LawBreakers, Cliff Bleszinski's New FPS Revealed

LawBreakers [official site], the new shooter from Cliff Bleszinski and his new studio Boss Key, was shown for the first time earlier today in a livestream. That livestream is finished now, but below you'll find the game's first proper trailer. It's a competitive, 5 vs. 5 sci-fi first-person shooter about manipulating gravity, with two factions based around law enforcement and criminal gangs.

Here's the trailer they showed during the stream:

Watch on YouTube

The Twitch livestream hasn't yet been archived, perhaps because it had to be restarted multiple times as audio and visual problems disrupted the quality. But here's what we learned about the game:

• Bleszinski called Reddit "the Reddit."
• LawBreakers is set years after the destruction of the moon caused a worldwide earthquake, but it's not post-apocalyptic. Though the event, called "the shattering", has changed the world, cities and societies have re-built.
• But there's a problem with crime. The game pits a Law faction versus criminal gangs, called Breakers. "And both are breaking the law of gravity," says Bleszinski. The game is "insanely vertical," players will want to avoid the ground, and you have powers that can create low-gravity zones.
• It has "arena shooter in its roots", but is also doing RPG-ish things with classes and weapon types and so on.
• Bleszinski talks a lot about American Football.
• Half the playable characters are women. "I want as many people to play this game as possible and to feel represented."
• Bleszinski wants to make a game about a lost dog.

We already knew that LawBreakers would be a free-to-play first-person shooter set in a sci-fi world, as Bleszinski has been teasing the game - previously known as Project Bluestreak - since the middle of 2014. This is the first sight of what it looks like beyond concept art and comes after publisher Nexon launched a teaser site for the game called The Shattering earlier this week.

Here's what Bleszinski said about the kind of game he wants to make in a Reddit AMA last year:

“I want to make a skill based game where someone who is really, really good is seen as a player with nearly godlike abilities. Sure, once in a while the person who sucks might get lucky with a stray shot and take that person down, but I want to craft a game that has weapons and moves that are easy to learn but to really make them sing takes thousands of hours of play just like a professional athlete would. Anyone can toss a football, but Drew Brees can get it through the tire at X yards every time.”

Did the livestream, or does the trailer above, do enough to convince you there's space for LawBreakers in an increasingly crowded genre?