Dev log ·
Dev log 4: the road to Morrow Junction
Mission two has begun. From Bastion the convoy drives the regional map to Morrow Junction, a rail station people still live in. The story is told in voiced cut scenes, everyone you meet speaks in their own voice, and the machines only come to a fight they can see or hear.
The demo used to stop at Bastion. Now Bastion is where the second mission starts.
Bastion Reach
When you set out from Bastion, the truck goes onto Bastion Reach, a map of the country around it that you can turn, tilt and zoom. You choose where to go, then travel a stretch of road at a time, or wait where you are. Time only passes while the truck drives or waits. The truck's scanner shows what's near, and places you've seen are marked with how long ago you saw them.
Morrow Junction
Hale sends the squad to Morrow Junction, an old rail junction with people still living in it. It has a platform, carriages, an engine shed, a walkway up to the offices, and a gate where the truck comes in. There are new people to meet: Tessa, the station's mechanic, Oren, its quartermaster in all but name, and PORTER, the station's old system, which goes about on an inspection trolley with a lamp. Four more residents live there too. Your first job is upstairs: find the dispatch office.
Cut scenes, and everyone speaks
The story is told in cut scenes now: the briefing in Bastion's rail office, the walk into Morrow, and every conversation. The camera cuts to whoever is talking, and people talk with their hands as they speak.
Everyone you can talk to has a voice: Hale, ORACLE, Tessa, Oren, PORTER (through a heavy machine filter), Bastion's residents and Morrow's, and your squad in all 21 of its voices. That's more than 500 recorded lines. Each line is checked by machine for clicks, words cut off at the end, stray words and questions that don't rise, and the ones that failed were recorded again. Anyone at Morrow can be talked to.
Fights
- Who joins a fight. A group of machines now joins only if it sees one of your squad or hears the fight. Walls muffle the noise, and a group that would have a long walk round to reach you doesn't come. Groups behind a wall are no longer pulled in from across the map.
- Leaning round corners. You lean out round a corner to shoot past it, and leaning draws overwatch fire.
- Range. Every weapon loses accuracy with distance in its own way, in metres.
- Patching yourself. Anyone carrying a medkit can treat their own wounds, in a fight or exploring.
- Wrecks. Machines you strip for salvage are left as a sagging heap of frame.
How the squad moves
Running looks like running. Ladders are climbed rung by rung with the rifle slung, ledges are climbed with the hands, a drop is a hop down, and stairs are walked. When exploring, the whole squad follows the lead up a ladder, however far ahead the lead has gone.
From your reports
We fixed more than a hundred of the issues testers sent in this stretch, from doors that were slabs of brick to a tree standing in the road behind Morrow's gate. The bug button in the top-right corner of the game is still the quickest way to send one.
This build changes the content version, so saves from earlier builds won't carry over.
Thank you for playing.