A good reason to avoid it for a year or two...
Sounds like a plan to me!
I've been playing this for a while now. Definitely not close to done, but I've laid down some of pavement. I'm having a lot of fun with it!
It's a mighty different game, that's for sure. The basic loop is:
- Get packages to deliver to someplace new.
- Try to get to the new place. You'll have a map that you can rotate to give yourself some perspective on where the steep parts are. On the way there, you can use ladders and ropes to deal with the physical stuff in your way.
- There may also be enemies. The MULEs are one kind - essentially bandits that try to knock you out and steal your cargo. The others are more like ghosts. You get an indicator pointing to the nearest one and you can kinda seem them when standing still, but otherwise they are invisible. At the start of the game, there's nothing you can do about them other than try to sneak around them. Later on, you're given ways to deal with them (and MULEs) more easily.
- Around the ghosties, it's always raining and the rain that's around them degrades packages and some of your gear. This effectively gives you a time limit. It's not much of one, but it's enough that you'll need to keep moving. Searching all around for ghosts every time you take a step isn't an option, but you should have plenty of time to consider what you're doing. (Plus you can bring a spray to counter the effects of the rain. Of course, bringing those adds to your weight.)
- Once you get to your destination, you'll be able to put them on the network. When you do that, the game pulls in things that other players have built. Early in the game, that will just be a bunch of ladders, ropes, and a few other things.
You can keep doing deliveries to the various destinations. As you do, the destination will give you "likes". The more they like you, the more raw materials they make available. They could also give you access to new schematics. Or you could just keep following the story missions.
Sheesh, this post is already starting to get long, and I've barely scratched the surface. You get a little "RPGness" as you learn to build better gear, structures, and weapons so there is a sense of advancement. The way structures are shared between players could use a couple of big paragraphs.
Oh, and yeah - plenty of cutscenes, including a lot of little ones. If you want to rest, you get a 5 second cutscene of Sam going down an elevator, then a 3 second scene of his vehicle being put in the garage, then another few seconds of him lying down, then another few seconds of him getting up. Every one of them is skippable, and you'll certainly want to skip them after seeing them a few times.
Can't say I'm interested. I'd much rather have The Last of Us 1 & 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, or Days Gone.
Can't you have more than one at a time?