FOREVER WINTER - WATCHING THE WORLD BURN
There has NEVER been a game that I have followed from its inception all the way to its early access launch on steam like I did for Forever Winter. I know for a fact I sold 4-5 copies of the game on word of mouth alone. The first screenshot I saw I fell in love with the art style, setting, visuals, world building and even the gameplay loop, I hope I can share some of that experience with you. That glowing praise aside, it's also a game I can't really recommend to EVERYONE…That probably sounds contradictory, but this game changes up the norm and puts you into an almost secondary role in terms of how important your player character is in the game.
WHAT
You play as a scavenger, either alone, or with your friends in a small group. You run around on active battlefields, dodging squads of soldiers and drones to get whatever scraps you can to survive, water for your hab, and precious ammo that the vendors who visit your settlement nickel and dime you on. The warring militaries controlled by the AI in the game VASTLY outgun, outman, and out maneuver you. As you rank up, you do get access to some autonomous assets to help carry your gear, or fight, but the best choice is always not to engage unless you have to.
As made famous by the game's marketing campaign, you are NOT really the main character here. The mix of dystopian futurescapes and liminal spaces due to your small scope as a “just a person” make the settings so cool. Loading into I don't think I’ve EVER been as immersed in a games world as I was and still am in Forever Winter’s. Say what you will about the gameplay and how most of the time you're just hiding, waiting for a patrol to go by, or running around, about the limited (but imo effective) progression features, Lord knows enough people complained about the water system (they've apparently made it WAY more forgiving, but I never thought it was that harsh, if people couldn't deal with that EFT would give them a heart attack lol).
You are just one person, or at best a small group, against the might of a generational war machine, on all sides, who no longer see the similarities of the common man anymore. Each runner can be leveled up to be more proficient, and as a maxed level scav, you can be a capable asset, but you are in no shape or form a force to match any of the above factions head on, as stated before. In the event of a “Water Death” where you run out of water and lose your settlement and gear, you can still run the scav again and retain some of those perks/efficiencies you worked towards, which is nice!
I love the spectacle of watching the armies clash with futuristic heli’s and Mech suits with tons of soldiers clashing as a Eurasian ship flies overhead and dumps out hordes of cyborgs to track down scavs and anything biological and destroy it with sheer physical power and numbers. Not to mention the Harvester Mothers, towering cyborgs sent out to find humans, animals, anything that can be destroyed and turned into fuel for the unending war machine, or to convert them into weapons in one form or another. The game at the surface is a PvE extraction looter/shooter with somewhat deep mechanics, but only gets better when you start to put the pieces together. Let's take a very brief look at who these people trapped in this never ending war are, and maybe try to shed some light on the reasons why, which have been lost for generations at the time this game takes place.
WHO
The quick rundown on the main different factions:
Scavs - this is you! Not a member of one of these giant factions with all the backing of a behemoth of a war machine, stoked by the fires of generations who died with its reasonings buried alongside them in their graves of trench mud and bullet riddled scrap. You fight for every meal, every scrap, every ounce of water. These factions will shoot you on site if you have anything of value unless you have formed some report with them, but even then, a canteen can be a reason for you to catch a bullet.
Europa - a remnant of what Western Civ. was, fighting with tech similar to what we have now with a spin. They are fighting a war on both fronts against the 2 factions below, but hold their own due to having a fleshed out fleet of helicopters, tanks, light and heavy mechs. They also (in my experience) are somewhat more friendly to scavs or pockets of civilians living in the underground cavernous ruins of old apartments and stores they now call home, but as with everything in this world, you still should not trust them, and having too much on your person at any given time puts a target on your back.
Euruska - obvious Eastern European influences, their armor looking way larger and more menacing. Their mechs are fairly rudimentary and rely on sheer scale to overpower. Their infantry shock troops are the backbone of their military.
Eurasia - They support their fragile alliance with Euruska by leveraging their technology to supplement a fairly small ground force along with a fleet of advanced aerial drones that can both pick you off from a distance, AND pick you up and take you back to twisted labs for testing and “reclamation”. To add onto the horrors, they have an unending army of Cyborgs, who do not need fuel, nor rest and have been known to continue fighting even when they've been reduced to a pile of biomechanical parts.
WHERE
The horrors (or really the beauty) of this game really start to come out when you start to take in the details and let yourself become immersed and assume the role as something akin to a spectator. The maps you play on are relatively large in scale and have procedurally generated hostiles and events for you to deal with. The loot is randomized and there is a diverse system of day/night and weather as well. All of this together makes each round feel fairly fresh, sometimes you get an easy run, in and out with no casualties. Other times, there is what looks and sounds to be a full scale conflict of the warring militaries including armor, air support and mechs, or small hall to hall skirmishes between fireteams while you and your party hide in the shadows and pray a flashlight doesn't hit you. There are events that happen occasionally where you run into people/things that act as a special encounter, like maybe a mech pilot who’s lost his mind and he starts to kill just for the gratification of killing. Or Harvesting Mothers that decide not to just harvest the injured/hostile forces and begin to just pick up anything they come across to grind into biofuel.
The environments are an amalgamation of colossal structures that to you look like impassable walls you could never scale, to only realize these are actually manufactured trenches for giant mechs to use to fight their generational wars of attrition (the map “Elephant Mausoleum”). Twisted bunkers and what's left of cities completely laid to waste where you have to dig deep to find something that resembles civilization. All of the maps in this game ooze future dystopian horror, industrial liminal mechanized mazes of no end and no touch of anything human anymore. Whole miles of what look to be dried up oceans, scorched cities, or what you thought were rolling hills covered in the dust of contaminated air, you now notice after a gust of wind are piles and piles of bones and the scraps of what's left of a battle at such scale that you are but a spec on the field it happened on.
The ships that fly overhead that look like B-2 bombers you see drop…”something” from the back of them to only find out the real horror of this sight. Cyborgs, used as the front line of the Eurasian forces to flush out any and all organic matter before the infantry of the Euruskan/Eurasian troops move in. the Cyborgs are used as a fire and forget tool that you may have to destroy to avoid detection, but the real tragedy of this enemy is only made clear when you get close to them, You learn that the cyborg hordes that have been chasing you down are actually lobotomized POWs, Scavs, or any person found that does not willingly give themselves to the cause. Reports are now coming back that as you fight them, some of these biomechanical beings beg for death as their programming forces them to run towards you swinging wildly. Imagine losing a friend on a supply run a week ago, only to see a robot with his face and voice come careening down from the sky as you try to run in a downpour of rain in a cityscape made of trenches in mud up to your knees. The consciousness of people trapped in a war machine. In some ways, at least these beings have an excuse, they were forced to do it.
WHY
This is where the game has lost people. The “why” is very much left up to you in this equation. Some people will need a reason to load into the hab, kit out a runner, then go to one of the maps in search of better weapons, armor, ammo, and most importantly, water. For me, the reason was to just exist in this world for a little while. To be a tourist in the future hellscape that is Forever Winter. I understand some will not be satisfied without an overall sense of progression, which DOES exist in the game, but not in a major and impactful way, which IS part of this game's design. You're not meant to become super powerful. Even fully leveled with all your perks and a leveled up hab., you're not ever going to be a match for almost any of the threats you come across. This game is a testament to the hopelessness of mankind against itself and its indomitable drive to become its own unmaking.
I would recommend this game if you're into sci-fi or anything related to what I spoke about here. The gameplay loop of building up a scav and an inventory to lost them in a raid with a ton of good equipment and have to build a loadout back up, or to lose a hab seems punishing for sure, but to me it plays into this games universe that you accepted to be a part of at purchase. You are not the victor. You are not the badass. You are the rats running at the first sign of trouble. You are the one clinging to the rope, barely hanging on. Run like hell, and if you cant, fight like hell, and save a bullet for yourself.
To get a look at some more gameplay and systems in Forever Winter, I HIGHLY recommend the below youtube video by Riloe (click the image to watch!). I had seen concept art back when this IP was possibly going to be an art book/concept art for sale to other studios and then some stills of the game when these devs decided to take the leap and do it themselves, but that was it and I thought I was already as hyped as possible, but Riloe’s video is when I went from excited for a new game to absolutely enthralled about this game, the setting, the world, all of the info I could find about it, and immersing myself in the lore!
