Welcome to Whispers in the Woods - Pacific Drive’s largest expansion yet, available now on Steam, Epic Games Store, Windows Store, PlayStation, and now Xbox.
Click here to check out our update post featuring the launch trailer!
Version 1.11.0 - Highlights
Whispers in the Woods is now available!
A brand new storyline for Pacific Drive that adds new gameplay mechanics, a new map to explore, and a fully voiced narrative that exposes you to an anomaly-obsessed group of Zone fanatics.
Significant Performance Improvements to Pacific Drive
New Languages, new minor features, and new cosmetics
Additional bug fixes and UX improvements
Features and Content added to Base Game
Added new languages
Ukrainian
Italian
Updated Spawning Rules and Map improvements
Traffic Jam Obstruction
Dynamic Street Light Spawning for Paved and Dirt Roads
New color variations to find for decal kits-
Five new colors for Arda, Flames, Numbers, Panel, Sketchy, Stripes and Two Tone decals - bringing the total number to 32 new car cosmetics!
New garage cosmetics to discover and collect: Little library, Advanced Dartboard, Footprint, Hockey Sticks, Wheeled Shelves, Tennis, Steering wheel collage
Whispers in the Woods is Out Now!
Brand new linear Narrative storyline
Fully voice acted with new cast of characters
New Gameplay systems
New musical score by Wilbert Roget, II
New Anomalies and Anomaly Behaviors
New Items, Car Parts, and Cosmetics
Explore the Whispering Woods
Performance Improvements
A small foreword: This patch brings our largest effort, and in turn our most significant performance improvements to Pacific Drive to date. These improvements positively impact all versions of the game, including PC (high and low spec machines) and Consoles (both standard and performance mode). The changes target CPU, GPU, Video Memory, and Load times.
CPU
Disabled multiple unutilized aspects of Unreal Engine 4.27 that were not necessary for Pacific Drive
Reduced complexity of the physics scene for faster performance
Optimized expensive player specific physics overlaps
General improvements for blueprints by increasing use of cached data
Minor Time of Day optimizations
Multiple CPU specific hitches fixed
GPU
Massive reduction in base geometry and LODs for very expensive foliage and rock meshes
Improved culling of meshes at extreme distances
Improved LOD generation for the entire game. Notable areas of improvement
Car Parts and Upgrades
Items, Tools, and Resources
Garage Stations
Resource Providers and Scrapable Vehicles
Environment Detailing Meshes
Reduced dynamic distance field scene complexity
Reduced the default mirror shadow quality settings which were set higher than needed and could significantly impact performance
Video Memory
Removed redundant landscape grass data for improved memory footprint
Reduced some expensive distance field mesh resolutions for improved memory footprint
Reduced unused or underutilized texture sizes across the game with no visual impact
Load Times
Improved load times across the game with targeted procedural generation spawning optimizations
A Note on Shader Caching:
Alongside the improvements in performance, we are aware that there have been some regressions with shader caching with this update. However, overall performance has been largely improved over previous versions and we do have a fix for this specific issue that will be deployed in a near future patch.
Gameplay Balance and Scripting
Improved Resistance stacking for certain Car Parts
Adjustments to Lim Shield Effectiveness
The Lim Shield now has active battery drain while activated
0.35 kW/sec. Battery Drain per Damage is reduced by 50% to help counteract this.
Developer Note: We found players were driving with the LIM Shield active at all times without much downside. To better align the car part with our design goals we added battery drain while it is active, but also lowered how much your battery drains when the shield mitigates damage.
Adjusted Expeditions Tutorials process
Tutorial timing flexibility for new players, you now have the ability to back out earlier if you don’t want to listen to Francis talk as much!
Weather pattern timing has been slowed, allowing them to last longer
Reduced death penalties on default settings:
85% Chemicals lost on death
Car parts that die shortly before players dies are more likely to appear in the Friendly Dumpster
Car parts returned from Friendly Dumpster are more likely to return with better health ranges.
Car parts that die shortly before players die are less likely to appear on Remnant
These settings remain adjustable under Gameplay Settings if players prefer a different experience
Changed quirks that influence Battery Charge.
Battery now charges at 0.65 kW / Sec as opposed to 2 kW/Sec
Bugs and UX Improvements
Fixed occasional softlock conditions in Expeditions tutorial
Incorrect maps have been removed from the Expeditions map pool
Stabilizer maps have been removed from the Expeditions map pool, player can no longer spawn gateways by activating stabilizers on an Expeditions run
Fixed Red Balloons duplicating after resuming a suspended run on certain maps
Fixed occasional crashes on save/load
Fixed the rare occurrence of duplicating fuel cans
Fixed occasional softlock conditions in tutorial
Electric Engine now correctly display resource consumption rates
Repair Stop in Garage will now ignore peculiar parts
Improved HUD feedback on Thermal Vac and Magnet Bumper
Prevents Anchors from accidentally being put into Magnet Bumper inventory
Bridge points of interest now have less aggressive LOD (pop-in)
Switching from low detail to high detail bridge meshes happens further away
Fixed missing collision on two trees
Radio no longer lowers volume temporarily for dialogue when dialogue is fully muted in settings
Updated lighting visuals in red Zone storms
Fixed certain spawning issues for obstructions and buildings that sometimes block roads
Updated Pacific Drive Crash Reporter options and legal language to be Ironwood Studios specific
Known Issues for Base Game
Controller haptics still activate occasionally when disabled in settings
Status Effect indicators are not properly rotating in inventory
Z.E.T.I. System can get stuck in animation when saving/quitting during the animation
Small workaround - can be fixed by reinserting Z.E.T.I hard drive
A hitch can occur when destroying a Plasma Generator with the Impact Hammer
Abandoned cars sometimes spawn floating
Known Issues for Whispers in the Woods
Taking a standard Junction Exit after summoning an Attuned Gateway can cause Altars of Passage to not spawn in future Exit Junctions
The Refinery garage station will continue to run while the game is paused
Rare instances where Audio Tape dialogue is missing partial subtitles
Occasionally, certain new anomaly types will fail to spawn in their specially marked junctions
Applies to REDACTED Anomalies
REDACTED neck visuals can erratically stretch and distort in certain situations
REDACTED logbook Photo cannot be unlocked due to the nature of the Anomaly
A slight hitch can occur when any Attuned car part is highlighted
Platform Specific Issues for Whispers in the Woods
The Xbox Entitlement for the WITW DLC is tied to the connection status of Xbox Online Services
If a player has an existing Xbox save with the WITW DLC and goes offline, they get a warning that “this save is inaccessible due to missing content” message when trying to load the game. Save becomes accessible once connection is reestablished to the Xbox Online Services.
On PlayStation 5 Performance Mode and Xbox Series S consoles, depending on graphics settings, there is a problem that can cause fog to flicker under certain conditions
We’ve prepared a fix for this issue, and will be implementing it soon