Whispers in the Woods is the first major DLC for Pacific Drive, a first-person survival driving game set in an Exclusion Zone. The survival and overall gameplay mechanics are very unique to modern survival games. The feeling of being trapped in an Exclusion Zone and mapping out your routes to find a way out with your potential wagon is what keeps the hope up of a player in Pacific Drive. I absolutely loved the overall concept of it, as it brought new and familiar features to my table. Now, 20 months after the release of Pacific Drive, I am back at it, this time to explore the Whispering Woods, a new area within the Exclusion Zone.
Pacific Drive: Whispers in the Woods is available for $14.99 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC [Steam, and Epic Games Store].
Step Into the Whispering Woods – A Folk Horror Dense Forest
Whispers in the Woods DLC offers a brand-new area, the Whispering Woods, for players to explore. It is a dense, dark, and folk horror forest filled with unique anomalies, effigies, strange symbols, ritualistic structures, and unnatural phenomena. From the moment you step into the Whispering Banks, it totally shifts the overall mentality of open roads in the base game. Not only that, the overall atmosphere of Whispering Woods is like someone is watching you. The eerie ambient sounds in your ears and random structural sounds are what uplift the overall folk horror theme of the forest.
Now, this new content becomes available quite early in the main story of Pacific Drive. After a few hours of progression in the main story, you will receive a transmission from Francis asking you to connect a ZETI System to the Route Planner. The ZETI System will pick up a mysterious signal coming from one of the unreachable areas within the Zone. To be specific, that area will be the Whispering Woods. Now, as you set off to the location of the mysterious signal, you will enter the Whispering Woods, where you will find the first effigy and some strange symbols.
Pacific Drive Whisper in The Woods New Zone
Story – Follow the Tracks of Audio Tapes and Repeat
The main story progression of the Whispers in the Woods revolves around finding Audio Tapes to learn about the rituals and experiments that took place in the forest. Moreover, the tapes will mention Jack, a new character, who was caught between the conflicting interests of The Fellowship and ARDA. As you finish your first route in Whispering Woods, you will arrive at a new Auto Shop with the same dark and horror theme. Here, you will receive a Whispering Chart, which you will use to plan your routes and find Audio Tapes.
The main nodes on the chart show the altars where you can find audio tapes. From here, you will have to follow the course of finding the audio tapes, returning to the Auto Shop, and playing the audio tapes. Each tape you play will unlock a new node for you to explore in the Whispering Woods.
Exploring Whispering Woods
Gameplay Changes – Get Used to New Ways
Now, let’s talk about the differences between the base game and the Whispers in the Woods. Honestly, the DLC follows a very unique path in terms of daily progression than the base game. Unlike the regular Exclusion Zone, where you snag energy nodes and scavenge points of interest in your route to return to the Auto Shop, the Whispering Woods operate differently. If you look at the upper left corner of the screen, you will see a bar, which is a Tide, that constantly fills up over time. As the Tide fills up every quarter, it brings new entities after you.
Once the Tide fully fills up, it opens a massive blue pillar of light at a random location. This blue light is your ticket back to the Auto Shop. Fortunately, there is no time limit to reach the blue light, but the chasing entities won’t make it easier for you to spend a lot of time. The rate of Tide filling up is based on the player’s synergy, which increases by putting on Attuned Car Parts. These Attuned Car Parts are unique to Whispering Woods. You can find these parts at the altars as well as cars on the map. It is best to swap them with your regular car parts.
In addition to these changes, there is a new tool, Harmonizer. This tool is essential for repairing the new Attuned Car Parts. You cannot repair the attuned car parts like the regular parts. The Attuned Car Parts require harmonic energy for repair. However, I personally avoid the repair, because it is a lot of work. You would have to use the harmonizer to transfer harmonic energy from one entity to another.
Whispering Woods Cult Symbols
New Features – Carry Artifacts for Challenge and Survival
Artifact is a new gameplay feature in Pacific Drive within the Whispers in the Woods DLC. As you will be going to Altars on your routes, you will get the chance to attain one item; it can be an Attuned Car Part or an Artifact. The Artifacts are mysterious items with surreal effects. These effects can bring benefit to your journey or raise the challenge for you. Each Artifact will make your car act differently. Some artifacts will make it honk all the time if the trunk is closed, lightning strikes closer to the car, and much more.
However, artifacts not only increase the challenge but also help you in surviving the Whispering Woods. In your routes, you will often come across sacrifice altars. Here, you can sacrifice artifacts to substantially fill up the Tide gauge, allowing you to open the path to the Auto Shop to escape. Moreover, you can bring the artifacts to the garage and place them at the refinery to produce attuned resources. These will help you craft the attuned car parts.
Overall, the adventure for Pacific Drive in Whispers in the Woods DLC is very different, and it is a good thing. You see, you will not have to worry about the surreal endeavors of Whispering Woods in the base game. It allows you to enjoy two different types of gameplay strategies within a single journey. Last but not least, I would like to mention that you can easily progress your tech tree while playing the Whisper in the Woods DLC. However, there are no new additions to the tech tree. If you are a new player, you can complete the tech tree while completing the DLC and return to the base game.
Weird Rituals in Whispering Woods
Graphics and Sound – Perfect Mix of Ritualistic Music And Ambient Car Drives
Pacific Drive is known for its artistic low-poly world design, which creates a sense of ominous and mysterious vibes as you explore the Zone. With Whisper Woods, this is taken up a notch with a hauntingly beautiful atmosphere full of rituals and cult displayed all around this dark and gloomy forest. However, the graphics are not photorealistic, but performance has definitely gotten better compared to the base version with the new update. Earlier, it used to struggle with frame drops on mid-tier PCs. I didn’t face any issues regarding quality on the PS5 version.
As much as I love sound design, Pacific Drive: Whispers in the Woods focuses heavily on the folklore-inspired sounds as you explore the forest. Music and Sound are at the core of the experience, from mud sounds, eerie music, scary wind, and car details, everything adds to your exploration. For music, there are tons of licensed and ambient music featured in the game that help during the drives. One of the coolest features is the in-game radio, which immerses you with radio chatter and other characters in-game filling you on lore.
-
- Scavenging Resources
-
- Eerie world of Pacific Drive
-
- Whispering Wood Challenges
-
- Driving Car in Pacific Drive
Pacific Drive: Whispers in the Woods was reviewed on PlayStation 5 with a key provided by Kepler Interactive.
