OverDose takes place in the near future. After the great war of 2012, Humanity was split into two halves; those who lived in shelter from the radioactive fallout, and those who had no choice but to surrender to its devastating effects. The game takes place in the year 2155, when the Earth as we know it is long gone and replaced by decaying land of filth and depravity. Those that remained sheltered from the fallout are much like we are today, only with a stronger will to survive. Those who were left behind are now changed, mutated over years of radioactive poisoning, some more machine now than man. So what of the world in which OverDose resides? Well, designing Earth 2155 is no easy task, especially because we have such a huge limitations and confinements to work within due to our plot like. So just how different is Earth 2155 to the planet we know today?
For starters you have to imagine what your own home area would be like if everybody just left it standing and came back to it 150 years later, what will have changed? Plant life will likely be overgrowing, tyres on cars will have long since been deflated, vines and ivy will have grown over your homes. Car doors, metal frames and posts will have all rusted and decayed. Paint will have chipped away, wallpaper would be hanging down from the walls. Lets not forget those who didn't leave, what would they do to your home? Would they ravage it in search of anything they could sell or barter with...? These are the principal designs we work with for OverDose. Taking the world we know, and letting the decay roll in.
What about the people who DO live there then? Well, let’s imagine the people who were smart enough to leave were smart enough to hide away from the nuclear fallout and deadly radioactive wastelands. They would be just like you and I, only possibly with a much stronger will to survive thanks to their upbringing. These would be people who do good because they want to preserve their way of life. They would rebuild towns and cities in the vision of their ancestors homelands, trying to keep that memory alive of what once was. Trying to keep "hope" itself alive. Sure, they would be a ragtag bunch, but they would be happy, living life to its fullest.
But where there is light, there is darkness. Where there are upstanding citizens, there are criminals. And where our new humanity tries to survive, there are those that want only to take for themselves. Those are the Marauders. When the bombs dropped, these were the unlucky people who didn't find shelter. When the radioactive wastelands overran the world, these were the people who ignore the warnings and walked on through. After 150 years of hatred and mutation, these are no longer people... They are more monster now, the things of nightmares. They scavenge anything they can find, and what they want, they take with force. As a dyeing population of what was once called "human", they scrounge the wastelands looking for items to keep themselves alive, sometimes even replacing entire limbs and vital organs just to last another day in the wastes.
As savage as they are, where they live is just as decayed, with makeshift houses and buildings built out of any old tat, always on the verge of collapse. Their villages are littered with the dead, sometimes not even disposed of, instead let to rot in the streets. Why throw away a good body when you can salvage a limb from it, or even a meal...? The Marauders are vile monsters, and any normal that ventures in their homelands by mistake is sure to be killed, no questions asked.
As you can see, both the CMC and MDR have very different personalities, visual styles and design schemes that make them both stand out differently. Everything from the Field Computer on a Engineers wrist to the decapitated trophy head on an Infiltrator's belt was designed to give its class personality. This guys is no easy task, I'm sure you'll agree!
Stay tuned for another update soon, next time I'll be talking about the sound system that we have in place for OverDose, with a few movies to boot ;)
