There are three intertwined main stories to play through, each made up of a series of missions and objectives, flanked by side activities and linked together by an expansive, dangerous world, and each tale is filled with dramatic twists and turns. The first is easily the longest. Its protagonist, Arthur, has gone cold turkey and is looking to escape, but going off his Joy risks his being reminded of the horrible details of the past, not to mention the risk of his being lynched by the other townspeople.

Arthur's slow drip-feed of memories is one of the highlights of the game, as the full reasons behind the town's obsession with forgetting gradually come into horrible focus. Meanwhile the beautifully British voice performances, twisted characters and dichotomy between the technicolour dream you experience while on Joy and the depressing reality off it are all very well done, which makes it all the more disappointing that the rest of the game can't keep up the pace.

The bones of We Happy Few's randomised survival game origins are plain to see, from the boring and repetitive combat to the need to eat and drink constantly in order to stay healthy. Over time your abilities do grow, but no matter how wild your gadgets and weapons get hide-and-seek and hit-and-block fundamentals never change. You'll also spend a lot of time collecting junk and crafting items to help you access different areas, stay alive and manage things like food poisoning and your level of Joy dependence, which is an interesting idea but generally not very fun.

The split between the two game styles is most apparent when transitioning between story-heavy areas — which are hand-crafted and unique, filled with wonderful incidental notes and story snippets to absorb you — and the wider open world which is a procedurally generated hodge podge of roads and towns that all blend together as you're forced to walk repeatedly across the whole island.

There's so much interesting stuff here, from the sinister bobbies that keep the peace to the awful doctors that force-feed Joy to so-called "downers", and all of it against a backdrop of such style and intrigue that all I wanted to do was dive in. But none of it is particularly well-served by the survival gameplay, arbitrary puzzles and bland randomness that makes up a lot of the minute-to-minute. Even some of the best quests were rendered annoying by the touchy stealth mechanics and the unintuitive need to "blend in" with the people of each particular location.

I also encountered a large number of bugs and performance issues throughout the game, including sound completely cutting out, being moved to an arbitrary town when loading a save, and frustratingly temperamental button prompts. But at least those could reasonably be ironed out in a post-release patch.

As much as I love the ideas and the characters in We Happy Few, and while it does have its moments of shock and delight, I'm afraid its most disappointing flaws lie far too deep to fix. Ironically, this is a case where the game really wanted to be better, but it just couldn't outrun its past.

We Happy Few is out now on Xbox One (reviewed), PC and PlayStation 4.