will frequently trigger random events. In the beginning, only the town of Otradnoye and it's immediate surroundings are revealed. Leaving your current zone places you on the world map. Towns and outposts feel realistic, even to the point that I understand why so many of the NPCs you interact with seem to just be waiting for death. The graphics quality feels uninspired yet serviceable, and the environments you will be exploring portray a bleak wasteland well enough. Camera control will be familiar to anyone who has played other top-down games, left-clicking to move and WASD map scrolling. Here you will get your first couple of quests, whet your appetite for combat, and partake in my favorite part of any post-apocalyptic RPG, collecting so much junk that you can barely walk.Īll of the action is viewed from an isometric view. After a quick tutorial, you begin your journey outside the town of Otradnoye. Unlike some games, these choices really do impact the options you have available as you play, so make sure to weigh all your options before finalizing your character.Īs you begin the game you are introduced to just how harsh the wasteland can be. You can be anything from a super soldier with zero social skills to a silver-tongued salesman that would accidentally shoot them self in the foot during a gunfight. As I mentioned, you can seriously boost or cripple certain skills, allowing you to make just about every imaginable archetype. The choices you make at character creation have a major impact on how your game is going to play out. They also come with hefty penalties, so make sure you have a specific play style in mind if you go this route.

The perks are completely optional, but they provide some serious bonuses to your character's stats and abilities. The last choice to make at character creation is choosing up to two Distinctions (aka perks). I was surprised by the number of character portraits available, and the option to write your own backstory, though purely cosmetic in relation to the game, was an added bonus. There is the typical RPG stat allocation along with a point pool to allocate to basic skills. Character creation gives you all the options you would expect to see in a classic RPG.

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