FBC: Firebreak Info & Q&A – Path Tracing and DLSS 4 MFG Confirmed; All Post-Launch Content Will Be Free

Ahead of today's appearance at the Future Gaming Show, Wccftech was invited to a remote press presentation of Remedy's very first multiplayer game, the co-op shooter FBC: Firebreak. Game Director Mike Kayatta was on hand to provide many details on this intriguing project set in the universe of Control (and Alan Wake, since it's all shared under the so-called Remedy Connected Universe).

Firstly, we learned that the development team for FBC: Firebreak is composed of around 50 Remedy developers. It is a cooperative first-person shooter for groups of three players, targeting 'AA' scope and mid-price (it will also be added on day one to Game Pass and PlayStation Plus). As previously stated, the game isn't far off, being slated for a Summer 2025 debut.

For those who haven't played Control, the basic premise is that the headquarters of the titular Federal Bureau of Control, the strange and mysterious Oldest House, came under assault by The Hiss. The FBC decided to close the doors and lock them in tight to make sure that the infection didn't spill out into the rest of the world, but everyone working at the FBC was locked inside with them. Fast-forward six years after the end of Control and the doors are actually still locked, except now the supplies are running out: food, water, and everything else you can think of. Exterminating The Hiss actually has turned out to be impossible. What happens when the Federal Bureau of Control actually loses control? That is the story of FBC: Firebreak.

The titular Firebreak is an initiative of volunteer first responders who are sent into the weird, dangerous crises that are spreading all across the Oldest House now that the FBC has lost control over the place. These people volunteering come from all across the Bureau. There are combat-trained Rangers, but also secretaries and middle managers. The FBC essentially hands them some very specialized equipment, gives them a bit of on-the-job training and just hopes that they survive.

Kayatta then outlined the game's key pillars. The first of them is called 'Only in Control'. Due to the inherently weird and unpredictable setting, Remedy felt it was a perfect space for them to explore. From the beginning of this development, they asked themselves this question over and over again. Is this something that could only ever happen in Control? Is this something that only Remedy would make? If the answer was yes, they figured they were on the right track and moved forward.

The next pillar is 'Pick up and play'. Remedy wanted to make something that players could enjoy on their own terms. That meant ditching all the engagement stress that can be seen in a lot of live service games. FBC: Firebreak won't have daily or monthly grinds, Battle Passes and the like, as Remedy isn't interested in giving people a second job. This pillar is also about putting up as few barriers as possible between players launching the game and when they actually start shooting Hiss. It includes ditching cutscenes and forced tutorials, as well as making sure that players can jump in with their friends without worrying about their respective progress.

The third pillar is 'Better together'. The developers acknowledge the challenge of having to empower individual players while still making sure that cooperation remains meaningful. Ultimately, Remedy made it so most things you can do in this game organically help the team progress, even without any direct communication within the group.

Last but certainly not least, the last pillar for FBC: Firebreak was 'Fun on repeat'. Of course, making something truly replayable is always tough, and the developers recognized they couldn't keep up an endless stream of new story chapters. The foundation was, therefore, placed on delivering engaging minute-to-minute gameplay and systems that could create impactful and memorable moments unique to your session.

When going on a mission, Firebreak members are assigned to a Job. Each Job is defined by a few different things, like a unique environment, a unique set of objectives (the victory condition), and a unique crisis that players will deal with when they get there. Once you know which Job you want to take on, you are going to choose two independent levers that you can pull: Threat Level and Clearance Level. The former determines combat intensity; basically, it's the difficulty level in FBC: Firebreak. The higher the Threat Level, the more combat you're going to face, and this also scales the number of rewards that you earn by playing a session.

The Clearance Level is a bit different. Each Job is actually split into three zones, and the Clearance Level sets the number of zones that you will be playing through in a complete run. It also determines what types of rewards you can earn. There are actually more than three Clearance Levels, and Remedy hinted that at higher levels even stuff like corrupted items would appear on Jobs.

Each player is going to have access to three loadouts that are called Crisis Kits. Each of these is centered around a specific unique tool and a general play style, although you can modify this play style with perks. If you end up regretting that choice later, or you simply face something that you weren't expecting, you're going to be able to switch mid-match and the game is going to recognize that you've done that and reward you for the time that you spent playing that kit.

Remedy shared the key specifics of each Crisis Kit:

• Jump Kit
  An electricity-focused Crisis Kit for Firebreakers who want to excel at field control and positioning
  Tool: Electro-Kinetic Charge Impactor
  ▪ A portable compression impactor capable of delivering an impressive amount of electricity through the conductive plate attached to its end.
  Item: BOOMbox
  ▪ An improvised device that attracts nearby enemies with music before exploding. After deploying the BOOMbox, it can be charged with the Impactor. The device will taunt all enemies in proximity for a short time before automatically detonating.
• Fix Kit
  An impact-focused Crisis Kit for Firebreakers who want to solve most problems by hitting them with a massive wrench.
  Tool: Wrench
  ▪ A large wrench capable of repairing machinery and staggering enemies with powerful swings.
  Item: Swivel turret
  ▪ An improvised device that autonomously acquires enemy targets and fires damaging projectiles at them. After deploying the Swivel Cannon, it needs to be assembled by striking the parts with the Wrench. The completed device will autonomously fire upon enemies until it falls apart.
• Splash Kit
  A water-focused Crisis Kit for Firebreakers who want to put out fires and manipulate the conditions affecting their crewmates and enemies.
  Tool: Crank-Operated Fluidic Ejector
  ▪ An industrial hydro cannon capable of pooling and ejecting heavy globules of water. Excels at extinguishing fires and priming enemies for devastating effects.
  Item: Humidifier
  ▪ An improvised device capable of spraying healing water over a wide area. After deploying the Humidifier, it can be primed with the Ejector. The device will automatically heal all crewmates in proximity for a short time before falling apart.

Remedy explained that one of the hard truths about being a Firebreaker is that the FBC doesn't really expect you to survive. This means that when you complete the objectives of a Job, the FBC considers the mission a success whether you make it out alive or not, and that success is rewarded with XP for your career at the FBC and your proficiency with the kits you used. But if you want currencies that give you access to new gear upgrades and cosmetics, you'll need to find them and escape the Job alive with them.

Ultimately, Firebreak is about efficiency. You can't fail objectives, but the longer you spend doing them, the more and more Hiss will show up to stop you, increasing the chance that your crew dies on the job. That means the longer you spend exploring for currency, the more risk you're inviting and the harder it will eventually become to make it back to headquarters in one piece.

Perks are heavily linked to the currencies, being one of the most meaningful and interesting things that you can buy with the currencies in the game. Perks can change how you play; for example, one perk might give you a chance that a missed bullet returns to your clip, or the ability to extinguish yourself when burning by jumping up and down. You can also equip two perks of the same type to obtain a stronger version of that perk, and even equip three of the same to share its effect with nearby teammates. Increasing your kit proficiency also expands the available perk slots.

Any online game lives or dies in large part depending on the developer's post-launch pipeline. Remedy appears to be aware of this. They claim to have concrete plans that will be better detailed in the future. For now, they shared the key concepts for the roadmap. To begin with, all playable post-launch content (such as Jobs) released for FBC: Firebreak will be free. Paid cosmetic content will finance the game's ongoing support.

Lastly, although the game aims for lower specs than previous titles like Control or Alan Wake 2, the Finnish studio confirmed that the full suite of technologies will still be available, including full ray tracing, NVIDIA DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, and Reflex. Following the presentation, Remedy's Mike Kayatta answered a few questions from the assembled press.

WCCFTECH: Is there any character progression system to keep players engaged over time?

Yes. The thing that we've prioritized with player progression is a little bit less about power ramping, which I think is really difficult to keep up with and also starts to create a big gulf between players. So, we focused a lot on unlocking options over time. The more you play, the more ways that you can play. We have quite a bit of that. We look forward to getting into that more deeply as we get closer to release.

CNET: Why go for three-player squads versus four-player? Is solo or duo play possible?

I can answer both of these questions with the same answer, which is that I just don't have very many friends, so we have fewer people in the squad. Yes, you can definitely play by your sad, lonely self. More honestly, the reason why we chose three-player squads was really an organic quirk of development. We actually started testing with four players. I think it just didn't feel quite as good. It was a little harder to understand where people were. That's something that's not required but definitely helpful in this game. With all the chaos and the systems going off, three just felt right. I would say that the game is definitely optimized to be played with three. You're going to get the most out of it.

INVERSE: How does FBC: Firebreak lean into Remedy's trademark style of storytelling? What will players who love that kind of story find here?

With this type of game, it was really important for us not to take our traditional storytelling route, and the reason is just that this is not a single player game where you're kind of walking down a special path and experiencing the world from certain angles and ways, exploring it by yourself. For a game like this, we wanted to preserve space for your experience inside of the game. That means basically telling the story inside the narrative world that we've put together. That means leaving more space for you to have the conversations that you want on the mics. There's a million reasons for it, but that doesn't mean that we have abandoned the idea of narrative. The world is extremely rich. It is the world of Control, after all. There's a lot to see, explore, and immerse yourself in, but I would not go in expecting something like Alan Wake 2.

BLEEDING COOL: Are you able to max out everything when it comes to job upgrade options and whatnot, or are there a finite number of resources, and you'll have to make tough choices in what direction you want to go with your character?

You'll be able to max out everything. Of course, that will take time, and we're going to move the goalpost on you over time as the game adds content. We're not interested in making you commit to difficult choices and be stuck with it. I don't think that's so fun.

WCCFTECH: What kind of post-launch content can players expect from FBC: Firebreak?

Well, again, this is something that we're going to talk a lot more about in the future, but I can at least say that this is a systems game where we really want to lean into the idea of you being able to have more toys in the sandbox and ways to refresh your experience and create the emergent moments that we know the game can make. So, that's what we'll be prioritizing. What that specifically entails is something that we'll detail in the future.

DIGITAL TRENDS: This has a very distinct sense of humor and style compared to Control. How do you balance making something that feels tonally distinct while still feeling like it's part of the Control Universe?

Yeah, this is a question I have asked myself many times over the years. The answer is that Control has this great blend of horror and tension, and then it also has this great edge of absurdity as well. It has a very specific recipe breakdown. I'll just arbitrarily pin it at 70%-30% for those two things. The strategy with this game was we didn't want to betray Control, and we didn't want to take it out of that space, but we also knew that for this type of game, we had to take the same ingredients and basically invert them. So, yes, we lean more into the absurd side of Control, but we're not trying to invent a new type of humor that you would never have seen in the universe.

Of course, we do have some of that tense, horror-like edge as well, although it does kind of step back a little bit to make room for some of the more fun and joyful aspects that are also present in Control.

How long will a Job take to compete?

Yeah, we're still tweaking some of this stuff and figuring it out, but generally speaking, we shoot for sessions that are under 30 minutes. But it was also important to us that we had a session type that you could jump in and out of. That's one of the reasons why we have those distinct aspects that you can control, both the difficulty and the complexity, to mix and match what you're looking for.

Can players expect to interact or see Control characters like Jesse Faden in FBC: Firebreak?

In terms of who you're going to see, we'll leave that for people to discover in the game, but I will say this at least. It was really important to us that we protected both Control and non-Control players with this game. That means protecting Control players by saying, hey, if you were into that single player journey and you're looking forward to continuing that single player journey in Control 2, we don't want to make you feel as though you had to go participate in a cooperative multiplayer shooter that might not be your genre in order to really understand that single player journey. On the other hand, let's say you really can't be bothered with Control. That's okay, too. It's definitely set in the same universe, it's the same lore, it is officially canon and so forth, but at the same time, we've tried to keep those barriers at just the right level and make sure both of those groups get what they want out of this franchise.

One of the big highlights of Control was dealing with objects of power and the bizarre events that they cause. How has this been adapted into the FBC: Firebreak experience?

This is something that we're really excited to dive into later. I think if you take a look at both of the trailers, you'll start to get a hint at the way that we're using them. I also made a cheeky reference earlier to the appearance of something we call corrupted items. I will say yes, they're an important part of the universe. They're my favorite flavor of weird in this universe. They're just so iconic and so I think we would be kind of crazy to avoid them. I think we have a lot of fascinating and fun ways that we've employed them in the game. We'll be showing more of that soon in the future.

Remedy's previous games have taken creative inspiration from film and other media, from True Detective to Annihilation. Were there any similar guiding pop culture touchpoints for FBC: Firebreak?

Honestly, a lot of our inspiration has actually been quite internal. We've got the Remedy Connected Universe that we've been building out. We're super excited about it, it has a lot of depth and complexity. It's got a lot of things that people haven't seen yet. Honestly, the most important thing for us was to not go kind of pull from the outside and accidentally risk diluting Control, because it's such a strong world. What we really tried to do was actually look to Control for inspiration and ask ourselves, what didn't we see, what would we like to see more of, and what happens when you take on that same universe from a totally different perspective? For us, that was enough.

Did you take inspiration from successes and failures in other multiplayer games?

I wouldn't say that. We didn't take a cynical approach, we we didn't try to do some sort of like, well, what succeeded and what failed from a pure business dissection standpoint. Of course, we do pay attention to it, but I think it's more from the perspective of what works for players. Whether something's successful or not, some people have great ideas in a package that just doesn't work, and some people have terrible ideas that seem to pop. We played a ton of other games in the cooperative PvE space, and we tried to pay the most attention to what people were saying and feeling, and as the game developers, what we were feeling and what we connected with.

Thank you for your time.

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