The main playing line game begins five years after the relocation underground (the tutorial takes place immediately before the destruction of the terraformer, which the MC had a direct *albeit unintentional* hand in) and follows the story of Darius Mason, grandson of Martian Revolution heroes, Alec Mason and Samanya who were the main characters of Red Faction: Guerrilla, who runs a lucrative series of businesses based in Bastion, the underground hub of Colonist activity, including mining, scavenging and mercenary-work.
In order to survive, the Colonists are forced to flee to the underground mines of Mars, building a network of habitable caves under the surface of the planet. At the beginning of the game, the surface of the planet becomes uninhabitable after the massive terraformer on Mars which supplied it with its Earth-like air and weather has been destroyed, causing the atmosphere to turn to chaos with super-tornadoes and lightning storms engulfing the planet. The storyline occurs in the year 2170, almost a half a century after the events of Red Faction: Guerrilla.
Like the first and third games of the series, the game takes place on the planet of Mars.