Former Epic Games design director Cliff Bleszinski has been working on his first original free-to-play online game for just over a year now. His new studio, Boss Key Productions, has been steadily growing, and Bleszinski has been collaborating with Japanese-owned PC game publisher, Nexon, which has built its success through free-to-play games like MapleStory, Combat Arms, and Dragon Nest. Bleszinski’s LawBreakers, a free-to-play arena-based shooter, will be joining the Nexon catalog of titles in the near future. No official beta test or launch date has been announced yet, although the game is expected to launch in 2016.
Bleszinski invited a collection of PAX Prime fans in Seattle to go hands-on with a 15-minute five vs. five LawBreakers demo in August. It was enough to give fans a taste of what’s to come from one of the creative minds behind the Gears of War franchise.
The competitive team-based shooter is set about 100 years from now in an alternate future after the world has recovered from a gravity-defying seismic event called “The Shattering.” Two factions have evolved in this new world: the peacekeeping, heavily-armed members of the Transnational Authority of Supplement Control (TASK), also known as the Law, and the highly-organized crime syndicate known as the Breakers. They battle for control using weapons as well as new age technological advancements like gravity manipulation and drugs that open up superhero-like abilities. The name, literally, says it all, as it’s Law vs. Breakers.
“I’ve never really worked on a licensed property, and it’s really scary and exciting to launch a whole new IP,” Bleszinski said. “Naming this game was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my entire career. Like Gears of War was originally called Apex War, and it was Unreal Warfare at one point, and then the whole Gear thing just clicked.”
Bleszinski originally had Free Breakers in mind for the game’s name, but then art director Tramell Isaac suggested LawBreakers and everything just clicked. There’s even the element of breaking the laws of gravity, which connects directly to the gameplay experience.
So far, Boss Key has revealed the Grandview map, which takes place over the new Grand Canyon. The Shattering fiction opens up new gameplay interactions, some of which were on display in this level like floating rocks. The game has Zero G pockets, as well as areas where lunar gravity is halved and others where gravity is inverted. These types of levels are accentuated by character attributes, which include grappling hooks, gravity grenades, and the ability to jump and dodge quickly through areas in combat.
“The first map we’re just showing is very clearly laid out,” Bleszinski said. “We’re very big on clarity in the game, making sure you can see your enemies and know where they’re coming from. That’s something we really care about a lot here. The gameplay we showed at PAX is massively asymmetrical right now. After PAX, we’re looking at slightly asymmetrical.”
Bleszinski said the plan is for the game to run at 60Hz minimum on any decent machine. That’s important for the gameplay styles that the different “roles” open up to players. Bleszinski said he doesn’t use the term “heroes” for his game’s roles because it’s more of a call sign than taking on an entire history of a character.
Two roles from each faction were playable at PAX Prime. One the side of the Law, there’s Breacher and Cronos. Bleszinski said the law is known for being heavily-armed soldiers. Breacher is a well-rounded soldier that performs well in nearly any scenario. His run-and-gun gameplay style is bolstered by an assault rifle and sidearm. Cronos is a tank, delivering high durability and damage output, but slow mobility. He’s equipped with a rocket launcher and ricochet grenades that work great on the front line of any battle.
The Breakers feature two of what Bleszinski said will be a large collection of female roles in the game. In fact, half of the game’s playable roster will feature female characters. Kitsune is a fast and versatile melee fighter armed with an energy shotgun who’s great at catching opponents off guard and by surprise. Maverick is armed with a Vulcun Gatling cannon and jets, which allow her to take to the skies and blow away enemies. Her special Starfall ability unleashes massive damage as she dive bombs on opponents.
“My goal was to do almost like the Meyers-Briggs personality test of all different types of gamers, and find somebody they can all aspire to be from a fiction standpoint in the world, but also from the gameplay way that it appeals to them the most,” Bleszinski said.
While the focus has been on close-combat, five-on-five action across a variety of maps with a large offering of characters, Boss Key has spent a lot of time developing the world’s fiction. Bleszinski reteamed with Gears of War writer Josh Ortega to do some work on the game, and TJ Hickman was brought on board to write one of the game’s trailers. And then intern-turned-junior game designer Chris Morris spent a lot of time working on the lore.
“Maybe your average person will play LawBreakers and be like, ‘I played as Breacher and I killed some fools.’ Or ‘I played as Cronos and I blew up some idiots and had some fun online and did some crazy gravity moves and it was awesome,’” but there’s going to be this certain percentage of people who are your most die hard. They’re going to want to find the page of information on this one map or this one weapon. The game is filled with all these little touches like these fictional pharmaceutical companies we’ve created with logos on crates in the map. Each weapon has its own manufacturing company, that has its own fiction that Josh Ortega and I helped develop.”
More of that fiction, along with more characters and maps, will be revealed leading up to the game’s online beta and launch next year. But for now, Bleszinski and his team of about 40 have accomplished a lot in a short period of time. LawBreakers is shaping up to be a fun new entrant in the PC shooter arena.
