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Taylor Kurosaki and Jacob Minkoff believe they have found a remedy to the rot that has crept into the third-person shooter genre. You may not recognise the names, but you'll certainly be familiar with their work – the pair have collaborated for almost two decades, having left their mark on countless Naughty Dog adventures and led the Modern Warfare revival at Infinity Ward.
Kurosaki and Minkoff just unveiled their latest creative endeavour: Crossfire. It's the debut project from That's No Moon Entertainment, developed in partnership with Smilegate. It's a third-person tactical action game with a focus on grounded stealth combat, built to leverage all that Unreal Engine 5 has to offer. Crossfire looks absolutely stunning in action, but the real point of focus should be in the miniature of its movement systems.
"Our vision is to combine cinematic storytelling with a genre-reinventing cover and traversal system that rewards players for being smart and tactical," says Minkoff, game director of Crossfire. "Our system will allow you to react to the severe pressure that we're putting on you in ways that you haven't been able to before in other video games."
To understand the ambition driving That's No Moon, you first need to understand where the genre it's claiming to reinvent is positioned. Back in 2004, developer Namco Hometek unleashed Kill.Switch – credited as the first video game to use cover as a core mechanic. It's one of those titles you probably haven't played, but you've certainly felt its influence elsewhere: Kill.Switch inspired the heavy cover systems that were later popularised by Gears of War and Uncharted. The third-person shooter never looked back, leaving battlefields strewn with blocks of waist-high cover in its wake.
Crossfire is here to change that. "The system that we have developed, and the fundamental innovation of this game, is what we are calling 'Adaptive Cover'," Minkoff tells me. "The basic idea is that the player enters cover mode, deflects the stick, and then the system chooses the correct stance and motions for the character, given the context of the environment around them and the line-of-sight of enemies."
I know what you're thinking, this all sounds incredibly dry, doesn't it? The thing you need to understand about Crossfire is that it's presenting exceptionally realistic environments (which is to say, unconventional; at least by traditional video game standards) for special-operative Layla, and her reluctant partner, Cross, to crawl through. It's all jagged rocks and splintered points of cover, a playspace that looks as if it has been weathered by time rather than the requirements of antiquated third-person shooter systems.
Adaptive Cover has been designed to dynamically adjust your stance to the terrain and enemy positions, allowing you to intuitively maintain cover. I should note that this is integral, given that a single bullet can kill here. While Minkoff is keen to explain that Crossfire is by no means a military simulator, it is designed to be tactical and challenging – ammunition and armor is limited, as are health reserves.
"We believe that a shooter that has sufficient lethality to make the player use interesting tactical options is also a shooter that has sufficient pressure to make the player buy into the arc of the characters," he tells me. "So, Crossfire is a stealth forward game. It kind of had to be, because this is a game about being intelligent in how you use the environment. This is a game about strategy over strength."
Crossfire is all about being stealth-forward, and being intelligent about how you analyze the environment
That strategy is reflected in the way that enemies relentlessly hunt Layla and Cross. "Enemies have individual knowledge of you and your buddy. Even if you're in hot combat, enemies can lose track of you. You're able to reacquire stealth, even if they are still firing at your buddy, allowing you to do stealth kills in the middle of a firefight." Minkoff adds: "Crossfire is all about being stealth-forward, and being intelligent about how you analyze the environment."
GamesRadar+ will have more to share on Crossfire in the coming days, following our visit to That's No Moon's base of operations. But before I let you all go, I should flag that there's something that Taylor Kurosaki, chief creative officer, really wants you to know about Crossfire: "This is not a multiplayer game. There are no live-ops components to it. It's a single-player experience, made in the grand tradition of tentpole single-player experiences."
Kurosaki and Minkoff believe that Crossfire has the ability to challenge the way we think about third-person shooters. By leveraging a more adaptive approach to cover and firing, by embracing a sense of true lethality, and by using cutting-edge technology to increase player empathy with sharply-written characters, Crossfire can finally make a stand in a Western market that has so often overlooked the success it has achieved elsewhere around the globe.
Crossfire is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X but doesn't have a confirmed release window. Check back on GamesRadar+ in the days ahead for more insight from Kurosaki and Minkoff, and more detail on the game's ambitious systems.
