The cleanup begins on May 20.
I was wooed consistently through the latest trailer for RoadCraft, Saber Interactive’s follow-up to Expeditions: Mudrunner about rebuilding infrastructure across global disaster zones, but it was the phrase “mobile quarry” that convinced me Roadcraft is the one. Quarries, as you may know, are generally static affairs, given they are literally the ground. But RoadCraft’s portable mineral deposit lets you take a little chunk of our planet with you, processing the stone and refilling your trucks on the fly. Put a ring on it, Saber Interactive.
In all seriousness, I’ve had my eye on RoadCraft since it was announced last year, having always liked Saber’s grungy offroad vehicle simulators, especially as they’ve become more goal-oriented. As this latest in-depth trailer demonstrates, RoadCraft pushes hard in this area, tying all the series’ ideas together under the theme of restoring industries and logistics networks across eight different biomes affected by natural disasters.
Unlike other offroading games, RoadCraft involves not only navigating difficult terrain, but actively altering it to make travel easier. As the trailer demonstrates, you’re able to clear debris with bulldozers and cranes, chop down trees, and build your own roads by dumping loads of sand and asphalt onto terrain and then smoothing it over with a big chugging steamroller. RoadCraft is apparently built on an entirely new engine with overhauled physics that simulates granular materials. There’s a clip toward the end of the trailer that shows a truck crossing a massive pile of sand, so presumably you’ll be able to get fairly creative with this system.
Yet RoadCraft isn’t just about moving stuff around yourself. There’s also a resource management system and a sprinkling of Factorio-inspired automation, both of which the new trailer sheds light on. The debris you clear from disaster zones can also be collected and repurposed to manufacture new materials that aid your rebuilding project, like making concrete for building foundations and bridges. You also don’t have to ferry everything around yourself, but are instead able to create logistics convoys and program their routes via a “precision waypointing system”. This lets you dot out waypoints along routes of your choice from an overhead perspective. It doesn’t show how resources are moved from processors to vehicles, though I wouldn’t expect it to be as visibly elaborate as, say, Satisfactory.
What intrigued me most of all, though, are the Thunderbirds-ass vehicles you’ll be driving around. The mobile quarry is one of these, but there’s also the ‘cable-layer’, a bizarre-looking truck with a giant spool at the front and a wedge-shaped scoop at the back, presumably for covering the laid cable with earth. Also shown is a Mars rover-ish mobile crane for transporting and laying down wooden logs, as well as a tank-like vehicle shown pulling open a gate with a tow-cable.
If I went back in time and showed this trailer my six-year-old self, his head would probably explode. Then again, I’m perilously close to middle age and after seeing this video my brain feels close to bursting anyway. RoadCraft could still prove rubbish, of course, though everything shown so far looks superior to last year’s Expeditions: A Mudrunner Game, which was a serviceable but unremarkable spinoff.
Either way, we’ll find out when RoadCraft arrives on May 20, which is just five days after Doom: The Dark Ages. In other words, it’s time to book in my second childhood.
About Post Author
