If you fight well on the levels without wasting ammo, you'll be able to clear out everything (rather than be reduced to just grabbing the passcode for leaving the station and running), and find both the survivors of that particular station and whatever food/health packs is hidden, + get more money for rare shops. Not just moment-to-moment train management choices, but the ground-based gameplay too, and the systems altogether form a complete loop.
However, this is never scripted, and is entirely up to you, and the way you play. Yes, characters can die on board your train if you fail to heal them, bring food or repair ventilation in time. Only ones that stuck out for me was an entertainingly incompetent young military spy, who keeps on peppering his speech with military terms, and a jumpy, armed woman who distrusts you and other passengers before her station reveals that she has a husband waiting for her.
Machinist you play as is silent, save for written replies in rare chat logs with other train drivers (sometimes you can even choose one of two options there, but it does practically nothing.) The other characters are decently written spins on familiar archetypes (the alcoholic, the conspiracy theorist, the amoral backstabber, a mysterious smoker with shady motives, etc.) but that's all they are.
For one, the storytelling focus is entirely different: whereas TLOU was all about the famed Joel-Ellie bond with a few notable supporting characters and minimal worldbuilding, Final Station only has characters as far as it needs to advance its plot and world-building. That aside, Final Station is still very much its own beast.
Both of them are games set during the zombie apocalypse that have a fair bit of gameplay going on, yet are ultimately plot-driven, using the gameplay process to give the rhythm to your journey through the one and only plot arc along the linear, scenic levels, while listening to a subtly atmospheric soundtrack (one in Final Station mainly leans on piano, as opposed to guitar-heavy tracks in TLOU) You can hardly draw so many parallels with any other notable zombie game, be it the interactive cartoons of Walking Dead or the hub-based CRPG of Dead State, let alone the countless scores of gameplay-centered titles. Both of them are games set during the zombie apocalypse The Final Station can, in a way, be described as an indie answer to The Last of Us. The Final Station can, in a way, be described as an indie answer to The Last of Us. The downside is it's pretty short and doesn't offer a lot of replayability unless you're really into the story. You'll have to conserve ammo and use melee and you'll have to think a bit when you face groups of different enemies. Beyond that, the art direction is amazing and all the environments look really cool and gameplay has some pretty neat tweaks to the basic Deadlight formula. The story is simple enough for everyone to get an emotional kick out of it, but you have to really look for clues in the environments if you want to piece the entire narrative together, it always feels like there's more to this world than the game is showing you. There's a lot of depth to this world and it feels more like end of evangelion than a zombie apocalypse. Sounds pretty basic, but there's a cool twist on pretty much everything here. Train management is pretty much reduced to a mini-game here, you'll spend most of the game exploring and talking to NPCs, fighting zombies and collecting stuff. Train management is pretty much reduced to a mini-game here, you'll spend most of the Not the train management game you might expect it to be. Not the train management game you might expect it to be.