![]() It feels incredible under pressure, with each new dialogue option requiring care and composure, especially if your goal is to save Will from his own weapon. The roadside tragedy technically plays out like any high-profile CRPG I’ve played, but it reminds me a lot more of the moral choice scenarios in games like Telltale’s The Walking Dead. Both require the same physical trigger, but they are distinctly separate choices. The Machiavellian option sees the boy as “too great a threat”, while the nihilistic option is much bleaker “this family is doomed anyway”. But such an action requires a justification that further defines their philosophy. My muddy morality, on the other hand, can shoot the kid from the get-go. The most violent option I have, available only after progressing through numerous branches of the dialogue tree, is to shoot Will in the leg. Want to talk Will down, gently convince him to drop the gun? How about getting him caught off guard and wring the gun out of his hands? Or do you shoot him and end the situation in a single muzzle flash? For my humanistic build, the latter option is completely impossible. This simple scenario branches like a tree in full bloom. On the side of the road, her son Will is holding a smoking gun. It all starts on a dusty street, where a woman lies sobbing in the corpse of her dead husband. But since then, I’ve played the demo three more times, with protagonists shot around very different worldviews, and watched in fascination as those two demo quests shift and change appropriately. Of course, I won’t be able to see the impact of my increasing decisions until Broken Roads arrives in full. ![]() When I played the 30-minute demo of Broken Roads at Gamescom earlier this year, which only contains two short missions, there wasn’t nearly enough time to watch the compass shift with each new decision. The white dot represents your current worldview, while the yellow cone highlights your wider range of potential thoughts.Īt least that’s what the Australian developer Drop Bear Bytes promises. The Broken Roads moral compass represents your philosophical inclination. Other times it will narrow down, block options, but also give you special abilities that reward your dedication to a specific worldview. Sometimes your worldview broadens to take in multiple perspectives, opening up more dialogue options. A utilitarian can slowly find his heart and become a humanist, or slide down a slope of manipulation and become a Machiavellian. ![]() But experiences shape us, and your character’s worldview can gradually change over time. For example, a humanistic character will be barred from uttering the most horrific answers simply because they would never consider saying them. ![]() That compass is split into four segments - humanistic, utilitarian, nihilistic, and Machiavellian - and your location on that spectrum determines what dialogue and actions your protagonist can perform. What would you do if you found out that a man taken for execution was probably innocent? How would you deal with scavengers looting a place you found first? How would you treat a captured bandit who invaded your house? Each of your answers is plotted on a literal moral compass, a persistent and permanent mechanism that will shape your character’s worldview over the next 25 hours or so. Akin to Blade Runner’s Voight-Kampff, it presents a series of hypothetical situations and asks how you would react. ![]() Your journey in Broken Roads, an isometric RPG set in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Western Australia, begins with a test. ![]()
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