Curious about the Frostpunk 2 story? With the release of the April Frostpunk 2 beta, we’ve got more insight into what to expect from the game than ever before. So where is its narrative and campaign likely to go? That’s what we’ll explore here as we aim to piece together the Frostpunk 2 story from the trailers, gameplay, and our Frostpunk 2 preview.
What Will The Frostpunk 2 Story Be About?
Until the full release of Frostpunk 2, we can’t say with absolute certainty what the story will cover. However that certainly doesn’t mean we don’t know anything, nor does it mean we can’t speculate.
At current, we’ve got three good sources for information on the Frostpunk 2 story and premise.
- The Frostpunk 2 announcement trailer
- The City Must Not Fall trailer
- The gameplay seen in the Frostpunk 2 beta
Let’s cover each one-by-one, and see what we can learn from them.
Frostpunk 2 Announcement Trailer
The Frostpunk 2 announcement trailer gave us our first glimpse into the return to Frostland, and set a solid precedent for how we can expect things to have evolved since. It’s this trailer that revealed and heavily featured oil, painting it as a relatively new discovery.
From the imagery of bubbling black liquid to the fields of oil wells, we can safely assume that the discovery of oil as a new fuel source is a major story beat within the game. The desolation of the oil field and the frozen corpse painted with the word “Liar” suggest it’s not going to be an easy resource to acquire and manage. We also found out around this time that Frostpunk 2 is set roughly 30 years after the first game.
Frostpunk 2 The City Must Not Fall Trailer
The next big trailer, titled The City Must Not Fall, gave us another big clue to the story – civil unrest. Mirroring “The City Must Survive” – the tagline for the first game – this title and the trailer quickly establish that the simple threat of The City being swept away by an endless winter is no longer the priority.
We watch as the city grows and expands. We get more imagery relating to oil, with voiceover dialogue about ambition implying how important it will be. Also, we see mass riots and civil unrest as The City descends into chaos. Clearly, the idea this time around is that The City is already well established and quite large, but under threat of serious unrest as different factions pursue different ideas about its future. This in turn is going to be one of the main threats to the player this time around.
Frostpunk 2 Beta
Finally, the recent Frostpunk 2 beta has helped to bring the ideas from the trailers into focus with some concrete gameplay to back up the story. Although it’s limited to the first 300 weeks, and the main story mode is unavailable, there’s a pretty clear sense of what we can expect.
First, we get a real look at The City itself. In this iteration, it’s indeed a lot larger than the first time around. We started off with a large central district and a population in the thousands. The gameplay itself reflects this scale; you now build districts, which can then hold specialized buildings.
Second, we get a look at how this relative stability has led to an evolution in city politics. This time you’re no longer The Captain, but an elected Steward, serving alongside the Council of Delegates: 100 representatives for the people. This makes for some better-realized mechanics like a new system of passing laws. More importantly to the story, though, it highlights how important navigating control and power balances will be.
This manifests during the game through the formation of various different factions with opposing ideologies. Keeping them all happy is no easy task, and it certainly suggests that in extreme circumstances we could see this factionalism be the driving force that throws The City into the kind of chaos the second trailer showed us.
Lastly, the gameplay demo drove home the importance of getting out into Frostland to find resources, as The City has used up most of its nearby deposits getting to this point. It’s now a necessity to find long-term solutions out in the rest of the world.
A Summary of the Story As We Know It So Far
The Frostpunk 2 story is likely about The City surviving not just the elements, but itself. As nearby resources dwindle and you’re forced to look further afield for better solutions, factionalism at home begins to divide the population. At some point, you’ll discover a key answer to your problems: oil. With the arrival of a new, more potent fuel, there will come a new chance for The City. But the path to success is likely to be fraught with many challenges from within, as well as the usual dangers of endless winter.
That’s as much as we know for certain, but expect some twists and turns along the way. There are plenty of one-off interesting character interactions and random events we ran into in the beta. For example, one involved a young girl spotting a rare seabird, suggesting the potentially earth-shattering revelation that the sea may not have entirely frozen over. We expect some of these events will remain as simple flavoring, like the first game, but others may have wider ramifications or lasting consequences.
How Long Will the Frostpunk 2 Story Be?
Right now, we can’t be sure how long the Frostpunk 2 campaign is going to be. The original Frostpunk took about ten hours to beat, and with multiple endings and smaller paths to explore, which can go as high as about 50 hours for a completionist. Considering the long development time and the ambitious scope, we would expect Frostpunk 2 to be at least as long as the first game, if not longer. We also don’t know how future plans for Frostpunk 2 DLC might shape things if there are any.
If we had to try and make an educated guess, we’d say anywhere between 10-25 hours seems reasonable for a playthrough. But keep in mind this is still just a guess, and we could find ourselves well off the mark in the future.
That covers everything you need to know about the Frostpunk 2 story. Needless to say, we’re pretty excited for the full release later this year and will update you here once we learn more. If you’re still after some more Frostpunk reading, be sure to brush up on game mechanics. Whether you’re trying to pass laws in Frostpunk 2 or just need a hand figuring out the best Frostpunk 2 graphics settings, we can help.
