I distinctly remember that wondrous feeling as I exited Fallout 3's Vault 101 for the first time. I took a moment to survey the landscape, chose a direction, and started walking. We Happy Few places me in a similar situation, but elicits a little less wonder. Here I’m thrust into the dilapidated part of town known as Wellington Wells. It’s littered with ramshackle buildings and impoverished townsfolk called Downers, wandering aimlessly and mumbling incoherently.
There’s no narrative to be readily found, but apparently the city of Wellington Wells was occupied by Germany during World War II. Its inhabitants took to popping a drug called Joy to cope, living in an artificial state of euphoria. Things are clearly very bad on this side of town, which stands in stark contrast to the other side, where the colorful streets and buildings support a healthier and wealthier class of citizen.
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I’m still not sure what I’m doing in We Happy Few, but I approach a woman to see if she’ll talk to me. Stopping dead in her tracks, she stares at me while a meter turns from yellow to red. It hits red – now she's angry. The next thing I know she’s pummeling me with both fists and I’m left with two choices: fight or flight. I choose to fight and I proceed to knock the woman out, or kill her, I guess, since she turns into a corpse that I can loot for random, mostly useless items likes rocks, empty bottles and syringes, and torn suits.But as I continue to explore the city, I find that it’s easy to get turned around. Everything looks the same and I’m constantly and tediously referring to the map in the pause menu in an effort to find landmarks.
This part of town is devoid of Joy, and while it makes sense its denizens are unhappy, I'm not sure why they're specifically unhappy with me – I would have assumed I’m one of them. After all, I just crawled out of a sewer in the middle of town. If I’m lucky enough to sneak past a checkpoint into a happier side of the city, I’m usually immediately accosted by cops and alarms that can tell I’m not under the effects of Joy. It seems no one likes a downer.Each death, whether from battle, an overdose of Joy, or even food poisoning, sends me right back to my sewer to start anew. We Happy Few's primary goal seems to be surviving as long as possible while invading people’s homes and rifling through for salvageable items to craft more useful items. It isn’t all that different from something like Don’t Starve, only the monsters out to get me are, well, everyone.
There’s a great deal yet to be revealed about We Happy Few. While current narrative gaps will surely be filled, I’d like to see how Compulsion handles save states and permadeath. As of now, there isn't much to do, but even less when your exploration is cut short by a city full of aggressively homicidal residents. Half the time, I'm trying to unsuccessfully sneak into the posh district of Wellington Wells, and the other half has me murdering anyone I can in fear of being killed myself. In any case, the drug-forged dystopia of We Happy Few finds a way to end me.
And so, I wake up in my sewer, ready to start all over again. Michael Martin is a contributor to IGN, and full-time freelance writer from Seattle. Follow him on Twitter @Bizarro_Mike.