When you get into your car for the first time Pacific drive, it feels no different than the average junker. Sure, it looks like it could fall apart at any moment, but somehow it manages to stay together for the most part… as long as you don’t run it into trees or through mysterious anomalies. It’s just an average car, until your friends on the radio start wondering how it even exists. They say it should be impossible for a car to operate in the Olympic Exclusion Zone, where the game takes place. The car also has some interesting features: it can tolerate a number of technologically advanced upgrades, like a Champion, and despite being a station wagon from the 1950s, it can handle a paranormal storm with only minimal damage.
What is the car in then? Pacific drive, precisely? You spend a lot of the game’s main story missions figuring that out, and along the way it becomes your way of exploring. As the intersections become more and more dangerous, the car goes the extra mile (so to speak) to be your armor, your backpack, your crafting table, and your only reliable companion. Unlike other open world survival games where you have to upgrade your character to survive, here you spend almost all your efforts making sure your car is healthy and ready for danger. There is a sense of pride when you give your car the right upgrade. What was once a metal box covered in rust and duct tape can become a high-tech device unlike any car you’ve ever seen. You can also make it look totally flashy thanks to stickers, paint and more that you can unlock.
After a long repair session, you get back into the car and the dashboard lights up. You get cheerful 8-bit music and you might even see a heart. And after just a few journeys the car becomes your best friend.
Image: Ironwood Studios/Kepler interactive via Polygon
Pacific drive is all about your car; in fact, you barely play a character. They’re just called “Driver” and they don’t even have a visible body. Oppy, Francis, and Tobias are your main human connections, but they only communicate as disembodied voices over your radio. The only ‘people’ you really see are the deviant mannequins (called ‘Tourists’) who explode when hit and sometimes stalk you Doctor who‘s weeping angels. It’s not just that you build an emotional bond with your car; you have no other choice. It’s the only other physical character you encounter.
“I was quite insistent that as a player you are completely yourself,” says Alex Dracott, creative director at Pacific drive developer Ironwood Studios, told The Gamer. “It’s you, and a car you find – there’s no baggage or big history with it. We wanted the relationship with the car to be built authentically.”
And speaking of that bond, that’s actually an emphasized point in the story. Oppy and the others tell you that the car is a relic, a misplaced paranormal object with undefined capabilities. The longer a person is near a remnant, the more he will cling to it; it will happen to you eventually.
This is a common strategy in video games; If you want the player to connect with an inanimate object, they need a fact in the universe that a potential bond can exploit. It’s basically a nod from the developers that this thing can and will be loved, regardless of whether it has a name, a face, or a secret feeling. Portal used this strategy to turn the Weighted Companion Cube into a tragic icon. In Test Chamber 17, the evil AI GLaDOS introduces you to this object, which is completely mundane in almost every way. The only difference between these cubes and other cubes you have used in the game is that their sides have pink hearts. GLaDOS tells you to take care of it, as it will guide you through the level, and that it may or may not be conscious.
The Cube indeed accompanies you and deserves the title ‘Companion’. It’s one of the few things you encounter during the game that is actually on your side. You never see GLaDOS until the final confrontation, and she doesn’t have your best interests at heart. The Companion Cube does, as you can see from the pink hearts on its body: it is truly capable of love! Of course, that doesn’t stop GLaDOS from forcing you to euthanize it at the end of the test. (Why would she use that term if the Cube wasn’t alive anymore?) You can try to smuggle it out of the room and into the elevator, but either way, it will be burned – and GLaDOS will mock you for it. This continues in Portal 2as more turrets and companion cubes appear.
Image: Ironwood Studios/Kepler interactive via Polygon
The setup is similar in that The Parable of Stanley: Ultra Deluxethat builds on the original Stanley parable through the introduction of the reassurance bucket. It’s initially nothing more than a normal metal bucket with a sticker, and the narrator says its function is to help new players get used to the experience at their leisure. When you pick it up, a wave of comfort washes over you – at least according to the narrator. However, our player character, Stanley, is a mostly disembodied figure who encounters no other humans or friendly entities on his ridiculous journey, so the bucket will become a companion. And because Stanley’s parable is one of the medium’s ultimate metanarrative experiences, the bucket follows you through multiple endings and countless journeys, becoming a protagonist in many of them. The game may force the relationship with the bucket down your throat a bit, but it’s in service of playing on the tropes established by games like Portal.
Pacific drive builds on this history of anthropomorphism in video games with its car, but does so in a way that is much more deeply ingrained into the overall story and more natural than some other examples. It introduces the seemingly normal object, reveals small and important features over time, and then adds an in-universe reason why you should bond with that object. It goes even further and basically makes it your entire reason to play. If you don’t upgrade and repair the car, you won’t have anything to spend your resources on and you won’t be able to move forward. you to have to take care of it, and along the way you will make friends with it.