Today, developer Bearded Ladies and publisher Funcom announced Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden. According to the companies, Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is a tactical adventure featuring a story set on a post-human Earth. The game combines strategy and the turn-based tactical combat of XCOM with real-time exploration and stealth gameplay. The team making Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden has members who previous worked on titles like Hitman and Payday.
Extreme climate change, global economic crises, a lethal pandemic, and increasing tension between old and new superpowers causes the destruction of the planet. Nuclear war destroys the land and humans perish. However, the story doesn't end there, as mutants arise from the rubble. You'll encounter characters like anthropomorphic ducks, pigs and even human-looking rocks on your journey.
Players must take control of a team of unlikely heroes such as Dux, a crossbow-wielding duck, and Bormin, a boar with anger management problems, and help them navigate abandoned cities, crumbling highways, and mutated monsters on every corner. The ultimate goal is to save yourselves by finding the legendary land known as Eden. However, it's unclear if it even exists in the first place.
Bearded Ladies' Executive Producer Ulf Andersson – known for being the designer behind Payday – issued the following statement alongside the reveal announcement.
It's an unusual label for a game, but tactical adventure really fits the bill, no duck pun intended. Our goal is to blend the deep and tactical combat of XCOM with a branching storyline that unfolds as you explore overgrown forests and abandoned cities with your team of mutants. Mixing that with real-time stealth gameplay gives you a unique way to approach or avoid combat situations you encounter while exploring.
Funcom is known for unique experiences like Conan Exiles and The Park, so Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden seems like the right fit. The game is set to release in 2018 on Xbox One, PC, and PlayStation 4. Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is based on the classic "Mutant" franchise that has spawned several popular pen and paper role-playing games since the 1980s.
The game looks like it takes a lot of inspiration from titles like Fallout 3 and not just XCOM. You can explore environments freely, but enemy encounters are restricted to a particular area and require careful execution. Hopefully Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden will be a polished experience even on consoles and provide compelling gameplay for many types of gamers when it launches this year. We'll keep you posted as soon as we know more about the game or receive word of a concrete release date.
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