Defiance. I’ve seen it. I’ve played it. I know many of you are thinking, “Yeah, so did I. Co-Optimus gave us beta keys,” and you’d be right. I played the 360 beta with a few of you. We grouped up, played some co-op, shot some mutants, killed some hellbugs, and chased down an Arkfall or two. We also couldn’t log on and got booted from our games from time to time. Whatever. It was a beta. We help out Trion test their game systems, and in exchange we get an early taste of the game itself. A few days ago I was invited to Trion Worlds’ new offices and got some extra hands-on time with Defiance, playing a fresh build of the game and enjoying the uninterrupted play provided by a stable server. I liked what I saw. I think you will, too.
Now if you’re worried about the quality of the game because it’s tied in to a TV show, stop it. This is a joint venture between Syfy and Trion, not a mere “licensed game.” Trion’s design development manager, Chris Arretche, explains:
“Syfy does what they do well, and they make good programming, and we do what we do well, which is (make good games). So from the onset of this grand experiment, it was ‘Let’s build this IP up together,’ but at the same time, let’s bank on what our strengths are. So yes, there are these really great connections that will develop as the game goes on and the television show goes on, but we want to make sure the game itself is fun first.”
For the uninitiated, Defiance is a sci-fi themed, third-person shooter set on a near-future Earth. The world has been thrown into chaos after a devastating --you know what? There’s a whole TV show coming out that will give you all the plot you want. You really should check it out. There is also plenty of story and exposition dished out through in-game cutscenes and missions. I’ll let you enjoy those for yourself.
All you need to know is you’re on Earth. It’s the future. There are hostile and friendly aliens, as well as monstrous creatures, various vehicles, and all sorts traditional and not-so-traditional weapons. You will play the role of an Ark Hunter --not to be confused with a Vault Hunter. A massive debris field made up of derelict alien ships liters Earth’s orbit. Giant chunks of wreckage rain down on the planet’s surface, providing valuable arktech for those who would claim it. As an Ark Hunter it’s your job to salvage these “Arkfalls,” fighting off hostile forces and partnering with equally ambitious allies.
When you’re not claiming Arkfalls you’ll be able to pass the time with main story missions, side missions, the intriguing Shadow War, co-op instances, PvP events, races, challenges, and random environmental events scattered throughout the ruins of a partially terraformed northern California.
I played the PC version of Defiance with a 360 gamepad. Blasphemy, I know. I chose my character’s origin and appearance from a rather limited selection. There are eight alien races in the world of Defiance, but only male and female versions of humans and Irathients are playable, for now. From what I could tell, character origin affected my starting weapon and clothing, but not much else. I was free to develop my character any way I wanted. Having played an Irathient outlaw in the beta, I chose a human survivalist.
The tutorial level was a little rough. I had to lower my graphical settings and resolution to get the game to run smoothly. The graphics looked similar to what I would expect from a console title. Trion Community Manager, Mathew Everett, explained that the PCs we were using didn’t have adequate graphics cards, which was kind of a bummer. He did provide access to a computer with better capabilities, and the game looked quite good with the settings maxed out. I’m not really a PC guy, but I can say that the game was markedly better on the gutsier machine.
Once I left the tutorial area the game ran much more smoothly, even on the lesser PC. My survivalist was armed with a sniper rifle, grenades, and a pretty effective pistol. I was also protected with a regenerating shield, which has become a staple for sci-fi shooters. I was able to take out mutant riflemen and hellbug skitterlings with ease. Grenades run on a cooldown timer. They act more like of a special power than a commodity. Ammo for my rifle was in large supply. As the day went on I heard other players were having a hard time with ammo management, but I thought it was rather plentiful.
I ran through a few brief story missions, earning points for my Environmental Guardian Online, or “EGO,” Defiance’s take on a leveling system. Increasing my EGO granted me access to special powers which could change the flow of battle. There are four basic powers: Blur, Cloak, Decoy, and Overcharge. I had already played as an Overcharged character, so I took my chances with the Cloaking ability. These powers are linked to each other in a large grid, providing players with a wide variety of unlockable perks such as defensive and offensive bonuses, as well as lower cooldown rates.
One of the cool things about Defiance is the fact that I wasn’t locked into a class. Players will have the ability to play several different roles. Arretche explained:
“Some people will be like, 'Well, what’s my class? Do I pick my sniper class up front, do I pick my heavy combat guy?' The fun for our game is you get to modify your combat style, we have multiple loadouts, you’re not locked into anything. Your weapon and your loadout define your playstyle.”
The basic shooting elements were reminiscent of other third-person shooters. The controls were intuitive, but the menus were a little cumbersome. I shot enemies in their weak spots, tossed grenades when I could, and I used my cloaking and perks to the best of my ability. Enemy AI was much more impressive than the mindless drones I had faced in the beta. Mutants actually took cover, flanked, and used grenades. The open world of Defiance was inviting, and I found myself drawn to random environmental encounters, such as defending survivors from mutant attacks or eradicating hellbug infestations. Of course, there were dozens of other players running around this starting area with me. For MMO veterans this was business as usual, but for console players, especially 360 gamers, this was a novel experience.
I noticed we would have access to several different unlockable loadout slots, affording my single character the ability to play any role I deemed necessary. With enough leveling you could potentially have access to all four EGO powers.
I dumped some EGO points into the Hunter’s Stance and Sucker Punch perks, which increased my damage when I was crouching and/or shooting enemies in the back. Not the most honorably choices, but I was playing as a cloaked sniper, what do you expect? I quickly gained access to a vehicle, which could be conveniently summoned with the simple press of a button. From here the world was basically open for me to explore, and it was time for some co-op.
In Defiance, gathering a group for co-op is simple. I could control social functions like grouping, queueing for events, and emotes with a few presses of the d-pad. I could fast travel to any player on my friends list with ease. Once I had joined a few players we could complete story missions together or queue for cooperative instances, PvP matches, or a Shadow War. I was a little disappointed to hear that groups and co-op instances would be limited to four players. I asked if this number would be increased in the future. Tony Morton, an associate level designer who is spearheading PvP and multiplayer, said, “We’ll never say no to anything.”
I’ve played through three co-op instances in Defiance: Explosions 101, Angel Island, and Cronkhite Bunker. All three had decent rewards and featured some nice loot drops. The Angel Island and Cronkhite Bunker instances were in last weeks beta. They were fairly simple. Explosions 101 was a bit more difficult. It featured the Cerberus, a jeep-like vehicle armed with a chain gun and rockets. The mission was highlighted by two tough bosses. These guys were happy to expose the weaknesses in my build and playstyle. Simply put, I got my ass kicked. Luckily I was grouped with some experienced players and we soldiered through.
I asked Morton how Defiance would handle potential co-op partners with different EGO levels.
“Let’s say you have 40 hours into a game, and you have a new buddy who hops in, and you want to play with him. Most of the time you have to re-roll, roll an alt and start over. So what we’ve done with the power curve and our leveling curve is we’ve really lowered it. So as you level up and you get more powers you’re allowed to do cooler things, but you don’t necessarily do a whole lot more damage. So you’re moving around a lot faster, your weapons are doing crazier things, your shields, your grenades are doing all these crazy things, now your buddy comes on and you want to play with him. Now you can just take your current dude and go over there and start playing with him. Now as you roll through with missions and stuff --you already completed the missions-- that doesn’t stop you from grouping up with your buddy, because he has the mission, and you’re rolling into POI’s together, and you’re still helping him out. So that really helps the whole co-op, which is one of the coolest things that we do.”
But what if we did a mission earlier, and we really liked that particular mission?
“If you and your buddy find an area that you really enjoyed, and you want to play again, you don’t need the mission, you can just go back in and replay the event.”
He went on to explain what set co-op instances apart from normal missions.
“These provide much more linear combat... We can really drive story. We can really drive cinematics. We know where the player is coming from. We know where the player is going to go. It let’s us crank up the difficulty in combat a little because we know exactly where the player fronts are going to be and how they’re going to repress the area, and those are really pretty cool as well. There’s quite a few different things you can do on top of that.”
Morton then brought up the cooperative nature of the Arkfalls:
“...then you have the dynamic content, which is the Arkfalls. Those things are a blast, right? So you’re out there, you’re playing with your buddies. You start doing these Arkfalls... People would start doing minor Arkfalls, two people would show up. They get done with that one and go to the next one, well now they run into two more people, so now there’s four, they run into four more, so now there’s eight. By the time we hit these big bosses there’s like 30, 40, 50 people just cranking away on this thing and before you know it you have this huge social event that has created itself and we didn’t have to do a thing. The game just kind of did it all on its own.”
Having played through several Arkfall events, I can say they’re pretty impressive. At the end of the event all the players involved receive some type of reward, be it cash or XP, and then you can compare your performance to other players on a final scoreboard.
Players with a thirst for adversarial combat will be happy to hear that PvP is quite entertaining. There are normal PvP matches that anyone can jump into. These will be comprised of two team deathmatch maps and a capture and hold map. There is a certain amount of technical kung fu going on that will keep players competitive, even if there is a large level gap. “We do have clamps and try to keep people somewhat close,” said Morton.
He then delved into Defiance’s Shadow War.
“The biggest thing we have going for us is Shadow War. Some games have open world PvP, other games have the instanced battled grounds that you’re used to. What we do is layer the open world PvP on top of the world that everybody else is already playing in. So rather than just going out and shooting people in the face, you know, you’ve got NPC’s still rolling around, you’ve got people who aren’t participating in the Shadow War still rolling around doing missions and stuff, so there’s this extremely diverse amount of gameplay that you just can’t get anywhere else.... "
He continued to explain how the game would handle large player counts.
"Another cool thing about Shadow War is that it scales based on the number of people playing, so it will start with as little as 32 (players) and move all the way up to 128, and it will grow with points. So you start with three capture points and then it spawns up to seven points over half a zone, so it’s completely dynamic in how it works. The other joy of it is that the system is random - instead of a whole bunch of predetermined things where it can pick... it can pick a few other locations. So you may play the left half of a... zone one time, you may get the same thing again, but the points are at a different spot, or it may send you to the other end of a zone, with all the different combinations you really don’t know what you’re going to get. The environments change, NPCs change, sometimes there’s an Arkfall going on.”
The Shadow War is a unique take on open world PvP, allowing a massive amount of players to wage a territorial war throughout a region. My cloaked sniping abilities were of little use in the smaller, standard PvP Observatory map, but I was fairly successful in the open world of the Shadow War. Basically I snuck up behind dudes and shot them in the back. If that’s not your thing you can simply observe from a distance, or pass through as a noncombatant in search of more loot.
Defiance has a tried and true colored loot system. My fellow players were eagerly calling out blues and purples. One lucky guy even got an orange. Different loot is dropped for each player, so don’t be afraid to pick up everything. There is a wide variety of modifiable weapons, shields and grenades. There will also be microtransactions, but these should only cover cosmetic items. “We’re not a pay to win game,” said Everett.
Some of you who participated in Defiance’s Advanced Beta Mission 3 event may have had a hard time getting in due to server performance. I know I had my own connection issues. I talked to Chris Lena, a live producer who focuses on, as he puts it, “the running of the (game).” I asked him if he was confident in server performance come launch day:
“Yeah, I’m feeling really good about it. We just finished up the big beta on all three (360, PS3, and PC) over the weekend. We’re all really happy with how things performed. I think from a technical standpoint we’re in good shape.”
Releasing an online game isn’t easy. Releasing an MMO simultaneously across two consoles and PC is unheard of. Trion Worlds is confident everything will be in place when Defiance launches on April 2nd. I hope so. I want to get my cooperative Ark Hunt on.
Thanks to Trion Worlds, Matt Everett, Tony Morton, Chris Arretche, and Chris Lena.