Watch On
Sometimes an awesome TV tie-in can provide a recreation a reputation enhance—The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 each obtained Netflix bumps—nevertheless it does not appear possible that an upcoming TV quick primarily based on the world of Concord may have the identical impact, on condition that the hero shooter cannot even be bought anymore. Sony and developer Firewalk are taking Concord offline this week after a dismal participant turnout; it did not even crack 1,000 concurrents on Steam.
In a deal that should’ve occurred properly earlier than any of us even knew about Concord, nevertheless, Sony secured its inclusion in upcoming Prime Video anthology collection Secret Level, whose 15 episodes are every impressed by a unique recreation or video games. The collection will premiere this December.
Firewalk says it may “discover choices” for bringing Concord again, however video games which are utterly un-launched like this typically do not return, and Concord might be a part of the graveyard the place Anthem, Crucible, and Artifact are interred.
That may make the Secret Level episode a little bit of an ungainly watch. Surely it was conceived of and written with the idea that Concord could be considerably fashionable by the point it aired, or on the very least nonetheless exist. The sci-fi shooter’s characters had been meant to be one in all its huge attracts; Firewalk deliberate weekly cutscenes about their area adventures.
Even earlier than it launched for $40, Concord struggled to get gamers into its free open beta, so I feel it is secure to say that the characters and world did not ignite imaginations. Their realistically rendered faces have been interpreted as bland up in opposition to the cartoony mugs of Overwatch characters, and my take is that all of them appear so good that it is onerous to think about them stepping into gunfights.
But that is simply a part of Concord’s downside. As I wrote final week, its lineage and aggressive hooks—former Destiny 2 devs doing enviornment and goal modes with an emphasis on strategic character switching—clearly did not snag any subset of up to date aggressive shooter gamers. I preferred features of Concord, however the Overwatch crowd did not go for it, the Counter-Strike crowd did not go for it, and the Call of Duty crowd did not go for it, not less than not in any critical numbers.
Maybe it will make for fashionable TV, although? That’s the form of dramatic irony I’ve come to anticipate from video games, and I can already image what the response might be if the episode seems to be a banger: “Why did not Sony present us this?”
