The very first glimpse of Concord was met largely with raised eyebrows and interest in knowing more. To be fair, that first trailer gave us little more than a cinematic look around a ship and a close-up of a very appetising hamburger. Smash cut to the May 2024 State of Play showcase, two slices of Concord were shown back-to-back, first a cutscene and then a now-infamous look at the gameplay for the five-versus-five arena shooter. While a select few remained optimistic, it’s safe to say that the first impression was a rough one, with the consensus being fairly negative. But we’ve now had two beta weekends, giving us time to go hands-on with Firewalk Studios’ first title, so we can see if the proof is in the pudding.
While many of us at the WellPlayed office jumped into one or both of Concord’s betas, Ash and Adam stayed the longest, and they came away feeling that the online discourse might be a bit harsh.
Ash:
Oh boy, Concord. Seriously, the game had one of those trailers that captured me and took me on a journey—its ragtag group of Guardians of the Galaxy from Temu blaggards had me thinking that maybe Eidos-Montréal had lost their Marvel license and was scrambling to keep producing something. But no, it all came crashing down with the reveal that this character and setting-rich outing was just a vehicle for another Hero-Based Ability Shooter™.
Video games and cynicism go hand in hand – or controller in hand, depending on your platform. For many, a totally normal response is to see some newly announced thing and immediately start picking holes in it – because, as an industry, video games have found new and unique ways to disappoint us year to year at an astonishing rate. So yeah, I was one of the early-day haters of Concord. Yeah, I was blasting that property well before it was cool, purely on the merit that it was an ability-based hero shooter in a landscape littered with many an opus that assures us all that this is totally the one that stands out from the pack.
But then it arrived. An invite to get involved with the early Beta and perhaps see if my crowd-sourced negativity was warranted. I smiled a ghoulish, almost Grinch-like smile and hit the install button – feeling that perhaps I could suffer through a few rounds and produce some hard-hitting journalism on how the game STINKS. I shortlisted at least half a dozen headings of things I could lance like a putrid boil – the gameplay, the characters, the wasted potential of narrative. I was lining up my fish in a barrel and packing some serious heat.
There was just one problem.
I started having fun.
When games of this ilk – especially when they offer no real on-the-fly learning – I will often leap into the deep end and see how it will all coalesce. I skipped over reading character abilities, didn’t bother to check into what objective tips might be displayed and instead joined a game and locked in the first space misfit that interested me – a cat lady with purple hair and a mundane-looking submachine gun. I jogged alongside my team and tried to make sense of what I was seeing – some dude in a wide-brimmed hat was manifesting a green aura, a giant woman was electrifying the ground and some dude in a gamer headset was jogging off without the rest of us. Whatever, this must be the first step on the road to Suck-town.
I rounded a corner and saw an enemy. Some lady with wacky glasses was throwing knives at me, and I instinctively pushed buttons and let fly with my SMG. Some orb bounced out of me and into her before returning to me – okay, no idea what that did – and I kept firing and mashed my jump key to avoid the sharp bullshit being lobbed at me.
I rocketed into the air, way higher than I expected – and peppered my would-be assailant. I hit the ground right around the same time as my foe’s body did, and I took a moment to process what had just happened.
Suddenly, surfing that wave of negativity wasn’t as fun as I thought.
I played more rounds and eventually hooked up with the legendary Adam Ryan to see if the magic could be shared – and you know what, it did propagate. We flicked through many of the colourful cast and found each character to have some fun quirks to them that never felt oppressive and shitty within the game. While Concord is an ability-based shooter, the abilities themselves are not massively overbearing and shitty to deal with. No ultimate abilities mean that every engagement is easy enough to measure – nobody is about to explode into a cascade of neon dogshit and wipe out the entire team at the drop of a hat. But by that same token, the time-to-kill and gunplay are a great deal more generous than what I expected. You end up with a product that isn’t quite as shooty as, say, Valorant – yet not ability-dominated like Overwatch 2. It’s this oddly happy medium that was tickling familiar centres of my brain in new ways. Dare I say it, this hero shooter appeared to stand out from the pack.
And I was quite happy to be wrong. I’ll always be happy to mop the egg off my face if the worst outcome is that something turns out to be fun.
But apparently, the internet disagreed with me. I was kind of amazed to see the range of white-hot hate being leveraged towards the game. Some arguments are barely worth repeating – typical rhetoric speaking towards diversity in games being a bad thing – but others were more tangible. The game should be free to play! It has the wrong attitude! Worst genre choice!
delay Concord, make it F2P and think about adding a PVE mode to advance the story
launching it next month with the current model is setting it up to fail
I say this as someone who enjoyed the beta and want to see it succeed
— Parris (@vicious696) July 24, 2024
Oof. What I feel in my chest is a pre-emptive state of mourning for Concord – because I personally felt a little magic going on. But the reception is so cold already that I have no idea how the title will overcome it. With the landscape of gaming being so ruthless and unforgiving, the idea of a niche title thriving is a hard one to parse – these days, the expectation of games is to break records or quietly get in the bin. But I do have a flicker of hope because there is something here. Beyond the labels and the unfortunate reception – there seems to be a degree of heart. Maybe the character-driven narrative nifties will be the deciding factor? I mean, I know that they have Adam all aflutter. Over to you, big lad.
Adam:
Hello, I’m the aforementioned Adam, the one who got stuck into the Concord beta with Ash. Similar in some ways and different in others to WellPlayed’s resident Photoshop wizard, I leaned on the side of positivity after watching the narrative cutscene and first-look gameplay for Concord. I wasn’t expecting to be enraptured with the new shooter, nor did I think I would give two hoots about the characters or story, but I wasn’t willing to dismiss it after on State of Play showing.
So, how do I feel now that we’re on the other side of two beta weekends? Well, to put it simply, I want to play more. Ash has already spoken about how the game feels to play, and I agree with him there, but I was also taken by that all-important ingredient: the vibe.
As Ash mentioned, no matter which way you cut it, the initial reveal gave off little more than “we would love to be Guardians of the Galaxy,” so it was a pleasant surprise to find out that Concord has its own visual identity and a strong at that. Instead of a sanitised spacefaring aesthetic, the characters, locations and UI all have a distinct 70s feel to them. Stopping short of having the eclectic bunch of aliens and cyborgs cooking with orange Pyrex bowls, this familiar yet fantastical approach gives Concord a genuinely unique look that I just wasn’t expecting.
There’s been a boatload of criticism thrown at Firewalk for its decision to release weekly cinematics to further stories within Concord but fuck it, I’m here to see what these legally distinct ratbags get up to. I’m someone who wants to be invested in characters in Overwatch and Apex Legends, but I just can’t latch onto narratives told through blink-and-you-’ll-miss-it in-game voice lines. I’m not completely dense, but I need some meat on those bones to buy in.
I do want to see more of these characters. Three cinematics played during the beta weekends, laying the foundation of the world and getting everything primed for launch, and what was shown was interesting, to me at least. At a base level, I want to know more about the Freegunners purely because they look so damn cool. I dig the general aesthetic, but I dig the character designs even more. Kyps is a purple cyborg/robot that focuses on stealth gameplay, and she’s kitted out in a beige blazer paired with a wide-leg pant in the matching colour. Oh, and she has a Kiwi accent, did I mention that? So, do I want to see more of her interacting with other characters, like my spirit animal 1-Off, the gigantic yellow robot with the body of a barrel and an obsession with vacuums that rivals my own? You best believe the answer is yes.
I didn’t come away from my weekends with Concord without worries or concerns, but I didn’t want to put the controller down, either. I understand some of the criticisms, and the low player count for what was essentially a free trial is a worry, but I’m staying positive and rooting for Concord, least of all because I think it deserves to be given a chance at success.
Concord releases on PS5 and PC on August 23.
So, I’m sure you have thoughts on Concord, so let’s have them in the comments or on our social media.
