It’s a weird and rocky time to be a brand-new live service title in today’s industry. Between colossal knockout successes like Helldivers 2 and Marvel Rivals, it feels like things can go any which way regardless of pricing, content delivery structures, and player engagement.
This is what makes it difficult to place a finger on the pulse of Remedy’s FBC: Firebreak. Even after nearly 3 hours of hands-on time with this follow-up to Control, I’m unsure on how this is going to land. Its unique premise and focus on emergent gameplay moments separates it from the other countless live-service offerings bidding for your time, but it’s hard to know for sure if Remedy’s latest will be making waves in the way they want it to.
If you’ve yet to look into FBC: Firebreak for yourself, the game is set six years after the events of Control. The Federal Bureau of Control has locked the Oldest House to keep the Hiss from escaping and spilling out into the world. The only catch, is that the agents of the FBC are also locked in. With dwindling resources and the imminent threat of the Hiss growing larger, agents from all departments of the FBC need to kit-up to look for supplies and push back against the horrors of the Oldest House.
This preview build consisted of three Jobs; Hot Fix, Paper Chase, and Ground Control, each with unique objectives and goals within the Oldest House. These jobs are remarkably diverse, not only taking place in entirely different wings of the building, but playing around with objective design, enemy encounters, and environmental hazards.
Hot Fix, for example, is all about sealing the Furnace, a paranatural entity from Control found in the Oldest House’s Maintenance Sector. The Furnace requires a lot of looking after to avoid catastrophe, but it hasn’t been getting the TLC it requires to stay happy. Temperatures throughout the Oldest House are rising as a result, and a team is dispatched to repair heat transfer fans and provide the Furnace with what it needs.
As you clear runs of Hot Fix and unlock new Clearance Levels, objectives become more involved as you progress deeper into the Maintenance Sector. While lower Clearance Levels will just have you repairing cooling devices while contending with the Hiss, Clearance Level 3 actually had us reach the Furnace proper to feed it barrels of Black Rock powder. Not only is this a brilliant way of shaking up multiple runs of the same Job, but also ties into the story and world of Control in an elegant fashion.
Paper Chase, which was shown off in an earlier hands-off preview of the game, has sentient sticky notes multiplying all over the Executive Sector. The walls and floors are plastered with a sea of malicious sticky notes that are chomping at the bit to latch onto a living being. It falls to the crew to dispatch as many of these sticky notes as possible while fighting off the Hiss. Higher Clearance Levels of this job pull you deeper into the Executive Sector until you face Sticky Ricky, a monster made of sticky notes.
Each of these Jobs is delightfully inventive and suitably Control-like in their premise and design. It still leans heavily into the S inspirations of the Oldest House and its myriad haunted objects. The tone around it all is markedly different, though. FBC: Firebreak opts for comedy more often than it does seriousness, taking jabs at late-stage capitalism in the way that FBC agents are literally putting their life on the line for work.
This all feels really great to play as well. It feels good to pull the trigger on all the weapons I played around with here, explosive ordinance is limited but impactful, and the Kits we got to play around with each had unique roles to play in the sandbox. These equipment sets inform the kind of class or role you fill in your team. The Splash Kit, for example, is centred around a pressurised cannon that shoots out large projectiles of water.
While that seems insignificant, this water can be used to prime enemies for the Jump Kit, recontextualising how you use its short range electrifying blasts. It’ll chain to nearby enemies as it conducts through the drenched terrain and Hiss, providing an instant source of crowd control when you collaborate effectively. The Splash Kit can also be used to dampen the sticky notes in Paper Chase, making it easier to destroy them with melee hits to save on ammunition, which can be scarce on higher Clearance Levels.
It’s all wrapped up in a progression system that I’m quite middled on currently. Currency you earn can be spent on new weapons, upgrades to existing weapons, and Perks that give you bonuses in Jobs. The only issue is that none of these feel particularly impactful. Weapon upgrades are just a bump to damage, the Perks that I played with felt minute in the broader scope of the game, and Kit upgrades felt similarly understated.
I also feel that there really isn’t much reason to go through the same Job once you’ve completed all the Clearance Levels. We weren’t able to go further than Clearance Level 3, so it could be that the higher levels are much more varied. Even though there’s variation in Kits and loadouts, the core objectives remain the same with small mix-ups in enemy spawns, variations, and placements of things like ammo stations or showers to cleanse status effects.
This all comes back to the main concern I had after my hands-off preview of FBC: Firebreak, which is content. While the total number of Jobs is yet to be seen, this preview build suggested there’s a total of six at launch. It has me concerned about the value proposition of FBC: Firebreak at launch as a double A title. While Remedy have confirmed that all post-launch Jobs will be free, these games live and die by their reception at launch, and I’m just not sure FBC: Firebreak will bring enough to the table to keep people onboard.
If one thing is for sure, though, it’s that this game is another total looker from Remedy. Control is a technical and artistic showcase from the studio that is unlike anything else they’ve ever produced. FBC: Firebreak doubles down on the Oldest House’s brutalist architecture and eerie enemy design. It looks very sharp for a game that’s built to run on many different machines (including the Steam Deck!) and performance was similarly smooth aside from some stuttering that I’m sure is related to connection issues with no Australia-side servers being setup yet.
There’s still so much of FBC: Firebreak to dive into at launch. The full scope of its progression and loadout system is yet to be seen, its live service elements which promise to respect the players time haven’t been fully unveiled, and whether or not it has a sustainable content offering on day one is unknown. I had a fun time with FBC: Firebreak and am sure it’ll be even better with friends, I’m just uncertain on whether it’s something I or many others will stick with in the long term.
FBC: Firebreak launches on June 17th for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
