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Alan Wake developers Remedy have announced their very first multiplayer game, a three-person co-op shooter set in the world of Control and thereby, the Remedy Connected Universe. Previously codenamed Condor, it’s called FBC: Firebreak – and I am going to immediately recommend they shorten it to Firebreak, because that caps-into-colon combo is going to wind me up when I’m writing news posts at speed. While I’m throwing my weight around, let me also instantly rebut the pedants who are even now racing to leave a comment saying that, actually, Remedy did work on Smilegate’s multiplayer shooter CrossfireX. Yes, they did, but only the single player bits.
Anyway, Firebreak! Here’s the announcement trailer.
As detailed by an Xbox Wire post, Firebreak casts you as a first responder working for the Federal Bureau of Control – that is, a crack paranormal exterminator who must stop extra-dimensional terrors invading the FBC’s shape-shifting Brutalist headquarters, the Oldest House. Firebreak members can equip Overwatch-style “ultimates” in the shape of Altered World objects that have “paranatural” properties.
These are to be used more carefully than the average video game ultimate, according to Remedy comms boss Thomas Puha. “I like to think of them as a jaguar in a box,” he told the Wire. “You carry the box, you point it at something, you open the box, and you just kind of hope the jaguar doesn’t turn around and eat you or your friends instead.”
Schrödinger’s Jaguar, then? Yes, this is commendably Control-esque.
Firebreak will evolve over time with post-release content, but Puha is reluctant to call it a game-as-a-service, with all the associated baggage. “FBC: Firebreak should be easy to get into and quickly understandable, not feel like a second job or that you have to spend an hour setting up your loadouts etc. before you get into a session,” he told the site. “This is not that game. It’s a pick-up-and-play experience [about] having fun with your friends when you have the time. That’s not to say that FBC: Firebreak doesn’t have deep player progression and things to unlock, it does, but this isn’t about logging in every day for some loot or fear of missing out on materials.”
Firebreak does have some kind of narrative component – it’s set after the events of Control, and as such, presumably harkens forward to the events of Control 2. It’ll try for a similar balance of absurdity and horror in its writing and atmosphere. But it’s not the same kind of story-driven game.
“For the people who are keeping up with the single-player journey, we wanted to make sure that FBC: Firebreak was a legitimate and impactful part of that history and lore,” game director Mike Kayatta comments in the Xbox Wire piece. “The narrative style you’ve seen in our previous games just wasn’t ever going to work here, for this kind of game. When you think about these differences in FBC: Firebreak’s gameplay – world over story, multiplayer over single-player, voice-chatting with your teammates, action over exploration and so on – you can probably see why it was important that we made FBC: Firebreak a stand-alone experience.”
“That said, you will see more of Control’s world,” he went on. “More of the Federal Bureau of Control. Meet more of the people who work there. Explore more of the Oldest House. Run into more weird stuff. And importantly, experience this world, old and new, from a completely different perspective.”
What do you make of it all? Much as I dread anything halfway live-servicey these days, I’ve always felt the Oldest House would be a natural setting for such a game – it’s a monstrous labyrinth that slops between realities in a way germane to the introduction of new foes, stories and areas. Just, please don’t ruin it by turning it into a content factory.