We have taken a few steps forward in fleshing out the story of the game. This is what a inhabitant of Hope would tell you how such a tragic disaster could have happened:
"In the midst of WW3, the gods finally decided that they had seen enough of humanity.
Therefore, 13 years ago the heavens and earth parted to make way for the hordes of angels and gods that would cleanse humans of this planet once and for all. But the gods underestimated the brutality of humans by a lot. For the first time in all recorded history - not that there would be much left for reference nowadays - all humans came together to face a common thread. With combined forces they drove back the onslaught of the gods and to fought against extinction. Or simply put, they nuked the shit out of some Heavensent (general term for all warriors of the the heavenly realm).
To say we won the war, is definitely correct, but even more definitely wrong. After 8 years of continuous bombardement and unending fighting, the Heavensent slowly vanished from planet earth - but barely a slimmer of human civilization remained.
Most of the world is a wasteland nowadays, the surviving humans have banded together in the last cities that are free of contamination. Washington and Moskau still stand almost as if just to spite one another. They also still have presidents I think, but who cares about that anyway. Most of Europe - the survivors anyway - moved to Iceland, one of the few completely uncontaminated islands - along with hell, but that is another topic. Europe and Asia are almost completely a radioactive desert, apart from a few remaining cities. What happened to anyone below south of the equator is anyone's guess. There hasn’t been any news from there for at least 5 years now. My guess is they are all dead, which would make sense, since most of the missiles were fired at those once-striving African countries.
This interesting beginning opens the way for interesting storytelling and especially for interesting enemy and boss design. It would allow us to take inspiration from various mythologies and myths to create a wide variety of enemies. With zombies being the remainders of nuked humans and the rest being mutated mythological creatures. You could even abide by the weird and specific weaknesses some mythological creatures have and make the fight system into something resembling a modern day Witcher with very specific weapons and gadgets involved in taking them down. This would allow for a lot of design space and add another layer to the combat system as well as the resource management system.
For reference, if you want to learn more about this poor world's well-deserved fate:
aka. deadlyartists wishlist: