Even though you don't meet any characters in Pacific Drive, talking to them and hearing their anecdotes was an unexpectedly enjoyable experience during my preview of the game.
Ironwood Studios' debut survival game with a twist takes you into a strange, creepy environment in the Pacific Northwest. When you download Pacific Drive, you'll see a series of infographics that chronicle how the Olympic Peninsula became a staging area for "promising new technology" in 1947—a process hampered by stories of overnight evacuations, mysterious disappearances, and "unnatural encounters."
Eight short years later, part of the territory was fenced off with a wall and became an exclusion zone, which expanded over the next 30 years and eventually became completely inaccessible. Of course, the Olympic Exclusion Zone is completely fictional, but Ironwood's attention to detail had me hooked. What happened there?
Unfortunately, I didn’t understand anything - my preliminary playthrough was limited to the first two story missions. But it's what happened in those missions that makes me eagerly await Pacific Drive's release date so I can go back and explore the full game. My journey begins south of the barrier wall in 1998, with nothing but a clipboard and vague delivery instructions. I push my beat-up old car forward and follow the only available path, during which a short tutorial teaches me how to use the windshield wipers and headlights and reminds me to put the car in “park” when necessary.
As the rain gets heavier, I soon find myself off-road, where fog begins to swirl around me and my surroundings eerily crumble. As the fog turns purple and begins to engulf me, the car stalls and I am plunged into pitch darkness. I suddenly feel very alone. Before I can acclimate, a bright red light illuminates my surroundings and I am yanked sideways through the portal.
I find myself in the very Olympic exclusion zone, full of unsettling green fogs and crackling radiation, and immediately run forward as the user interface urges me to get to safety. When I find an abandoned car, I quickly learn that you can open the car and get into it with the same key, distinguished by a long press or tap. I walk forward hesitantly until an unexpected voice pierces the silence. This is my first time meeting Tobias Barlow.
“Signal, yes, he’s back!” - he shouts. He explains that he and his colleague, Francis Cook, are in Sector B of the Mid-Zone. He tells me that my "distress signal" is being received in the Outer Zone, more precisely in Sector E. Of course, this means that my newfound friend is not near me, and without being able to contact him, I am still left alone .
The friendly voice on the intercom calms me down and relieves me of loneliness. Tobias identifies me as an “intruder”—a person outside the barrier wall—and wonders aloud how I managed to get into the exclusion zone. However, I am grateful that my lonely, solitary enterprise is now much more collaborative.
As I head east toward the shelter, Tobias notices a blip on the instrument he and Francis are monitoring, a spectrometer. He suggests that it may be a "remnant", but Francis insists that this cannot be the case as they have not seen it in decades. Thanks to the speed at which I'm moving, they quickly figure out that I may be the one who found the "Remnant" and that it is shaped like a car.
The back-and-forth conversations between Tobias and Francis paint a picture of the story I'm caught up in. It's a perfect embodiment of how effectively Ironwood uses characters, even if they're solely off-screen.
As I approach the hideout, Tobias warns me about Oppy, another unseen character who might not like me "poking around" in her auto repair shop. Of course, as soon as I turn on the power, she greets me with a disgruntled sigh and then shouts “you have five seconds to get the hell out” before my new friend, Tobias, assures her over the emergency broadcast that I’m not looking for trouble.
His message also explains that Oppy is actually Dr. Ophelia Turner, and I can already imagine her. A short woman with messy bright-colored hair, wearing dirty overalls and large worn-out boots. She's probably standing there with her hands on her hips, furious at my unexpected intrusion and even more furious at Tobias' threat to read her his entire anthology of poetry if she can't keep me safe.
Oppy mentions a number of "unfortunates" who have been trapped in the Exclusion Zone in the past, which gives me more insight into how I ended up in this fickle scenario. Reluctantly agreeing to let me rummage through her garage for scrap metal and parts to fix the car, she explains the game's map system and missions to me. I feel like she's warmed up to me, and considering we only met two minutes ago, it doesn't seem worthy of the sense of achievement I feel. She even gives me advice!
During the first two story missions of Pacific Drive, I was left with a feeling of complete loneliness. With limited incentives for me to leave the safety of Oppy's car park, I might be tempted to just abandon Pacific Drive and leave it alone. But these three characters, despite the fact that I never physically met them, serve a much greater purpose than the standard game tutorial. They will be my closest support in this strange world, and I can't wait until we meet them in the flesh later.
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