Firefall: Red 5 talks class balance in new dev diary

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Game-design musings cut with multicolor pyrotechnics; everyone happy

Here's a new behind-the-scenes clip for Firefall, Red 5's upcoming free-play online shooter. The clip focuses on the team's efforts to achieve balance among the shooter's various classes, an objective with vital consequences in any online title. But tweaking the firing-rate of the medic's secondary firearm doesn't exactly make for scintillating viewing, so the studio's seen fit to overlay lots of fast, brightly-colored footage of sci-fi laser-battles. Congratulations, Red 5, on knowing your audience.

Firefall, due for release in December, mixes cooperative and competitive multiplayer in an online environment rich in outlandish sci-fi doodads for the obliteration of rival players. The game's now taking applications for its second closed beta, and will be free-to-play when it launches next month. When we last went hands-on with the title, what impressed us was the seamless transition between competitive Team Fortress-style play and MMO-esque co-op scenarios – which you'd expect from a studio founded by World of Warcraft veterans. If nothing else, the studio looks to have distilled Ritalin into viewable form, an achievement whose implications we can only guess at (for a few seconds, before becoming distracted and antsy).