Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden Demo Stream, Stealth Overview, Previews

The Bearded Ladies, the developers behind Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, along with their publishers at Funcom livestreamed a portion of the game’s recently released beta demo a few days back. If you’re interested in seeing some fresh gameplay and learning a bit about the game’s mechanics and plot, you can watch the VOD below:

You can also visit the game’s website where you will find a fairly detailed stealth overview, and then check out this Steam announcement that directs us to a number of recent media previews of the game. Here’s a bit on stealth:

Being stealthy and using the silent approach to your advantage is a key component of Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden. Combat is brutal and will offer a harsh challenge, but by sneaking around and taking out isolated enemies will let you remove several low-level enemies before tackling the main threat.

You wouldn’t expect any less with a game made by former Hitman developers.

SILENT, BUT DEADLY

As you explore and travel through the irradiated Zone you will encounter Ghouls, monsters and other foul creatures that make this post-apocalyptic wasteland their home. Out here it’s kill or be killed. Anything is ready to ambush Stalkers who are caught unawares.

Since half of The Bearded Ladies is made up of former Hitman developers it made sense to combine tactical combat with real-time stealth mechanics. The main goal of the project was to experiment with the tactical genre and push it in a new direction by taking the initial part of any tactical scenario – the setup and planning – and moving it into real-time gameplay mechanics to speed up the loop. As your characters sneak around you will hear incidental dialogue from NPCs and the party will react to things in the environment.

Switching off your party’s flashlight will put you into stealth mode. Your characters will crouch down and be less visible, but can still be detected by Ghouls and other enemies if they’re not careful. At this point your best bet is to split your party up and set up a sneak attack.

TACTICAL COMBAT EVOLVED

It is simply not enough just to tackle your enemies head on in Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden. If you want to survive you will have to use stealth – if not your team of mutants will not last long.

Your team consists of only three mutants, and even though they are powerful they can still easily be outnumbered and overrun by the enemy.

The crucial point is that you can’t just run into a group of enemies and expect to come out victorious. It may work sometimes, but most of the time you will either end up with a team of dead mutants or you will use up all your med-kits in a hurry.

Use stealth to study enemy movements and see if some of them move away from the others. These are the perfect targets to take down with your silent weapons, so you don’t alert the larger group.

You must try and take out as many single targets silently as possible. Then, and only then, you can take on the larger group when you are ready and they are weakened.

GATHER INFORMATION

Sneaking around is also incredibly useful to gather information about the enemies you are facing. You need to know how many they are and if any of them represent specific threats, like tanks, shamans or the mind-controlling Nova Sect, for example.

Your tactics for the fight to follow will be vastly different if you have already snuck around the enemy camp and learned what you can about them. With your new knowledge you can focus your first-round alpha strike on their shaman, so he can’t call for reinforcements, or root their tank in place, so he can’t charge your mutants and knock them down.

Perhaps the group even contains a brand-new type of enemy, which you may want to swap out mutations for, or get some new weapon upgrades from the Ark to tackle. Without the information gathered from stealth you will be blind.

KNOW YOUR SURROUNDINGS

By sneaking around the map you will not only learn the composition of your enemies, but you will also be able to hear what they are talking about. This can often offer crucial information.

A group of Zone Ghouls may be talking about a pack of Zone Dogs that are nearby. Knowing about these dangerous creatures, so you can be ready for their ambush, can be very helpful.

You can also learn where the Ghouls have taken captured Stalkers and hear about their plans or even where they keep their treasures.

One of the most important things you can learn through sneaking around the map is figuring out where to setup your team for an ambush. Is there a suitable place with high-ground? Are there places with lots of cover available? Can you lure the enemy out in the open so they won’t have much cover of their own to hide behind?

Using stealth to learn all these things is one of the most important aspects in Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden – and we feel it adds another layer of planning, tactics and depth to an already great genre.