Broken Roads News

Originally posted by author

Hey everyone,

Thank you for your ongoing patience while we address player feedback, add requested features, and, of course, continue to fix bugs.

The major changes in this patch are that you can now manually level up your companions. There are now auto-assign buttons for each companion on level-up, following the same auto-level profiles that they had at launch.

Just like when leveling up your player character, if don't go to a companion's character sheet, that companion will stay at a lower level until leveled up.

We've also added an Agility check when fleeing random encounters on the overworld map. If you are not successful, your party enters combat in the 'Ambushed' status, suffering a -50% penalty to initiative for that battle.

Next up, there are now stat restrictions for the higher-tier weapons. You will need to increase your characters' Shooting Mastery or Melee Mastery skills to higher ranks in order to be able to equip the +1, +2 or +3 variants (for example, SR98 +1 requires shooting Mastery 25+, Cleaver +2 requires Melee Mastery 50+, etc).

The full list of changes is below, split up into general and spoiler notes.

This is just our first step in improving Broken Roads - something we are committed to doing until it satisfies your expectations. We will update again with more details on the May patch, which will be considerably larger and on top of many more combat encounters, will also be more focused on the companions, Moral Compass, narrative.

We hope you enjoy these new changes and fixes.

- The team at Drop Bear Bytes

• Added a feature to allow manually leveling up your companions.
• Made many improvements to the random encounters in Chapter 3
• Added a feature to the overworld that lets you flee based on cumulative party agility vs cumulative enemy agility and start a battle with 50% initiative if you fail.
  
• Added stat restrictions to different weapon types (for example, SR98 +1 requires shooting Mastery 25+, Cleaver +2 requires Melee Mastery 50+, etc).
  
• Added an additional origin story combat encounter in Kokeby Waystation.
  
• Added VO for Mad, Mick, Angela, and Sean.
• Various mixing adjustments for Animal and Ambience SFX.
  
• Fixed a line in the intro cinematic having text that doesn't match VO.
• Improved localisation and added some missing UI text (more to be included in an upcoming hotfix)
  
• Polished many animations and gestures throughout the game.
• Adjusted many waypoints and interactables in many scenes to only require the player (rather than waiting for the entire party to stand in formation).

• Players can now (Lie) to Hunter about actually killing the Ripper when handing in evidence for the bounty as well as lie that they were going to hand in the Ripper for the bounty to John and whoever is arguing with him.
  
• Players can now offer to Ben and Katherine to give the Ripper's necklace to Hunter to pretend they killed the Ripper for their safety.
  
• Players can now decide to fight in Korrelocking after offering to buy the necklace.
  
• Cover, enemy placement, and enemy behaviour fixes for Life and Mind raider combat in Korrelocking.
  
• Fixed a quest logic issue that would not let you discuss books with Talia if it was night time and she was outside of the library in Lake Deborah.
  
• The player’s party now spawns on the ground floor if exiting Brennan's quarters to start the showdown in Lake Deborah.
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause a soft lock in the final combat in the game.
• A leadership skill check when speaking to Djet now allows players to successfully convince her to go to Kalgoorlie.
  
• Fixed an issue where the game could get stuck in combat during the dingo random encounter.
• Solved an issue where it was possible to experience a soft lock while the Loaded Dog quest was active.
  
• Moved Charlie Evans for Aldersyde CH.3 to be more visible.
  
• It now costs $5,000 to repair the CAES system in Southern Cross.
  
• Fixed an unopenable chest at the south end of Brookton.
  
• Cole now spawns properly in the convoy in Merredin after not being rescued after a set amount of time.
  
• Players can now speak to Cole in Merredin about his experience in Aldersyde after not saving him in time.
  
• Adjusted interactable points of containers in Kalgoorlie, Westonia, and Lake Deborah.
  
• Solved an issue where an incorrect journal entry related to speaking to Kendra regarding firing the Southern Cross device no longer appears.
  
• Added new animations when trying to trip DJ while making tea.
  
• Added new animations when beating Priss to death.
• The objective of "Travel to Kalgoorlie" does not activate if players already visited Kalgoorlie or are in the process of finding a way in to the city.
  
• Changed combat area, cover, and enemy placement of Brookton Chapter 3 combat encounter
  
• Adjusted combat area, cover, and enemy placement in Brookton Chapter 4 combat encounter
  
• Adjusted position of clickable POI on Brookton camels so the interactable icons don't cover each other when holding tab
  
• Added some more camera pans back to the player when speaking to Numbat during Art and Illusion
  
• Adjusted Merredin navmesh so players can no longer walk through the fence at the north, as well as several other small navmesh objects not marked correctly.
  

Originally posted by author

This launch has been a rough one. We’re glad so many people have enjoyed playing the game. We’ve loved watching the streams, engaging with you all and hearing about your positive experience with Broken Roads.

But we know that, overall, we’ve fallen short of player expectations in some key areas and in many ways we’ve not delivered the quality game we had hoped to ship, so we’re changing that. Our work on Broken Roads is far from over.

We have taken the criticism on board. There’s a lot we can improve and a lot we can outright redo because it just isn’t good enough. On top of fixing bugs and issues with quest logic, we’ve also been gathering feedback on the main areas we need to refine. You want more freedom from the early game. You connected with the companions you met, but wish they had more depth and more to say along the way, and you want to level them up yourselves as you go. We greatly underestimated how much combat players expected during the origin stories. You want more features such as being able to click on the map to move the party. Moral or ethical moments that could have been far more interesting lack depth. Translations need to be improved. Combat needs a lot of work.

We’re on it. We have a short term roadmap that begins with what we’re delivering by the end of next week, a May patch goal that aims to flesh out some areas of the game where players have felt they wanted to see more, and we’re busy working on a longer-term list of improvements that all address your most commonly reported issues and areas where Broken Roads is falling short.

Thank you for your continued support and interest in Broken Roads, and for caring enough to comment and report issues. We welcome all feedback and suggestions, be it on forums or our official Discord, and are getting to work from Monday.

She’ll be right.

Craig Ritchie
Game Director

• Retreat tutorial added to Orkney Heights Barter Crew Combat
  
• Players spawn closer to their objective in Orkney Heights
  
• Fixed an issue where "PlayerState.CharacterName" showed in a dialogue in Russian translation
  
• Improved the size of the helmet and its interaction point in Orkney Heights to improve the Barter Crew origin story
  
• Fixed an unselectable tent interaction point in Orkney Heights
  
• Added additional SFX to the menus and other parts of the UI
  
• Made it clearer where the camel cart is during the Barter Crew origin story by having the camera pan to it
  
• Added more VO to Frida Lamm at the start of the Barter Crew origin story
  
• Fixed some enemies not resetting their health and loot in random encounters
  
• Fixed an issue where you couldn't tell Sean that Bitey was comfortable before getting Bitey unstuck.
  
• Unchecked a few erroneous cyclopedia highlights (eg tool) that were coming up in dialogue in the wrong context.
  
• Fixed Mad's interaction point in Merredin so you stand next to her
  
• Solved an issue where some objectives were not updating correctly when freeing Connor while the Scott Measure quest is active
  

We always return to the apocalypse. For decades, and over nearly as many years of videogames, stories set in the aftermath of a world-destroying cataclysm have captivated audiences. Most of them share the same scoured setting, survivors scrabbling for resources and fighting off bandits, and explore a familiar concept: namely, how do our personal values and social ideals hold up in the most extreme situations imaginable? The latest comes from Broken Roads, Drop Bear Bytes' debut release.

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