Remedy is a studio known for disappearing into its work for several years, then emerging with an inventive, often mind-bending, single-player game such as Max Payne, Alan Wake, or Control. But the studio has grown a lot lately, becoming a team juggling several projects simultaneously. Alongside the upcoming Max Payne remakes and Control 2, Remedy is also trying something very different from its past games. FBC Firebreak is a three-player co-op PvE first-person shooter set in The Oldest House, the setting for Control. I recently got to see a hands-off preview of the game, which strives to combine the team’s signature strangeness with the pick-up-and-play appeal of a modern multiplayer shooter. But its best feat may be what it doesn’t want to be: your part-time job.
In FBC Firebreak, teams of three players go on missions called Jobs, in which they have to cleanse various sections of the unpredictable Oldest House, fighting The Hiss with an array of weapons that feels decidedly Remedy-like. Control’s wide variety of Hiss enemies was on exciting display in the mission I saw, called Paper Chase, in which FBC first responders had to make it through hordes of corrupted agents using weapons like a piggy-bank mallet, all before fighting a gigantic boss monster that had formed from millions of sticky notes, like a chaotic blend of Office Space and Ghostbusters.
The demo I saw showed off several “Kits,” each of them meant to lean into a type of play and collectively complement each other in a three-person squad. The Jump Kit uses electricity abilities and offers buffs to mobility; the Fix Kit is a tanky offering with a huge wrench for melee attacks; the Splash Kit is designed as a support class that can disrupt the environment using a water-based loadout.
While the game can be played solo or in pairs, Remedy said it’s designed for the full team of three to take on hordes of Hiss. As each Job comprises three zones with different objectives, environments, and challenges presented each time you play, and with each zone escalating in difficulty and culminating in a boss showdown, players short on allies will have their hands full, but it’s doable.
The visual flair, inventive weapons, intense combat, and sly workplace humor shading it all were very reminiscent of Control, but because of the first-person perspective and the game’s endlessly replayable mission format, it also reminded me of Left 4 Dead.
Game director Mike Kayetta told me that although the team looked to other modern shooters for guidance on bringing FBC Firebreak to life, much is owed to that co-op all-timer, too. “Of course, there is no (and should be no) perfect comparison to another game out there […] especially, the greats like L4D. It’s the crowned granddaddy of the whole co-op session thing, and yes, there’s been a lot of evolution and movement in games since then, but I don’t think anyone could jump into this space without some healthy respect and awe for the original king.”
One thing I learned in writing a retrospective on Left 4 Dead is how its total lack of a metagame–no battle passes, no leveling system, no endless train of unlockables–is considered by some developers to be a non-starter today. You just can’t really build a game like that anymore, a few developers suggested when I spoke to them for that story. FBC Firebreak doesn’t go as far as L4D in throwing out all of those elements; you do level up, and there are loadouts to perfect and rewards to unlock, but a major distinction between this game and most others in the multiplayer space today is that it doesn’t punish you for not playing on its schedule. Refreshingly, it has no plans to be a live-service game in that sense.
“Most of that decision came from just being gamers and listening to gamers,” Kayetta told me. “So many people are feeling the same thing. There’s already too much good stuff out there for me to get through my backlog, and now you want me to play only this game? Or feel too bad because I didn’t play this game enough? Maybe I’m just grumpy because I have two kids at home and precious little time to play, but I know I can’t be the only one.”
Funnily enough, I also have two kids at home and have lamented how games ask for my undivided attention to the extent that I sometimes stop playing games I enjoy just because I feel like I’m not able to min-max their metagames properly. Kayetta’s words were all too familiar to me, as I’m sure they are to many others reading this now. This feeling was so common within Remedy that the game director told me he couldn’t even recall a time when anyone pushed back against the idea and vouched for making the game more of a traditional live service. “No second-guessing. Really, I am sitting here racking my brain for a single example of someone who wanted to do something different and drawing a blank,” he said.
That’s not to say FBC Firebreak will be without post-launch support. The game will get free updates such as new missions, and paid cosmetics will be available to engage the community that’s playing the game a lot anyway, but if you’re among such devotees, it ought to be because you want to be there, not because you feel obligated to show up. There will be “no limited-time rotations or daily log-ins,” Remedy said.
The line between post-launch support and a live-service game is blurry, Kayetta said, “because different people have different takes on what [live service] means. What we do on Firebreak has never been about trying to conform to or buck those trends. We just talked about what was going to provide value to the people who give our game a shot and join the community we’re trying to build. And what was reasonable to ask of them in return. This is where we landed.”
It’s almost nostalgic to hear a team speak this way about a multiplayer game. It made me think of how many hours I poured into L4D–literally thousands, I’d estimate–and how I did that all without concern for any of the FOMO-inducing metagame systems that now similarly keep me engaged with games I do genuinely enjoy but sometimes play merely to check their proverbial boxes. Some live-service games have opted to offer battle passes that don’t expire as a solution, but this hardly helps since newer battle passes are always available too. I’ve even found this system to be worse sometimes, like when I jumped back into Halo Infinite and found I had about nine earlier passes to work on if I cared to catch up to present-day offerings.
To the extent FBC Firebreak has progression systems, I expect I’ll be heavily inspired to max them out anyway. I tend to enjoy Remedy’s work, the gameplay demo I saw looked excellent, and I’ll no doubt be scrubbing its levels for more Remedy Connected Universe teases to dissect in any case. But it’s heartening to know I’ll be doing all these things because I want to, not because they’re some unseen boss’s orders.
FBC Firebreak is coming to PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5 this summer. It’ll be a “mid-priced title” and, in a rare move, it will launch into both Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus on day one.