Left 3 Dead<\/em>, anyone?<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n FBC: Firebreak<\/em> takes place six years after the end of Control<\/em>. The Oldest House, which used to be the seat of power for the FBC, has been sealed with the Hiss inside, and it\u2019s now time to eradicate the invasion and lift the lockdown. The agency is sending in the Firebreak team, a unit composed of government volunteers with no extra combat training and little hope of making it out alive. As a member of Firebreak, you\u2019re handed some special equipment, patted on the back and locked inside the headquarters with the Hiss and every unfortunate employee it\u2019s infested. Good luck.<\/em><\/p>\n The game is broken down by Jobs, which are essentially custom-built missions in specific regions of The Oldest House. All Jobs have three zones, but otherwise each one has a unique objective, crisis, and environment. After selecting a Job, you get to customize your run by setting the Threat Level and Clearance Level \u2014 Threat Level determines combat difficulty and the number of rewards up for grabs, while Clearance Level sets the number of zones you have to clear and the type of rewards.<\/p>\n \u201cI will say we do have more than three clearance levels, and you get into some pretty interesting stuff later, such as corrupted items that appear during the job,\u201d game director Mike Kayatta said.<\/p>\n Before the match begins, each player gets to select one of three Crisis Kits, loadouts designed with specific playstyles in mind. Crisis Kits come with a tool and an item each. The Jump Kit is based around electricity and it has the Electro-Kinectic Charge Impactor, a portable jackhammer kind of device with a conductive metal plate on the end, capable of slamming into enemies or propelling yourself into the air. It also has the BOOMbox, which plays music to attract enemies before exploding. The Fix Kit gives you a big wrench that\u2019s able to repair machinery and stagger Hiss, and it also includes a turret that you have to smack with the wrench to assemble. The Splash Kit is for all the water signs out there \u2014 it features the Crank-Operated Fluidic Injector, an industrial water cannon that can extinguish fires and soak enemies so they\u2019re primed for extra damage, plus a Humidifier, which sprays healing water in a wide area.<\/p>\n \u201cA good way to look at all of this is that you're going to kind of combine the threat level and the clearance level and the type of job you want to play to sort of create your own load, your own experience, exactly the session that you're looking for with whatever group you're playing with that night,\u201d Kayatta said.<\/p>\n Members of the Firebreak squad have their own Research Perks, or upgrade slots. You purchase Perks with currency earned during Jobs, and stacking upgrades of the same type strengthens their effect. Equipping three Perks of the same type lends that ability to nearby teammates as well.<\/p>\n \u201cFor example, one perk might give you the feature that each missed bullet has a chance to return to your clip, or the ability to extinguish yourself by jumping up and down, which is how that of course works,\u201d community manager Julius Fondem said. \u201cIf you equip just one perk, you get its effect. Simple, straightforward. If you equip two of the same type, you get a stronger version of that perk. And if you equip three of the same perk type, you can actually share its effect with your nearby crewmates. As you increase your kit proficiency, you'll increase the slots you have to play with, giving you the opportunity to play with a lot of different builds and strategies.\u201d<\/p>\n Killing Hiss is all fine and dandy, but collecting currency is a major goal of each run in FBC: Firebreak<\/em>, too. Currency is used to purchase new gear and cosmetics as well as Perks. Regardless of whether you actually escape a Job alive, you're rewarded with XP and proficiencies for the gear you used. You can only earn currency by finding it in the environment and successfully escaping with it (and your life).<\/p>\n \u201cUltimately, Firebreak<\/em> is about efficiency,\u201d Fondem said. \u201cYou can't fail objectives, but the longer you spend doing them, the more and more Hiss will show up to stop you, increasing the chance that your crew dies on the job. That means the longer you spend exploring for currency, the more risk you're inviting and the harder it will eventually become to make it back to headquarters in one piece.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking of currency \u2014 Remedy promises it won\u2019t charge for critical content post-launch.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to keep all of our players united, which means that all playable post-launch content, such as Jobs, will be free for everyone who has the game,\u201d Fondem said. \u201cWe'll support the game by offering paid cosmetic content as well.\u201d<\/p>\n The Job that Remedy showed off in the media briefing (and featured in today\u2019s Future Games Show Spring Showcase<\/a>) was Paper Chase, a mission filled with flying yellow sticky notes, sticky-note monsters, and one hulking sticky-note titan as the final boss. It\u2019s set in a classic FBC office space, concrete walls and blood-orange carpet, and players have to eradicate the rogue, multiplying sticky notes as well as the rushing Hiss. Little squares of paper swirl through the air and cling to the player\u2019s face, covering the screen at times, amid explosions, flickering lights and showers of bullets. At one point, a player places a piggy bank in their melee weapon and smashes it on the Hiss, screaming, \u201cStand back, piggy\u2019s coming out!\u201d It activates an AOE wind effect on nearby enemies. There are environmental factors to mess with and a range of weapons to deploy \u2014 shotguns, machine guns, rifles, pistols, water cannons, turrets, grenades, electrified impact devices, boomboxes \u2014 and overall, Paper Chase seems like a damn good time.<\/p>\n It\u2019s taken plenty of iteration to get to this point. And as it turns out, FBC: Firebreak<\/em> isn\u2019t limited to three players just to differentiate itself from a slightly similar 16-year-old game with a four in its title.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reason why we did three-player squads, really, it was like an organic quirk of the development,\u201d Kayatta said. \u201cWe actually started testing with four players. I think it just didn't feel quite as good. It was a little harder to understand where people were. That's something that's, like, not required but definitely helpful in this game. And it just felt like, with all of the chaos and all of the fun systems going off, three just felt right over time. So that's it. And yeah, you can play solo or duo.\u201d<\/p>\n FBC: Firebreak<\/em> is due out this summer, and it\u2019s heading to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X\/S and PC via Steam<\/a> and Epic Games Store<\/a>, plus it\u2019ll be available day-one on Game Pass and PlayStation Plus. It\u2019ll support cross-play. Remedy is aiming for a \u201clower-minimum\u201d PC spec requirement and optimizing the game for Steam Deck. Still, FBC: Firebreak<\/em> will ship with full ray-tracing support, DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation and NVIDIA Reflex capabilities.<\/p>\n