Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Firefall Is Shooty, Boasts Alien Pretties

By Jim Rossignol on November 1st, 2011 at 3:30 pm.

A computer game.
Red 5′s Tony Park (who runs the Singapore studio) has been talking to Gamespot about the art style of Firefall, as well as showing off some gameplay footage and touching on the PvP and PvE aspects of the game (below, with some new game footage, and some old). The shooter-MMO, which has talent from both Tribes and World Of Warcraft directing it, is currently undergoing closed beta-testing, and is scheduled for a December launch. I am quite keen to take a closer look.

Amazingly incongruous music, too.

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32 Comments »

  1. 01/11/2011 at 15:35 squareking says:

    Shooty or pretty, Jim? Make up your mind!

  2. 01/11/2011 at 15:40 Tams80 says:

    The art style is great and being a manga fan finding out that it’s based on manga is a bonus. As long as they don’t go down the road of the Battlefield play for free games, it should be bearable.

    Good to hear their hiring some new developers as well.

  3. 01/11/2011 at 15:43 westyfield says:

    Something something Orson Scott Card something something.

  4. 01/11/2011 at 15:58 scottossington says:

    Why is it that snipers are always woman? Are they not strong enough to carry a larger gun?

    • 01/11/2011 at 16:06 Simon Hawthorne says:

      Aren’t sniper rifles quite large?

      (But see your point.)

    • 01/11/2011 at 16:46 SpinalJack says:

      Haven’t you played Metal Gear Solid? Women make the best snipers, more patient or something.

    • 01/11/2011 at 17:31 Wulf says:

      I completely agree with this. It is more than a bit sexist, isn’t it? I’d be totally up for seeing more heavy ladies with gatling guns.

      Also: I’m not sure if MGS is the best call. MGS 2 subverted the slightly sexist ‘women can only be slender and carrying sniper rifles’ trope that seems to be prevalent in so many games. They did this with… Olga, was it? And then you have a ninja bloke who’s more slender than just about any lady in the game. All of the subversions. Every subversion. Okay, not really, but they did at least subvert that. The only bad part was that they instead upheld the ‘heavy women must be bad guys’ trope. But that’s another unfortunate stereotype entirely.

      I’m all for removing these ‘gender standards’ really, as I think that they’re very silly and they show extremely outdated ‘sensibilities.’ (If you can call them that.) I’m still interested in this game, but there are aspects around the edges that strike me as… mildly unsettling. And it has nothing to do with the giant alien bugs romping around, but rather that the development team may have some questionable views on things that won’t sit well with me.

      /shrug

    • 01/11/2011 at 18:17 Gap Gen says:

      They have the good sense not to betray their sniping position by leaving lots of jars of pee about?

    • 01/11/2011 at 19:13 Droopy The Dog says:

      By the time they’re close enough to smell the urine it’s already too late…

    • 01/11/2011 at 19:49 bleeters says:

      I’d assume it’s not so much being incapable of hauling a weapon around, more in terms of distance from the actual fighting. Seems to fit in with the prevalence of bow or spell using fantasy female characters, of which more come to mind than I care to count. They’re rarely in the thick of it, so to speak.

      And yes, it’s entirely annoying and needs to go away.

  5. 01/11/2011 at 16:08 Chalky says:

    I’m certainly looking forward to giving this a go – but every time I see the FireFall logo I think about StarCraft 2. That certainly is a very similar look!

  6. 01/11/2011 at 16:17 Strangineer says:

    Sunken Harbor Mode, oh god. Suit misconceptions gone nuts.

  7. 01/11/2011 at 16:19 mana says:

    was excited for this team-pretty-man-shooter, but it was “supposed” to be out ages ago… December, you are so far away!! ;)

  8. 01/11/2011 at 16:56 Pop says:

    The problem is, I hear the outcome of the multiplayer is going to impact the single player campaign :(

    • 01/11/2011 at 18:03 Wulf says:

      The more I hear, the less I like.

      The artistic style is interesting. But that’s it at this point.

    • 01/11/2011 at 19:24 tungstenHead says:

      I should imagine that Firefall’s singleplayer is going to be catastrophically impacted by the multiplayer seeing as how it’s a “free to play online shooter.”

  9. 01/11/2011 at 17:05 Hoaxfish says:

    The music makes it sound like a Sims 3 expansion

  10. 01/11/2011 at 17:28 Sagan says:

    Lost all interest in this after the sexist ads that they had for this at pax. Men in insane armors and women only half dressed.
    Sure, it is kinda standard in online games now, but seeing it plastered all over the place in such a public space made it embarrassing to be a gamer.

    • 01/11/2011 at 18:02 Wulf says:

      Yeah. See… this is why I said what I said above, and why I think Orson Scott Card is a good fit for this team. I kind of wanted to like this, you know? It’s colourful, it looks fun, it has a beautiful open world…

      And yet, some parts of it just make the little hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. There’s just this wrongness there that pervades the whole experience. I had this sinking feeling when I picked up on the decidedly awkward news that Orson Scott Card is writing for them, which made me wonder if any of his trademark homophobia would seep into the game like a creeping illness from all sides.

      But after seeing the general sexism, I just think that this is a Red 5 thing, and that they just have some very undesirable values regarding gender roles overall. See, I wouldn’t mind playing something like this, but I have my own sensibilities too, and I’d be put off of it myself.

      Here is a thought: Really, isn’t it time gamers moved beyond this sort of thing?

      I mean, I remember the likes of Barbarian back on the ZX Spectrum and the advertising campaign for that. This… isn’t a lot different, is it? It’s gone from “helpless buxom women” to “give the helpless, buxom woman a gun/weapon you think she may be able to handle.” In this great, enlightened era of ours, it’s not a massive step forward. And I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who feels that way.

      Here’s that thought repeated: Really, isn’t it time gamers moved beyond this sort of thing?

    • 01/11/2011 at 18:19 Gap Gen says:

      Out of interest, how much of Advent Rising was Orson Scott Card? It was a weird and messy game, whose story made barely any sense (you got magical powers half-way through for no reason, for example, and it had several endings, like an incoherent Lord of the Rings. Oh, and it was also incomplete, apparently). That said, defeating an UNSTOPPABLE ALIEN INVASION FORCE by punching them had a certain mind-warping charm.

  11. 01/11/2011 at 17:33 Inglourious Badger says:

    Alien Pretties boasts Firefall is shooty? Is he one of the Devs? Wierd name

  12. 01/11/2011 at 18:20 skyturnedred says:

    That song was awesome.

  13. 01/11/2011 at 19:27 Adekan says:

    RPS: “A computer game.”

    They should put that on the press section..

  14. 01/11/2011 at 20:25 ChiefOfBeef says:

    If it has alien pretties, can we go all William Shatner and have sex with them?

  15. 01/11/2011 at 22:58 MythArcana says:

    World of Tribes! That says it all to me.

    UT3 installed is all I need to satisfy my FPS kiddie-thrashing antics, but thanks anyway!

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