I feel like this is your worst fear
Can't tell if it's dystopian or the byproduct of a schizophrenic unreliable narrator stretching the truth beyond it's limits. I hope for the latter.
This also isn't the first game to call a pill "Joy". The game "LISA" features an apocalyptic future where there's only one woman left in a world of men, so they recognize their own demise is on the way (with a fair deal of crossdressing NPCs and party members). The drug they take is like a super steroid that also has them no longer feel pain or sorrow, but down the line it makes them become deformed mutants.
I hope this idea keeps trending in pop culture.
The more I look at this, the more delusional the potentially unreliably narrated protagonist seems:
This trailer features a television that talks to him (and in the next video, radios as well), giving orders even, everyone looking the same in a way that seems almost hallucinatory, and his fear is used to justify how he broke into someone's house when running away from who he thought was after him. The guy who hits him with the frying pan is in the right! A reported trait of schizophrenia in some patients is the belief of the media talking directly to them, whether in code or as an outright auditory hallucination.
I'm loving all the small details. From your trailer he shows:
o Traumatic memories related to his brother, who in the article was written to have an abnormally strong Photographic Memory. In this setting that is a blatant hindrance.
o The Scrap Metal article has me wonder if that contribution somehow turned the tide of the relevant war.
o A job that involves censoring out "bad things" from history (The 1950s specifically) in The Department of Archives in "Recycling and Printing".
o Time goes faster (the clock on the wall even after the time lapse keeps moving quickly). A loss of time in that fashion is associated with many disorders.
o Everyone's choice in clothing is crazy clown fashion, and we don't even see what people look like until after the scene related to his medication at his desk.
o "Happy is the Country that has no History" is a fun quote.
o Hallucinations! Do you know how unlikely it is that people will share the same hallucination? The Pinata scene makes me think that it's not a rat at all.
I'd imagine it being very easy to blend in if the world is so blind... and yet he can't seem to hide from them at all. He must look dangerous, and he is likely starting most of the fights that way. Crazy people can be stuck believing they are doing it all in the name of self defense through persecutory delusions.
The game has you take the drug to pass numerous checkpoints, and your visuals shift a great deal when on your happy pills. With such a thing being the case, I'm left questioning how much of his skewed perspective could be withdrawal, if not his base self being prone to this sort of delusion or even a bad interaction with his medications. Imagine someone with a history of punching people, running around screaming, and otherwise looking like an unwashed loon? He's probably scanned at said checkpoints from being on a most wanted list of some kind, or from looking like he is crazy and has things to hide. It's probably meant to be taken literally... but it's fun to imagine this version all the same, as when only one person seems to make sense and everyone else seems to be crazy bordering on participants of a population-wide conspiracy, that's usually a red flag that there's something wrong with the one telling the story. Even the maps seem to change every time you die, adding some weird elements of non-consistency that put the main character's eyes to even further questioning.
Interestingly, this setting is supposed to take place in 1964. I wonder what historical connections can be tied to this Elseworld reimagining. If it were more modern I'd have imagined it being a commentary on the direction the world and pills are going now... but it's in the past instead.
Maybe, but I don't know. It seems more like a Bioshock mod, where you play as the fucked up people instead the usual protagonist.
Only joined bioshock when I played as big daddy. I loved how scary you could be to the other bad guys.
Probably will pirate this game.
Either way Turncoat, we are friends. Best friends.
It's actually more of a rogue-like game in the first person, playing more like Sir, You Are Being Hunted. Story-wise it does play a little like a Comstock conspiracy, but a lot more drastic without the presence of gene-splice magic, with history being altered more subtly than parallel dimension theft, and people are kept in line with medication instead of batshit faith. The guards also feel kind of Fable-y.
So... you avoided playing the best one? Why!?