Everything else aside, Concord definitely throws up an interesting question. Does doing every distinct, individual part of a game as well as it can be done lead to a good game in itself? We’re a step away from “what makes a good game?” here, a mountain-sized can of worms. A worm volcano. Not going near that one – but Concord does make me wonder.
A 5v5 hero shooter that is online and multiplayer-only, Concord’s initial reveal was awkward. Its true nature became apparent only after a lengthy, lavish Guardians of the Galaxy-style narrative cinematic, that had all these interesting new characters galloping about an interesting new universe. People saw that, and saw Sony, and then saw what it actually was. Enter discussion of live service burnout and bait-and-switch marketing and quite astonishingly final dismissals of it, before a game had been played. The good news, for Concord and for brand-new developer Firewalk Studios, is that those dismissals were as premature as they seemed. Concord is good. The bad news is I can’t figure out how good, just yet, from a couple of hours playing it – and that the actual way in which it is good might be the thing that gets in the way of its own success.
Concord is good in the sense that it feels like – and has been intentionally designed to feel like – a combination of a lot of other, excellent, multiplayer games. The first and maybe most surprising is that it feels less like Overwatch than it does a few rounds in the Crucible of Destiny. There are floaty, aerial caster characters, charging, punching tanks, gun-and-grenade shooters, and a sense of perpetual tumble-dryer motion to the to-and-fro flow of its maps. That starts to make more sense when you realise where Firewalk’s development talent has come from. Bungie, for one. But then there’s also expertise from developers of Overwatch, yes, and also Halo, and Call of Duty, and Apex Legends, and more.
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