The tepid player response to recent big-budget live-service titles has left many fans of the genre–this writer included–wondering which studio would be next to unveil a new live-service shooter in an era that is already oversaturated with them. After the striking failure of Concord, who would be brave enough to step onto the stage and attempt to sell players on their latest live-service creation?
Rather unexpectedly, the answer is 2K Games, which revealed its newest title last week. Known as Project Ethos, 2K’s new free-to-play title was developed by 31st Union, which describes the game as a “third-person roguelike hero-shooter.” If you’re wondering what the hell that means, you’re not alone, but after attending the game’s hands-on preview event and getting a feel for Project Ethos, I’m pretty well-equipped to explain the game’s (admittedly somewhat convoluted) premise.
31st Union is the first to admit that the game’s concept is a little difficult to describe in a concise manner, declaring in a recent press release, “The best way to learn about Project Ethos is to play it.”
Here’s the general gist: Project Ethos is a third-person extraction hero-shooter with a hint of roguelike flavor sprinkled on top. Its “signature mode” is called Trials, which sees teams of three players select characters from the game’s six-hero lineup before dropping into a 20-minute match. When joining, you can find yourself spawning in mid-match, meaning you can potentially get squashed by an enemy team with better loot shortly thereafter. Guns are exclusive to each character, so looting is focused on picking up health items, primary and secondary ammo, gadgets with useful abilities, and body shields.
Within the match are various timed PvE events very similar to those seen in Destiny 2. Completing these events rewards players with loot, including Trials Cores, which are the game’s main currency. Naturally, players must keep an eye out for other enemy teams who may also arrive to take part in a timed PvE event, but it’s generally pretty easy to sufficiently loot up before bumping into your first squad of enemies.
From there, players continue completing events and battling other teams, both of which are a means of collecting Trials Cores. Similar to Apex Legends, injured players are first downed and can be picked back up by their squadmates. If a revive doesn’t happen fast enough (or the enemy is still spraying bullets), downed players will eventually bleed out, at which point their squad must locate and make use of a Respawn Beacon to bring back their fallen brethren.
At any point during the match, players can head for the extraction point. It’s clearly marked on the map, and the earlier you show up, the more likely you are to successfully escape unscathed. As it turns out, all those Trials Cores you’ve collected over the course of the match have a little catch: If your squad dies before successfully extracting, you don’t get to keep any of them. The longer you stay alive, the more Cores you can accumulate, but the longer you wait to hit the extraction point, the more likely you are to find it crowded with several enemy teams all duking it out. Accumulate enough Cores, and you’ll soon find that a temporary bounty has been placed on your head, allowing other players to more easily hunt you down. (This is usually a good time to book it to the extraction point.)
Once you’ve successfully extracted, you can visit vendor NPCs in the lobby to exchange Trials Cores for Augments. Augments are powerful, permanent perks that allow players to tailor the game’s individual heroes to their own personal playstyle, and though I didn’t get a chance to unlock many of them during my time with Project Ethos, I did find them interesting and unique. Augments can morph an up-close-and-personal skirmisher into a skirmisher who also excels at range, give a healer a more defensive edge, and much more.
The second mode 2K presented during Project Ethos previews is called Gauntlet Mode. Gauntlet is Project Ethos’s competitive tournament mode, forcing multiple squads of players to face off with each other one by one. Heroes can be (temporarily) upgraded between each match, and the ultimate goal is to be the only squad standing at the end of each round. Players who bite the dust in this mode cannot be respawned by teammates, but will automatically respawn at the beginning of the next round. The first squad to snag three victories wins. There’s no PvE to speak of, nor are there any Trials Cores to collect, but winners do get medals, and Gauntlet essentially functions as the game’s ranked mode. We didn’t get to see or hear as much about Gauntlet Mode as we did Trials Mode, so some of the details surrounding it remain unclear.
Each of the game’s six heroes come with two weapons (one light, one heavy), two unique abilities, and a collection of character-exclusive Evolutions. Evolutions work a lot like the Legend Upgrades seen in Apex. As players take down enemies, pick up Evolution Nodes, and improve the strength of their armor, they’re periodically prompted to pick one of three Evolutions (which appear to be randomly selected from the dozen or so Evolutions that are exclusive to each character). Unlike Augments, Evolutions only last for the duration of the match, but some of them are surprisingly powerful, and they seem to improve on Apex’s Legend Upgrade formula quite a bit. The random selection of Evolutions to choose from keeps things fresh and prevents players from always leaning on a single specific Evolution, forcing them to try out new ability buffs.
The heroes themselves are both my favorite and least favorite part of Project Ethos. On one hand, these characters are undeniably fun to play once you get the hang of Project Ethos’s gameplay loop. On the other hand, they look derivative, uninspired, and aren’t especially eye-catching (though that could certainly change before the game launches). As someone who isn’t a fan of Fortnite-esque art styles, I found Project Ethos to be pretty underwhelming from a visual perspective. The game certainly has a few cool character designs–Prism is easily the most unusual-looking hero–but in their current state, Project Ethos’s playable characters don’t exactly inspire much interest or curiosity about who they are or why they’re involved with Project Ethos.
Unfortunately, the heroes’ abilities are not particularly unique, either. The first character to really grow on me was Breeze, a rocketeer with the ability to move quickly. But when playing her, it’s impossible to ignore the similarities she shares–both physically and ability-wise–with some of Apex’s titular Legends. The first issue is that Breeze is a dead-ringer for Apex’s Bangalore, to the point that they almost look like identical twins. The resemblance is so uncanny that multiple preview attendees remarked on how similar the two characters look. Even worse, Breeze’s abilities are effectively Bangalore’s Rolling Thunder and Smoke Bomb abilities combined with Valkyrie’s Missile Swarm and VTOL Jets abilities. Breeze is the most egregious example, but she’s far from the only character in the game to share striking similarities with the appearances and abilities of characters that already exist in Apex Legends, Overwatch, and Valorant.
But regardless of their physical appearances and familiar-feeling abilities, Project Ethos’s characters can be quite a lot of fun to play. The game’s developers were clearly not afraid to make powerful heroes with powerful abilities that are fun to use. As long as you use your abilities (and your head), you can reliably gain the upper hand in conflicts with enemy teams, even if their aim is better than yours. Pushing players to think ahead and plan their moves instead of solely relying on good aim is definitely one of Project Ethos’s biggest strengths.
Another of the game’s major strengths is movement. Project Ethos shines when it comes to getting around the map. Sliding is actually useful, allowing players to build momentum, jump on ziplines, and hop into strange purple energy fields that will fling them into the air, similar to the Gravity Cannons of Apex Legends. Project Ethos’ gunplay feels good as well. The game’s weapons feel punchy and are satisfying to use, TTK feels balanced (players won’t drop instantly, but you also won’t find yourself wondering how the enemy is still alive after emptying three clips into them), hitboxes seem appropriately sized, maps are well-designed (if not exactly stunning), and characters have fun-to-use abilities (even though they feel a bit copy-pasted). Calling Project Ethos a roguelike might be a bit of a stretch, especially given how much the meaning of the term has changed over the years, but it’s certainly a fun time. The bounty mechanic is especially challenging, and surviving the match despite the target on your back feels like a genuine achievement.
Overall, Project Ethos feels like a combination of Apex’s movement, Overwatch’s character abilities, Destiny 2’s mid-match events and NPC-filled lobby, and Fortnite’s Zero Build mode gameplay and art style. Is it enjoyable? Yes. Is it a roguelike? That’s debatable. The use of “roguelike” in Project Ethos’ marketing seems more like a buzzword than an apt description of the game, which feels nothing like The Binding of Isaac, Cult of the Lamb, Hades, or other titles one tends to think of when they hear the word “roguelike.” Fans of Fortnite and Apex Legends, however, will likely have a good time, but in a genre this crowded and competitive, I’m not sure mere enjoyability will be enough to make Project Ethos a success.
31st Union hasn’t yet announced a release date for Project Ethos, and it’s clear the developers are extremely eager for player feedback, which I think is commendable. “Live service is a conversation,” one developer said during previews, while other members of the dev team walked around asking players what their thoughts on the game were. It’s very clear that 2K is attempting to carefully test the waters here rather than expecting everyone to instantly fall in love with Project Ethos, and their attention to player feedback is clear. During previews, I even noticed a dev taking notes as a player shared their critiques.
Project Ethos isn’t a groundbreaking masterpiece at this moment in time, but it’s also not a lazy, sloppily assembled mess. Its biggest flaws at the moment are its lack of a distinct identity and the absence of a unique gameplay hook. Project Ethos has an interesting plot (which players can read up on by unlocking various in-game lore text) that revolves around AI taking over the world, but its bland visuals and recycled hero abilities make it feel rather unremarkable, despite its genuinely enjoyable gameplay. After five years of development, 31st Union is clearly excited to share its creation with players. But thankfully, the studio wasn’t overconfident enough to stroll into the graveyard that is live-service gaming in 2024–ignoring Overwatch 2’s pitchfork-riddled existence and stepping over Concord’s still-twitching corpse–to proudly announce to the world that Project Ethos is officially the Next Big Thing.
Instead, 31st Union’s dev team is taking a much wiser approach: They’re not bothering to implement monetization and microtransactions until the game is closer to launch, they’re asking players what they want, and perhaps most importantly, they aren’t expecting anyone to take a $40 trust-fall in order to try out the game.
It’s worth remembering that the biggest threat live-service games are facing right now is the fact that although people are playing more games every year, the number of people who play video games isn’t rising nearly as quickly. Since live-service games tend to require a fairly significant time investment, most people can only play a few titles regularly. To succeed, 2K and 31st Union will have to overcome a massive challenge: not simply convincing players to try out Project Ethos, but wooing players enough to make them want to ditch one of their current favorite titles in favor of it. In its current state, I’m not sure that’s something the game can pull off, but if given enough time and attention, it could certainly earn a positive response from players once it launches.
Ultimately, Project Ethos isn’t visually gripping, nor does it really have a unique schtick to lean on (like Splitgate 2’s portals). What it does have is a team of developers who appear to genuinely care about what their players think, and a good deal of potential. Whether that potential blossoms or withers is entirely dependent upon what the game’s creators are planning next. More playtests, a beta phase, and a few character redesigns would certainly do the game some good. If 2K plans to launch Project Ethos sometime in the very near future, my opinion of it likely won’t change. But if it’s given a bit more time in the oven, I think there’s hope for the game’s future–provided the developers spend that time figuring out who exactly this game is meant for.