Characters / Pacific Drive

Main Characters

The Driver

You

A nameless, faceless player-proxy. A delivery driver who was assigned to deliver some documents to a location near the edge of the Olympic Exclusion Zone, they end up caught in a zone phenomenon and teleported past the border wall and into the middle of an expanding cloud of radiation. To escape, they find and commandeer an old station wagon, only for the Zone's resident scientists to inform them that this car is a Remnant, which has linked to their mind, preventing them from leaving the Zone. Oh, and it's going to slowly drive them into obsessive insanity if they don't find a cure.

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They provide examples of:

• Badass Driver: Of course.
• Gas Siphoning: Always carrying a hand pump to siphon fuel from vehicle fuel tanks and barrels.
• Featureless Protagonist: Has no character model, not even a set of hands in first person, and says nothing.
• Find the Cure!: Their motivation for exploring the zone is to find a way to cure remnant obsession so that they can safely leave.
• Mr. Fixit: With the help of Oppy's Mechanic Vision headset and the quirk diagnostics machine in the garage, they can diagnose and fix everything from a cracked window to a flat tire to an electrical fault that causes the car to accelerate whenever the horn gets honked.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: Can eat canned food and old military ration packs to regain small amounts of health.
• Silent Protagonist: Never speaks. Francis clarifies early on that the car's radio has no transmitter, so the scientists never bother to really ask you for your input on anything either.
• Take Your Time: It's not stated how long remnant obsession takes to reach the terminal stage, but the player has no actual time limit to reach the end of the story. Tobias speculates early on that being inert for so long might have dampened the speed at which the remnant can drive you crazy. Since the end-stage of remnant obsession actually drives people to try and reach the Well, the player is probably saved from going crazy by the fact that they're already trying to do exactly that for most of the story.

Oppy

Dr. Ophelia Turner

A bitter and reclusive scientist still living in the zone, and the originator of the LIM-technology that resulted in its creation in the first place.

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She provides examples of:

• The Alcoholic: Starts the game clearly waking up from a hangover and occasionally mentions wanting to break open a new bottle rather than deal with Tobias. It seems she's been like this for a while as the SSR Meeting Minutes you can find include notes about her drinking during meetings with fellow scientists even before ARDA was created.
• But Now I Must Go: After The Driver succeeds in freeing themselves from the Remnant car, she decides to finally leave the Zone, like her husband Allen urged her to do thirty-seven years ago.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Her work not only resulting in her hometown being depopulated and perhaps hundreds of people being killed by the Anomalies and Instability, but her husband died during an experiment with the LIM-tech she created.
• Drunken Master: Still probably the best scientist remaining in the zone despite her drunkeness.
• Enraged by Idiocy: Can't stand Tobias' theories, and ends up at first splitting the "non-essential" radio messages from him into their own channel before eventually shutting Tobias and Francis out of your radio frequency entirely (until you reach the Mid-Zone and they jam her back before hacking into the radio with your help).
• The Hermit: Lives in a part of the zone surrounded by permanent instability storms, on purpose, so that nobody can bother her. She also says at the start of the game that it's been roughly a decade since she last spoke to Francis and Tobias.

Francis

Dr. Francis Cooke

Another scientist living in the Zone, he resides in the Mid-Zone alongside Tobias and begrudgingly participates in his cryptid investigations alongside his own LIM research.

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They provide examples of:

• Nice Guy: Almost always polite to everyone and is the first to call Oppy out on risking the driver's life with the Cappy stunt. Even he has limits though and will let loose some scathing criticism of both the other two at certain moments.
• My Greatest Failure: Falsified his experimental data to try to buy himself more time to prove his theories, but was found out and Reassigned to Antarctica for it. He's kept this a secret from Tobias this entire time and still bears some ill-will towards Oppy since she was in charge of the committee that did the reassigning.
• Only Sane Man: Between Tobias' tangents on his theories and Oppy's caustic personality, he is by far the most normal of the three characters talking to you.

Tobias

Tobias Barlow

The former head of maintenance of ARDA, now a cryptid investigator living in the Mid-Zone with Francis.

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They provide examples of:

• Blatant Lies: Jams Oppy's radio connection to you soon after you cross into the Mid-Zone and then unconvincingly pretends it's a happy coincidence as he instructs you on how to link his and Francis' radio to the garage. Francis calls him out on it.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Far less deranged than the one you can find in the logs, but still believes in cryptids like Bigfoot and various anomaly stories with questionable veracity. Though Bigfoot, at least, is absolutely real.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Despite his kooky nature and questionable cryptid research methods, Bigfoot actually does exist and lives in the Zone.
• Killed Off for Real: He dies during the player's attempt to cross into and reactivate the power grid in the Deep Zone due to his insistence on continuing to maintain the Midzone's power grid to prevent the driver's mission from failing while he's trapped in the middle of an instability storm.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Admits several times that he was no good at science in school, a log you find has him badly attempt to record scientific data of an anomaly he encountered, and his cryptid investigation seems partly a way to try to be like the scientist coworkers he respected back when ARDA still existed.

Anomalies

The Car

The Remnant

A beat-up, broken-down old station wagon with false wood paneling that the player finds and commandeers at the start of the game. It's actually a remnant, and as such it's going to worm its way into your mind, make it obsessed with you, and eventually drive you completely insane if you don't find a way to stop it. On the plus side, the bond is mutual, and it'll save you from near-death should the Zone's dangers get to you.

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They provide examples of:

• Artistic License – Cars: The car has an automatic transmission, but only has two settings: "Park" and "Drive". In reality even an automatic selector would have Reverse, Neutral, and likely one or two numbered towing gears. None of these would really be necessary for a game that uses arcade controls however so they are absent on the car (the fact that the two settings spell out 'PD' for 'Pacific Drive' on the gear stick also helps).
• The Alleged Car: Subverted. It's in an objectively sorry state at the start of the game, with one tire missing, another flat, several quarter panels and the rear door and bumper are missing, and several of the panels and doors that are there are held together with wire and duct tape. However, it has an immaculate engine and frame and Tobias mentions that it's a miracle that it runs at all since no other car in the Zone has been running for decades. Indeed, most other cars in the Zone make the Remnant's initial state look positively pristine by comparison.
  • The Quirks system allows it to develop the type of inexplicable electrical and mechanical oddities that old cars tend to do, which can range from suprisingly handy (See Cursed with Awesome below) to relatively innocuous (wipers that seize up if you turn too hard) to charming (horn that beeps when the car is started) to annoying (battery drains faster when driving downhill) to absolutely disastrous (hood that pops up in your face whenever you accelerate).
• Cursed with Awesome: It's possible for the car to develop a "If X happens, Car Lurches Forward" quirk. If X is something convenient, like toggling the wipers or beeping the horn, it essentially functions as a free on-demand speedboost. On the other hand, if it's triggered by something inconvenient, like turning on the headlights or opening the driver's side door, it essentially functions as a free "crash the car" button.
• Last of His Kind: The last known remnant to still exist in the Zone. For this reason it's frequently referred to as simply "The Remnant".
• My Car Hates Me: Zig-Zagged. While it will never actually fail to start unless it's completely out of gas (even if the battery is dead, since the ARC Device will jumpstart the car for you unless you're using the electric AMP Engine), starting the car has the potential to be the trigger for any number of nasty quirks ranging from doors opening to the parking brake being toggled.
• Nitro Boost: A researchable upgrade part that the player can install. Unusually, it's not an actual nitrous system applied to the engine, but rather a set of rocket thrusters installed in place of one of the bumpers. Including the front bumper, if you ever want to reverse at breakneck speeds.

Remnants

Old pieces of manmade junk with strange properties. They'll bond themselves to people and cause them to become obsessed with whatever the object is (painting, tea, or, in your case, cars) and slowly drive them insane until they run off alone into the Zone.

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• Anomalous Art: The murals found in the Mid-Zone were painted using a Remnant paint can. Visiting them reveals that they've actually subtly changed from when Francis and Tobias had visited them in previous decades and the new designs contain GPS Evidence of the location of the remnant counter-signal in the Inner Zone.
• Artifact of Attraction: Link themselves to people and cause them to become obsessed until they go crazy. The reverse also seems to be true, since the paint can remnant bound itself to a frustrated artist and since the Driver is a proxy for the player, they were probably already interested in cars (since they're playing a car-crafting game).

Colossal Cappy

A gigantic, floating resonant anomaly that destroyed the small town of Sierram when it was first created.

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They provide examples of:

• Macguffin Location: The first real journey the player is required to make is to visit Sierram to see Cappy and take advantage of her resonance properties so that the scientists can tell you whether your car is actually a Remnant or not.
• Polluted Wasteland: Large portions of the area around Cappy are destroyed and permanently irradiated.
• Power Floats: Entire wrecked rail cars are found floating in the debris surrounding Cappy.

Abductors

UFO-like collections of metal scrap, tires, lamps, and waste oil that try to grab things with magnetic tow lines and drag them away.

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• Alien Abduction: Not actual aliens, but their teal spotlights, behavior, and name is clearly based on the idea.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Can be easily distracted with lit road flares.
• Bandit Mook: They'll try to steal your entire car if you let them. They'll even try to steal you, but fortunately can't manage to actually take you much of anywhere.
• Helpful Mook: They'll also try to pick up and steal Bunnies, preventing them from attacking you and can even snatch them right off your car.

Tourists

Explosive crash test dummies attached to the ground by grey zone biomass, often found in large crowds. They don't move... while you're watching.

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• Action Bomb: They explode violently when touched. Though they can't actually move themselves enough to explode on you directly, they can certainly get close when your back is turned and cause you to stumble or reverse into them if you're not paying close attention.
• Can't Move While Being Watched: They'll move or even multiply when your back is turned.
• Helpful Mook: They'll sometimes toss things at you. Sometimes this is a piece of plastic. Sometimes it's a spare tire. Sometimes it's an anchor that they somehow pulled out of nowhere.
• Made of Incendium: Downplayed since they're so explosive already, but lit flares specifically will set them off without having to knock them over first like other thrown items do.
• Murderous Mannequin: Crash test dummies, actually, but dangerous all the same.
• Underground Monkey: The Shocked Tourists have electric arcs passing between each other and will send out electric shocks when they explode, but otherwise operate identically to normal Tourists.

Bunnies

Tumbleweeds made of scrap metal that match speed with your car, then launch themselves at it. They can do a variety of unfortunate things to your car, but are easily dislodged with a swift kick or crowbar.

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• Action Bomb: The aptly named Boom Bunnies are explosive.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The primary way to tell different bunny varieties apart is the color of the lamps embedded in them. Broken are orange, Bolt are bright blue, Dust and Burp bunnies are sickly green, while the Hares are a deeper blue and green.
• Helpful Mook: Rarely you'll run into the Hares, bunny varieties that heal or recharge your car rather than damaging it.
• Sickly Green Glow: Dust Bunnies and Burp Bunnies have glowing greenish-yellow lamps.
• Underground Monkey: Broken Bunnies cause random malfunctions, Dust Bunnies are radioactive, Burp Bunnies splash acid on you, Bolt Bunnies are charged with electricity, and Boom Bunnies explode. The Hopped-Up Hare and Happy Hare recharge and repair the car, respectively.

Spark Towers

Old radio repeaters that ARDA juiced up with plasma generators to try to retain signal clarity throughout the Zone. In the absence of maintenance, they've all shorted out and will electrocute you with huge arcs of electricity if you get too close (which you'll want to do, since those generators contain valuable plasma capsules).

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• Conspicuous Electric Obstacle: Big, broken-down radio towers with electric arcs running through them and around them.
• It Can Think: Despite being non-sentient radio towers, the electric arcs these things emit will always crawl along the ground directly towards the player.

Bollards

Stone columns of various size that periodically rise from the ground, potentially in front of or under the player's car.

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• Gaia's Vengeance: Speculated by several different log entries to be a reaction the Zone is having to human presence.
• Living Structure Monster: It's essentially a series of roadblocks that appear out of nowhere.

Bubblegum Buddies

Pink, bubblegum-like, giggling goo-balls that extend sticky tendrils out toward whatever catches their interest. Often found in clusters of three.

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• Bandit Mook: They're not strong enough to steal parts off the car or the car itself like a Pickpocket or Abductor, but they're content to steal any scrap items left lying around on the ground.
• Giggling Villain: Make a sound somewhere between chittering and a child's giggling. It's rather annoying.
• Pushy Mooks: The real threat they pose (if any) is the fact that unlike an Abductor which has a telegraphed period before they grab you, they can casually reach out and yank on your car as it passes by, which can result in them redirecting your course into a nearby rock or slowing you down as you're desperately trying to escape a zone storm.

Log Characters

Chiaki Saruhashi

The journalist responsible for the Frequency Files podcasts the player can recover from radio interception towers scattered around the zone. These detail her investigations in the (in-universe) present day into what exactly ARDA was doing in the zone.

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She provides examples of:

• Intrepid Reporter: Hunting down old government secrets.
• Dramatic Irony: Only has loose, scattered bits of information on ARDA, LIM Tech, and especially Ophelia Turner, leaving her initially skeptical of the fantastic "anomaly" stories that came out of the zone, unsure if LIM was ever actually a functional technology or even if Dr. Turner was even a real person. Contrast the player, who gets a very up close and personal look at those very real anomalies every day, drives around in a car full of LIM tech and has the very same Dr. Turner serving as their Mission Control.

President Lawrence Koch

The US President in 1955. A former Washington State Senator, he served at least one term in the mid-1950s and was involved in the creation of ARDA but is mentioned to have been dead by 1969.

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He provides examples of:

• All There in the Manual: His first name and the fact that he died before the end of the 60's are only mentioned on some of the randomly-appearing F.A.X. messages.
• Our Presidents Are Different: An Alternate History President, as the real one in 1955 was Dwight D. Eisenhower.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: By creating ARDA he set in motion the expanded LIM experimentation that would eventually result in mass evacuations, suffering, and death.

The Conspiracy Theorists

A few conspiracy theorists sharing their... "views" on ARDA, the anomalies, the Zone, and the President, among other things. They identify themselves only with their initials: "C.C.", "J.K.", "K.W.", and "R.F".

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They provide examples of:

• Conspiracy Theorist: Naturally.
• Insane Troll Logic: Believe, among other things, that the zone is full of robotic owls that use low-frequency sound to make people sad, that the weather is manufactured by the government in hollow mountains (and since the anomalies are like weather, therefore they were also manufactured by the government) and that one can protect oneself from the effects of terraforming by using mayonnaise.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: They manage some accurate insights into various things going on in the zone like the place being a testbed of terraforming (the scientists weren't trying to, but the zone reforms itself constantly nonetheless) and the fact that the government created the anomalies (they also weren't trying to, but ARDA is in fact responsible for them).

The Pnematube Technician

A hapless repairman working on the pneumatic tube messaging system set up throughout the zone. His experiences are cataloged in "The Mailman" log series.

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He provide examples of:

• All There in the Manual: A weird case in that his name (Clive) and the resolution of his story aren't actually found in his own log series. Scanning the Hopped-Up Hare will reveal that an ARDA search and rescue team found him and two other individuals, still alive after years in the zone thanks to helpful anomalies fixing their gear. However, all three insisted that they'd only been there for a short time, weeks at most.
• Alien Geometries: Went into the tubes and found a location where he could end up going in the opposite direction without ever turning around.
• The Determinator: Absolutely will not stop until he finds out what's going on inside the tube system.
• Uncertain Doom: Their last logbook shows that he crawled into the tubes and found something anomalous, then declared his intent to stay in the tubes until he finds out what it is, but that's where his log ends and nothing seems to specify what happened to him (though the fact that the player can find that log might imply that they survived, one way or another). Subverted, in that the fact that he was ultimately rescued is found in the log entry for an entirely unrelated anomaly.
• Unstoppable Mailman: Technically not a postal worker, but the name of their logs and their unending persistence to find out what's going on in the tubes certainly reflects this trope.
• Unnaturally Looping Location: Encountered one in the tube system. Going through it, he caught a glimpse of whatever anomaly was causing all the problems in the tube system and resolved to find it.