The story is a bit confusing...

[Metal Izanagi]

I just started playing this a few days ago, and I gotta say...the way the DLC missions and content are all tossed in on top of the main story stuff right away has me a bit confused.

I get that there are two main "goals" of the story here. To find out what happened to the people on the islands after the army seems to have taken them away with sleeping gas or something, and to figure out what's with all these robots running around killing everything that moves.

But on top of that, the moment you leave the archipelago suddenly there are these FNIX robot variants all over the place, some FNIX base that looks like it's straight out of the Terminator movies that I went and blew up so I could make my own base...from what I understand FNIX Rising, which is what the base building stuff is part of, takes place months after the main story so...why was the game telling me about this stuff the moment I left the little tutorial zone? Shouldn't this have been set to show up after I did at least some of the main story missions? Or is the idea that it's taken me four months to get from the starting point to exiting the archipelago?

Also, did I just like...ditch Therese and that Pontus dude entirely back at the archipelago? They haven't been very interested in talking about well...anything, since I left that place. I'd have figured they would at least be interested in hearing about it when I found that old dude out in that base after it got blown up, which I think is also a DLC thing.

Not a dig at the devs, btw. I'm really enjoying waging a one-man war on these murderous robots. The first time one of 'em shot rockets that left radiation everywhere was a heck of a surprise.

[❌️▶️👱]

Even if you don't activate the DLCs the structures and bots they introduced will be automatically be available in the game but their DLC related missions will not activate until you enable the DLCs, (Alpine Unrest. published on November 26, 2019) and Fnix Rising (June 16, 2020).

A bit confusing but manageable as long as you don't activate the 2 DLCs so their missions don't pop up early in the game, and will allow you to play the vanilla game only. However, the Russian story cannot be prevented from chronologically disrupting the story sequence as they are not DLC but was added in the game after the 2 DLCs mentioned. Also ignoring the Good News mission when you reach Forest Region (which will lead to activating claimable Fnix and Neutral bases In Forest region, Farmlands and South Coast) will be a wise move if you want to play the game with the least chronological disruption.

This link to a post by flick which has a nice background info about the game's storyline:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/704270/discussions/0/6337144732927701355/#c6337144732928134423

This links asked devs to pick up from the end of Finix Rising and continue the story from there.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/704270/discussions/0/3361398331718086122/

[SniperGirl]

Yeah, some of the stuff like control points and the Soviets should have been DLCs , paid or free, so that you could play the base game before getting into those things. The control points and Soviets were tossed in some 3 years after the game came out and doesn't make must sense as to what it has to do with the base game. The game started out as a action RPG with missions that kind of give you clues and hints as to what happened and what is going to happen with a lot of lore mixed in. Then base building and defense became a thing in the game and it tossed the story out of the picture.

I don't know why they even leave the missions in or try to keep the story. Just have to spawn into the map and start destroying machines. The machines will take over control points, so no need to explore, and you run over and take them back, build your defenses and fight off the machines. That is the game now. Only reason to have rivals or the reaper is to get you away from the control points so the machines can take them over. And it is the main source for better weapons.

kind of still a beta game when they continue to change the dynamics of the base game. Even the landscape has changed a lot from base game.