The thought 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 system, the splintered display screen represents a fractured world and completely different, disparate and but by some means parallel views of the identical actuality.
Fragpunk takes place within the Shardverse, a world shattered by a mysterious component known 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 known 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 staff, or game-changing as tearing open a portal to a parallel model of the map you’re enjoying on that Lancers can bounce 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 sport 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 executed this by sticking to our core concept, to bend the principles and break the norms. We do that persistently by means of our artwork design, our narrative design and our gameplay design.
“From the very starting our purpose for designing this sport is so it may be performed and loved by world gamers, in order you’ll be able to 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 films.”
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 solid round them.
On this, Fragpunk’s purpose 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 similar time. It’s a troublesome steadiness which the event staff hopes to realize by taking a narrative-first strategy to every character’s place within the sport’s world.
“What we’re attempting 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 tips together with the fashion, look, animations, ability results and color use as nicely.
“We need to give an general steadiness 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, however it’s true that we’ll regularly and frequently replace our setting throughout sport improvement,” Fu provides. “It’s the narrative staff who provides the lore and the prototype of the character concept, then the artwork staff comes up with numerous completely different design parts whereas additionally offering their ideas, then we’ll focus on which prototype is value pushing ahead with.”
Nearly as essential as Fragpunk’s characters although are the maps and environments they inhabit, which are sometimes essentially 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 deliver the basic map archetypes that it attracts on – your transport depots filled with corridors and vehicles to explode, your crumbling temples filled with waist-high partitions to leap over and slide behind – into its distinct fashion too; once more by inserting their narrative purpose to exist throughout the Shardverse on the forefront.
Our working course of with the map design staff 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 atmosphere, the situation and the lore behind it. However we attempt to not give them too many necessities to provide them numerous freedom.”
“When the map design is completed by the design groups, they then give the map again to us so we can provide 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 beneath the narrative staff, there have been two issues we wished to realize: first, we wished to verify the names have been in step with the lore and world of Fragpunk, however second we additionally wished to be sure that gamers might simply name out areas to their teammates. As you’ll be able to see from the earlier demos, most of those names are frequent names like ‘mid’, ‘A-side’, ‘B-side’”.
Nonetheless, whereas the narrative good thing about parallel universes is apparent, within the hero shooter and free-to-play dwell service style the place there’s an expectation of latest characters, maps and seasonal themes throughout a interval of a few years, it will probably additionally serve a sensible goal 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 offers a compelling conceit for the motion in Fragpunk to happen, however a real and unforced technique to discover completely different fashions, references and even lore-rich moments from a personality’s backstory or potential future in a manner that also feels extra critical than the Prepared Participant One-esque hodge podge of different dwell service video games.
“After we have been designing the Shardverse, we have 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 provide more room to design and future improvement.”
“For our skins we’ll have completely different ranks, so for the decrease ranked skins we’d simply change the color or the supplies, however for the upper skins we’ll have numerous breakthroughs which you could’t think about what they’ll develop into,” Li clarifies.
“The intention for us is to make issues that look cool, or humorous, or now we have an concept for greater stage skins the place it reveals a second of their story – it may very well be the previous or the longer term, 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 means 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 all types of media and want to use all types of media to discover our sport’s lore,” Fu states. “As you’ll be able to inform in-game, we’ll have the textual content telling you the story, but in addition the character’s voice traces 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 attempting to make use of all types of media to inform the story.”
For extra about gameplay and the way Fragpunk looks like each shooter, in all places, , additionally take a look at 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.
