One of our E3 2018 highlights is most certainly We Happy Few, whose story trailer is enough to make anyone think for a wide variety of reasons. 1984 and Brave New World implications? Check. Clockwork Orange? Check. Chilling? Definitely.
The trailer starts of with Ollie, whom you could've seen in the for We Happy Few, with arguably equal hostility. Nevertheless, at least we now know what bee got under Ollie's bonnet, as the man is simply reluctant to chow down any more Joy pills.
Ollie accurately asserts that the jolly people of Wellington Wells are starving to death, all the while painting bleep rainbows and wearing ridiculous masks. Do we really need to point at the obvious ambiguity here with the masks? Also, that rainbow delivery is just lovely.
Once you go beneath the laughs and smiles, Wellington Wells turns out to be a wretched place, full of poor souls wallowing in their denial. Basically it's , although not nearly as bad, because Compulsion and Gearbox managed to save some humanity in We Happy Few.
This retrofuturistic, WWII alternative-timeline adventure will have you playing as one of three "flawed" characters, who end up snapping out of their Joyful slumber to the realities of refusal to deal with pain and loss. One of them is Arthur Hastings, a newspaper censor, who comes across a news piece on his younger brother, deciding to dump his Joy dosage on the spot.
As you can imagine, the pain of awakening is no small thing, prompting other Wellingtonians to stick to their drug and maintain the illusion. Moreover, We Happy Few won't really let you run around the town without a care in the world, as Joy-abiding residents tend to get quite cranky when Downers, as they call them, are around.
Compulsion Games
The game is set in procedurally generated Wellington Wells, guaranteeing almost endless playthroughs. The dev promises a bunch of items and crafting recipes too, but we're sure we'll have many more details for you before it launches for PC, PS4 and Xbox One on 10 August 2018.
