Alan Wake developers Remedy have announced their very first multiplayer game, a three-person co-op shooter set in the world of Controls and thus the Remedy Connected Universe. Formerly codenamed Condor, it was called FBC: Firebreak – and I’d immediately recommend that they shorten it to Firebreak, because that caps-to-colon combination is going to wind me up when I’m writing news posts at speed. As I throw my weight around, let me too instantly dismiss the pedants who are already racing to leave a comment saying that Remedy actually worked on Smilegate’s multiplayer shooter CrossfireX. Yes they did, but only the single player bites.
Anyway, Firebreak! Here is the announcement trailer.
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As described in an Xbox Wire post, Firebreak casts you as a first responder working for the Federal Bureau of Control—that is, a paranormal exterminator tasked with stopping extradimensional horrors invading the FBC’s shape-shifting Brutalist headquarters, The Oldest House. Firebreak members can equip Overwatch-style “ultimates” in the form of Altered World objects that have “paranatural” properties.
These need to be used more carefully than the average video game ultimate, according to Remedy comms manager 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 hope the jaguar doesn’t turn around and eat you or your friends instead.”
Schrödinger’s Jaguar, then? Yes, it’s commendably Control-like.
Firebreak will evolve over time with post-release content, but Puha is reluctant to call it a game-as-a-service, with all that baggage. “FBC: Firebreak needs to be easy to get into and quick to understand, not feel like another job or that you have to spend an hour setting up your loadouts etc before you even start a session,” he told since. “This isn’t that game. It’s a pick-up-and-play experience [about] have fun with your friends when you have time. That’s not to say that FBC: Firebreak doesn’t have deep player progression and things to unlock, but it’s not about logging in every day for some loot or fear of missing out on materials.”
Firebreak has some sort of narrative component – it’s set after the events of Control, and as such presumably pushes forward to the events of Control 2. It will attempt to strike a similar balance between absurdity and horror in its text and atmosphere. But it’s not the same kind of story-driven game.
“For the people following along on the single-player journey, we wanted to make sure that FBC: Firebreak was a legitimate and impactful part of that story and lore,” game director Mike Kayatta comments in the Xbox Wire piece. “The storytelling style you’ve seen in our previous games just would never work here, for this kind of game. When you consider these differences in FBC: Firebreak’s gameplay – world story, multiplayer over single-player, voice chat with your teammates, action over exploration and so on – you can probably see why it was important that we make FBC: Firebreak a standalone experience.”
“That being said, you will see more of the world of Control,” he continued. “More from the Federal Bureau of Control. Meet more of the people who work there. Explore more of the oldest house. Run into more strange things. And most importantly, experience this world, old and new, from a completely different perspective .”
What do you think about it all? As much as I fear anything halfway live-servicey these days, I’ve always felt that the Elder House would be a natural setting for such a game – it’s a monstrous maze that slants between realities in a way that’s relevant to the introduction of new enemies, stories and areas. Just, please don’t ruin it by turning it into a content factory.