Remedy's multiplayer Control spinoff looks even weirder than I expected: A co-op FPS where you shoot goo and garden gnomes at murderous monsters from another dimension
Remedy's multiplayer Control spinoff, formerly known as Project Condor, was officially unveiled today as FBC: Firebreak, which game director Mike Kayatta pointedly stated "is not Control DLC and it’s definitely not a Control sequel."
FBC: Firebreak is a three-player co-op FPS set in The Oldest House, the weird, ever-shifting headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control. Players will step into the boots of "fearless first responders" dealing with the various problems that pop up—but since you're lacking the paranormal abilities of FBC chief Jesse Faden, you'll have to rely on more practical methods of getting things done: Guns, grenades, and blunt instruments of various sorts.
Which isn't to say you won't have more Control-esque implements at hand. "The Firebreak crew has been cleared to carry ‘paranatural augments,’ which are Altered Items engineered into tool attachments," Remedy communications director Thomas Puha told the Xbox Wire. "Like the Garden Gnome you saw in the trailer. These are more or less our take on ‘ultimates’ and are not to be taken lightly. I like to think of them as a jaguar in a box. You carry the box, you point it at something, you open the box, and you just kind of hope the jaguar doesn’t turn around and eat you or your friends instead."
Puha said FBC: Firebreak is meant to be "a pick-up-and-play experience" that's easy to jump into, and while "a steady supply of new content" is planned post-release, it's not intended to be a game-as-a-service: "This isn’t about logging in every day for some loot or fear of missing out on materials."
Despite being very different from Remedy's previous work—FBC: Firebreak is the studio's first multiplayer game—it promises to maintain the studio's famed narrative flair, albeit from a different angle.
"For the people who are keeping up with the singleplayer journey, we wanted to make sure that FBC: Firebreak was a legitimate and impactful part of that history and lore," Kayatta said.
"The narrative style you’ve seen in our previous games just wasn’t ever going to work here, for this kind of game. When you think about these differences in FBC: Firebreak’s gameplay—world over story, multiplayer over single-player, voice-chatting with your teammates, action over exploration and so on—you can probably see why it was important that we made FBC: Firebreak a stand-alone experience."
The tone of the FBC: Firebreak trailer is decidedly lighter than that of Control, but that doesn't mean the game is going to be light. "FBC: Firebreak is a game about people trapped in an absurd world fighting for their lives," Kayatta said. "What we may interpret as ‘funny’ from our couch, like seeing a bunch of murderous sticky notes evolve consciousness after reproducing like bunnies, would actually be really frightening to the character living it.
"When looking for the tone, it was important to me that we found a way to keep those same, fundamental ingredients of ‘absurd’ and ‘serious’, but then play with the mix in a way that works for Firebreak—for the specific situation our characters find themselves in but also for the specific type of gameplay we’re building."
FBC: Firebreak is currently set to come out sometime in 2025.