PAX EAST 2023 | "Pacific Drive"
The idea that your car is your life sounds like a joke from a Burt Reynolds vehicle, but Ironwood Studios’s Pacific Drive is playing it straight. After seeing the trailer for it, I felt the need to learn what was going on in this game. Now that I’ve gone hands-on with Pacific Drive at PAX East, I have zero answers and a ton more questions. What is this so-called Olympic Exclusion Zone, and what’s causing these strange occurrences here?
In the demo, I started off by making some much-needed repairs to my car. Scouring through the pit stop, I found some items that will either be handy or be merely waste of pocket space. Once I filled up my gas tank, I drove away, where a ten-minute timer started counting down. What it was counting towards, I had no idea, but I wanted to explore this strange area.
Some things in the woods caught my eye, ranging from big glowing rocks to a pack of mannequins looking like they were in agony. However, I began to notice green smog and liquid in some of these places, as my radiation levels started reaching frantic levels. It appeared that where I was would kill me quickly if I stayed too long, so I hightailed it back to the vehicle.
But that wasn’t the only thing that caught my eye in Pacific Drive. In the road, blocks of concrete rose and fell to some strange rhythm, with their reason for existence being unknown. Weird orbs of light flew by from time-to-time, but I had no idea if they were spirits or electricity. Sometimes electricity would shoot out from wherever, but thanks to being in my car, I wasn’t affected. What I do swear I saw was a red-eyed creature -- possibly a Bigfoot -- but I was a little too frightened to get close to it.
I got so invested with my surroundings, that I didn’t notice that the timer was reaching zero. So I hightailed it back to the pit stop, in hopes that I would survive…whatever this event would be. The skies grew red, the wind picked up, and my car shook like a dog hearing lightning. That’s when my car was struck one too many times by this phenomenon, and my health started plummeting. Stupidly, I left my car to get inside the pit stop, but I was quickly greeted with death.
What just happened? I haven’t the foggiest idea, but I’m strangely weirded out enough to want to uncover this mystery. There’s a Welcome to Night Vale vibe coming from the Olympic Exclusion Zone, only with a lot more life-threatening auras coming through. Will I be able to uncover the truth of this place, or would I become just another story about an idiot who got lost in it?
Pacific Drive is set for release this year. All hail the glow cloud.
