Paradox Interactive is preparing a new strategy called Afterworldset in post-apocalyptic North America. Like the studio’s other titles, this game offers players almost unlimited freedom to build their own society, including the ability to make highly unethical decisions without any artificial restrictions from the developers.
Game director Dan Lind talked about unexpected scenarios that may arise during the game. According to him, a lot depends on how the player adapts his society to external circumstances and resources available in a particular territory.
One story might go like this: I found a huge colony of only older people and took them in. We used technology that allowed people to live very long lives, but they couldn’t contribute with work, and society began to struggle.
So we find a way for them to, say, jump off cliffs when they reach a certain age for the well-being of everyone else, or something like that. And then the story arises: “Wow, how did you get to this point? Why do you have such a society?” And the answer could be: it happened because of some event and I had to prohibit the use of a certain resource, so now we are all vegetarians. Those are the stories I think you’ll get in this game.”
In addition to ruling your own civilization, Afterworld also involves interacting with territories ruled by other powers, including powerful ancient tyrants. These characters control large areas of the wasteland and are capable of subjugating the player through military force if the player is not sufficiently prepared for the conflict.
Paradox’s grand strategy game Afterworld is more of a survival RPG than you might expect
For the first time in ten years, the studio behind Crusader Kings and Hearts of Iron has unveiled a title that is not tied to a real-life story. According to Lind, interesting stories can also emerge from political intrigue with these tyrants.
I think there would be some interesting stories in a big political game, like, “Well, I decided to betray this tyrant in this way, and now I have to rule all of New York,” or something like that.
Lind believes player-created stories will be great conversation starters and confirmed that Afterworld will not prevent users from engaging in cannibalism or selling members of their society to other factions.
One of our rules is that we should not judge a player for his terrible decisions. The game itself will react, of course: the population won’t necessarily approve of you doing something terrible… unless you happen to have an equally terrible population.
Maybe you brought them to this state, or maybe you initially found people this way.
According to Lind, this freedom is one of the main distinguishing features Afterworld compared to other games in the genre.
This is expected for such a setting. People don’t expect characters to behave normally and adhere to a moral code in an apocalypse, but as you progress, you can steer society in different directions. There’s definitely an advantage to having a society that doesn’t do too many crazy things if you want to grow.
The game director admitted that he can’t wait to see what results players will achieve after release Afterworld.
In all our games, this is the most interesting part. Someone says, “Wow, you did it! This is crazy!” That’s the point.
Release date Afterworld unknown. The game will be released on Steam.
