Fallout 5 is a ways off. With Starfield in the bag, and Elder Scrolls 6 seemingly its next project, we’re unlikely to see a return of Bethesda’s apocalyptic RPG for at least a few years. In the meantime, Broken Roads seems like the perfect substitute. Mixing the isometric, wasteland exploration of Fallout 2, the character-driven drama of Disco Elysium, a little of Frostpunk’s brutal survival systems, and the aesthetics of Mad Max, the new CRPG game is absolutely one to watch. Unfortunately, developer Drop Bear Bytes confirms it’s just been delayed.
Broken Roads casts you as a group of survivors making their way across the Australian outback after the end of the world. An RPG game in the style of classic Fallout, especially Fallout 2, you need to manage your resources, make tough decisions, and keep everyone alive throughout a sprawling, decision-driven story. With the Fallout 5 release date still a ways away, Broken Roads is the ideal game if you miss Bethesda’s tentpole apocalypse sim. We expected it to arrive in November, but that’s no longer the case.
The Broken Roads release date was originally set for Thursday November 16. Developer Drop Bear Bytes now says the game needs a little more time before it’s ready for launch.
“Since 2019, the Drop Bear Bytes team has been pouring their hearts and souls into Broken Roads, spending countless hours designing, troubleshooting, and adjusting to player feedback,” the developer explains. “While Broken Roads is still coming, we’ve made the decision to delay the release to allow for additional polish time and QA manpower, plus resources to allow for a higher quality bar for the thousands of permutations that can arise.”
Drop Bear Bytes confirms that Broken Roads is “content complete,” and that the delay is only required to further test, tweak, and polish the survival game before it comes to PC. The developer also says that Broken Roads is longer and bigger than originally anticipated, with a substantial running time and thousands of lines of dialogue.
“While the game is now content complete, it is also coming in longer than we originally anticipated, at around 30 hours of gameplay and nearly 400,000 words of dialogue,” the developer explains. “As you can imagine, it’s extremely time consuming to properly test all of these.”
Broken Roads will now arrive “early next year,” meaning we’ll likely see it during the first few months of 2024. Drop Bear Bytes says this will help to deliver “the highest quality product.” So, not too long to wait, and it’s bound to be worth it, especially if you’re seeking a classic-style RPG with a hefty dose of Fallout flavor.
In the meantime, you can always try some of the other best games like Fallout. And if Broken Roads’ branching narrative sounds like your thing, get the best story games available on PC.
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