Chris InglisWhen Broken Roads was first announced back in 2019, I was so happy to have a game based in the Australian outback and with Australian voice acting. Drop Bear Bytes, hailing out of Torquay, Victoria, were working on a narrative-driven RPG with a moral compass and turn-based combat that had me reminiscing the days of playing Fallout, Wasteland 2 and Shadowrun. Now working with publisher Versus Evil, I finally have got hands-on with a playable demo and I am loving it.
This is a short demo, only an hour or so long depending on how much conversation you engage in, but it has it’s hooks in me. It is amazing to be an Australian and playing in an Aussie outback setting, and even better than it’s based in my home state of Western Australia. There’s some good old Aussie slang and banter between characters, kangaroos hopping about the place and the sound of the wind rushing through the bushes sounded just like the real thing.
This demo for Broken Roads starts off with an intro movie that has an outstanding narrator. His voice sounds like a true older Aussie battler, with the emphasis on the ‘s’ sounds that make me think he’s got a tooth or two missing. We are shown various locations we will visit, and once you have played through the demo, they have a lot more meaning on a second watch. I particularly liked one of the final intro scenes that shows a tower with Kalgoorlie Bitter advertised, a nod to a Western Australian gold mining town. The locations are all authentically recreated from the team visiting towns and landmarks in Western Australia and taking photos, videos, and audio recordings for it to be as true as possible.
Character creation as several layers and the first choice we will make in the full game is choosing from one of four origins – Hired Gun, Surveyor, Jackaroo or Barter Crew. Each choice has starting stats and skills, and a unique perk. The demo limits us to just the Hired Gun, but we are told that our starting story impacts your reputation, how people interact with you, and even where you begin your journey and which locations will be available to you. There are four character presets to choose from – two male and two female, but we cannot customise them any further visually. We choose our name and then are introduced to the moral compass.
The moral compass itself is split into four distinct areas – Utilitarian, Nihilist, Machiavell and Humanist. In this demo we are given six questions and we choose how we want to respond which will determine the final moral selection. One in the game decisions we make will affect future ones, and players will be faced with real moral dilemmas. Your companions and other key characters each have their own hidden moral leaning, and will react to your statements, choices and general attitude based on their own world view. In this demo, all moral choices are visible in conversations, and it gave me a good feel for how I wanted to shape my character. In the full game, some of the moral choices will be hidden based on how you play but this can be toggled in options.
Finally, we get to choose our skill allocations. For this demo I just chose auto-assign my stats and skills, but I will be paying more attention when I play the full version of the game and it was great to see so many options available for players. Once in-game we meet several characters, complete optional side quests which reward some items and experience, and then head off to the next town. It was great to see the multitude of dialogue choices, and I loved running around the locations. In this demo there weren’t many things to interact with, and without names above npcs heads, I lost track of who I was supposed to speak to or turn a quest back to. Generally, any stationary npcs were the important ones.
Each location was very well detailed, I loved the sound design, and the voice acting is superb when it was used. The first spoken dialogue of a new character you meet is usually voiced, but additional conversations are not voiced so you’ll be doing a bit of reading which isn’t a bad thing. It’s so refreshing to have a game full of Aussie accents, not just the odd character amongst American or European voices. The Aussie slang and shit stirring was on point with phrases like ‘doovalackies’, ‘no wozzas’, and ‘up the wazoo’. I can’t wait to see what other pearlers they have included. I stopped playing once I got to Brookton as I didn’t want to spoil anymore of this fantastic story and save it for full release.
In that time there was a simple practice combat scenario against target dummies, and it showed us that different weapons are more effective depending on the distance to the target. We have a limited number of action points (depending on chosen origin and skills) and reloading takes an action. We can see the combat order at the top of the screen and this easy combat scenario felt familiar. It was announced recently that we can play the game purely as a pacifist with the right choices. I also faced one major moral scenario and it was devastating to start off, and then even more emotional and impactful based on the choices I made, instantly making me want to have made better choices.
Overall, I am very impressed with what I have seen so far with Broken Roads and my only complaint is that I want to see more. The level of detail in the locations we can explore really captured the Aussie outback so well. I am excited to dive more into the moral choices and the impact this has on the overall story. If you’re a fan of RPGs like Wasteland, Fallout and others, definitely add Broken Roads to your wishlist. Broken Roads is on track to release on Steam and consoles in 2023 and the demo is available on Steam.
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Johnny