You Are Empty is a first-person shooter video game based in a fictionalized postwar Soviet Union. The game begins with the protagonist waking up in a ruined hospital, and it soon becomes clear that the populace has been afflicted by mutation and madness. He then must battle to stay alive and unravel the mystery.You Are Empty takes place in 1955 in alternative Russia, where Joseph Stalin still reigns. In an attempt to ensure the global victory of Communism, the Soviet Union has constructed a massive psychic antenna to broadcast a reality-altering signal designed to transform the population of the Soviet Union into supermen. However, the experiment goes horribly wrong, and most of the population is either killed or transformed into homicidal mutants. The game's cutscenes flesh out the backstory by telling the life story of the master scientist responsible for the disaster. As a young boy, the scientist discovers that he has psychic powers that allow him to control other living beings. Becoming a scientific protégé, he develops plans for a massive psychic antenna that would amplify his power and broadcast it across the world, initiating a Great Transformation of humanity.