I felt like I went on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster with the reveal trailer for Defect. A gritty, grungy cyberpunk shooter with Lore and a soundtrack from Mick Gordon of neo-Doom fame: The crowd cheers. Then I get to the line "Play with your friends in PvP or co-op:" The crowd boos. But after hearing some more about the game from Emanuel Palalic, game director at developer emptyvessel? Well, the crowd might just be cheering again.
"We are not an extraction shooter, hero shooter, or some competitive tac shooter," Palalic explained over email. Thank God. Look, I get there are a lot of fans of the FPS genres du jour, but surely we can have a non-extraction shooter or two every once and awhile, as a treat. Instead, emptyvessel is calling Defect an "Immersive Objective Shooter."
"We felt like there really isn't a subgenre of FPS that can describe our game other than Immersive shooters," Palalic said. "We decided to add 'Objective' because every team has their own unique dynamic objective they are following, similar to a Ready or Not, Swat or GTFO type experience. The only difference is another team might have an assassinate or arrest objective on one of your teammates while you are trying to complete your mission. So imagine playing Ready or Not and another squad ends up intercepting and adding tension to your already tense mission."
I'm more of a singleplayer guy, but those influences and emergent objectives have me intrigued, with GTFO and Ready or Not boasting a design sensibility closer to the singleplayer games I love, and managing to avoid that instanced, throwaway feel of so many multiplayer games. SWAT, meanwhile, is a damn singleplayer game full stop, and so are the other big influences Palalic cited: S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Metro, and The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. In addition to atmosphere and presentation, Palalic stressed that a minimal UI, as well as a preponderance of diegetic information and interactive environmental details are a big part of those games emptyvessel wants to translate into multiplayer.
"We want the player to feel immersed in the setting, the narrative of the world, so we are actually trying to remove as much of a traditional UI as possible and have that information displayed on your guns/gadgets, and in the game world itself," Palalic said.
"We’re taking measures to make the Defect world feel alive, so we will have unique ways to tell a story and set the tone within the world itself while playing Co-op with your friends or even in PvP. Each player can find and equip unique weapons and gadgets in the world, and can use this gear to work with and communicate with their friends."
That sounds sick, and it kills any trepidation I had about "Immersive Objective Shooter" just being some slick marketing lingo: Words still have meaning, and Defect certainly sounds like an immersive sim-adjacent multiplayer shooter. Palalic also described a "rock paper scissors-like" component to the combat, with certain enemies demanding "quick swapping combos" and on-the-fly strategic adjustments the developer compared Doom.
So it's still early days for Defect, but it clearly has a lot more going for it than just a slick trailer and some good music. If nothing else, the intentional homage to the 2012 Karl Urban Dredd alone might be enough to get me to bully one of my adult friends with a job into playing it with me. Defect does not yet have a release window, but you can wishlist it on Steam.
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