The Forever Winter is an ambitious indie “anti-shooter” that, despite its many technical problems, features one of the most grim but masterfully made worlds in gaming. It invokes the same sensation one would have when first encountering Warhammer 40,000 and exudes great beauty with its dark and gritty themes.
There are several factions that prominently feature in the game and clash endlessly on its many maps, so here are all The Forever Winter factions and their backgrounds.
Every faction in The Forever Winter
The following information was skillfully put together by a YouTuber, Riloe, who compiled a lore video in collaboration with the game’s developers.
- Europa: Since The Forever Winter takes inspiration from George Orwell’s 1984 novel, every major faction is a “superstate” comprised of numerous real-world countries. Europa is one such superstate, built by unifying most of North and South America and Western Europe. It is a dying, decaying state that, despite its size, faces widespread disease and famine alongside endless, brutal warfare with its neighbors.
- Eurasia: This is a union of East and parts of Central Asia, exhibiting sci-fi levels of technological advancement, particularly in the biotech department, through which it has managed to successfully continue growing crops even as the Earth continues to decay and wither away. However, due to being so advanced and a “false utopia,” as Riloe puts it, Eurasia slowly but surely faced total collapse amid rising overpopulation, though that was cut short once all-out war broke out between it and Europa, in which most of the world was leveled with nukes.
- Euruska: This was one of Eurasia’s allies in the total war between it and Europa, comprised of what we know as the Slavic countries of Eastern Europe, as well as parts of Africa. Eurasia’s aggressive biotech-obsessed governance has largely influenced its culture and perspectives on war and humanity, with Euruska using living creatures to mass-produce all sorts of bio-technological horrors.
You, the player, are completely unaligned with the states above. Your role is to go out into the ashen, barren wastelands of the former American West Coast to scavenge for gear and resources to bring back to the so-called Innards, a place of relative safety where the downtrodden and those who love to prey on them gather to survive another day or make a quick buck. Arms and drug dealers, biomechanical creatures, sorry souls seeking nothing but a roof over their heads—this is the only state you know. Don’t forget to bring them water, as losing that, even when you’re offline, could mean a return to baseline and a new need to venture out into the ash and darkness.
