I really appreciate the global commitment to showing everyone what the apocalypse could look like. While so many of the films I saw in my younger days showed a lot of USA-based scenarios, the end of the world took place in every corner of Earth. Escape From New York, Brazil, Mad Max…the list goes on. Today, video games make a decent play at showcasing the same doomsday scenarios in various locales, but the ones people know best tend to occur in the continental US (due to poor execution, nearly no one knows about Ashes of Oahu). The good people of Drop Bear Bytes wanted to remind everyone that Australia is very much a place of sprawling, awful potential in a world gone mad, and did so with the release of Broken Roads. Sadly, it seems that the biggest worry after the nuclear war is simply dying of boredom.

Broken Roads puts players in the shoes of one of four characters as you attempt to navigate the Outback after a large-scale war has decimated civilization and years have passed during attempted rebuildings. Generally speaking, you’ve got the groups you’d imagined peppered throughout the world: the people who want to have safe and strong communities, the people ruling through might and fear, religious zealots, and, thankfully, a handful of true Australian folk who just wanted to keep living their lives, as they hadn’t changed terribly in the face of massive annihilation. Your path can lead many places, but the beats remain the same: conduct diplomacy, forge alliances, take sides and, if necessary, bring violence to those on the opposite side of the table from you.

As an isometric RPG with tons of dialogue, a moral compass system and a fair bit of side questing, Broken Roads seeks to walk the path of Wasteland, Fallout (the older ones) and, in some degrees, Disco Elysium. As a result, it’s important to get into the right mindset before setting out. For example, there are going to be times where the game feels exceedingly slow, which is…bizarre. I had a chance to try a couple of different character classes, and the setups were totally different, which I appreciate. After all, if you’re setting out as a Hired Gun, you’d expect the game to begin in a tense situation where your skillset is needed. Inversely, if you’re a Jackaroo (jack-of-all-trades), you start off just doing odd jobs on someone’s farm. Nothing quite like running around, picking up dung to make fertilizer.

Very soon, Broken Roads reveals itself to you in a big way, and the effect is both engaging and a little disappointing. As much as I want to enjoy the apocalypse for what it is, the tooth-and-nail moments of certain titles (Bioshock springs to mind) keep me engaged as I’m being told a story. Wasteland III is certainly lengthy in speech and exposition, but that’s also balanced by the bonkers level of radiation and mutation that permeates the game. Even something like Disco Elysium has so many direct, dramatic effects that come about from what you say and how the other person (or even yourself) reacts to your choices. There’s a pressure cooker that’s constantly there, making sure you know damn well how important this all is.

But Broken Roads seems to take its time with everything. You talk to NPCs, be it friendly denizens or wildly hostile raiders, and there’s never a sense of urgency behind choices or ideas. Getting into gunfights gives you all the time in the world to think and line up your position and your shot. Early on, there was literally a fire in a town and I was told to hurry up and get out, or take an optional sidequest to rescue five people. Moving around the map was so haphazard that it took an exceptionally long time to find everyone, and that was more than okay. Hell, as far as I can tell, everything burned down eight times over and I’m still trying to talk to the former mayor about getting a key to let some criminal out of his very real cage.

Unto itself, this wouldn’t be a problem: after all, being able to pause and plan out my next moves are why Baldur’s Gate I & II are some of my favorite PC RPGs. And, beyond that, technical issues weren’t really present in the Xbox version. Load times were decent, though I did get a crash trying to move from a new game creation screen to a load game screen. Truth be told, I quite liked how the move from mouse and keyboard to controller were handled, and I could move around, click and target items with relative success and ease. Main character walked a tad slow, and I wish the map could have been zoomed out a bit more, but the limitations are probably necessary to keep the game from going completely off the rails.

Broken Roads also does well in visually and auditorily presenting itself as a fine title, and I will give it that. The visuals are the right balance of dusty and grim, with occasional shots of color here and there. In a world where the apocalypse seems to paint everything in either black or neon, having the arid, dry world of an Australia after The End was pleasantly surprising and interesting. Characters are distinct in both avatars and portraits, and I never got anyone mixed up or had difficulty remembering who was who once I met them. Hell, even the occasional presence of the surviving fauna of Australia helped to add more to the worldbuilding, though I will admit I tried to chase kangaroos probably more than I should have.

Additionally, fantastic voice work from top to bottom on all cast and narration. The authenticity and trueness to the tale being told was only further shot through with the generous collection of accents and dialects that you encounter throughout. Even better, I sincerely appreciate Drop Bear Bytes adding a system wherein certain words and phrases have a pop up glossary to translate so people outside of Oz know what the hell people are talking about. The Australian dictionary is a fascinating thing, and I sincerely enjoy seeing the dialogue not being dumbed down or simplified for people who haven’t ever been to Big Smoke or the like.

The massive arrow in the back of this all is that Broken Roads spends most of its time being boring. You have all these points of skills and a mortality check before you start, and most of it doesn’t feel like it amounts to anything. You get presented with certain phrases that only come up with being more of a Nihilist or an Humanitarian or whatever, but saying them doesn’t seem to change the direction of most conversations. Players walk around, gather a ton of supplies and items from dumpsters and boxes that you only need on some occasions, and talk with people. I’m not exaggerating that, as the Hired Gun, I played for well over an hour before I shot anything that wasn’t a target practice dummy.

The major issue is, for something so potentially grand and promising, there’s just no fuel to keep the fire going. You find handfuls of tinder and the occasional decent stick to build a little heat, but when the most exciting moments come from shooting massive spiders and finding innovative ways to run around the map, it’s just a bit of a splodge that doesn’t ever quite find its shape. I really wanted to like Broken Roads, and I hope that, eventually, I do. But to put several hours into a game and keep telling yourself “this could be great” is a level of defeatism I wasn’t prepared to experience. Good luck to all who traverse these roads, but for me, I think this is the end of the path.

 

Graphics: 7.0 A solid presentation of a world after the war, Broken Roads has an excellent amassing off different locations, characters and buildings/ruins for inhabitants to seek out. While some areas feel a bit too sprawled and repetitive, the display is appreciated and captures the world’s feeling.	Gameplay: 5.0 If you like talking and mostly listening, you’re in for a treat. So much of this game hinges on people talking, and you responding or not. The morality compass is a cool concept that didn’t feel like it did much in my playthrough. Gunfighting is standard and shockingly sparse. You will find bottles of water just everywhere.
Sound: 8.0 Exceedingly lonely tones of background ambience and lightly suggestible scoring give an excellent soundscape to Broken Roads. Voice acting isn’t constant, but the moments it appears is appreciated. Love the narrator, really captures the tone and delivery of the tale unfolding.	Fun Factor: 3.0 There was so much just clicking, walking, and reading that I got a crick in my neck. I kept waiting for something to happen and, 9/10 times, it didn’t. The small pang of joy felt from seeing a kangaroo didn’t undo the wide stretches of time just walking around a map. There needed to be more and less at the same time: more game, less dead space.
Final Verdict: 5.0

Broken Roads is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.

Reviewed on Xbox One X.

A copy of Broken Roads was provided by the publisher.