The Surge teases "a very grim vision of the future"

The "visceral hardcore RPG" The Surge was announced in the summer with a bizarre image and very little in the way of actual information. We haven't heard much about it since—anything at all, really—but today Focus Home Interactive revealed a little bit about the game's setting by taking a look into its history.

Apparently central to the story will be a manufacturing and R&D company called CREO, headed up by "enigmatic CEO" Jonah Guttenberg. At some point prior to the events of The Surge, CREO undertook a project designed to reverse the effects of climate change (along with war, famine, and disease) on the planet. But—and I'm sure this will come as a big surprise to everyone—things didn't work out quite as intended.

The announcement includes a "letter to humanity" written by Guttenberg, a blueprint for a "Grapple Spider" transport unit—not at all the sort of thing that could ever be put to nefarious uses—and a couple pieces of gritty, futuristic concept art. There's also a happy-sounding blurb describing a future for humanity that isn't quite as sunshine-and-lollipops as Star Trek may have led us to expect.

"Set in a heavily dystopian future as Earth nears the end of its life, those who remain in the overpopulated cities must work to survive as social programs become saturated by an aging population and increasing environmental diseases," it says. "As the intelligence of technology incrementally increased over the years, many jobs for the human race had been made redundant, forcing Earth’s citizens to head out into the suburbs seeking labor, aided by exoskeletons to improve their efficiency. The world of The Surge offers a very grim vision of the future, where the evolution of our technology, our society and our relation with the environment led to a decadent state of the Human civilization."