In April 2023, Sony acquired Firewalk Studios. Firewalk is made of ex-Bungie developers who made it their mission to create a new kind of shooter using their expertise in the genre. When their first project, Concord, was revealed in May 2024, it received a mixed reception.
Its first CGI trailer focused on the characters, the world, and the galactic bounty hunter aspect of their new game. Once the gameplay was revealed, however, all goodwill faded away, as players discovered that it was a 5v5 hero shooter.
We had the opportunity to play Concord’s Open Beta on PlayStation 5 this weekend, which lasted July 18-21. In that time, we got to try out 5 maps, all 16 characters, 4 modes, and all of the game’s mechanics.
The following impressions are based on the game’s current version and do not reflect the final game’s quality. And while the idea of a brand-new IP coming from Sony is exciting, the question remains: is there room for another 5v5 hero shooter on an already saturated market?
TL;DR
Concord is a live-service hero shooter fighting an uphill battle. As Firewalk Studios’ debut title, published by Sony, it has very high expectations to meet. However, its Beta leaves a lot to be desired with slow gameplay, a bland world, and a range of quality-of-life issues.
Slow and Lumbering Gameplay
The heart of Concord lies in its gameplay, and it’s a slow-beating heart. From the moment you first take control of a character, you’ll notice that the game feels sluggish. Like something is ‘off’.
The game is much slower than its contemporaries in the hero shooter genre, and not for the better. Time to kill (TTK) is very high but movement is very slow. This results in fights being slow to start but quick to finish, which feels odd when it happens for minutes on end.
When it comes to shooting mechanics and abilities, Concord’s DNA finally shines through, as Firewalk Studio is comprised of ex-Bungie developers who worked on Halo and Destiny. Every weapon feels good to control and every action you take against enemies has a good sense of impact. Contrary to games like Overwatch 2 however, there are no ultimate abilities here. And worse yet, many hero abilities blend with what they do.
Some heroes have healing abilities, others have ranged one-shot abilities, and others place defensive barriers. The game struggles to distinguish each character and make them ‘unique’ in the player’s eyes. This is especially felt in fights where it’s difficult to tell which heroes are on the enemy team.
The reason for this is due to their silhouettes being very similar, if not identical. With 16 heroes, only a few are ‘big’, with others having a typical humanoid shape. They all just blend visually and the only thing you can do is just start shooting and hope for the best.
Needlessly Complex, Poorly Explained
While Concord is pretty straightforward if you treat it as an arena shooter, a lot is going on under its hood, for better or worse. Each character has specific passive bonuses that are activated when switching between different heroes during a match.
The game also incentivizes players to create their lineups of heroes, with up to 3 variations of the same character for selection in competitive modes. This information is never explained, instead being buried in various menus.
Bizarrely, the game also encourages you to switch characters constantly instead of specializing in certain heroes to become better at utilizing them. This runs contrary to the established hero shooter formula and we’re not certain it’s an improvement over what already works in so many other games.
When it comes to character customization, there is a lot of room here for Sony to monetize the game. Instead of having entire ‘skins’, characters have 8 different slots for visual customization. Firewalk Studios assured players that all heroes, maps, and modes will always be available to everyone for free. However, we’ll have to wait and see how the in-game shop will function, especially with Concord being a 40€ game at launch.
An Uncertain Narrative Hook
Concord features a narrative similar to Guardians of the Galaxy. We follow the crew of the Northstar, an intergalactic ship used by Freegunners, a group of bounty hunters. Their job is to travel the galaxy and complete jobs for various clients. That’s it. That’s the story.
The game heavily relies on its characters and their quirks to carry the ‘story’. As far as their personalities, you’ll either love them or hate them. Compared to Overwatch 2, these characters don’t have praise-worthy qualities you can identify with. Most of them are unfortunate caricatures of various minorities, and they all come with diverse pronouns.
That’s not meant as a derogatory comment–each hero’s gender pronouns are a part of their character selection screen. Whether you’re bothered by an emphasis on diversity and inclusivity in Concord will vary from player to player.
The game also promises to deliver weekly story content to players who continue to log in. How this story content will play out remains to be seen, although the Beta did contain one cutscene. Its ‘story’ was inconsequential and comprised of character banter and one-liners. The game will have to work hard to earn the players’ attention and loyalty if it hopes to hook them with its story week after week.
Concord Open Beta – Final Thoughts
Does Concord have a fighting chance in a market dominated by Overwatch 2, Apex Legends, and Destiny 2? Unfortunately, Sony’s ‘pedigree’ just isn’t coming through. The game doesn’t do anything in a way we haven’t already seen in a dozen other, much faster and more engaging, hero shooters over the years.
Here are only a few things Firewalk Studios needs to address until launch:
- Strong narrative justification for characters fighting one another and then being friends during cutscenes
- Hero balancing (some heroes are overpowered, some are underpowered)
- Matches are very short (queue time, match intro, and hero selection combined take as much as the match itself in many cases)
- Expanded hero voice lines (even during Beta, heroes repeat the same line of dialogue every time you select them)
- Lack of automatic queueing after a match
- Players are unable to rejoin a match
- Players are unable to join matches in progress
- Players are not penalized for being AFK
- Players are not penalized for leaving casual or competitive matches
- Players often can’t physically move once a match starts
Some of these points may be deliberate choices made for the Beta. However, with its launch only a month away, Concord has a lot of quality-of-life and gameplay design issues to address. If nothing else, it’ll be an interesting case study on how Sony handles a live-service PvP game after the success of Helldivers 2 earlier this year. Concord arrives on August 23th and you can pre-order it now on PC and PlayStation 5.