This interweaving of the stories isn't a recycling job, it's a narrative risk that pays off, casino jackpot style. Personally, I found Sally's the most affecting - for reasons too interesting to waste on a cheap spoiler here - but I suspect everyone will see it differently. All three experiences are different, all three are excellent. Ollie is a brilliant fighter and mechanic - with a passion for extracting TNT from dud German bombs - but also a diabetic in a world without an insulin stocked pharmacy on every, or any, corner. Honestly, it was a relief when the mob was small enough that I could just beat them to death with a cricket bat. Even though it made little difference to the game's mechanics, I steered my character into the shadows, tried not to come face to face with NPCS. Walking when you want to run, turning in the street to avoid trouble. There are ways to level up and hide your motives with drugs and skills, but you'll always feel on edge. It comes from being publicly humiliated, called out as different, and chased and screamed at until you can find a safe place to hide from the bullies. Games like Assassin's Creed have obviously made stealth an integral part of their story and mechanics, but the anxiety in We Happy Few doesn't come from failing a mission. I can't remember another game that's made me feel so aware of how odd my character, rushing around, punching and stealing, must look. There you won't get shouted at for running, but wearing your nice city clothes will make people aggressive, and looting a body or a chest will have the mob after you. Things are only a little more relaxed in the Garden District, a place of exile for people who aren't on Joy. Not just that, how you look matters, and even if you can fake it, there are downer detectors dotted around the towns and in people's homes, ready to catch you. Unlike a lot of games where people will turn a blind eye to you scrabbling through their bins or walking around carrying a blade, how you behave in We Happy Fews matters. To survive you need to learn to craft with the scraps you can scavenge and steal, to fool the people and machines that hunt "downers", and to fight to the death with an umbrella. It's a world where Britain apparently agreed to give up its children to Germany to end the war, one where the stiff upper lip became mandatory, and where his intellectually disabled brother was taken away. You start out as Arthur Hastings, a propaganda merchant who stops taking the compulsory antidepressant Joy - it's even pumped into the water supply - and goes looking for his brother. It's one of those games - like Dishonored 2 - where you're distracted by every room, every ruined house, anything that looks a little out of the ordinary because it might harbor just another nugget of twisted environmental storytelling. Each character has a main storyline and a smattering of side quests, and you'll guzzle everything. Each of the stories you'll play through are dark, with echoes of the best Black Mirror episodes, but each will be subtly different, thanks to the shattering pasts and different skills of it's heroes. It doesn't matter if you're an unhappy wimp, a woman with a secret or a diabetic ex-soldier with issues, the world of We Happy Few is an unkind place.
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