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You know that an FPS is doing something right when the reload animation is as gratifying of a reward for emptying a clip as racking another point on the scoresheet. It's the smallest details that shine brightest in Concord. That satisfying chuck, chuck, chuck as Star Child feeds shells into his Skullbreaker Shotgun. The joy IT-Z exudes as she slipstreams through space and time, hurling electrostatic magazines aside before locking fire. The confidence commanded by Lennox as he playfully reloads his heavy handgun between twirling dodges. Production of Concord has been driven by veterans from Activision, Bungie, BioWare, Respawn, and Raven, and that's evident throughout.
It was always going to take something special to get Sony Interactive Entertainment to reinvest in first-party shooters. It's perhaps the one genre that PlayStation has been happy to cede ground to Microsoft in the modern era, which is a shame given the weight and ingenuity inherent to franchises like Killzone, Resistance, and Socom. So in blasts Concord, the debut project from Firewalk Studios – founded in 2018, partnered with PlayStation Studios in 2021, and later acquired by it in 2023. I do wonder what SIE found so attractive about the nascent studio, or a genre currently locked in battle royale for its own future, but I imagine it has something to do with the perception that Concord could be Destiny 2 meets Overwatch.
Critical hit
It's a killer sell, easy too, although not necessarily rooted in the reality of what Concord is putting out there. So, what would be closer? A slower Quake, perhaps? Not quite. A more forgiving Counter-Strike? Hmmm. Halo without the buoyancy? That's not right either. Concord deserves to be held to account on its own merits, but there is something about its makeup that seems to draw comparisons out into the ether. There's this dichotomy in the video game industry right now, where it's almost as easy to make the argument that the multiplayer shooter genre is at its zenith as it is that a pervasive sense of live-service fatigue threatens to bring the whole thing crashing down. That's the arena Concord steps into when it launches on PC and PS5 on August 20, 2024 – and one Sony is trying to claim ground in now through open beta.
Here's what I will say, Concord is an easy game to spend time with. It's a visually vibrant shooter, with strong definition implanted across its personable characters, richly detailed weapons, towering environments, and evocative skylines. Lanes are carefully carved through each arena, allowing for intermittent salvos of sharp gunfights powered by full-force forward momentum. There's no firing while sprinting or reloading, strafe-shooting isn't part of the equation, and the constant fizzle of hero power activations ensure that the best battles always seem to occur within your immediate field of vision. Outside of all the small, almost imperceptible design choices that contribute to Concord feeling so robust, there's an immense production value here that helps set this refined, raucous effort apart from other live-service shooters that have come and gone in recent years – Splitgate, The Finals, countless others.
What surprised me is how grounded Concord's action is. Arenas are large (arguably too large), and often equipped with what appears to be towering verticality. But it's a facade – a smart trick that echoes the scale of Destiny 2's Crucible environments. None of Concord's 16 Freegunners are free runners. Gunfights typically unfold dead center of the Y-axis, with the trajectory of the right thumbstick typically curving upwards to mitigate a character like Roka – hovering in the air while wielding a light missile launcher. This grounded approach almost feels unnatural, given how fluid the animation cycles and purposefully weighted the movement is in Concord. I want to be running across walls, vaulting over obstacles, and darting between cover, but it never comes. Concord lacks the momentum of Halo, the carnage of Quake, and the acrobatics of Titanfall, again making it feel more aligned with a supercharged Counter-Strike or depowered Valorant. Had more fluidity manifested itself in the movement and combat, I suspect that Concord would come dangerously close to being the spiritual successor to FASA Studio's Shadowrun – but I recognize I'm probably one of the only people clamoring for a revival of the critically overlooked 2007 shooter at this point in time.
Still, Concord shows real signs of life. It's difficult to know how successful the untested Firewalk will be at handling the growth of a live service – the studio is promising weekly cutscenes, evolving character arcs, and regular content drops – but perhaps its biggest test will be one of perception. Overwatch 2 has essentially collapsed in on itself, a sequel that few asked for, and that everybody has been stuck with after Blizzard wiped the original game off the face of the planet as part of the transition. There's definitely room for a new hero shooter to lay claim to that wayward community, but I don't necessarily see Concord filling the void – Marvel Rivals or Valve's unannounced Deadlock could be more fitting.
Know your role
That's partly because the aspects of Concord designed to accelerate collaboration between players is pretty muted. There are six class archetypes – Anchor, Breacher, Haunt, Ranger, Tactician, and Warden – but they feel woefully undefined, to the point where Firewalk could remove them before launch and I suspect that nobody would notice. These roles are poorly signposted within the labyrinth of menus, and supposedly contribute to broader 'Crew Bonuses' – a system that stacks passive ability boosts over time, as a reward for careful planning and teamwork in any given round, but these are exceptionally difficult to perceive. Concord also has this weird design quirk where the lower elements of the UI (denoting health, ammunition, etc) are exceptionally prominent, while the status of your fellow Freegunners occupies a tiny amount of real estate across the north quadrant of the screen; it's difficult to see whether your team needs support at a glance, effectively making this information (and support abilities) redundant.
I'm definitely impressed by what I have played of Concord so far. It's a really fun arena shooter - not one that's necessarily rewriting the rulebook, but offering appealing enough play to eat away evenings with ease. If there's anything I hope Firewalk takes from the open beta sessions, it's that an abundance of tutorialization and communication is going to be vital at launch. There's a lot of systems at play, connected to character specialization and how they intertwine, which feel somewhat unnecessary at this juncture. A distraction from the core arena shooter combat that Concord does so well. Whether Firewalk can address this adequately for launch will likely determine whether Concord fizzles immediately from view or has any chance of blowing up like Helldivers 2.
Concord is set to launch on August 23 for PC and PS5. You can try it for yourself in open beta from July 18 to July 21.
