The Pacific Northwest can already be pretty strange, but what if you threw in bizarre anomalies that will cause pillars of earth to rise into the air for tumbleweeds to start throwing lightning bolts as you pass? Then you'd get Pacific Drive, a new game that was just announced at tonight's Sony State of Play.
The game is described as a run-based first-person driving survival game, or as Seattle-based developer Ironwood Studios calls it, a "road-like." Excursions into the rocky and treacherous wilderness will bring new and dangerous challenges as you work at restoring your car and upgrading your garage to give your wheels a better chance at surviving.
You can get a brief sense of that in today's trailer. The car starts out as any old station wagon, albeit with a high-tech LCD screen that keeps track of each component's health far better than even modern luxury cars with onboard diagnostic equipment. Pretty soon you go from driving a lemon to a futuristic ground traversal vehicle disguised as a write-off. A chameleon system adorns the wagon as you plow through dangerous thunderstorms and forests filled with creatures that seem out for blood.
There's a few more clues in the trailer. First is a sign that notes the garage has been abandoned since 4/2/08, making this an alternate history game. There's also a map that shows large swaths of Oregon, Northern California, and Washington, with sticky-notes marking locations, pitfalls, and Xs that likely denote the ends of previous runs.
Why doesn't the player want to flee this terrifying place? And why do they need a set of wheels that lets them drive past monsters to reach the mystery at the heart of the Olmpic Exclusion Zone? We'll have to wait until next year to find out as Pacific Drive arrives on PS5 and PC sometime in 2023. Check out the official website for updates.