We Happy Few

Let's start with what keeps this game from being actually good: The game is definitely not a work of flawless ingenuity, no matter how you look at it. Everything, from the premise that the story has, to the gameplay, to the way too wide open world, to the chapter system, the lore, the loot system, the choice of setting and the motivation of the characters is dubious at best. But it's at least a near miss throughout the whole experience, not a total whiff. The story and plot are just not believable enough for me. There are some elements to it that make sense and that complement each other and their credibility, so as to make the game world a tad less nonsensical, but all in all this screams: "Missed opportunity." They seemed to have tried, to lessen the realism and tried to introduce more comical elements and weirdness, because it would have taken too much extra work to make it believable and immersing to a T, which may have been passable if you hadn't tried to make character development and the feel of dread and oppression your main world setting. Throughout the whole game you are thrown in between this disunion of seriousness and attempted take on a schizophrenic and paranoid life style and the failure of the setting to deliver a genuine feeling of and danger and believability. Games like BioShock or Fallout also tried to create a dystopic setting for their stories and introduced elements that distract from pure realism and the feeling of oppression and danger you would rightfully experience in the settings portrayed, but at least to me those felt less unimmersive than the narrative and character focussed approach in We Happy Few. As long as you can lighten your expectation of integrity and followthrough for setting and lore enough, that that divide doesn't constantly pull you out of your immersion, the story is just about passable. That's my take. But there's problems aside from the topical presentation. Most of them pertain to the element of repetition and the size of the world map. This game would have benefitted from a more condensed overworld and a more structured and thought through allocation of points of interest and architectural locations. The long stretches of emptiness and few tilesets of housings and streets and "dungeons" makes everything you discover feel more samey and takes away massively from the replayability aspect of the main game and extra game modes delivered with the game. On top of that will you be pressed/able to explore the same world map thrice, because you basically restart the game with three different characters. The amount of tedium and repetition gets insane fast. The looting, the overall flow of motion and traversal and the huge distances make everything an absolute drag. Side quests often span around 50 meters of area on a map that feels like you're traversing 10 square kilometres of empty space and as such they feel forgettable and unimportant. Tools that you will need during specific areas in the game are locked behind main story and side quest progression that you will only unlock way into the game, which makes backtracking a common occurence and whatever you unlock is most of the time not even worth coming back for. Skill books can be picked up past the point of having maxed a specific skill, which makes the rare occurence outside of main quest and side quest areas feel less exciting and rewarding. And if all that weren't enough, even on the highest difficulty, you'll at some point end up overpowering everything in your path to such a degree that really foraging the areas of the game world is basically pointless to begin with. The difficulty curve is rather high at the start and basically nonexistent at the mid to end point of the individual chapters. The most solid or least criticizable part of the game is the actual gameplay. Movement feels good, climbing is fun and can at times allow access to locations that allow for specific strategical use of items and stealth mechanics, stealth works fine, combat is better than let's say Oblivion for instance and the overall design of interiors feels fitting. The most detracting factors on the gameplay side are bugs with collision (where you may end up unable to defend yourself, free yourself from being stuck or able to progress) and infinitely respawning NPCs and the harsher restriction on movement, when weighed down, compared to other games of its ilk. Now onto the things that make me want to recommend the game nonetheless: The amount of content is rather large for a game that began its own franchise and the amount of incorporated mechanics is good enough to keep you busy for a while. The main quest is well presented, graphically and through gameplay and cutscenes and the different areas you will traverse through have prominent gameplay features they reward more than other areas, which at least makes the Garden District and the Village or specific scientific buildings all feel differently, from a gameplay perspective. Unlocking perks felt good, the perks themselves felt mostly impactful, even though some of them were just percentage based increases and the ability to run specific kits of equipment made the game more enjoyable for the time that it lasted. If it had been less unstructured, a little more "linearized" and well ordered, the underlying gameplay mechanics might have carried this to a classic or a good old game. As it is, they just keep the game from being a total train wreck. Now unto the things that are definitely recommendable: The DLCs are actually fun to play. They lend themselves perfectly to speedrunning or just playing through in one sitting and didn't feel like they overstayed their welcome, in comparison to the main game. They also complement the main games plot and setting very well with Roger & James being a prequel or back story to the world building, Lightbearer being some padding to content found throughout logs and radio content in the main game and We All Fall Down being a worthy ending to the otherwise somewhat left out public Wellington Wells aspect of the main game (separate from the three characters you play throughout). So yeah, to the general person I will not recommend the game. To people that like achievement hunting, people that are less strict about a need for solid quality throughout the whole experience and just about seeing something different and those that don't like games about guns, but love melee and tools, I will give a soft recommendation under the premise: Be patient, play through everything, especially the DLCs. The basis for my review is a 100% achievements complete run that spanned the main game completed once, then Arthur again and the DLCs twice, except the Lightbearer DLC + one survival run on hard permadeath with Arthur. I feel like I saw 98%+ of whatever there is to the game.