Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden Gameplay Trailer, E3 Impressions

Tactical ducks, post-apocalypse, and stealth-action. Funcom and The Bearded Ladies’ upcoming turn-based RPG Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden has received a new gameplay trailer that showcases some of the game’s characters and features and directs us to the newly-opened pre-order page that tells us to expect the game in “the second half of 2018.” Have a look:

And since the E3 press embargo is no longer in effect, we can also check out some hands-on impressions from the event.

PCGamesN offers a preview article that doubles as an interview with the game’s producer Mark Parker:

At first glance, Mutant Year Zero could be seen through the same lens as Divinity: Original Sin, or the Shadowrun games: the world is explored in real-time, and entering turn-based combat is a seamless transition that lays gridlines over the environment. But while the broad setup is familiar, the intricacies are not. There’s an emphasis on stealth; enemies in the world walk along patrol paths akin to Metal Gear Solid foes, with a radius around them highlighted to warn you of their detection field. Get too close and they’ll initiate battle, calling on their nearby allies to rush in and decimate your tiny team.

To avoid this, you are equipped with silenced weapons, the ability to hide behind corners, and a handy ambush mechanic. Get your team into position, wait for an isolated grunt to walk into your trap, and then a tap of the spacebar will begin combat and allow you the opening moves. With any luck, you’ll be able to quietly elminate them without alerting anyone else, and continue to rinse and repeat the tactic until the zone is clear of foes. There’s a little of Invisible Inc.’s rhythm to this, and that’s no bad thing.

As with all turn-based tactical games, positioning is of paramount importance in Mutant Year Zero, something I quickly discover as Bormin is riddled with bullet holes due to being left in an awkward position at the end of my turn. The Mutant universe offers more options than just rusty guns, though; powers can really help you gain the edge in the battle for prime locations.

“We’ve got moth wings, stone skin, and one mutation where you can control the trees nearby and wrap their roots around enemy legs,” Parker says. “I really like the super jump. You can jump really far across different areas, up to high points to get a good vantage point.”

Variety shares their demo impressions along with some background on the tabletop RPG that inspired the game:

“Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden” may have caught North American audiences off guard when it was announced back in March, but for pen-and-paper role-playing gamers who grew up in Sweden, it was likely a different story.

“Mutant” is a pen-and-paper role-playing system and world — similar to “GURPS” or “Cyberpunk 2020” — that originally released in Sweden in 1984 and saw a series of expansions and updates through the ’80s and ’90s and all the way up through 2002. In “Mutant,” the human race is largely extinct; in its place, a ragged collection of animal-derived mutants, robots, and a few human remnants are rebuilding in ways big and small, exploring the ruined world and the mysteries of that now-extinct human society. This was elaborated on in several expansions, but “Mutant” and its myriad offshoots never saw translation into other languages — until, that is, 2014, when a new version of “Mutant” was published, set hundreds of years before the original game, and which received an english translation under the name “Mutant Year Zero.”

That might be a lot to take in, but the point is, “Mutant Year Zero” isn’t coming from nowhere — there’s a rich history and background to the setting, and as importantly, a generation of pen-and-paper fans vested in doing right by it. In speaking with members of developers The Bearded Ladies, there’s a sense of a cult following that they want to do right by in their interpretation of “Mutant,” which is surprisingly a first for the property. There’s never been a video game adaptation of the RPG, even as contemporaries like “Shadowrun” and “White Wolf’s various settings found life on PCs and consoles.

PCWorld calls the game unique and clever and appreciates the real-time exploration elements:

But in Mutant Year Zero, I felt like I was supposed to laugh. Panic in combat, sure, but as grim as Mutant Year Zero’s post-apocalypse portends to be, there’s a lot of humor here too. Watching a zombie get sniped by a pistol-wielding duck is inherently hilarious to me, as is a pig wearing biker gang clothes and wielding a shotgun.

Our demo didn’t show off a ton of story, but I imagine it’s also easier for Mutant Year Zero to tell one. As I said, the real-time segments play out a bit like an isometric RPG. That’s not to say there are extensive dialogue trees to sit through or anything (at least not that we saw), but it does open up levels for exploration a bit more, and thus lends itself to environmental storytelling. We were given a sneak peek of another mission for instance, one that took place in an abandoned tunnel. It was a smaller level, with very little combat. Just basically a quick detour for the party.

And Destructoid appreciates the game’s difficulty:

Road to Eden takes place in a post-apocalyptic Sweden, keeping in line with its source material that always sets games in the players’ hometown. Many of the developers working on it, including some former Hitman developers transported from IO Interactive, are from the specific region of Sweden it takes place in. There’s no introduction to the demo as I take control of three characters — Dux, Bormin, and Selma — attempting to infiltrate a hollowed out building the enemy is patrolling. I don’t know who the enemy is, but I can hear from their dialog that they’re after the girl.

The crunch of the snow beneath my feet is the soundtrack to my journey, and as I search the area looking for scrap (the game’s currency) I come across a pile of body bags with a trench dug nearby. My team converses and comments on their surroundings, ensuring this won’t be some silent, stoic trek through the wildlands. These are three characters with unique personalities who are not above sharing hot takes on what they see.

They’re also unique in their playstyle. Bormin is equipped with two powerful, but loud, guns while Dux and Selma both have silenced weapons in their arsenal. Keeping quiet is the key to victory in Road to Eden, as one of three phases of gameplay lets me snipe enemies before they have a chance to alert the others. I fail miserably at this as I’ll explain in a little bit.