The World of Who We Are Now
Who We are Now takes place ten years after a nuclear war. The location of the game is somewhere in what’s left of the United States. It’s been ten years of bandit gangs warring with each other in the countryside and mutants consuming the cities from the inside.
The terrain is rugged, dotted with hills, crushed freeways, and scattered, abandoned cars. Sparse supermarkets and gas stations promise goods for the wary scavenger, but most of it has been picked clean by now.
Much of this time a person only had one thing on their mind: survival at any cost. Recently, however, things have calmed down somewhat. Most of the bandit gangs have destroyed each other. People are still scared, still hungry. But survival is more of a possibility now.
Home
Home is a small, peaceful community high up on a easily-defensible ridge (you can see it eclipsed by the sun in the picture above). It was founded several years ago by Elder Mohra and the Valkyries, a gang of mostly women who protected the defenseless from other bandits. Mohra and the leaders of the Valkyries form a council that makes decisions for Home, but for the most part, there are simple rules that govern the day to day.
The most important rule of Home is “Only defend, never attack.” Home is not a raiding camp. It’s a community of people who just want to live their lives. Denizens of Home will defend themselves, but will never go out and attack others.
The second rule of Home is “Everyone has a place to stay.” People who move in to Home are expected to pick up work to help the town, but those who cannot are also given a place to live.
Enough time has passed that vegetation is beginning to return to the battered landscape, and the people of Home have begun to farm to feed their people. Luck lies with Home, as the initial war a decade ago left the area largely untouched by radiation, so current efforts have been fruitful.
Home has a storied past, with several clashes against bandits. Few know the story of how Home was founded, but the rumors say there was a great amount of bloodshed. Home’s future is looking up, especially when an ill-fated raid against it by the Futurists ended with Home gaining access to an incredible power source. Which leads us to...
The Futurists
The Futurists are one of the last major bandit groups, though they are far from other bandits. They somehow have access to technology that far surpasses what anyone has seen before, and they use it to subjugate others. They perform cruel experiments on those they capture, attaching metallic limbs to them and pressing them into service.
Little is known about the group itself. There are rumors about who leads them -- some say a rogue and corrupted AI controls the group, for instance -- but one thing is for certain: they are evil and must be avoided at all costs.
The Futurists stand between Home and the feeling of true peace.
This sets the stage for the events of Who We Are Now.
Play the demo here.
Preorder the game here.
