PlayStation Studio Firewalk has shared a new video this week detailing the team’s vision for not only for Concord's launch on August 23rd, but post-launch as well. You can see the full video below, but some of the points I found interesting was the developer’s approach to design, and how Freegunner variants can allow them to tweak characters without breaking what player’s love about them.
In terms of design, Firewalk was inspired to some extent by the match strategy of fighting games, which explains why one-on-one firefights felt like an absolute slugfest in the beta tests. They also took inspiration pre-match from deckbuilding games with the crew system, which lets you assemble lineups of different Freegunner variants, whether for different game modes, or even different friend groups you play with.
Speaking of variants, those are tweaked versions of base characters that have different buffs that can change the way they play. Firewalk will of course be adding all-new Freegunners to the roster post-launch, but variants allow players to experiment with different playstyles of their favorite characters without compromising the original version. It’s an interesting approach, considering how annoyed us players get when devs mess with our favorite characters, weapons, and so on in these sorts of games – the variant system allows Firewalk to preserve the original characters while still experimenting.
At launch, Concord will include 16 characters, 12 maps, six modes, and full access to the in-game lore via the Galactic Guide. Player progression will be both account-wide and character-specific. All post-launch content, save for cosmetics, will be at no additional cost to players. Just one short week now until we are free-gunning across the galaxy on PlayStation 5 and PC.
