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IMPRESSIONS
E3 2009: Brink
June 8, 2009 | 5:28 PM PST
by: Brad Hilderbrand
There are some publishers which, whenever they announce a new game the entire community begins collectively salivating. Companies like Rockstar and Telltale have established themselves as hit-making machines, and they pretty much force you to sit up and take notice whenever a new title is on the way. Another company which shares that same level of respect is Bethesda, the publisher behind massive RPG hits Oblivion and Fallout 3. Bethesda's latest title takes the publisher in a new direction though, and it's time to find out if the company known for its RPGs can strike gold in the FPS market. The result of their effort is Brink, a brand new futuristic shooter that seems to offer enough wrinkles to help set it apart from the other games in the genre.
The story of Brink launches in the year 2035, and takes us into the Ark, the last bastion of safety for humanity. Originally created as a playground for the rich and famous, the Ark was suddenly isolated from all other human contact and has also been locked down so that no one can get in or out. The folks stuck inside the Ark have split into two main groups, Security and the Resistance. The Resistance believes that their confinement to the Ark is some sort of government conspiracy and an effort by the rich to keep the poor under their heel. Security however, sees themselves as the last bastion of law and order, the only force on the Ark preventing it from falling into total chaos. Players will get a chance to play both sides of the conflict, and needless to say, things are a bit more complicated than they seem at first blush on either side.
One thing some folks might be worried about with Bethesda getting into the FPS genre is the danger of a subpar game coming out of a studio that isn't used to this sort of title. To be honest, many complained that the straight up shooting mechanics of Fallout 3 were among the title's weakest attributes. The good news is that they have some help, as the game is actually being developed by Splash Damage, the studio best known for its work on Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Given their pedigree, it's safe to say that the game is in good hands.
Of course, it wouldn't be a Bethesda game without at least a little RPG flair, and that surely is the case with Brink. Every action in the game earns experience, and that experience can then be parlayed into weapon and ability upgrades, entirely new guns and new outfits for your character. At any point during a given mission players can select an objective off a wheel and then complete it for a set number of experience points. After one objective is finished, you can jump back onto the wheel and snag another, continuing down this branching path until you finish each level. Some missions require a certain character class to complete, but rather than forcing you to replay the entire stage multiple times while being locked into one class, Brink lets you stop off at forward bases and change your character class on the fly. So if you feel the need to sneak through the level and snipe enemies for a while, but then jump over to a heavy soldier to mow down the remaining resistance, you can do that too.
We got to see this constant change of classes in action during our demo of the Container City level. In this stage players take on the role of Security, and must escort a bomb disposal robot deep into the heart of a Resistance stronghold in order to defuse a suspected dirty bomb. The demo started off with our guide playing as a stealthy character, and he quietly moved through the high perches picking off unsuspecting foes. At one point though, the robot broke down and the Resistance swarmed in with a large force to try and finish off the now stranded Security officers. Our guide then switched over to a soldier in order to stand toe-to-toe against the wave of baddies and repel the sudden offensive. Then, once things calmed down he jumped over to the engineer class in order to complete an objective where he repaired the broken-down bot and then utilized a crane to help it over a shortcut. This constant class-hopping allows players to make sure they always have the right tool for the job and are never left hung out to dry by accidentally choosing the "wrong" class for a given level.
The other major innovation that Container City showed off is the new SMART movement system. SMART, which stands for "smooth movement across random terrain" is basically an extension of Mirror's Edge's parkour movement system, allowing players to move quickly and easily across the landscape without having to constantly hop over small boxes or duck under pipes. With SMART, all you have to do is point your character in the direction you want to go and the game will do the rest. Run up to a box and angle your vision up and you'll vault over top; approach an opening and angle down and your character will slide through or crouch down to keep your momentum rolling. From what we could see the system seemed very fluid and promised to allow players to focus solely on combat and completing objectives and therefore worry less about how they are going to move around in the environment, which should make for some very dynamic fire-fights.
Brink is also looking to offer the standard FPS trappings such as drop-in/drop-out co-op and 16 player competitive multiplayer. We weren't able to get any juicy details on either aspect, but seeing as how this is a newly announced title, we'll just have to be patient until word on maps, modes and the rest begin to leak out. In any case, players don't have to worry about Bethesda's traditionally single-player only games; this is one you can get your friends in on as well.
At this early stage Brink looks pretty impressive, but we're going to reserve judgment until we get a chance to actually play it ourselves and get a feel for both the SMART system and the classes. Still, with power players like Splash Damage and Bethesda pooling their resources you can bet that this won't be a quick cash-in or a halfhearted effort. There's a lot of promise in Brink, but we're going to have to wait and see if that promise ends up living up to the high standards Bethesda has set for their games. From our early look, it seems that it probably will.
The story of Brink launches in the year 2035, and takes us into the Ark, the last bastion of safety for humanity. Originally created as a playground for the rich and famous, the Ark was suddenly isolated from all other human contact and has also been locked down so that no one can get in or out. The folks stuck inside the Ark have split into two main groups, Security and the Resistance. The Resistance believes that their confinement to the Ark is some sort of government conspiracy and an effort by the rich to keep the poor under their heel. Security however, sees themselves as the last bastion of law and order, the only force on the Ark preventing it from falling into total chaos. Players will get a chance to play both sides of the conflict, and needless to say, things are a bit more complicated than they seem at first blush on either side.
One thing some folks might be worried about with Bethesda getting into the FPS genre is the danger of a subpar game coming out of a studio that isn't used to this sort of title. To be honest, many complained that the straight up shooting mechanics of Fallout 3 were among the title's weakest attributes. The good news is that they have some help, as the game is actually being developed by Splash Damage, the studio best known for its work on Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Given their pedigree, it's safe to say that the game is in good hands.
Of course, it wouldn't be a Bethesda game without at least a little RPG flair, and that surely is the case with Brink. Every action in the game earns experience, and that experience can then be parlayed into weapon and ability upgrades, entirely new guns and new outfits for your character. At any point during a given mission players can select an objective off a wheel and then complete it for a set number of experience points. After one objective is finished, you can jump back onto the wheel and snag another, continuing down this branching path until you finish each level. Some missions require a certain character class to complete, but rather than forcing you to replay the entire stage multiple times while being locked into one class, Brink lets you stop off at forward bases and change your character class on the fly. So if you feel the need to sneak through the level and snipe enemies for a while, but then jump over to a heavy soldier to mow down the remaining resistance, you can do that too.
We got to see this constant change of classes in action during our demo of the Container City level. In this stage players take on the role of Security, and must escort a bomb disposal robot deep into the heart of a Resistance stronghold in order to defuse a suspected dirty bomb. The demo started off with our guide playing as a stealthy character, and he quietly moved through the high perches picking off unsuspecting foes. At one point though, the robot broke down and the Resistance swarmed in with a large force to try and finish off the now stranded Security officers. Our guide then switched over to a soldier in order to stand toe-to-toe against the wave of baddies and repel the sudden offensive. Then, once things calmed down he jumped over to the engineer class in order to complete an objective where he repaired the broken-down bot and then utilized a crane to help it over a shortcut. This constant class-hopping allows players to make sure they always have the right tool for the job and are never left hung out to dry by accidentally choosing the "wrong" class for a given level.
The other major innovation that Container City showed off is the new SMART movement system. SMART, which stands for "smooth movement across random terrain" is basically an extension of Mirror's Edge's parkour movement system, allowing players to move quickly and easily across the landscape without having to constantly hop over small boxes or duck under pipes. With SMART, all you have to do is point your character in the direction you want to go and the game will do the rest. Run up to a box and angle your vision up and you'll vault over top; approach an opening and angle down and your character will slide through or crouch down to keep your momentum rolling. From what we could see the system seemed very fluid and promised to allow players to focus solely on combat and completing objectives and therefore worry less about how they are going to move around in the environment, which should make for some very dynamic fire-fights.
Brink is also looking to offer the standard FPS trappings such as drop-in/drop-out co-op and 16 player competitive multiplayer. We weren't able to get any juicy details on either aspect, but seeing as how this is a newly announced title, we'll just have to be patient until word on maps, modes and the rest begin to leak out. In any case, players don't have to worry about Bethesda's traditionally single-player only games; this is one you can get your friends in on as well.
At this early stage Brink looks pretty impressive, but we're going to reserve judgment until we get a chance to actually play it ourselves and get a feel for both the SMART system and the classes. Still, with power players like Splash Damage and Bethesda pooling their resources you can bet that this won't be a quick cash-in or a halfhearted effort. There's a lot of promise in Brink, but we're going to have to wait and see if that promise ends up living up to the high standards Bethesda has set for their games. From our early look, it seems that it probably will.
November 20, 2009
