Day-One Horror Survival Game Shadow Dropped for Xbox Game Pass

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Okay, so I was totally surprised to see Pacific Drive pop up on Xbox Series X/S and PC! I wasn’t expecting it at all. And the best part? It’s available with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass Premium, and PC Game Pass right away. They also dropped a new DLC called Whispers in the Woods, which was a nice surprise too. Honestly, it’s a fantastic pre-Halloween gift for us Game Pass subscribers – I’m really excited to jump in!

Released in February 2024 for PlayStation 5 and PC, the survival horror game Pacific Drive, created by Ironwood Studios, quickly gained a following for its unique gameplay. Within its first year, the game sold over one million copies and was even nominated for Best Debut Indie Game at The Game Awards in 2024.

The unique survival horror game, Pacific Drive, is now available on Xbox! It’s been added to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass Premium, and PC Game Pass as a surprise release, becoming one of the day-one games for October. Players face supernatural threats while driving and exploring the mysterious Olympic Exclusion Zone in the Pacific Northwest. Your station wagon is your lifeline – it’s how you get around and a safe place to repair damage. Keeping your car in good condition is crucial, because locations start to decay the longer you stay, adding a tense time limit to an already challenging adventure.

The Pacific Drive expansion, Whispers in the Woods, is now available! It was first teased in a trailer back in September, but the release date was unknown until now. Update 1.11.0 brings the expansion to all platforms, adding a new, fully voiced story, a brand-new map, and fresh gameplay elements. Players can expect new types of anomalies, plus extra car parts, items, and cosmetic options.

Adding a popular game to Xbox Game Pass might attract players who recently canceled their subscriptions. Microsoft saw a surge of cancellations – and even a temporary website crash – after raising the monthly Game Pass Ultimate price to $30 in October. This price increase coincided with the addition of 48 new games, many thanks to a new partnership with Ubisoft+.

Pacific Drive Version 1.11.0 Patch Notes

  • 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

This update includes our biggest performance improvements yet for Pacific Drive! You should notice faster speeds and smoother gameplay on all platforms – that includes PCs (both powerful and less powerful), PlayStation, and Xbox, whether you’re playing in standard or performance mode. We’ve focused on optimizing the game’s CPU, GPU, video memory usage, and loading 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:

Okay, so this update definitely feels smoother overall, I’m getting way better performance than before. But, I’ll be honest, I noticed some weird stuff with how the game loads textures at first – like shaders weren’t caching properly. Don’t worry though, the devs are already working on a fix and it should be coming in the next patch. They’re on it!

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.

We noticed players were constantly using the LIM Shield without much penalty. To make it more balanced, we’ve added a battery drain while the shield is active. However, the shield now uses less battery when it actually protects you from 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

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2025-10-24 03:10