The characters of Mutant Year Zero are scouts and scavengers, not soldiers, and the game tries to reinforce this at every turn. It teaches you that if you open fire on the first enemy you see, you’ll bite off way more than you can chew. You’ll simply be overwhelmed as more enemies hear the fighting and come swarm your position. So the name of the game is reconnaissance.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/j5zw8b/mutant-year-zero-is-the-rare-tactics-game-where-scouting-is-actually-fun
Every time I hear the Waypoint crew talk about the scouting in this game it reminds me how much I enjoyed Fallout Tactics. I specced my squad in that game toward stealth and had encounters that sound a whole lot like the ones described in Mutant Year Zero. Often the opposing group didn’t make it out of the first turn and we’d return to real-time movement. In fact, to a lesser degree I played the combat in the first two Fallout games the same way. Sneak attacks always gave great advantages, but is wasn’t as clear how to remain undetected as it seems it is in MYZ.