Gameplay

The gameplay of Dark Future revolves around how you choose to manage your Basic Needs. Of these needs, Nerve is the most important; it represents your overall mental health and level of anxiety. If Nerve is low, your Stamina recovery time is significantly increased. Low Nerve can also make you nauseous and restless, making it impossible to eat, drink, or get restful sleep.

Exposure to stress will cause your Nerve to deplete. Unlike other Basic Needs, if Nerve runs out, you will suffer a fatal heart attack.

There are two ways to recover Nerve:

• Return to an apartment and engage in a relaxing activity. (Sleep, take a shower, spend time with a romantic partner, etc)

• Use a consumable. By default, all of the consumables that restore Nerve are addictive and often come with other negative status effects when used.

This creates tension between pushing your luck and staying out in Night City with the help of dangerous and addictive substances, or heading home to rest. This tension is heightened with the other included features of Dark Future (disabled Fast Travel, vehicle summoning restrictions) that make returning to your apartment more prohibitive. Suddenly, going to the bar across the street looks more appealing than taking the metro all the way back home...

Because of this, each new apartment that V unlocks becomes hugely beneficial in a way that they weren't before in the base game. The more apartments you unlock, the closer you will be to any one of them when the need to relax arises.

Visit other pages to learn more about each of Dark Future's features, or just start playing; tutorials will appear to guide you when contextually relevant.

When Dark Future Is Running (i.e. "Is This Thing On?")

Dark Future automatically starts up when you start the game. You can start a new game, or load any existing save game. You will see a welcome message when Dark Future starts, confirming that it is running.

Dark Future intelligently suspends its behavior during important moments. You shouldn't have to care about your growling stomach during an important cutscene.

• If starting a vanilla new game, Dark Future will be suspended until after you have completed The Rescue. If using the Phantom Liberty quickstart, Dark Future will become available immediately following the first call with Songbird.

• Dark Future will suspend after you cross the Point of No Return during Nocturne Op55N1 until the main story is finished and you return to the open world.

• Dark Future temporarily suspends during the following scenarios:

  • When playing as another character during certain story events

  • When in Cyberspace

  • When in the Fury state from the Edgerunner perk

  • During all cinematics and moments of limited gameplay