New Info on Lawbreakers

Lawbreakers - You know that game that is NOT LIKE OVERWATCH AT ALL! DO YOU UNDERSTAND!? COMPRENDY-NONY-NONY!?

Recently, Eurogamer were lucky enough to interview Cliff Bleszinski about upcoming “vertical” FPS, Lawbreakers. Above is a video of the interview, but here are the most pertinent points from it and my slightly deeper look into it.

The first major point is that Lawbreakers is to be a Steam exclusive and that it feels like a game to be played on PC with a keyboard and mouse. When pressed slightly on the possibility of the game being ported to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, CliffyB had this to say:

“I wouldn’t rule it out, I mean we like money, we like to keep the lights on! You know, and Sony and Microsoft need games, so you know, we’ve talked to them a little bit, but it’s one of those things, we’re not going to do this – the port – ourself.

“The other thing is you need a partner since this is going to be a living product that will hopefully go on for years, you know if we do updates for the PC, the console version is going to need to be updated as well…

“The thing about the controller is that, it’s gonna be tricky. We’ve played around with it with a controller a little bit, and the thing is that if we get around to doing console ports, I don’t wanna do cross-play. Some people think that’s like the “holy-grail” for a lot of games, and I’m like “No – if you have someone with a keyboard and mouse vs somebody with a controller, I’m sorry, but the person with the keyboard and mouse is gonna win 9 times out of 10.”

Quite a lot to chew over there! So firstly, it’s by no means a confirmation that Lawbreakers will make its way to consoles, but it certainly hasn’t been ruled out. The issue seems to be the ongoing support that would be required, however the key point there is that money talks, and they have talked with Sony and Microsoft already, so things might already be in the pipeline.

Secondly, the type of gameplay does seem to lend itself more to keyboard and mouse setup than controller, and I know that I find standard FPS games a lot easier to control and master with  keyboard and mouse than controller. And he’s right, PC gamers using kb/m would run all over console gamers on any given FPS – remember this when it comes to commenting!

Anyway, the next topic was on the games “verticality”, which I suppose is just a super awesome term for “weird gravity and jumping around a lot” that the game involves and how it compares to other shoot-em-ups, notably – Gears of War.

“You need to always be looking around, always checking your 6…I saw the new Gears of War demo today…it looks really good, I think they’re doing a great job with it, but it reminded me of how non-vertical a game like Gears is.

“I think this game is the direct result of having worked on Gears for so long – it’s like this game is a lot more colourful, this game is back to First Person this game…it’s not “stop and pop” it’s like “go and flow”…and it’s really, vertical. That’s kind of what we’re going for with this.”

Firstly, loving his impromptu “stop and pop” and “go and flow” bits – I will be stealing them. Apart from that he has a point, FPS and 3rd Person Shooters are really non-vertical. I’d never really thought about it before, but such a simple thing as having more vertical gameplay could be a real game changer. And let’s be honest, it looks ridiculously fun.

Here are some other points from this interview:

  • Possibility of removing Iron Sights. Don’t want the game to be like Call of Duty and don’t want sniping. Personally I think this is a good way of stopping Campers.
  • Any DLC and new content more than likely to be free – ongoing costs following initial $20-$30 outlay probably through micro-transactions. Possibly similar to CS:GO Key Crate system possible model – not guaranteed but possible. Definitely NOT pay to win.
  • On comparing Lawbreakers with Overwatch, CliffyB was understanding, but dismissive – basically saying that Lawbreakers looked better, wasn’t overloaded with characters, and the gameplay wouldn’t be “rock, paper, scissors” like it is in Overwatch. It would be balanced in a way that if you as an individual were good enough, you could take out an opposition team alone, whereas you can’t really do that in Overwatch.
  • No release date as yet. But probably due towards the back end of Summer 2016
  • Public alpha available now through Steam.
  • Game’s narrative is asymmetrical but gameplay is symmetrical.

The whole interview was punctuated with a gameplay video of Lawbreakers in action, which only served to accentuate a lot of his points about the gameplay and how the game is NOT LIKE OVERWATCH, OK!?!?

Let us know what you think about Lawbreakers. Have you played the Alpha, if so what did you think? Does this game appeal to you? Are kb/m gamers better than controller gamers when it come to FPS? Let us know your thoughts on these any anything else Lawbreaker related, in the comments below or in the RGM Forums.