There is hardly any need to prove to anyone that the gaming industry in the post-Soviet space is in poor condition. Despite all the success Gaijin And Wargaming, Somehow they don’t make good, powerful blockbusters here. More and more turn-based strategies, “browser” games or not very noticeable indie. At best, one or two projects a year can reach the global level.
The funny thing is that the games that actively export Slavic culture to the West achieve the greatest success. At first, the constantly updated series attracted everyone’s attention for several years S.T.A.L.K.E.R., then the baton was intercepted Metro. A year ago, the list was replenished with another ambitious project – an action role-playing game "New Union" from Best Way, authors "Behind Enemy Lines". At the last Igromir, we were one of the first to look at the working build of the project and assess how successful it could be.
My native country is wide
A man in a leather jacket, vaguely reminiscent of Leon Kennedy, froze heroically, aiming his gun somewhere. Across the road, among the birch trees, a battle has begun: unidentified bandits are exchanging fire with a representative of the local flora – a huge aggressive gooseberry. The camera slowly flies up to the opponents, and the player clicks the mouse cursor on each head.
This is an active pause – an exact copy of it from Fallout 3. Once the action points run out, the game returns to real time with simple wooden shooting. By the way, a completely uncontrollable partner is running nearby. The developer sitting to the right of the monitor makes a remark: “Maybe by release we will abandon our party members.”. And rightly so: there’s no point in them yet. The shootout, by the way, has already ended – the enemies ran away into some kind of electrical anomaly and did not return.
After a ten-minute walk through a sparsely populated area, the officer manages to reach a neighboring location. It is marked as peaceful, so the weapon is automatically hidden in the holster, and those around them stop firing without warning. A small town hidden behind iron gates is populated by a couple of dozen NPCs, of which only a few are hand-made and capable of conducting constructive dialogue. The rest create the appearance of a living world: they clean weapons, saw wood, or can trade with the player.
Burning with the desire https://supremeplaycasino.co.uk/bonus/ to remove this unfashionable jacket from the character, we hastened to familiarize ourselves with the assortment of local stores. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to follow trends: the inventory in the game is very limited. It will not be possible to change your wardrobe, and merchants are mainly responsible for machine guns, first aid kits and parts for “crafting”. The maximum you can attach to yourself is an artifact modifier. The rest of the role-playing component is just as simplified: in total, the hero has four parameters and a set of skill trees (according to the number of weapon classes).
Having sorted out the equipment, we set off along the storyline. The scenario is divided into several large tasks, which can be solved in any order. At the same time, the team tries to avoid single quests (even minor ones): any story is revealed by a whole story arc, which will end in a couple of locations from the place where it began.
However, there won’t be too much variability: the dialogue system is built in such a way that everything necessary will happen regardless of your desire. As proof, the local crime boss, whom we diligently talked into with a hairdryer, still sent the hero into the arena with the “boss” – a healthy mutant with an unprotected back. “Sometime in the future he will become an ordinary enemy,” explains the developer, while the monster beats the hero with its huge paws. A few minutes later the fight ends with the phrase “okay, let’s better load up”.
The era of bright years is approaching
In fact, the strongest point "New Union" – it’s not even gameplay or dialogues, but the setting. As you can guess from the mutants and anomalies, the action takes place again after a nuclear war, but with a remark: the USSR won. This means that on the surface people communicate with each other exclusively using the canonical “tovarish”, and underground bunkers are completely hung with red flags (at least this is evidenced by concept art).
At the same time Best Way promises a positive outlook on things: the state will for once be good, and the people will be happy and united by a common goal. Nobody is revealing specific plot threads yet, but they promise to catch up with the epic as it should be: if not peace, then the country will have to be saved.
For the rest, talk about "New Union" – it’s a difficult and thankless task. What’s happening doesn’t even look like a beta version: unnecessary skills stick out, the interface is drawn in a hurry for work purposes, the characters don’t open their mouths during conversations.
Only the abstracts are known. So, the passage will take from 10 to 22 hours. During this time, you will visit 7-8 peaceful locations and about 40 combat ones, among which you will find high-rise buildings, swamps, destroyed monuments and underground storage facilities.
Crossing each level takes about 15 minutes of real time. At the same time, during a walk you will be able to observe how the fauna exterminates itself, the cycle of day and night changes, and random events occur around (for example, a farmer runs away from a wild boar with a cry for help).
Separately, the authors talk about anomalies. In addition to standard traps (where you can drive foolish opponents), sometimes you will come across entire puzzles that occupy a large area and require a special approach to solving. As an example, a labyrinth consisting of transparent walls is described – you can go through it only by following the sound that warns that the player is walking in the wrong direction.
Despite the fact that all this greatly smacks of the already boring “Stalkers”, the project does not have much in common with them. This is more of a domestic Mars: War Logs – an RPG with a strong focus on action. Even if the shootouts ultimately don’t turn out to be something interesting, the creators have two aces up their sleeves: excellent location design and a truly unusual world concept that can make for a good script.
"New Union" was supposed to be released this year, but if the authors are not crazy, the release date will be shifted. The material demonstrated at Igromir is not even a game, but an interactive tour of concept art. All that can be understood for sure from it is the genre. And it’s a moderately linear third-person action game in an open world.
Even the developers themselves don’t seem to know the rest – the phrase “we haven’t decided yet” was heard so often during the presentation. That is why the project is worth following closely: it has almost the same chances of both turning out to be interesting and falling into annoying “garbage”.