Draft:Ashes 2063

Ashes 2063 is an independently developed and freely distributed video game based on the GZDoom engine. It is a single-player, post-apocalyptic, first-person shooter game with elements of roleplaying and a mix of exploration, social interaction and combat.

Setting

Ashes takes place in an alternate history of the planet Earth in which a mysterious global disaster took place during the Collapse of the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1992, along with evidence of artificial general intelligence, psychic phenomena, teleportation and other science fiction concepts. After this apocalypse, most radios, computers and electronic devices do not function except for a few left in sealed military facilities.

Focusing on the southeastern United States and specifically Georgia, society has broken up into small villages of survivors that often clash with groups of cannibals and bandits, separated by wide areas of uninhabited, dangerous or poisoned wilderness. The game's story often focuses on the city of Atlanta, which is heavily irradiated and haunted, and in which the few survivors take shelter in train stations.

In this society, all of the cannibals and some of the settlers and bandits are mutants, humans whose biology has changed significantly from what it was before the toxic fallout. These biological changes generally involve glowing eyes, resistance to radiation, increased endurance, unusual skin colors and sometimes psychic sensitivity.

Over the course of the game's episodes and chapters, the player takes the role of several different scavengers, a role within this society generally reserved for non-cannibal mutants. Scavengers are people willing to explore dangerous ruins at their own risk to recover useful salvage for settlers to use in the hope of rebuilding civilization.

Undead monsters also feature prominently in the story, with hostile ghosts frequently found in dark, quiet underground places, causing brain damage to the player when encountered. A type of fungal zombie also appears occasionally.

Story

The game's story takes place over several episodes, currently four. Events revolve around the scavenger protagonists performing standard salvage and recovery missions, dealing with bandits and cannibal clans threatening settlements, and trying to recover artifacts and information that could help to rebuild society. Of particular focus is a fictional artificial general intelligence named Athena, seemingly developed by the U.S. Army in the game's alternate history. According to various sources of information and different characters in the story, Athena either caused the nuclear war, or could be used to help rebuild society, or both. Various characters would like to enlist the protagonist to help revive or destroy this entity.

References

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