History VideoGame / PacificDrive

** The LIM-Chipped Engine is an absolute beast, allowing you to get up to speed of 100 miles an hour without trouble, but it absolutely devastates your fuel tank, getting only 7 miles to the gallon (the Turbolight Engine gets 13), forcing you to bring along more fuel cans or be constantly on the look out for refueling opportunities.

* AlternateHistory: Aside from the obvious changes to the Olympic Peninsula, in 1955 the US president was named "Lawrence Koch" instead of UsefulNotes/HarrySTruman.

* AlternateHistory: Aside from the obvious changes to the Olympic Peninsula, in 1954 the US president was named "Lawrence Koch" instead of UsefulNotes/HarrySTruman.

* AnachronisticSoundtrack: The in-game radio is full of songs by real life performers that didn't start recording until the 2020s. Possibly justified, as some notes indicate that the Zone has some TimeScrew effects here and there.

** If you manage to get stuck or flip your car, you can engage a Car Warp, which causes the car to disappear and re-materialise several feet away. The only snag is that this uses up a considerable chunk of battery, and can cause damage if there is insufficient charge.

** The options menu offers numerous ways to tone down the difficulty of the game.

* DueToTheDead: For the final mission, you're given the optional objective of putting a bobblehead depiciting [[spoiler:Tobias' favourite cryptid]] onto the dashboard of your car, as a tribute to them. The game marks your choice with an achievement.

* CheckpointStarvation: The game only saves between junctions (or manually at the garage). Be prepared for whatever the zone can throw at you.

* PowerUpLetDown: The All-Terrain Tires. On the one hand, they have A ratings on every possible surface, making them JackOfAllStats. However, because of the way tire durability is calculated[[note]]Tire wear depends on several factors, but the most obvious are "what the tire is rated for on the current surface" and "what you're doing with the car": the better the rating for the current surface, the less damage the tire takes, and the less you're asking of the tires, the less chance of catastrophic damage. So a tire rated for AA on a surface will easily resist damage from sharp turns, while a tire rated B on a surface could go flat or blow out if you turn too sharply while taking damage[[/note]], All-Terrain Tires are ''much'' more likely to go flat than other previous tires, and running them while they're flat increases the chances of blowing them out. The utility of running them equally on any surface will quickly be tempered by having to fix flats all the time.

* {{Roguelite}}: the premise supported by the instability: Junctions that you travel through are roughly similar, but the maps could be turned 90, 180 or 270 degrees, your entry point could be one of several possibilities, and anchors and resources are always placed in random locations. The goal is to get enough resources to make your run worthwhile and return without dying, and you use your resources to incrementally upgrade your gear to give you better chances in future runs. In addition, each Junction can have modifiers that can vastly change how you experience them; a Junction could be covered in ''Eerie Darkness'', or electricity could give you an unexpected and unwelcome speed boosts with ''Shocking Speed''. There's over 40 possible Junction modifiers.

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: Long before the game begins, ARDA pulled this on the entire Olympic Peninsula. With LIM technology not delivering any particularly useable breakthroughs, and the side effects running rampant and killing people ''en masse'', ARDA simply decided to pull up stakes, wall off the entire peninsula, tell everyone to stay out, and left. The fact that the wall ''isn't'' keeping anomalies from spreading is not something they seem to care about, and the department itself may or may not exist any longer.

* AnachronisticSoundtrack: The in-game radio is full of songs by real life performers that didn't start recording until the 2020s.

** Their immobile counterparts, the Pacemaker and Beating Heart (an abnormality shaped like a bush, adorned in the same speakers as your Auto Shop's Matter Regenerator upgrade and glowing the same green), do the same.

* MadeOfExplodium: Tourists will explode if you nudge them with anything (your car, your foot, a hurled road flare, etc). Ticking Tumblers will explode whenever they feel like it. Tour Busses and Tourist Traps go off with any contact. Boom Bunnies explode after hopping at you or your car. The Deep Zone is basically full of things that explode, to the point that database entries for anomalies in the Deep Zone start to complain about "all the EXPLOSIONS!"

* NoAntagonist: [[spoiler:There is nothing intentionally malevolent about the Zone, and all of the human characters you actually interact with are friendly and don't mean anyone harm, just grumpy loners at worst.]]

* ForbiddenZone: The Olympic Exclusion Zone, naturally. If the "no trespassing" signs don't put you off, then the [[TheGreatWall 300-foot high wall]] will.

** The Fuel Synthesizer can be a ''life-saver'' in a pinch, being able to refill an unaltered gas tank with some fuel to spare, and its admittedly hefty power costs (about 34 KW) can easily be countered with the above-mentioned Mini Turbine or its siblings, especially if you use multiple, as well as a Plasma Charger or Battery Jumper.

** One of the first Ability-type mods you can learn to make are a set of [[Anime/SpeedRacer Jump Jacks]]

* AlternateHistory: Aside from the obvious changes to the Olympic Peninsula, in 1954 the US president was named "Koch" instead of UsefulNotes/HarrySTruman.

* ButNowIMustGo: After The Driver succeeds in freeing themselves from the Remnant car, [[spoiler: Dr Oppy decides to finally leave the Zone, like her husband Allen urged her to do thirty-seven years ago.]]

* CoolAndUnusualPunishment: When Dr. Oppy initially balks at helping The Driver, Tobias threatens to start reading the ten years worth of poetry he's been composing. [[KnowWhenToFoldEm She immediately complies.]]

* DeadpanSnarker: Dr. Oppy is a more bitter example of this trope than usual. She's an ill-tempered woman who initially resents having to deal with you at all, and she rarely has anything pleasant to say to you, Tobias, or Francis.
* DefrostingIceQueen: In the beginning, Dr. Oppy is abrasive to you, but becomes steadily less so as the game progresses, and will sometimes even compliment you after a particularly successful run. [[spoiler:After Tobias' death, she is outright empathetic with Francis, marking the point where she fully defrosts.]]

* ForScience: The only reason Dr. Oppy is helping you is 1) to get you out of her garage, and 2) because she can use you to explore dangerous areas in the Zone.

* FunctionalAddict: Implied with Dr. Oppy, who Tobias describes as being able to compute complex mathematics with one hand, "...with a double in the other." Though Tobias and Francis note Oppy's intellect is in steep decline from what it once was. She also appears to use "expired medication", but it's not expanded what for.

* MeaningfulName: Dr. Oppy's actual name is Ophelia, but Oppy is also short for [[UsefulNotes/RobertOppenheimer Oppenheimer]], who (like Dr. Oppy) created technology capable of wrecking the world.

* NoodleIncident: Tobias promises Dr. Oppy the current situation isn't like "The Sasquatch Incident." What happened is left unmentioned, but it apparently led to them not speaking to each other for ten years.

* TheRemnant: Less militaristic than most examples, and not related to the Remnant-type Anomolies like your car. Dr. Oppy, Tobias, and Francis are part of a cadre of scientists and administrators who actively avoided ARDA's evacuation demands to continue their research.

* SchizoTech: You're driving a 70's station wagon equipped with a flatscreen touch-capable computer that includes vacuum tubes. Justified, as the car is a Remnant, which are always antiquated technology, while the computer is Dr. Oppy's invention that she gives you to operate her portal network.

* ThoseTwoGuys: Tobias and Francis, who provide most of the radio chatter and lore when Dr. Oppy isn't speaking, and generally have a StraightManAndWiseGuy act.