The thought for Fragpunk began with an all-too-relatable on a regular basis tragedy: a smashed telephone display screen.
However whereas the neon mild 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 machine, the splintered display screen represents a fractured world and totally different, disparate and but someway parallel views of the identical actuality.
Fragpunk takes place within the Shardverse, a world shattered by a mysterious aspect known as Glunite which gave common individuals from alternate realities superb powers, however made them reliant on the supernatural substance to outlive. Now working as mercenaries known as Lancers, they combat on totally 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 crew, 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 primarily double the enjoying house on supply.
So, in that sense, Fragpunk’s multiverse isn’t simply visible, however contributes to gameplay as properly.
“What I believe makes our recreation stand out is the expertise that no two rounds are ever the identical,” Fu Wenhe, Fragpunk narrative director at Unhealthy Guitar studio says. “We’ve finished this by sticking to our core thought, to bend the principles and break the norms. We do that constantly by means of our artwork design, our narrative design and our gameplay design.
“From the very starting our purpose for designing this recreation is so it may be performed and loved by world gamers, in order you possibly can inform, quite a lot of our concepts or inspirations are studying from world mainstream media.
“For instance, our artwork model – 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 totally different alternate universes, one of many key elements of the Spider-Verse model 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 purpose is to emulate that concept of a cohesive world that’s immediately recognisable, however the place the roster feels each acquainted and totally different on the similar time. It’s a tricky stability which the event crew hopes to realize 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 tips together with the model, look, animations, ability results and color use as properly.
“We wish to give an general stability of all of the characters to allow them to present their particular person personalities, but in addition give a unified constant artwork model.”
“We had the lore set down from the very starting of the sport, however it’s true that we’ll step by step and frequently replace our setting throughout recreation improvement,” Fu provides. “It’s the narrative crew who offers the lore and the prototype of the character thought, then the artwork crew comes up with quite a lot of totally different design parts whereas additionally offering their ideas, then we’ll focus on which prototype is price pushing ahead with.”
Virtually 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, Unhealthy Guitar has additionally tried to carry 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 model too; once more by putting their narrative cause to exist throughout the Shardverse on the forefront.
Our working course of with the map design crew 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 web site – however what the narrative does is ready the surroundings, the situation and the lore behind it. However we attempt to not give them too many necessities to present them quite a lot of 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 totally different callouts, signatures and decorations so gamers can simply distinguish between totally different callouts,” Huang Jingsi, a story designer engaged on Fragpunk, continues.
“Though the job was below the narrative crew, there have been two issues we wished to realize: first, we wished to ensure the names had been in keeping with the lore and world of Fragpunk, however second we additionally wished to ensure that gamers might simply name out areas to their teammates. As you possibly can see from the earlier demos, most of those names are widespread names like ‘mid’, ‘A-side’, ‘B-side’”.
Nonetheless, whereas the narrative advantage of parallel universes is clear, within the hero shooter and free-to-play reside service style the place there’s an expectation of latest characters, maps and seasonal themes throughout a interval of a few years, it could actually additionally serve a sensible goal as properly.
It is a actuality Unhealthy Guitar is up entrance about, particularly within the battle for consideration all aggressive FPS video games must combat. The Shardverse not solely supplies a compelling conceit for the motion in Fragpunk to happen, however a real and unforced approach to discover totally different fashions, references and even lore-rich moments from a personality’s backstory or doable future in a method that also feels extra severe than the Prepared Participant One-esque hodge podge of different reside service video games.
“After 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 model,” Fu explains. “A punk artwork can embody quite a lot of totally different design supplies, so we wished to have this very inclusive world view and lore to present more room to design and future improvement.”
“For our skins we’ll have totally 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 quite a lot of breakthroughs that you would be able to’t think about what they’ll turn out to be,” Li clarifies.
“The goal for us is to make issues that look cool, or humorous, or we now have an thought for larger stage 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 Unhealthy 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 variety 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 want 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 inform you 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 appears like each shooter, in all places, , additionally take a look at our preview and interview with Unhealthy Guitar inventive 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.
