Broken Roads Review

Critiquing a developer’s work is difficult when it’s clear that they’ve wholly and earnestly poured a lot of love into it. Broken Roads, the debut title from Australian developer Drop Bear Bytes, is an RPG chock-full of their native culture and references, so much so that there’s a dedicated in-game encyclopaedia for those less savvy to use for reference. Despite the clear heart, soul, and hard yakka that’s gone into Broken Roads, several shortcomings are difficult to overlook.

Set in the vast post-apocalyptic Aussie outback after the fall of civilisation from nuclear war, you’re given control of a character with a slight opportunity for customisation. You can choose the basic look of the character and select from a few backstories of how they traversed the outback before the start of the game, each with their own set of bonuses to your character sheet. You can finalise the last few perk points and levels before your journey begins.

There's always time for a nicely synchronised Cha-Cha Slide, even after the apocalypse

On the positive side, though, Broken Roads excels when it comes to presentation. The art style and visuals borrow nicely from one of its clearest inspirations, Disco Elysium. Although not an exact emulation of the slapdash paintbrush colouring look that Disco utilises, there’s a nice sort of blended paint look to the environments in Broken Roads, which lends well to portraying the Australian outback, bringing the essence of the rustic locale to life. The general art direction of the title effectively crafts a uniquely immersive display of the world that it is set in, making the outback look distinctively different from other “wasteland” settings seen in titles such as the Fallout series.

The soundtrack and sound design are other highlights, with the delicate soundscapes of the desolate bush filling the air of the world and Tim Sunderland’s sparse, atmospheric score utilising piano and acoustic guitar to craft gorgeous melodies that interpret a desperate, yet hopeful, ordeal through a post-apocalyptic world. Voice acting in Broken Roads makes a good effort to lend to the authenticity of the setting, opting for a partially-voiced script, similar to how Disco Elysium’s voice acting was initially presented on release, where the first few lines, or particularly important parts, of an NPC’s dialogue would be voice-acted. On the other hand, the narration throughout the story, unfortunately, detracts from the experience, as lines are read with an almost random level of intonation and tone, and is a severe downgrade from the original narration that was intended by proficient indigenous actor, Uncle Jack Charles, whose narration was used in the initial trailers. Unfortunately, Uncle Jack Charles passed away in 2022 before he could complete his work on Broken Roads, leading to the new voice actor.

This isn't even post-apocalyptic, this is just a standard pub in the outback

Where Broken Roads experiences its biggest speed bumps are in some of the gameplay choices. Although it is effectively possible to complete many of the encounters as a pacifist, there is a combat mechanic that feels obscurely confusing. Although being a fairly standard turn-based battle utilising action points with the option of using melee attacks or ranged weaponry, as well as moving around the combat area, the fights in Broken Roads feel more like chores than enjoyable aspects of the gameplay loop, with many fights making me clamour to get back to the story as soon as possible. With the use of an isometric camera angle, the line-of-sight aspect of combat feels awkward, as enemies can position themselves in ways where your targeting seems to completely break, despite angling yourself in what would appear to be a clear flank.

The narrative is yet another area that feels lacking, which is a great shame. Broken Roads spends a good amount of time introducing some great characters with unique ideals and motivations, which, in time, seem to fall flat or take a back seat after initially being presented as potentially having more connection to the story. Combined with limited options during a lot of interactions, it makes it difficult to grasp a connection with the many of the characters you meet along your journey, and I found myself more often than not talking to one character or completing an action that I felt should logically progress a relationship with another NPC, yet I’d excitedly hurry back to the them to be greeted with the same dialogue choices I had already used.

Hold tight, squad, we'll be down in Kokomo before you know it

One of Broken Roads’ unique selling points is the morality compass, with the four corners representing different ideologies, Utilitarian, Humanist, Machiavellian, or Nihilist. Your decisions of how you react to different scenarios or dialogues will adjust the compass to focus on one of these ideologies, with slight overlaps to the ideologies next to it, and the focus area of the compass will, in turn, provide you with choices focused on the ideology that your character subscribes to most. This focus can be adjusted and rotated around the compass with outlier choices that will nudge the highlighted section over to the surrounding ideologies. Although a novel idea to provide player urgency and connection to your character's motives and choices, the corresponding actions and dialogue options for each of the ideologies feel like you're being railroaded into fundamentalist territory, as opposed to an overarching worldview, where your choices end up being strongly psychopathic or overly naive.

Drop Bear Bytes has put a lot of hard work and passion into Broken Roads, which is abundantly clear despite all of its flaws, and as seen from their strong appreciative response to their player base's feedback, are intent on ensuring the title will one day live up to the vast potential that its presentation portrays. Unfortunately, that means that Broken Roads is off to quite a disappointing bumpy start, which will undoubtedly appeal to die-hard fans of the genre looking for more stories and campaigns to play or those who have been clamouring for a slightly Mad Max-esque style adventure but might leave a nasty taste in the mouth of those who had been eagerly anticipating its release.