That's a lot of adjectives and acronyms for a game, and it's something the industry has never seen before.
If you are currently able to watch videos, here are a few that explain it better than I ever could. If not (I dunno, you might be in a library, or your internet is kinda slow), continue reading, I'll try to explain what the videos say as best I can.
Extra Credits explanation (if you only have time to watch one video, watch this one):
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpBiNHPfjKw
IGN gameplay video (probably a better explanation of the actual game, but the EC vid got me interested):
- http://www.ign.com/videos/2011/08/25/fi ... tid=805149
Cinematic Trailer (doesn't really do the game justice, but it's pretty cool):
- http://vimeo.com/14628833
Actual Trailer (MONTAGE!):
- http://vimeo.com/27311539
Courtesy screenshots:
Hidden/Spoiler:
Now then, for the wall of text
First off, it's a free-to-play Triple-A game, Triple-A meaning that a lot of time and money is going into creating and polishing this project to perfection. Most developers would shudder at the idea, but developer Red-5 is diving into this territory head first, and I commend them for it. Free to play is arguably the future of the industry. If something's free, you have a much larger player base, and you deter pirates, as you really can't pirate something that's free to begin with, all ingame purchases can be monitored, and any illegal activity in terms of getting paid items for free is more easily regulated. And if free-to-play is done right, where all for-purchase items are either purely cosmetic or available through normal means somehow, then I will be a happy camper.
Next, it's dynamic and community driven. If any of you have played the card game "Legend of the Five Rings," you'll know what I mean by this.
For those of you that haven't (like me, I hadn't heard of it til I looked it up this morning)...
This game isn't going to be like WoW or TOR or any other narrative-based MMOs. Sure, there are still predetermined quests, but you don't have to go to the nearest town to get them, they aren't fetch quests (I don't think. This is all based on what's in those videos above). Most or all quests will be given to you remotely. What makes the game stand out, though, are the dynamic events outside of quests, such as randomly generated alien invasions. And it looks like that the community will decide how the future quests play out based on how they handle the dynamic events in the world. If the aliens take over a town, the players have to fight back in order to get to important buildings, but who knows what would happen should they fail?A major distinctive feature of [Legend of the Five Rings] is the importance of the storyline: new fiction pieces advancing the story are published on a weekly basis, in addition to being released with every expansion. Many of these fiction reflect the result of tournaments, where players use their decks to determine which faction will claim a particular prize within the storyline.
And finally, it's a first person shooter MMO. The classes sort of resemble some of the TF2 classes. The assault class is like the soldier, with rockets and splash-damage-based weapons. The medic is like, well, the medic, with a medi-gun that can sap enemy health as well as give it to teammates. Recons are snipers. And the engineers can build small turrets and shields that do work for them. All set in a fully-explorable open world. And jetpacks. Lots of jetpacks. I've seen MMOFPS games before, but this one is the first where the gameplay piques my interest.
It's currently in a private beta. You can go to
http://www.firefallthegame.com
to request beta access.
The game is planned to be released sometime later this year.