This announcement trailer might be accompanied by the Offspring - where are they now? - but This War Of Mine: The Little Ones is going to be decidedly grim when it arrives on PS4 next year. Including a complete edition of the PC original This War Of Mine, the brand new The Little Ones adds the additional perspective of war through a child's eyes and, as you might expect, it's not going to be happy making.
"This is a very unusual project: a serious game made for a mature gamer; an experience that will tackle your emotions heavily," says 11 Bit Studio's senior writer Pawel Miechowski on the EU PlayStation Blog. "Based on the award-winning This War of Mine, The Little Ones puts you in charge of a group of adults and children stuck in the middle of hell, trying to survive in a besieged city; struggling with lack of food, medicine and constant danger. The question is: how far will you go to make it through another day?"
The original This War of Mine saw you playing through a number of shelters, trying to keep people alive and making decisions as painfully difficult as deciding which of your fingers you'd like to cut off with a rusty machete. "This experience focuses not only on the reality of enduring war, but also the fact that even in times of conflict, kids are still kids – they laugh, cry, play with toys and see the world differently," says Miechowski. "In addition to thinking about survival, you’ll have to bring back the kid in yourself to understand how to protect the little ones."
If that sounds stressful, it's meant to be. "Our goal as the devs was to create a mature experience in which you’re seeing war through eyes of a regular people – so not a military action, but a horrible challenge to overcome," Miechownski adds.
"As a group of civilians you’ll be facing extremely difficult choices that have to be made just to survive the war: what do you do when you have to sacrifice someone? What do you do when you’re starving but other survivors may have food?" If you're feeling up to it, The Little Ones is coming to PS4 on January 29th.
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