The concept for Fragpunk began with an all-too-relatable on a regular basis tragedy: a smashed telephone display screen.
However whereas the neon gentle spectrum smeared throughout damaged and battered tech completely encapsulated the concurrently rebellious and dystopian feeling that Fragpunk aimed to seize, the metaphor went deeper nonetheless.
When a lot of our day-to-day is wrapped up in that one gadget, the splintered display screen represents a fractured world and completely different, disparate and but someway parallel views of the identical actuality.
Fragpunk takes place within the Shardverse, a world shattered by a mysterious component referred to as Glunite which gave common folks from alternate realities superb powers, however made them reliant on the supernatural substance to outlive. Now working as mercenaries referred to as Lancers, they battle on completely different Shards over no matter Glunite they will discover.
Between each spherical, gamers in Fragpunk are dealt Shard Playing cards, which Lancers use to twist the world round them to their benefit or the detriment of enemies. They are often as foolish as turning on huge head mode for the enemy workforce, or game-changing as tearing open a portal to a parallel model of the map you’re enjoying on that Lancers can soar between on-the-fly and basically double the enjoying house on supply.
So, in that sense, Fragpunk’s multiverse isn’t simply visible, however contributes to gameplay as nicely.
“What I feel makes our recreation stand out is the expertise that no two rounds are ever the identical,” Fu Wenhe, Fragpunk narrative director at Dangerous Guitar studio says. “We’ve performed this by sticking to our core concept, to bend the principles and break the norms. We do that constantly by way of our artwork design, our narrative design and our gameplay design.
“From the very starting our aim for designing this recreation is so it may be performed and loved by world gamers, in order you possibly can inform, numerous our concepts or inspirations are studying from world mainstream media.
“For instance, our artwork fashion – with a mixture of 2D and 3D – was impressed by the Spider-Verse motion pictures.”
However with Fragpunk, the Spider-Verse inspiration appears to be extra than simply aesthetic.
Whereas the characters may come from completely different alternate universes, one of many key components of the Spider-Verse fashion is that, regardless of their disparate parts, the characters nonetheless have a way of concord with the world and forged round them.
On this, Fragpunk’s aim is to emulate that concept of a cohesive world that’s immediately recognisable, however the place the roster feels each acquainted and completely different on the identical time. It’s a tricky stability which the event workforce hopes to attain by taking a narrative-first method to every character’s place within the recreation’s world.
“What we’re making an attempt to keep away from is specializing in a single character,” Li Yiming, Fragpunk artwork director, explains. “So we wished the entire characters to have a constant logic and design pointers together with the fashion, look, animations, ability results and color use as nicely.
“We need to give an total stability of all of the characters to allow them to present their particular person personalities, but in addition give a unified constant artwork fashion.”
“We had the lore set down from the very starting of the sport, but it surely’s true that we’ll progressively and frequently replace our setting throughout recreation improvement,” Fu provides. “It’s the narrative workforce who offers the lore and the prototype of the character concept, then the artwork workforce comes up with numerous completely different design parts whereas additionally offering their recommendations, then we’ll focus on which prototype is value pushing ahead with.”
Nearly as vital as Fragpunk’s characters although are the maps and environments they inhabit, which are sometimes probably the most seen manifestations of the Shardverse and a number of realities at play in-game.
Whereas Fragpunk is a aggressive shooter at coronary heart, Dangerous Guitar has additionally tried to convey the traditional map archetypes that it attracts on – your transport depots filled with corridors and vans to explode, your crumbling temples filled with waist-high partitions to leap over and slide behind – into its distinct fashion too; once more by putting their narrative cause to exist inside the Shardverse on the forefront.
Our working course of with the map design workforce is a parallel line,” Fu says. “[The narrative team] give them a tough theme and so they’ll design the map – the participant routes, the bomb website – however what the narrative does is about the surroundings, the situation and the lore behind it. However we attempt to not give them too many necessities to present them numerous freedom.”
“When the map design is completed by the design groups, they then give the map again to us so we may give the areas completely different callouts, signatures and decorations so gamers can simply distinguish between completely different callouts,” Huang Jingsi, a story designer engaged on Fragpunk, continues.
“Though the job was below the narrative workforce, there have been two issues we wished to attain: first, we wished to verify the names had been in keeping with the lore and world of Fragpunk, however second we additionally wished to be sure that gamers may simply name out areas to their teammates. As you possibly can see from the earlier demos, most of those names are frequent names like ‘mid’, ‘A-side’, ‘B-side’”.
Nonetheless, whereas the narrative advantage of parallel universes is apparent, within the hero shooter and free-to-play stay service style the place there’s an expectation of recent characters, maps and seasonal themes throughout a interval of a few years, it could possibly additionally serve a sensible function as nicely.
It is a actuality Dangerous Guitar is up entrance about, particularly within the battle for consideration all aggressive FPS video games have to battle. The Shardverse not solely supplies a compelling conceit for the motion in Fragpunk to happen, however a real and unforced solution to discover completely different fashions, references and even lore-rich moments from a personality’s backstory or potential future in a means that also feels extra critical than the Prepared Participant One-esque hodge podge of different stay service video games.
“Once we had been designing the Shardverse, we had been designing it deliberately as a result of we’re a hero shooter – particularly a hero shooter with a punk artwork fashion,” Fu explains. “A punk artwork can embody numerous completely different design supplies, so we wished to have this very inclusive world view and lore to present extra space to design and future improvement.”
“For our skins we’ll have completely different ranks, so for the decrease ranked skins we would simply change the color or the supplies, however for the upper skins we’ll have numerous breakthroughs which you can’t think about what they’ll grow to be,” Li clarifies.
“The intention for us is to make issues that look cool, or humorous, or now we have an concept for increased degree skins the place it exhibits a second of their story – it might be the previous or the long run, a sure second of this character.”
However Dangerous Guitar’s ambition isn’t simply to dig into these concepts with paid-for cosmetics, however to deepen and diversify Fragpunk’s lore by way of a spread of various media. In addition to in-game environmental, emergent and atmospheric storytelling, each digital graphic novels and animations are on the playing cards.
“We’re very inclusive of every kind of media and wish to use every kind of media to discover our recreation’s lore,” Fu states. “As you possibly can inform in-game, we’ll have the textual content telling you the story, but in addition the character’s voice strains let you know about their tales.
“Then we’ll have comics telling story updates, the skins. For out of the sport, we’ll have comics, animated trailers, and we’re making an attempt to make use of every kind of media to inform the story.”
For extra about gameplay and the way Fragpunk looks like each shooter, in all places, abruptly, additionally try our preview and interview with Dangerous Guitar artistic director, Xin Chang.
Fragpunk will launch on PC by way of Steam and the Epic Video games Retailer on March sixth. The PlayStation and Xbox console model needed to be delayed and is coming at a later date.
