We Happy Few (2018)

I’ll admit upfront I only finished the first arc of this game, Arthur’s story. So, while I’ve a pretty decent feel for all the mechanics of the game, my insight on the story is only 1/3 complete. Still, I think they led with the strongest story.

This game has been on a bit of a journey, I remember watching playthroughs of it when it was still an early access Steam game. Of those “crafting, survival” type games it was one of the more engaging ones that seemed to have a though put into it’s world building, like the Long Dark, or even This Land is My Land. You could tell this was more than just some cheap attempt at a cash grab. And if I understand it correctly, Gearbox realized this as well and helped inject some money into & got it published on home consoles, but appeared to stay pretty hands off otherwise. I could see the three DLC packs being a stipulation imposed by Gearbox, but even still those are just more story content and nothing too heinous. There’s a lot of early access games that state grand ambitions for the future only to, willfully or not, fall flat on their face, so I appreciate seeing this game succeed on that front.

Let’s start with the gameplay. Originally this was a hard survival game where you had to constantly babysit your meters or fear dying from hunger, thirst, etc. As feedback came in and there was a shift to more of a narrative, Compulsion Games turned the meters down, reducing the amount of babysitting and making an empty meter a stat debuff instead of death. It was a smart move as it allowed me to focus on the game’s world and story vs treating everything as a scavenge point. There’s also some difficulty tweaking settings that allowed me to usually have a solid stash of food and drink to fall back on. There’s still plenty of scavenging to be done as the game has a crafting system for building weapons, clothing, tools, and medicines. Simple stuff like lockpicks are easy to find materials for, but more advanced clothing requires scavenging the right places, usually ones that are heavily guarded. The actual crafting is done mostly in a menu and isn’t too cumbersome. There’s a few high level items that require an actual workbench to build. These are located in underground rail stations, your safehouses/fast travel spots for the game. They are similar to AC3’s underground, you have a small puzzle to solve before you can claim the door. To travel between them you have to visit the nearest safehouse, no fast traveling from anywhere here.

A lot of the story missions involve sneaking around places you ain’t supposed to be. The sneaking mechanics are functionable. I never had too many instances where a cop saw me from across the map or through a wall and the distraction tools worked as advertised. Most areas were set up to be snuck around with convenient bushes, holes in fences, and broom closets to use. I had heard the combat in this game was a bit trash, so I set that difficulty down to easy. It’s very manageable on that setting. Once I got the hang of the systems, I could reliably fend off most enemies. If you get ganged up on though, no amount of skill will pull your fat from the fire. If you are mobbed by the plague crazies, or chased by a whole town, it’s best to duck into an alley and hide. There’s an upgrade menu where you can learn new combat skills, along with stealth and crafting skills. If you play diligently enough, you can upgrade your character to have some broken traits mid-way through the game. All of the town is under curfew, but with a level 4 skill you are excluded from it’s enforcement, making it easier to waltz around at night, as the cops won’t bother you for just walking the streets now.

The world building and aesthetic is the star of We Happy Few. The vibe of 60s Britain is strong in Wellington Wells. Everyone is dressed very mod, and their reliance on a recreational drug feels appropriate for the time period. The technology has a bit of a retro-futuristic vibe to it. The technology that was seen on sci-fi shows of the 60s is an actuality in Wellington Wells. Uncle Jack, the omnipresent TV host of Wellington Wells only TV channel is a perfect caricature of 60s TV hosts. The actor responsible for playing Jack did a great job. He had the cadence and soft spoken voice of a Mr. Rogers-esque host nailed down. It didn’t sound like someone from 2018 doing an impression, it sounded like they found footage of an old 60s show. Watching his broadcasts were a highlight of my playthrough and I love the subtle storytelling they add. He has cooking shows about using common weeds to make salads or how to extend the life of your bread, because Wellington is on hard times and food supplies are running short, so people have to make do with whatever, but he doesn’t say that. He just talks about how tasty local flora is & how to prep it. Again, everything is presented a bit askew, but it still feels authentic to the period. It’s not some overly satirical “wink-nod” type of deal.

The lore of the drug Joy is set up early and without too much boring exposition. To cope with the horrors of the recently ended WWII, the town willfully attempts to forget its history. It’s an effective story about lots of things, forgetting one’s past over reconciling with it, what people will trade for safety, and the dangers of perpetual happiness. Even death is too much of a downer, so anyone who disappears or dies is just “on holiday”. In a great bit of world building, the houses of Joy users have Post-It notes everywhere with simple reminders like “Turn on the stove to make tea” or “Put on socks before shoes”. One reason Wellington is falling apart is because no one really does any of the required maintenance work that a town needs to operate. Those that do work as maintenance men are too coked out of their mind to do the job right.

We Happy Few also seem to take place in a slightly altered history. The Germans actually invaded the town and rounded up all the children, shipping them back to Germany… supposedly. At first, I thought maybe this meant WWII played out differently and the Nazis won. Then some intrigue is mixed in when we learn the tank army that supported the Germans was all a ruse. They were Tigers made out of papier-mâché. Which made me think, maybe WWII is still going on & the Germans took the town’s children out of a need for laborers or soldiers. Wellington Wells is very much an isolated English country town, so we never get an idea what the rest of England is like. Is the war still going on? Is London also on Joy or rebuilding like normal? It’s a nice level of ambiguity that, while I wish we got answers, I’m not upset that we didn’t.

Of course, I only played Arthur’s arc, perhaps we do get answers later on. Arthur works as a redactor, redacting any old newspapers that mention the horrible thing that happened or anything that may upset people. One day he comes across a story about him and his brother that the doses of Joy made him forget. He snaps out of his stupor and realizes the true state that Wellington is in. The Joy made him blissfully ignorant, seeing rainbows and sunshine everywhere, when reality was a gray and dreary as an actual English town. He is immediately assaulted for “going off his Joy” & dumped in the garden wasteland outside of the town proper. From then on Arthur makes it his goal to escape and try to locate his brother who was part of the round up by the Nazis. As he progresses, he remembers more about the day the Germans took his brother and how he sort of sold him out. He toughens up to live his guilt while also discovering an intrigue plot about how the company that makes Joy is running out of resources and most people are becoming immune to the drug, or worse, sick from it. A lot of the locals you meet seem to be at least somewhat aware of what’s going on, having secretly gone off their Joy or reducing their dosage and pretending to be perpetually happy. He meets up with an old flame, Sally, who is more trouble than help, and finally escapes Wellington, crossing a bridge into an uncertain future. It’s a good story that kept me engage for the most part, some of the fetch quests grated on me, but Arthur is a likeable everyman. He’s not quite a nerd, not quite a jock. He likes going to the pub and is a bit awkward with people.

After that you start the next section of the story, playing as Sally this time. Her story has an interesting hook involving a baby, but after the several hours it took to complete Arthur’s story, starting from square one again with none of my resources or skills just turned me off the game. Sally’s also geared more towards chemical and medicine crafting, which I never used as Arthur, and she has several handicaps that clash with my playstyle. I’m sure her arc, and the final story arc with Ollie, are the same level of interesting as Arthur and would answer some of the questions I have, but I think I need to let this game rest a bit, then roll around back to it.

As a game from a small developer, there were a few bugs. Most were just dumb graphical things, like people float 2 ft above their bed when they sleep, and the sneak attack animations have some mismatched clipping issues. The only time I encountered a significant, game breaking bug was during a heavily scripted side quest. I tried to act outside the box and the game didn’t quite like that, so I was locked in a room that was slowly killing me and respawning didn’t fix it. It took 5-6 tries to figure out what exactly the game wanted before I was able to leave.

All in all, I enjoyed my time getting to explore Wellington and interacting with all the locals. I know a lot of people seem to shit on this game still and I don’t understand why. The original releases were a bit rough, but this is by no means a bad game now. It’s a very adequate AA title. A survival crafting game with a story is a rare beast, and I appreciate this game for being one. It also gave me a chuckle that Arthur is a Quaker.

This game remind me a lot of Far Cry: New Dawn. Some great story and storytelling, great setting and athmosphere, but to get to all that, you need to survive the crafting part. And it's simply horrible.
I think for one of the main quests, you need to gather literally 20 flowers. For another - 6 pieces of some other garbage, which I had 0 of. To be clear, it's not just garbage, it's a garbage you need to look for, without any indication where to find it (except Wiki, of course, but Wiki tells you to kill old ladies for it, and I'm not making this up).

But yeah, story explores heavy stuff, like betrayal, motherhood, drugs, war. At some points it almost felt like Spec Ops: The Line, the good parts of it. But then came the stupid agro system. For example, you cannot run in the city. If you run for even a second, NPCs will literally kill you. You need an expensive skill just to be able to run in front of other people. Imagine you're playing Skyrim, but you don't have a horse, and cannot run. That's about how fun this is.
Oh, and you must take drugs that alter your perception all the time. Which is fun for the first 10 minutes or so, but then your character start to suffer from withdrawal, and NPCs kill you for that. So, you cannot run, and you can walk every 3 minutes out of 5, because other two you're waiting for the withdrawal to pass, so people won't kill you. And to avoid that, you need to craft expensive medicine, which you won't be able to, because there's only so much useful junk in this game.

So yeah, very mixed feelings about this one. If it had a "story mode", without all the stupid agro stuff, I would give it 9 out of 10.