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Mutant Year Zero is a tactical apocalypse with a dry sense of humor

by Amr (@siegarettes)

• Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden 
  
• Developer: The Bearded Ladies 
  
• Publisher: Funcom 
  
• PC, PS4, Xbox One
  

Before I even began Mutant Year Zero it was broken. Starting a new game greeted me with a bizarre “Do you want to continue without saving?” prompt which didn’t allow me to continue unless I said yes. It was only after I played a session without dialogue or area transitions triggering, dying to enemies I obviously wasn’t supposed to fight, that I was able to play the game intact. Even then it was clear that this game was going to be a rough ride. This is a harsh game that made it clear it would beat me down every step of the way, sometimes with exhilarating, but often frustrating, results.

Mutant Year Zero’s basic set up is this: the world has ended once again, leaving humanity basically erased and mutant surviving in the wreckage. Some band together under the guidance of The Elder, one of the last surviving humans with knowledge of the previous world, and for The Ark, a haven from the dangers of the new irradiated world. Only a few are sent out to scavenge the world for resources, the aptly named Stalkers, which I took charge of. It’s an interesting apocalypse, getting a lot of mileage out of writing that reinterprets the familiar through the eyes of characters who have only limited context for the previous world. Hearing characters warn of a boom box’s explosive potential for example, definitely got a chuckle out of me.

In terms of moment to moment play Mutant’s quick and dirty pitch can be described as “stealth XCOM”. There’s a familiar two action turn system, a half/full cover system, and the overwatch mechanic that can be used to take shots at enemies during their turns. What separates it is the way it situates each of these battles in an explorable overworld of connected spaces, and its harsh approach to calculating damage.

The world operates in real time, making it possible to scavenge areas for weapons and resources, and sneak by enemy patrols. A large circle delineates each enemy’s sightline, showing unambiguously the distance which will trigger a fight. Being caught, or beginning an ambush, will move into turn based combat, where you attempt to pick off as many of the enemies silently and hope to god they don’t have a chance to call their buddies. 

It’s a very PC-minded approach to stealth, one where the quick save button is an essential tool to getting through encounters. Even on normal, the easiest difficulty, enemies will often bring so much backup it might as well be considered an instant fail state. You can fight them, but the game makes it clear from the start that you’ll frequently be outmatched and outleveled, and that sneaking by will be your only option.

Adding to this harshness is the way the game calculates damage. Unlike the fuzzy probabilities and damage of XCOM and other strategy games, Mutant operates on a strict and predictable scale. Hit percentages are all in the same increments, calculated on the type of cover and flanking bonuses. A successful hit always gives the same damage, with critical hit damage also pre-determined by your weapon. It makes calculating success easy–I never lacked the information to know if I could take on an enemy. The flipside is that there aren’t any clutch victories or lucky breaks in Mutant either. If I made a bad call it was over, the game wouldn’t fudge the numbers for the sake of drama.

Mutant Year Zero gains consistency with this approach to numbers, but does lose some expressive potential. I didn’t have any stories about the shot that opened up enemy defenses or the hopeless encounter that turned around right at the end. All my clutch victories were the result of cold, hard, calculation. If I didn’t do enough damage to stealth kill an enemy in a single turn then it was time to scavenge some parts together and upgrade. There’s no room for mistakes in the apocalypse. In other terms, it’s the difference between generating stories about good football plays, and generating stories about the players that made it happen.

Stripped of that storytelling potential, Mutant Year Zero’s combat and stealth can’t carry it. That’s where it falls to its storytelling and exploratory elements to provide momentum. Mutant clearly owes a lot to XCOM, but between its cheeky approach to the apocalypse and hybrid of exploration and tactical combat, it gave me a lot of Fallout vibes. It might not have the same absurdly complex RPG systems and dialogue trees, but it draws on the same PC RPG and board gaming heritage, and placed me in the same headspace. There’s the same satisfaction to skulking around, scavenging weapons parts, and piecing together stories and secret stash locations from notes.

The narrative techniques here are more the familiar at this point, but the tone of the writing and the delivery of the acting sells it. The Elder provides the only real context for what the previous world was like, so most characters’ view of it is filtered through his perspective, with them left to fill in the details themselves. These slightly askew interpretations of the previous world provide endless gags, and the dry affectation characters deliver them with only adds to it. It caught me off guard how funny some of the lines were, and how much character the acting gave them. The overall plot is straightforward, with scavenging missions, missing persons, and a search for a promised land, but it gives enough momentum to carry the game forward between exploring areas.

Between the solid stealth tactics and its world’s dry humor, Mutant Year Zero came as a pleasant surprise to end the year on. The rough edges continue to scrape at the borders of the experience, but they’re worth struggling through. Mutant Year Zero might bring a familiar apocalypse in some ways, down to its buggy nature, but it manages to stand out from its inspirations.