Concord Preview: Polishing a Rough Gem

After two Beta weekends and about 20 hours of playtime, there is a Concord-shaped hole in my heart.

And I think there are few better compliments one can give to a game than wanting to spend even more time with it, especially after a worthy binge.

But I’m uncertain if even the full version of Concord will ultimately be able to satiate that yearning.

Last December, I dived into the Closed Alpha for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. My anticipation for the game had grown for several months, partially cut short because the game had been delayed almost a year from May 2023 to February 2024. There was a high degree of uncertainty in how the game would turn out but my love for looter-shooters and a degree of morbid curiosity fueled excitement. The short time with the Closed Alpha proved satisfying enough that I spent the next two months absorbing any new content and news about the game in hopes that it might trickle into the zeitgeist.

Well, we know how that worked out.

For two weeks I sunk 50+ hours into Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. In my review, I scored it an 8, a number I still stand by and used almost 10,000 words to justify. Fundamental issues with mission structure repetition, unimpressive boss fights, and a rushed story held back some truly engaging gameplay. After I published my review, I took a couple days off to finally get into Helldivers 2. By the time I hopped back into Suicide Squad, a bit of wind was out of the sails. Then info about the first season trickled out and seemed to add… not a lot.

Maybe the writing was on the wall all along but the wholesale rejection of Suicide Squad felt a touch baffling. “Just play it and you’ll see,” I thought. But the flood of reviews, pitiful player counts, and the sparse season updates fast-tracked the seal of fate. Eventually I stopped engaging in forum posts where a small collective of people expressed excitement and enjoyment. There were simply too many games I had to play and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League faded into the distance, only to have interest fleetingly resurface when some news piece came out that I would read, think “huh”, and move on.

I truly hope that Concord does not suffer the same fate.

Concord is Sony Interactive Entertainment’s second experiment into the live-service ocean, one that has so far payed off with Helldivers 2. Developed by Firewalk Studios, Concord is a 5v5 competitive PvP online multiplayer shooter. The base instinct is to refer to Concord as a “hero shooter” in the vein of Overwatch, as the game has 16 characters with unique loadouts that players can select from.

For better or worse, Concord is going to be compared to contemporaries. In the months since it was revealed, Concord‘s mindshare butts heads with Overwatch 2, Valorant, Marvel Rivals, FragPunk, Call of Duty, Apex Legends, Fortnite, Rainbow Six: Siege, Paladins, Battleborn, Destiny 2, Lawbreakers, Team Fortress 2, to name a bunch. A few of those games are free to play. Some of those games are dead. Many have been around for years with steady, established player counts. Concord, at launch, is a $40 game in a new franchise.

Over the past couple weeks of the Closed and Open Beta periods, Concord has progressively had the deck stacked against it, building off the negative momentum since its gameplay reveal at Sony’s May 2024 State of Play. Some knew that Concord would be some kind of live-service game that involved multiplayer. At the State of Play, a cinematic played showing Concord’s cast of sci-fi characters getting into a scrap. Which then led to the announcement of the game being a competitive multiplayer shooter where two teams of five would compete across various modes and maps.

Vitriol ensued.

Over the past few months I’ve seen Concord referred to as “slop” on YouTube thumbnails. One may think this is what a game designed by a committee would be if comments are to be believed. PlayStation making a game without a prominent campaign? The nerve. Little oxygen was provided to the fact that Concord seemed to be a game trying to do something different in a busy genre. What’s the harm?

The ensuing reception from Concord has been absolutely disheartening, especially after playing and enjoying it for so long. As a deeply cynical, pessimistic person, video games are one of the few things I actually am not jaded about. Certainly there’s trite, exhausting games across all genres. Predatory F2P titles often pull in untold sums from whales. And often, mobs pile on hate simply because it’s the “cool” thing to do.

It feels wrong but necessary to emphasize the slice of time Concord is being thrust into. Seemingly abysmal Steam numbers imply that the game does little to interest massive amounts of players. Bullshit criticism over the game’s use of pronouns are an easy target for the wrong types of people. The simple act of enjoying this game from a casual and critical level, a damnable sin. But here we are.

Going into Concord‘s second weekend, I certainly did feel deflated. Firstly, why keep playing when all my progress would be reset before launch? But the negative news cycle was certainly infecting me, dampening my enthusiasm. Was I crazy for having a great time? And I was leery at the idea that Concord could keep its hooks in me for more than a couple hours of the Open Beta. And then I spent as much time with the game as I did the week prior.

Fundamentally, Concord does not have a complex mission statement. It is more team-based shooter than one dictated by the whims of heroes with specific roles. Each of the 16 characters attacks with a ranged weapon; Bazz and her throwing knives and 1-Off with his vacuum cannon being semi-exceptions. Each character is capable of dealing damage, it’s just that some pack more of a punch than others.

At launch, Concord will have at least six modes, all of which were available during the Beta periods. Takedown is a standard Team Deathmatch where the first team to 30 kills wins. Trophy Hunt acts like Call of Duty‘s Kill Confirmed where players must collect the bounty cards that drop after a teammate or enemy is killed; the first to 30 wins. Area Control and Signal Hunt are objective-based modes. In Area Control, three capture points are available and a team must claim two zones to collect points. In Signal Hunt, a single capture point rotates over a map. In either of these modes, the first to 125 points wins. These four modes feature unlimited respawns. Cargo Run and Clash Point are round-based modes where players have one life per round. Clash Point has a centralized capture point that when claimed grants a team victory. Cargo Run asks teams to collect a “Blue Buddy” cargo package and plant it at one of two points. Killing everyone on the opposite team will result in victory, except in Cargo Run where a team may have to “defuse” the Blue Buddy if the opposing team had planted it.

Anyone who has played a competitive multiplayer game in the past 15 years will recognize the modes Concord has on offer. And to me, that is one of my bigger disappointments with the whole package.

Speculation has arisen on if Sony and Firewalk are being coy and have yet to reveal other modes or a potential PvE offering for Concord. But as it stands, the six modes that I’ve played in Concord are fun but not exceptional in terms of offering something entirely unique. There might be an inclination to expect some kind of payload or escort mode and I think that’s fair. Yet I’m truly surprised that Firewalk has stuck to the basics. Yes, they are fundamentals that have worked across countless other multiplayer games but there is nothing uniquely “Concord” that players couldn’t technically get elsewhere.

This is an entirely valid jumping-off point for legitimate concern with Concord‘s viability in a space where several other games have already established themselves. If Concord really isn’t offering a crazy unique mode, why care?

Being a $40 game, Firewalk has gone on record saying that future updates to Concord will be free. This includes new maps, modes, and characters (called Freegunners). I’m curious what modes are tucked away for post-launch seasons and why they weren’t in the launch roster. As Call of Duty continued past launch, it was common to see certain Playlists take longer to queue up as most players gravitated towards the core handful of modes. So I can’t completely knock Firewalk for potentially wanting to not splinter up the player base too much.

However, there needs to be tweaking done to the cadence of these modes. They are simply over too fast. The Deathmatch-based modes have a 10-minute timer but I’ve seen them over within 3. Make the score cap 40 instead of 30 and bump Signal Chase and Area Control up to 150 and it might be the perfect sweet spot. Perhaps the biggest problem with Concord‘s match flow was the frequent rate of players leaving a match. Whether through disconnect or frustration, I would say that over half the matches I played both weekends had a person leave. Concord does not throw another player into the lobby to fill up that space. This often led to matches becoming one-sided, causing another player to leave.

It simply isn’t fun to lose a teammate within seconds and know you’re going to be down a player, even when matches are short. And leaving penalties just aren’t an optimal solution. If a player becomes disconnected by a genuine server issue, they shouldn’t be punished but it also doesn’t fix the core problem of having a handicapped team. Being active in Concord‘s Discord and reading forum posts about the game, you could tell this was an immense pain point for a majority of people and it is one Firewalk has been strangely silent on, making the choice not to fill in a replacement seem intentional, which worries me. Having healthy player lobbies is essential in multiplayer games, especially if competitive modes are going to be introduced at a later date.

Despite all this, it’s Concord‘s 16 characters that truly allow its basic modes to really shine through.

Seemingly unlike everyone else who played during the Beta period, before actually hopping into matchmaking I decided to scour Concord‘s “How to Play” section which not only broke down most of the game’s mechanics, it provided explanations on each of its characters, hints of lore, and tips on how to use their abilities.

Would I have known that 1-Off’s deployable vent deflected enemy bullets but not friendlies’? Nope. Would I have known that IT-Z’s “grenade” weakened her target’s weapon and buffed her own? Nah. I went into Concord feeling prepared and willing to experiment with all I had just learned.

At launch there is likely going to be a way for players to test out and try Freegunner’s before taking them against others online. But jeez, I watched a number of streamers and content creators hop into the Freegunner selection menu and completely ignore the prompt to show a list of their skills and abilities. While it isn’t as detailed as what’s described in the “How to Play” section, it’s a quick taste of a Freegunner’s kit. Should Firewalk do a better job making these character’s abilities more obvious? Sure. But even without my “vast knowledge” it is hard to imagine I would have felt in the dark after spending a few rounds with each Freegunner.

And while I may be in the minority here, I enjoy the characters and personality of Concord both mechanically and visually. There is a vintage chunkiness to the aesthetic of what Concord is trying to express. There’s a blend of influences here like Star Wars, Planet of the Apes, Aliens, Logan’s Run–70s and 80s sci-fi movies that had characters and palettes that were less sleek and maybe a bit tattered.

I think of Daw’s puffy blue jacket and the pad strapped to his back, making him look like a turtle, emphasizing his deployable shield dome and ability to heal. Teo is meant to look like the generic soldier, almost mimicking the style of Kyle Reese or Dwayne Hicks. His assault rife, pocket of cluster grenades, and cybernetic eye that can see through smoke only emphasize those traits. In the lore of the game, Haymar is kind of a mystic witch and as she floats through the air her cloak flutters and her bulky moon shoes seem to be there to pad her descent.

From my subjective standpoint, the crew of Freegunners in Concord are wholly unique for the world that they appear in. The handful of alien creatures players can select from are like humanoids from a Star Trek episode, just weird enough. I understand the argument and comparisons for the roster of something like Overwatch, who have easily identifiable personalities that people became drawn to on an obsessive level. No one in Concord is particularly “loud” and once understanding their abilities, it completely matches the visual language of the character.

A person who has never hopped into Overwatch or perhaps even played a game with distinct hero-like characters that aren’t a single-player protagonist would see someone like Mercy and just assume from visuals alone that she’s a healer, right? I think we give Blizzard a lot of credit for popularizing the genre but there are many ways to craft an appealing character and not have to translate their abilities into that design as well. Sure, developers could be as blatantly obvious as Team Fortress 2 but the subtlety that exists in Concord makes me excited to see what Firewalk is going to come up with in terms of unlockable cosmetics.

What Concord does unique to this particular genre is how Freegunner choice can actually evolve matches. A number of Freegunners have skills that deploy an object onto the map. Daw has healing pads, Kyps has surveillance cameras, Vale has trip mines, and Duchess has walls. These objects will actually persist through the course of a match and over the rounds of the no-respawn modes.

It’s a mechanic that I don’t think players will entirely wrap their heads around until a few weeks into the game’s full launch when teams are trying out strategies and working to be more competitive. A character like Duchess is great to use in a mode with a control zone because she can wall off lines of sight and create chokepoints. But what if those walls don’t go away? A smart player can use Kyps first and go invisible around the map, establishing security cameras for future rounds that will ping enemy locations. Of course, other players can destroy these objects but during the Beta I noticed that a lot of times, they went ignored.

Knowing how persistent objects will play out in Concord is hard, but my inclination is that it is certainly a fresh idea in the genre. Again a character like Daw or Jabari–who can throw orbs at teammates to create a healing aura others can use–are semi-support characters. But if Daw’s healing pads last beyond one round, maybe no one else on the team needs to select him again?

Concord emphasizes building a crew, adding another interesting spin. Freegunners have a crew bonus that applies a buff for the duration of a match. So Roka, the girl who can hover and shoot rockets, is a Haunt. Haunt characters apply an increased mobility buff. If you die as Roka and decide to switch to Emari, Emari will be granted that speed buff. As an Anchor, Emari receives increased healing, which helps her stay alive. But if you decide to switch to a different Freegunner after Emari’s shields fail you say, Lennox, he will get the Haunt and Anchor buffs, plus his own Warden buff, granting extended weapon range.

It is a system that players simply will not understand unless they go into the “How to Play” section, which is a failing of Firewalk. It’s a shame because the crew bonuses incentivize thoughtful team compositions and working with other players. I’ve seen it suggested that the system encourages players to die or switch from their favorites but I disagree. I don’t think the crew bonuses are so exponentially powerful that they make one character better than the other.

Instead, the crew bonus system rewards players who not only experiment but decide to adjust based on the team’s needs. Countless times during Concord it felt like the opposing team was starting to gain a lead. So I decided to switch to a different character that was maybe filling in a current need, often turning the tide back in our favor. Concord encourages players to use other Freegunners because they are all pretty damn fun.

Tweaks certainly need to be made and I think the Beta period will help bring some of those needs to light. Kyps’ pistol needs to do more damage, otherwise her kit doesn’t feel useful outside of certain instances. Jabari’s heals could probably get a bit of a buff because they tick fairly slowly. Some of these flaws may be curbed by crew bonuses but if Overwatch has taught us anything, balance is a constant battle.

But damnit, Concord has been a blast for me, truly. This isn’t like Call of Duty where a team of players can also go there separate ways in a map and kill someone in a second. Concord‘s time-to-kill is lengthy enough that players are meant to stand a chance against any Freegunner. Yet nothing can compare to rounds where each team rolled up with five players squeezing into chokepoints and having shootouts. There’s a real tug of war for power watching each team trying to poke holes in the other’s defense.

Sadly, Concord‘s real progression and its narrative content were not really on display during the Beta. I am extremely curious how Firewalk is going to incorporate these characters into an engaging, cohesive story not just through weekly vignettes but a separate section of the game that explores the universe of Concord. Will players even care? It’s hard to know. And questions exist about monetization and if the coolest looking cosmetics are going to be something you have to pay for. I’d love to think that leveling up my account and individual Freegunners are going to reward more than just simple color palette swaps. Are we going to get a costume that shows us Roka’s face? Is Lark going to get different mushroom heads? Only time will tell.

Concord has its work cut out for it. Firewalk has created more than just a competent, satisfying team-based competitive shooter. There are uniquely interesting touches here that make me excited for the future of this universe and its community. The Beta weekends proved Concord is a beautiful game that has some rough edges and glaring issues that need to be polished. Will it be special? I hope so. Will other people recognize it? They need to.