The Player is the main player character in Sunset Overdrive. Players are completely customizable to their personal taste. Body type, face/skin tone, gender, hair and clothing can be edited at any point. While always referenced as "Player" when subtitles are enabled, the Player reveals in the Quest Fizzie: The Inside Story that their name is "visible in multiplayer, but always just out of my field of view", referring to the actual player's Xbox Gamertag.
Involvement
CAUTION: STORY SPOILERS BELOW
Sunset Overdrive
The Player was a janitor for FizzCo, and was working the night of the Overcharge Delirium XT prelaunch party in Sunset City. Shortly after deciding to go on a break, the Player witnesses a party goer mutate into the first Overcharge Drinker, and is then chased by others shortly after. The Player manages to get on the rail train, but is forced out by OD at a stop. After discovering their traversal moves (without explanation), the Player attempts to enter their apartment, but the door struggles to open. The Player is then knocked to a neighbouring rooftop by a Herker. Traversing away from the Herker, they undergrind to meet another survivor who managed to arm himself, but he is taken away by a Winger, dropping his weapon. The Player arms themselves and fends off the OD until another survivor distracts the Herker, clearing the way home. Upon entering their home, the Player barricades the door and window, and grabs a beer out of the fridge. 17 days later, the Player is out of beer, food and toilet paper, and the OD finally managed to break into their apartment. Walter, the man who distracted the Herker on the night of the outbreak, once again saves the Player from certain death.
Outside, the Player is tested by Walter on their survival skills and learns that Fizzco has cut off all communications from the city in an effort to cover up the outbreak. After meeting Two-Hat Jack and Floyd at the Brewery Fort, the Player defends the fort from an attacking gang of Scabs. When the Scabs are dead, the Player is sent by Floyd to run some errands while Walter returns to the overpass. The Player is introduced to various game mechanics and the Announcer, a disembodied voice that the Player hears, since "studies have shown that this is the best way" for players to learn.
The Player meets Sam at the Crown Blades Factory
Meeting Walter at the overpass, the Player helps fend off more Scabs. After the dust has settled, Walter shows the Player a glider he has been working on. which he plans on using to escape the city and expose Fizzco. However, while holding the glider up for him while he tinkers with it, the Player is ambushed by OD and is forced to let go of the glider, which falls off the platform and is too damaged from the impact to fly. Returning to the Brewery, Floyd gives the Player a lead to help rebuild the glider's propeller at the Crown Blades Factory. There, the Player meets and saves Sam, a private school student, from OD. In return for saving his life, he offers to help the Player get a propeller. They escape the factory by hijacking a nearby train and ride it to Sasquatch & Friends, an arcade and pizzeria where other students of Oxford West are holed up, along with Floyd's friend Calista, who is selling clothes.
In an effort to win the Oxford’s favour, the Player gets Dirk the expensive Bora Bora brand bottled water he likes so much, helps retrieve Margaret’s robot dog Boo Boo, and gives Max closure about what happened to his parents. However, the Oxfords are ungrateful, and after Sam’s unsuccessful attempt at a motivational speech, the Player threatens to throw the kids out to fend for themselves, which springs them into action. This results in the construction of a 3D printer, which they intend to use to build a new propeller. The printer needs a faster processor, so the Player gets a lead from Floyd about a man who lives in a nearby cell phone tower. While searching the tower, the Player is ambushed by reality show host Buck National, who mistakes them for Fizzco. Pleading their case for just wanting some computer parts, Buck cuts the Player a deal; parts for footage for his show, Buck National vs. the Apocalypse. The Player completes several combat challenges for Buck, who stays true to his word and leaves the Player a new motherboard. Upon returning to the Oxfords, Sam installs the new board and tells the Player that the new propeller will take a few hours to complete. In the meantime, the Player protects the Brewery vats for Floyd while he cooks some new amps.
After the propeller is done and delivered to Walter, the Player retrieves a part that Scabs had stolen from the glider, a glide wheel. Upon returning with the part, more Scabs try to attack Walter, followed up by Fizzco Rifle Bots. After the bots have been dealt with, Walter and the Player launch the glider. Walter instructs the Player to head towards the Brewery to get a lift boost from the exhaust, but they are ambushed by a Fizzco patrol blimp which will call in reinforcements. Sam instructs the Player to follow the blimp to the Oxford’s base, where Sam uploads a virus that disables the blimp’s shields, allowing it to be shot down with the glider’s weapons. With the destruction of the blimp, the Player uses the exhaust of the Power Plant to get another lift to gain enough altitude to leave the city limits, that is until Walter notices a pigeon being fried on an invisible Fizzco energy wall. He pushes the Player out of the glider in time, but does not have enough time to escape himself and perishes in the glider explosion.
The Player watches the glider explode with Walter in it.
While mourning Walter, Floyd sends the Player to the Little Tokyo District to find Bryllcream, a troop master who took several scouts to take shelter in the during the outbreak. Arriving at the museum, the Player finds the courtyard deserted, but defended by traps. Entering through a window after discovering the front door is locked, the Player is surrounded by several scouts brandishing spears, and is addressed by Norton, the troop master in charge, who claims that Bryllcream is missing. After witnessing the scout 4Kim being kicked out for agreeing with the Player on Norton being a dick, Norton offers to help them find Bryllcream if they do exactly what he says.
Norton’s first task for the Player is to destroy the radio transmitters at the radio tower, which will make finding Bryllcream easier. The Player heads to the Content Channel radio station, where they fight off Fizzco bots and destroy the two transmitters, which severely damages the radio tower. Doing so causes Fizzco mascot Fizzie to appear and attack the Player for trespassing and destroying Fizzco property. The Player destroys Fizzie and parachutes down on a piece of his balloon.
The Player prepares to do battle with Fizzie
Sam calls the Player back to the Oxford’s base, where they find 4Kim amongst the Oxfords. She distrusts Norton and believes that Bryllcream’s last known location, the Hot Dog Factory, holds clues to his disappearance. The Player is ambushed by Scabs at the factory, where they find several artifacts belonging to Bryllcream. The Player sees a wrecking ball, and hunts down a Herker that made off with the keys. After starting the wrecking ball up, the Player accidentally causes an Overcharge spill and fights off more OD. When the OD are clear, the Player smashes the wall to the factory. Inside, a journal by Bryllcream states that the hotdogs have spoiled and that he was going to meet Norton at Hepcat’s Diner.
When the Player arrives at Hepcat’s, Sam informs them that 4Kim has run off to search the rail train station, and that Scabs have followed her. At the train station, the Player sees 4Kim being taken prisoner on board the train. Chasing the train around the city, the Player disables each car’s thrusters and brings the front car to a halt. 4Kim easily dispatches her captors and informs the Player that Bryllcream is in a garbage truck somewhere in the city. Sam chimes in, saying he can use the garbage system’s GPS to locate the truck Bryllcream is in. While Sam works on that, Floyd sets up base at Hepcat's and has the Player defend the vats again to cook more Amps.
With help from Sam and 4Kim, the Player uses satellite dishes to perform vector triangulation to locate the garbage truck Bryllcream is in, and destroys a Fizzco signal jammer in the process. Using the co-ordinates Sam gained by the triangulation, the Player arrives at the truck’s location and fights off a gang of Scabs. After killing the Scabs, the Player tries to assure him that they are here to rescue him, but Bryllcream insists on waiting for his troop to save him. After a few Scab Tossers set fire to the garbage truck, Bryllcream accepts the Player’s offer of rescue. The Player douses the garbage truck in Overcharge, the only liquid available, attracting OD. After fighting off the OD, the truck somehow starts moving. The Player rides on top or chases the truck until it comes to a complete stop, and the Player discovers Bryllcream as a quadruple amputee inside.
The Player carries Bryllcream to the museum where they confront Norton, revealing that it was Norton who locked him inside the garbage truck. Exposed, Norton decides to drink a can of Overcharge and mutates into a worm-like dragon OD. The Norton Dragon bursts out of the museum with Bryllcream in hand. The Player chases the Norton Dragon around the district, taking it out with several passes of melee strikes. After the final blow, Norton falls to the ground and dies, releasing Bryllcream.
After the battle with Norton, Bryllcream sends the Player to the Harbor District find his friend Ignatius, head of the Ship Builder’s , who can build a boat with plans provided by Bryllcream so the Player can escape the city. They are briefed on Ignatius by 4Kim, who reveals that he is a hardcore Live Action Role Player (LARPer) and that he and his LARPer friends have been psychologically damaged by the events of Horror Night and believe that they believe that their fantasy campaign is real. The Player doesn’t think much of it, thinking that they will be armed with fake weapons. Upon reaching the gym, the Player alerts the LARPers (known as Fargarthians), who attack the Player with real weapons. The Player calls a truce and agrees to swear fealty to Ignatius, who has fallen ill. Wendy, the one Fargarthian who has not suffered PTSD, advises the Player to get 21st century medicine and food.
The Fargarthians, however, decide that Ignacius should have tree bark stew, and enlist the Player to help them harvest it. After fighting off some OD and Scabs, they arrive at a camp site where the Player defends the Fargarthians from OD as they harvest bark, with the aid of siege weapons. Returning to Castle Fargarthia, Ignatius drinks the bark stew, but vomits it back out. The Player then asks Wendy to send the team to meet them at the farmer’s market.
Upon arrival, they discover that all the food has been eaten by pigeons, which the Player decides will have to do. They set up Pyro-Gyser traps and flaming grind rails around the area, with the Fargarthians launching bird seed to each trap. After roasting 500 pigeons, they bring the pigeon feast back to Ignatius.
To finalize Ignatius’ recovery, the Player goes to the docks to look for some medicine. After fighting off a Fizzco Bomb Bot ambush, the Player finds a bottle of Fizzotussin. Wendy calls the Player and tells them to meet her at Leech Pond, where she tells them that the Fargarthians will only use 12th century medical practices, and makes the Player strip to their underwear and collect leeches from the pond. After the Player has collected enough, Wendy makes them drink the whole bottle of medicine so that the leeches will absorb it, allowing them to transfer it to Ignatius. The Player objects, calling out Wendy’s weird logic, but goes through with it anyway.
On the way back to the gym, the Player starts hallucinating about chasing a flying, talking Fizzie plushie around the city, who fills the streets with lava and summons skeletons to “play”. After chasing Fizzie around a bit (and hallucinating a ninja cheerleader assassin), they land on the roof of the gym, where Fizzie leaves a Dirty Harry for the Player. Fizzie makes more copies of himself, and attacks the Player with rockets until the Player shoots the “real” Fizzie, where the hallucination ends, and they apply the leeches to Ignatius. In the meantime, Floyd requires the Player to defend the vats at the marina while new Amps cook.
Fully recovered, Ignatius requires one more task before building the ship, and that is to retrieve his crown from the King Scab. First, he sends the Player to retrieve a triceratops figurehead that was stolen from the Fargarthians. Upon returning with it, Ignacius leads the Fargarthians on an assault on the Scabs at the amusement park. There, the Player assists in taking out the King Scab on the rollercoaster. Ignatius promises to begin construction on the ship the next day.
The Player escaping Sunset City by boat.
The next day, the Player finds the ship built out of junk, which will allow it to bypass the Fizzco energy wall. Captained by Wendy (who has now decided to become a pirate), the ship sets sail and comes under attack by OD, whom are fended off by the Player. As the ship is leaving the city with Wendy and the Player undetected, Sam calls the Player, saying that Fizzco is
attempting to eliminate any evidence of the outbreak by killing the survivors. Troop Bushido also sends a distress signal. The Player has a revelation, realizing now that they’d just floated through life and that theirs didn’t begin until the world came to an end, and tells Wendy to turn the ship around. Wendy attempts to mutiny, but the Player pulls out every gun in their arsenal, convincing her to go back.
The Player first helps Troop Bushido dispatch Fizzco bots near the museum, and then assists the Oxfords in defending the pizzeria from an onslaught of bots, including a Tank Bot. Sam decodes the data stored in the Tank Bot, which tells of an imminent threat to Sunset City. While Sam decodes more of the data, he sends the Player to the hospital in the Downtown District, to enlist the help of cheerleaders wearing Day of the Dead makeup, who have been seen sneaking in to Fizzco HQ.
When the Player arrives at the hospital, they are ambushed by the cheerleaders, Las Catrinas, and knocked out cold. When the Player comes to in the children’s wing, they try to enlist the help from Las Catrinas’ leader, Esperanza, who explains that Fizzco HQ is fully automated and that there is nothing of use inside, and asks the Player to go away. The Player decides to complete a quest for them to sway their favour.
Believing that Las Catrinas will be impressed if presented with a new sword, the Player asks 4Kim for assistance with finding one. She explains that the best sword in the city is owned by a Fizzco exec. The Player discovers that the exec left with the sword, so they collect nearby metals, smelt them in the Power Plant’s steam vent and forges the blade using Dive Bomb attacks, and then cools it in the Water Treatment Plant. Finally, the Player uses the sword to collect Fizzco Bot souls just outside the hospital for Las Catrinas to see. However, they are not impressed, with Esperanza not seeing a use for it. After the Player accidentally sets a teddy bear on fire with the sword, scaring a child, Esperanza kills the Player, who respawns outside only to find the sword to have lost its power.
The Player returns to the hospital and decides to talk to one of the children. A boy says that he has never been to a baseball game or climbed a mountain, which the Player dismisses, but when the boy reveals that he’s never been to a rock concert, the Player decides to put one on. Recruiting both Wendy and 4Kim on bass and drums, respectively, the Player still needs a frontman. Spotting a conveniently placed flyer, the Player uses it as a lead. Traveling to Club Fortississimo, the Player discovers that inside is King Buzzo of the Melvins, who immediately agrees to play at the concert.
Meeting at the Downtown fort, the Player protects three fuse boxes that Floyd has powered with Overcharge from incoming OD as the band sets up and tests the equipment. When the show begins, the Player fends off another wave as the band performs the Melvins’ song Rat Faced Granny. The concert a success and the children happy, Esperanza agrees to help the Player in the final battle for Sunset City.
The Player rides the Overcharge bottle in a parody of Dr. Strangelove.
During the final battle at Fizzco HQ, the Player provides a distraction with the aid of the others as Esperanza helps Sam sneak inside to hack into Fizzco’s server room to discover their plans, which are revealed to involve a super weapon somewhere inside the HQ building. The Player decides that destroying the building outright is the best course of action. After Fizzco’s forces are dispatched, Sam instructs the Player to go to the giant bottle of Overcharge nearby and knock it around to cause it to launch like a rocket so that it will strike the tower. The Player rides the bottle right into the top of the tower, destroying it, but dies in the process. As the others mourn the loss of the Player, the credits start to roll.
"THAT'S the ending?!" One of the many examples of the Player breaking the fourth wall.
The Player then walks into frame, complaining about the quality of the ending, indicating that Neogaf’s wrath will be incurred. Time rewinds and the Player awakens from the dead. As the Player is bragging about their display of the destruction of the tower, Sam’s phone indicates that the super weapon is about to power up. The Fizzco HQ Building’s inner core powers up with a copy of Fizzie’s AI, revealing itself to be the super weapon that will destroy Sunset City to cover up the outbreak. As Fizzie starts destroying the city, the Player traverses to the top of the building and shoots the exposed power core until the building is destroyed. Declaring that is how to end a video game, the Player celebrates with the others with a keg party. After the real end credits, the Player is free to roam Sunset City at their leisure, complete any outstanding Quests and Challenges, find collectibles, replay missions or play Chaos Squad.
The Mystery of Mooil Rig
The Player escorts Bryllcream to the Mooil Rig.
The Player is informed by 4Kim that Bryllcream has gone missing, and recieves a tracking signal for his mech suit from Sam. The Player follows the signal to a few pieces of the suit, with a Winger grabbing Bryllcream when the Player reaches the final piece. The Player follows the Winger to the beach by the marina where it drops Bryllcream off. They are attacked by OD exposed to Mooil petroleum infused with Overcharge. Bryllcream tells the Player that those OD are coming from the offshore oil rig, and that he fears his sister may be in danger. They repair his mech suit and acquire a glider and blast off towards the rig, taking out Wingers along the way. After the Wingers are dead and they arrive at the rig, they are attacked by a sea monster. Bryllcream is snatched up by it, and the Player's glider is grabbed out of the air and dragged into the water. The Player shoots their way out of the monster's grasp and emerges from the water onto a cargo crate.
The Player establishes contact with Bryllcream, who is fighting off resistance as the Player traverses to the oil rig, avoiding the sea monster's tentacles. Bryllcream instructs the Player to go to the foreman's office to look for the incident log for clues to his sister, Gwyneth's, whereabouts. After fighting off more Oil OD at the foreman's office, the foreman informs the Player that he had her put on a boat and offers to help find it if the Player clears the rig of the egg clusters around the rig. After destroying the eggs, the foreman offers to take the Player to the navigation room after he has a cigarette, which ignites from the oil fumes, killing him in the resulting explosion. The Player meets Bryllcream on the other rig, who throws them to the platform where the navigation room is, which is defended by the Mooil Workers. As the Player is about to enter the navigation room, the Workers demolish the entrance with explosives.
The Player and Bryllcream then, under Sam's direction, create three massive fires by building up pressure in three valves on the rig so Sam can triangulate the position of the rig. Upon discovering that the boat has explosives on board that will go off if the boat gets too close to the rig, the Player rushes over and finds all five bombs hidden onboard and throws them overboard. The Player also protects the ship from the Worker's mortor cannons as it approaches the dock, and moars it to the rig. Upon meeting Gwyneth, the Player and Bryllcream find out she was trying to kill off the union workers and replace them with cheaper labor, so she can keep earning her high executive salary. The sea monster then appears and kills her, and then grabs Bryllcream and swims around the rig, with the Player close behind for a while until the monster throws Bryllcream onto the rig.
The Player does battle with the DL Sea Monster.
The Player and Bryllcream fight off the DL Sea Monster by launching the Player into its maw to get themselves swallowed so they can melee attack its internal organs, and then destroying its tentacles after it spits the Player out. After repeating this process a few times, the DL Sea Monster falls into the water and is presumed dead. In one final, awkward conversation, The Player inappropriately keeps bringing up Gwyneth's death, causing Bryllcream to leave them on the rig as the DLC comes to an end. The Player is free to explore the rig and complete any Quests, Challenges and collectibles at their leisure.
An awkward conversation with Bryllcream.
Dawn of the Rise of the Fallen Machines
The Player is contacted by Sam regarding two of his former teachers, who are trapped in the Fizzco Robotics Factory just outside the city. The Player needs to bypass the Invisible Wall, so Sam sends them to collect the flight schedules from a relay on one of the bridges. The relay's circuit's malfunction, but the Player conveniently finds a new board in a Sigtran crate that the Scabs in the area stole, which Sam uses to locate where the next drone will pickup cargo to ship to the factory. The Player hitches a ride on a cargo container and defends it from Scabs trying shoot down the drone. After fighting off both Scabs and OD, the Player arrives at the factory as the wall opens up to let the drone in.
Arrival at FizzCo Robotics
Upon arrival, the Player heads to the junkyard in the rear of the factory, where they meet Snackwrap, a cleaning robot who has managed to trap Sam's mentors, Lou and Fiona, inside a building. The Player gets replacement parts for Snackwrap, who then lets Lou and Fiona out (and is subsequently pummeled out of commission by Lou). They send the Player off to collect Kill Codes, which Fizzco has programmed into their unupgraded robots, giving the Player a disguise in infiltrate the forcefields (re: cardboard boxes and a bucket painted like a Fizzbot). The Player collects the Kill Codes by reprogramming the security bots to take down the force fields protecting them. After a brief fight with an upgraded Tank Bot, the Player chases it down to the fort where the bot is defeated. This causes the factory to go into lockdown, so Lou has the Player take Boo-Boo to take down the final forcefield protecting the Kill Code.
Lou and Fiona's idea of a "disguise".
After gathering all pieces of the Kill Code, the Player attempts to transmit them via the comm hub, which powers down due to the lockdown. Fiona sends the Player to reset the breaker, which temporarily brings the invisible wall down, letting the OD in. The Player is sent to collect an arc reactor from a Security Tank Bot and bring it to the power station, which creates the Energy Ball, which the Player uses to jump start the magnetic dampeners. After bringing the power back online, the Energy Ball becomes unstable, so the Player covers it in nanites by rolling over upgraded security bots. After being released from the Energy Ball, the Player transmits the Kill Codes, which shuts down most of the robots.
The Player battles B-Win.
After regrouping with Lou and Fiona to celebrate, the factory initiates Phase 2, which creates a Nanocloud of Death. After a few scuffles with the Cloud (after demagnitizing it), the Cloud assimilates the Player into the Xbox One console, where it attacks them with ad banners. The Player uses a Kinect voice command to summon a Charge Rifle to defend themselves. While blasting the ads, they decide to order the Xbox to defragment the hard drive. After doing so, they battle the Cloud one last time before luring it to the junkyard, where Lou and Fiona prepare magnetic cranes to drop it into the smelter. The Cloud activates the B-Win Protocol, merging with a TV screen showing Sunset TV, grabbing Brandon Winfrey into the game world, who battles the Player as the final boss. After damaging B-Win enough, the Player lures him to the magnetic cranes, where he is finished off. After the dust has settled, Lou thanks the Player, who tells him to thank the actual player. When Lou is confused, the actual player is given four choices of responses: Y: "Master and Commander of the Universe", X: The Sexiest Gamer Alive", B: Just Your Average Player, and A: Shut Up and Give Me My Achievement". The Player will have a final line of dialogue based on which ever is picked before the DLC ends. The Robot Factory remains open for the Player to explore, complete challenges and side quests at their leisure.
SPOILERS END HERE
Personality
The Player has a brash, free caring, "smart-ass" demeanor and a fondness for humorously breaking the fourth wall from time to time, most notably through directly addressing the audience (one of Sunset Overdrive's clichés) and indeed video game clichés in general. The Player is shown to be more concerned about their own well being than that of those around them most of the time, besides when necessary for character development.
Abilities
For reasons unknown, the Player has many superhuman abilities:
Grinding, one of many ways to get around Sunset City.
- Grinding on rails with only their feet, and under them with a crowbar, and effortlessly switching between the two without loss of momentum.
- Bouncing to unnatural heights, both off of solid surfaces and out of water.
- Dashing mid-air.
- Sliding on the surface of water.
- Falling from great heights without injury, sometimes paired with dive bomb attacks.
- Running along walls for as long as the wall goes.
- Carrying several weapons (many over sized) without appropriate storage.
- Ability to respawn upon death in many humourous ways (See below).
- Great marksmanship (using weapons of all kind).
- Superhuman strength, resiliency, and durability.
- Healing factor
- Amazing acrobatics and agility.
- Magic satchel
- Elemental powers
- Temporary time slow down
- Expert gamer
Respawn Animations
Upon death, the Player will respawn using one of 19 animations listed below:
The Player respawns by rising from a grave.
- Hatched out of an egg
- Rising from a grave like a zombie
- Thrown out of a van by OD
- Uses Portal gun
- Rappelling from a chopper
- Crashing a rocket into the ground
- Emerges from time travel portal like Terminator
- Transporting in like in Star Trek
- Emerging from a coffin like Dracula
- Emerging from a sarcophagus doing the Walk Like An Egyptian dance
- Sliding into frame like Tom Cruise in Risky Business
- Crawling out of a TV like Samara in The Ring
- Molded from clay
- Dropped off by UFO
- Emerging from the phone booth from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
- Jump kicking through smoke screen
- Mission Impossible-style bungie
- Emerging from drill transport (TMNT cartoon 80s style)
- Emerging from the Delorean from Back To The Future with Marty McFly driving off with it. An alternate version of this features Walter instead of Marty. Added on April 1, 2015.
Trivia
- In the prologue, the Player is playing Sunset Overdrive on a smartphone.
- When it was revealed that the Player could create a female character, Sunset TV showed the Player wearing the Killer Jacket, which resembles the outfit of the lead characters of the Assassin's Creed series. This was done in reference to Ubisoft's response as to why there were no playable female characters in Assassin's Creed: Unity's co-op mode.