Rock, Paper, Shotgun

There’s a bunch of new content appearing in the Firefall beta, and Red 5′s bossman Mark Kern has been wheeled out to explain precisely what is going on in a new dev diary video, which you can see below. Basically signing up gives you a chance to sign up, and then to invite others. Kern also does some clever stuff with a map made of lasers. I’m genuinely interested to see how the PvE world works, which is what Red 5 are beginning to roll-out properly now. If there game can give players a genuine sense of urgency in fighting the NPCs, rather them just being a conveyor-belt of MMO-style targets, then it could make for an interesting proposition. I’m a bit less interested in the PvP because, well, Planetside 2, or Tribes Ascend. Anyway, there’s some new footage in there, so take a look.
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Firefall developers Red 5 are going further than simply expressing their denunciation of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in words. On January 18th, the studio will close the Firefall beta and website for 24 hours in a show of protest. More drastically, the developers are also refusing to show the extremely promising free-to-play multiplayer shooter at E3 this year because of the organiser’s support of SOPA. Commendable. More below.

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Not content with the impressive CG versions of their main characters from multiplayer open-world shooter Firefall, Red 5 Studios have gone a bit overboard on the cosplay and brought in pros to play the parts of a couple of their armoured cartoon soldiers. I don’t think the jetpack actually works, so he won’t be making a Jingle All The Way entrance to PAX or anything. Yes, it’s more than faintly ludicrous, but I couldn’t help playing into the hands of this bizarre promotional strategy: seeing a grown man and woman enthuse about wearing plastic space armour is something we should all witness. As, you know, a warning.
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There are the jetpacks, of course, which instantly drew out a nod of approval, but my first impressions of Firefall were only of mild interest. The marketing campaign has been rarely effective though, not because of increasing bombast or social network integration which would be more likely to make me ignore it’s attempts to inflitrate my life, but because it has increasingly taught me what it will actually be like to play. The latest developer diary is another convincing burst of information. It sits before me and tells me how the various classes will work and, most importantly, why that will be fun. Observe.

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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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Most of the footage I’ve seen of the hugely ambitious and massively multiplayer shooter Firefall has made me nod approvingly at the scale and design of the world, which not only looks the part but also seems a place it’d be fun to soar through, raining death from above, and probably from the front, sides and back as well. Lo and behold, there is a new trailer that takes a different perspective; instead of whooping about size and numbers, this one zooms in on an individual piece of kit, giving a better idea of individual skills. It takes the form of an advertisement for the heavy weapon specialist’s Dreadnaught frame and it’s one heck of a sales pitch.

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UPDATE: PAX trailer added.
And what a handsome trailer, below. (That bit at the start with the cliff! You’d better be able to do that…) Information about the beta can be found here, and there’s a sign up here. I remain pretty excited about this, even in light of Planetside 2 possibly being awesome. It’s going to be fascinating to watch some prime MMOFPS candidates duke it out in the coming year or two.
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Unhinged, semi-airborne shooter Firefall, which looks a bit like Borderlands meets Tribes meets Brink meets WoW meets Unreal Tournament, has only gone and done the new trailer thing. It is fun to watch! It is also Firefall’s first big show of footage since announcing contentious author Orson Scott Card would be writing this sorta-MMO’s story. But never mind that: this trailer has some remarkably upbeat music. It has some grand views. It has a giant spider-robot. It has men and women flying over vast terrain. Terrain! Music to any PC gamer’s soul.
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Firefall devs, Red 5, have revealed that their Tribes-a-like online shooter has its story written by Orson Scott Card, he behind the SF novel Enders Game, and other games including the exquisite Shadow Complex. Some will greet this news with enthusiasm, as it means the already promising action MMO will have something deeper than “the man shoots the other man” as a backstory. Others will start scrawling protest banners.

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Red 5 Studios’ jetpack-based free-to-play shooter Firefall is making me sing with excitement – and look at this previous coverage for judgement, not this trailer – and no less after watching this new PvP trailer. While I am most interested in the scale of the world and co-op play vs monsters, this player combat (although entirely staged) looks like it might have some Tribes-like value to it. Also: class-based. Hmm! Go take a look.
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Earlier this week I had a chance to talk to Matt DeWald, community manager at Red 5 Studios, the company making Firefall. It’s a shooter that promises to do new and unusual things to the free-to-play space. The game was the big surprise at the most recent PAX event in Seattle, with its blend of cartoon good looks, Tribes-like shooter action, and a persistent world. Perhaps most intriguingly, Red 5 is the company that Mark Kern and William Petras went on to form when they left Blizzard. It seems to have both the vision, and the design pedigree to be a really big deal. I asked DeWald to go into some of the details.
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