Hi! I am Blake from the Ironwood Studios team and with pride we proudly present whispers in the forest, the main narrative and extension of the game Pacific Drive.
When Pacific Drive began for the first time in February 2024, players joined their trusted station wagon to dare a haunting, filled with an Olympic anomalies of exclusion. The unique mix of the game, tense exploration and maintenance of the car quickly resonated with fans of car games as well as survival. Now we are glad that we can bring players back to the driver’s place and back to the zone in whispers in the forest, coming this year on PlayStation 5.
Return to the zone
Whispers in the Woods takes a completely fresh adventure with a return to the Olympic exclusion zone. Available after the first few hours of the game, the expansion can be chased with the main campaign and study the escalate in the terrifying group of anomalies of obsessive fanatics hidden deep in the depths of the forests.
With their appearance, the extension brings a change in the zone forest, unlike everything you saw before. New anomalies not only go through the forests, but massive images decorated with cryptic symbols fill the landscape when the atmosphere of the game takes on a darker tone more focused on horror.
“From the very beginning we knew that we wanted to take the secrets of the Olympic exclusion zone in a new direction of this extension.” Says Cassandra Dracott, artistic director at Ironwood Studios. “We heard so much feedback and so many stories about the fear that people experienced in the Pacific and with whispers in the forest, we knew that we wanted to bend strongly in this direction.”
This is not only other tonally different experience. In expansion we added a completely fresh, fully expressed narrative, and with it we are able to continue to build the game world and the surreal nature of the zone. We will leave you to theorize what will happen next – but it would not be Pacific Drive if we had not given you fresh experiences with your 4 -wheeled companion.
Discover artifacts
Whispers in the forest brings more everything you could hope for when expanding Pacific Drive. New items, car parts, cosmetics, intersection types and anomalies are waiting. We even added fresh behaviors to ancient anomalies to keep you on your fingers. The largest and most significant addition are completely fresh artifacts.
“When you collect these mysterious objects, you will have to fight their unpredictable effects of changing the car and the world, forcing you to constantly adapt and change the strategy in flight.” He adds Richard Weschler, the main designer of whispers in the forest.
Created by our mysterious group of fanatics, artifacts are the focal point of the game extension. Inspired by our quirks system, each artifact is saturated with conditions and a condition that creates a condition. Perhaps every time you jump, your car is respected. Maybe when your car is trumpeting, it also requires injury. While some can grant strange advantages, others will add twists and turns to how you play. Artifacts can even play to create chain reactions.
It depends on you whether the artifacts are appropriate for your time in the zone. Regardless of what kind of artifacts you and your wagon you find, two things are true: collecting many of them will be of key importance for your time in a whispering forest, and if you keep too many, much more perilous things deep in the forests will slowly wake up.
A significant expansion for fresh and recurring players
We have been proud of its release that we have over a million players around the world. Within 18 months of the premiere, we are still supporting the game with many free updates, such as the endless update of Expeditions, which added endless trips to the zone, doubled the size of the radio list and added the function of Supply Run.
However, whispers in the forest are the most ambitious update of the studio. Thanks to the hours of the fresh game and the content of history, as well as the unique region of nearly a third of the basic game, the extension is a significant step forward for both fresh and returning fans, and we are incredibly excited that everyone will experience it.
“We see this edition as both for our long -time players and a welcome sign for newcomers,” adds Cassandra. “If you drive through the zone from the first day, the whispers in the forest will add a completely new, more terrifying approach to the Olympic exclusion zone. And if you are just starting, then the extension means the best version of the game with new systems and content to find and discover.”
Regardless of whether you return to a friend of the station wagon, or start freshly during the first trip to the zone, Pacific Drive: Whispers in the Woods offers a fresh journey and we can’t wait for them to experience it this year on PlayStation 5.
