The premise is not a conventional apocalypse. The American South has burned, but the cause is named and metaphysical: a calamity called the Burning, after which reality bends under ancient forces, competing faiths and myths that turned out to be load-bearing. You play the Gunslinger with No Name on the Hound's Path, walking east through a country that ended while you were away.
The cast is built from mythology rather than from historical fiction. Seven factions organise the enemy side, and the one the game has explained in detail is V.I.T.R.I.O.L. Co., a hermetic-alchemy statelet run by the Widow, who is fusing people with machines to finish a project her husband started.
Where to start
- Story and Setting — the Burning, the factions, the Codex as a narrative object, and the road east.
- Viktor Antonov — the art director's previous work and what the studio has said about finishing his last original world.
- Trailers — every official video and the order they were released in.
- Reviews — why there are no scores yet, and how to read the studio's own positioning statement.
Which page fits your question
If you want the setting, read the story page first. If you want to know why the setting looks the way it does, read the Antonov page. If you are deciding whether to buy, the trailers page lists what each video actually shows and which one is worth your ten minutes.
The reviews page exists because the honest state of the critical picture before 8 December is that there is no score, and it is more useful to explain why than to leave the question hanging.