Concord

Written by Jason Dailey on 8/27/2024 for PS5  

Concord is not the absolute dumpster fire the internet would have you believe. A quick glance at the comments section of any social media post about Concord is full of memes, jokes, and some full-on grave-dancing regarding low player counts, but rarely does it speak to the quality of the game itself. I won’t be eulogizing it here, but I will certainly get into the internet’s issues with the game, while also praising it as a great team-based hero shooter with PlayStation-level production values. Sure, you can argue that mistakes have been made with Concord’s pricing scheme, or maybe its character design, but I see both sides of this coin.

The inspirations for Concord are clear – part Overwatch, part Guardians of the Galaxy, and multiple parts Destiny. Three beloved properties that are certainly high-water marks worth striving for, though its similarities to that trio have been met with consternation online. Concord’s gameplay feels like what you would get if Destiny and Overwatch had a baby, with great gunplay, an emphasis on teamwork, and high production value. Some of Concord’s character designs may be a little too on the nose, but you could say the same about lots of video games.

At launch, the game features 16 Freegunners (characters), 12 maps, and six modes, with more being added post-launch at no additional cost. For $40, it does feel like a complete package (as it should), with a nice variety of characters to fit whatever your playstyle may be. Some Freegunners are more beginner-friendly, while a couple require the hands of more skilled players. Teo, for instance, is well-suited for first timers, with his traditional shooter loadout of an assault rifle and grenades. Meanwhile, Vale is a sniper with a bolt-action rifle that can only fire one shot before needing to reload, requiring far more precision and skill. Of the 16 launch characters, there are none that I did not like, only ones that I was not good at playing with, but there should be someone for everyone on this roster. If you enjoy playing as a brute that can both absorb and deal lots of damage, there is someone for you. If you prefer to zip around maps with quick strikes, there is someone for you. Or if you like to play the role of healer, there is someone for you too. Each Freegunner feels like a viable option, if not necessary, depending on the game mode, and none feel overpowered, which is equally impressive.

Of the six modes available at launch, they are all variation of the modes we typically see from shooters, divided into three playlists. The Brawl playlist contains a standard team deathmatch-style mode, called Takedown, and Trophy Hunt, which is Kill Confirmed in Call of Duty terms. The Overrun list includes the traditional capture-and-hold three points mode, known as Area Control, as well as Signal Chase, a king of the hill-style mode where teams fight over a singular roving point. There is one minor issue with Area Control, and it’s that your team does not accrue any score for holding just one objective, which can lead to some lopsided matches where your team never really stood a chance if you get down early. And finally, the Rivalry playlist contains two, no-respawn round-based modes – Cargo Run and Clash Point – though admittedly, it has been hard to test that one thoroughly due to a strange level cap on the mode that was not lowered until after the time of writing. On that point, the team at developer Firewalk have been extremely responsive since the game’s launch last week, already pushing several patches to address a few issues regarding connectivity, user interface, and the Rivalry level cap. There is also a solo Time Trial mode where you can complete courses with various characters as you attempt to climb the global leaderboards if you are a high-score chaser.

As for the maps, you probably won’t laud any as being one of your favorite maps in a multiplayer shooter, though some do standout more than others for the design of their combat lanes, creating chokepoints that lead to chaotic firefights and real turning points within a match. All maps feature elements of verticality for you to find vantage or ambush points that can help at critical moments of a match. Like its character designs, the maps include that signature-level of PlayStation production value, boasting beautiful skyboxes, cool art direction, and a general level of graphical fidelity that might only be matched by Call of Duty – or other PlayStation studios. From an art standpoint, the map design feels like a cross between Destiny and Starfield, which I think works.

Speaking of design and art direction, let’s talk about the Freegunners. As I said, I’ve been lurking online enough this past week to see that one of the major complaints about Concord is its character design. Folks find their design to be atrocious, meaning that every character is not attractive to look at, or like comic book characters popping off the page. I can’t recall purchasing a video game based on whether I found a game’s characters physically attractive, so I can’t relate to that sentiment, but it feels disingenuous. For context, every character in the beloved roguelike, Hades, is sexy as hell (pardon the pun) but I have tried to get into that game multiple times and simply cannot do it. To each their own, of course, but the point is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and besides, does that really matter in a style of game where gameplay should be king? We gamers are a fickle bunch – we get upset when game after game comes out looking just like Fortnite from an art standpoint, but then scoff when a hero shooter with PlayStation-level production values hits the market. That PlayStation money is on full display in Concord, by the way – each Freegunner has been performance captured, featuring some excellent facial animation work, particularly for IT-Z and Haymar.

Getting back to the nuts and bolts of Concord – its gameplay, in a nutshell, is exceptional. Gunplay is satisfying, with excellent implementation of the PlayStation 5’s DualSense controller haptics and adaptive triggers that add a punch to each gunfight. It wears its Destiny inspirations on its sleeve, with some characters having floaty movement mechanics taken straight from the Warlock class. Each Freegunner has a primary weapon, and some a secondary, as well as two abilities and a passive trait. There is a lot of variety in character abilities, which does a good job of making each Freegunner feel unique. There are no ultimate abilities here, a la Overwatch, though it doesn’t feel necessary within the framework of Concord. Movement also plays a huge role in how each character plays. The hulking, tank-like characters are plodding and slow, though they have the most health and firepower. Meanwhile, the nimbler characters are far more fun to get around with, but they die quickly and don’t pack as much of a punch. All of which is to say that Firewalk nailed the holy trinity of weapons, abilities, and movement with each Freegunner. Double-jump hovering around maps while shooting incendiary crossbow bombs with Haymar is awesome, so is triple-dodging enemy attacks on the ground with Bazz while whipping her throwing knives at enemies. And then there are times I want to stomp around with Starchild, blasting with his shotgun and ground-pounding groups of the enemy team.

Perhaps the biggest thing I have noticed about Concord’s combat is it truly does emphasize and reward teamwork, regardless of game mode. I had little luck attempting to lone wolf it, even in its elimination modes, as I would usually run into groups of enemy players, resulting in a swift death. At first, I thought this was because of a time-to-kill that was a tad too long, but then I understood that Firewalk has it tuned exactly how they want it. This game wants you to stick together, to play as a crew – it’s designed around this crew system after all. The cool thing is that most players have figured this out already, and you’ll often see teams running around together taking the other team head-on. That doesn’t mean you have to be on a microphone, or even pinging enemies – your teammates just know, and that is a breath of fresh air. Further playing up this sense of “crew” are crew bonuses; these stackable buffs are applied in-game as you switch between different Freegunners, encouraging you to play with multiple within a match. These buffs are things like longer weapon range, faster reloading, more health on heal, and so on, and they can offer a big lift over the course of a match.

The crew system has an interesting wrinkle in what is known as variants, or slightly different versions of a Freegunner which has a different passive trait than the base model. For instance, instead of having a trait that reloads weapons while dodging, you could have a trait that increases the ammo capacity of weapons. They’re subtle differences, to be sure, but what’s most intriguing is that rather than compromising on the spirit of the base characters, this allows Firewalk to tweak how Freegunners play while not breaking them. Combined with the crew builder system, which lets you have multiple rosters of Freegunners with a hodgepodge of variants to your liking, and you can tailor each character to fit your own personal playstyle. I created a secondary crew to use in the objective-based modes, for example, or perhaps you will want one for a specific friend group where you fill a certain role.

Narratively, there is an entire foundation of lore that Concord is built on, viewable through cinematic vignettes that will be released periodically, but also through an extensive in-game lore bible known as the Galactic Guide. You can engage with or ignore the Galactic Guide at your leisure, but there is incentive to at least peruse though it – opening each lore entry awards 100 XP. I’ve been reading lore here and there, but it is ultimately up to you how far down the rabbit hole you want to go in understanding these characters and universe. One cool tidbit that I learned is that the Guild – the corporate entity that Freegunners are pushing back against – once hauled an asteroid bigger than the average moon from multiple star systems away to the planet named Silo, only to drop it on said planet, creating Crater City, one of Concord’s maps. Put simply, if you are a lore person, you’ll be smitten with the Galactic Guide and its breadth.

Now, let’s talk about the elephant in the room, and Concord’s biggest hurdle – its $40 price tag. While fellow team-based hero shooters Overwatch 2 and the upcoming Marvel Rivals have gone the free-to-play route, Concord has opted for a $40 barrier-to-entry. A bold strategy, to be sure, but one that warrants further context and conversation. While Overwatch 2 and Marvel Rivals are based on established and popular properties, which can rely on what we call cash “whales” to bankroll them long-term, that’s not a given with Concord. In lieu of seasonal battle passes every few months or other microtransactions, Concord has a $40 get-in asking price, with characters, modes, and maps added post-launch for no additional cost. Is it worth that price? In my opinion, yes. But should it be $40 given what the competition is doing? I think that’s debatable, with an argument to be made both ways.

To that end, player counts are reportedly extremely low on Steam, having yet to break 1,000 concurrent players according to the platform’s metrics. On PlayStation 5, what evidence we do have suggests a different story for Concord, having garnered 8,000 user reviews on the PlayStation Store at the time of writing (five days after early access release). For comparison, the current best-selling game of 2024 in the United States, College Football 25, has 10,000 user reviews on the PlayStation Store. I’m not suggesting Concord is doing anywhere close to College Football 25 numbers in terms of sales – there is simply no way that will ever be the case – but what I am saying is that we don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle. The internet would have you believe that no one is playing this game, and that’s simply not true. I have played at all hours of the day – 8am in the morning, 6pm in the evening, 11pm at night, and I have had no issues finding a match to play. Of course, a few days after launch, and a few months from now are two different things entirely. Will Concord hold up long-term? That’s hard to say, and typically games with this dark internet cloud hovering over them have difficulty recovering, but the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.

Concord is not this daft, creatively bankrupt game that the internet is painting it as. In an era of gaming where we bemoan every game that looks like Fortnite, and those with $15 or $20 battle passes every few months, Concord arrives, hat-in-hand, offering something different. We can certainly debate over its potential checkers-not-chess business strategy of charging admission at the gate, unlike its direct competition. But regardless, that won’t change the fact that Concord is a great team-based hero shooter, boasting exceptional gameplay and sky-high production values.