A week or so ago, we were privy to an early preview of Nexon’s third-person action shooter called The First Descendant. While checking all the right boxes to ensure it’s a grab-a-gun-and-go experience, it goes far deeper than a game featuring a slew of guns and targets to go with them. Initial impressions of it put it somewhere between Anthem if it turned out to be good, and Destiny, where there is more than enough to keep you busy.
So, without delay, let’s dig into The First Descendant and talk about what is and what could be.
Gameplay with an iron heart
The First Descendant begins by asking you to choose from three characters. While I didn’t explore the other two characters, I chose Ajax, a beefy boi that wrecked enemies before anything else. He looked cool, and robotic, and benefited from the power of the Unreal Engine. He was gorgeously detailed.
Anyway, once you choose your character, the game shifts straight into the story. It starts with a pair of characters (one being you, surprise!) traversing a series of caves while taking down enemies, all the while trying to find an object called the Iron Heart. This object is presumed to contain a mysterious power that wasn’t readily defined or revealed in the prologue but provided enough motivation for the evil antagonist Vulgus to push forward, acquire it from the heroes, and start a war within the Ingris continent against our crew.
Playing the initial storyline was fun as hell. While I didn’t know who the enemies were at first or what I should be doing, I did understand that as soon as the action began, I just needed to point and shoot. The gameplay was easy to understand, which is expected from a point-and-shoot game like this, but the mechanics, the aiming system, the attach/release climbing system, and even the speed of the action were super easy to grasp and fall right into. Heck, even the tutorial, which is generally a hub-drub experience in games like this, hit all the right notes and blended learning with the fast-paced action perfectly. I can’t remember the last time I was entertained by a tutorial, but this certainly did the trick. And all of this before the boss even showed his ugly face. Let’s discuss this guy briefly, as I didn’t spend too much time hunting him down.
The Vulgus leader showed up and raised the chaos level exponentially. In a short amount of time, he was nasty, cruel, and driven by whatever the Iron Heart brought to the table. I didn’t know the background of this bad dude one bit, nor did this particular mission provide a hefty number of details to give him more context, but there was enough presented to immediately provide the right amount of motivation to want to hunt him down. I always tell my students that a good video game story is one that connects and makes you feel something towards characters, and this dude just simply made me angry because of his actions (which I won’t mention – you should experience it). He was a helluva enemy and a defining reason to be cautious in the game.
At this point of the preview session, the game felt like a third-person shooter should feel with compelling characters and potentially a good story. While judging the final draft is up in the air until the final version is released, I’m hopeful it will be more entertaining and less disappointing than anything from the Destiny family.
Now, once I got beyond the boss, fought a big crab-like creature, and moved the small piece of narrative preview along, the game quickly expanded.
So much to do
Once you get beyond the opening narrative, you’re thrown into a large mechanical city brimming with merchants, missions, and reasons to continue playing the game. Don’t get me wrong, shooting enemies and fighting could be enough to make a game worth its weight in gold, but the devs at Nexon Games seemed to take it much further. And all of it started with missions.
Missions
The biggest part of this cityscape reveal was how many ways you could play. The game offered different ways to play various missions. While I’m 100% positive that I didn’t see everything this portion of the game had to offer, there were a couple of mission types that had me frothing at the mouth for more understanding and to see them in their final version of the game. They were as follows:
Special Operations – The special operations here were broken into varied mission types. The first type was resource defense, which appears to be just like it said it is, defending one’s resources. The second type was Mine Blocking. I think it probably had something to do with mines and blocking. I didn’t get a chance to dig into these, but there were quite a few versions of them with tiny stories attached. I’m anxious to spend more time with them in the final release.
Colossus – This piqued my interest the most out of all the different missions beyond the campaign. Essentially, this mission type is about taking down giant monsters called Colossus (is that plural?). The very idea of having the option to go against giant beings in a game like this would be an instant sale. These missions featured a variety of colossus, which means it probably isn’t over quickly. I’m so down for big fights against large monsters.
Smaller mission experiences
Beyond these beautiful unknowns and assumed fun missions, The First Descendant also contained a bevy of smaller missions that you could pick up on and earn XP from. This was akin to the randomly scattered missions in Destiny 2, where you can roam a broken town and happen upon missions that require you to accomplish tasks to gain XP. I played a good chunk of these missions and found they offered a good variety of fun. For example, I played one mission where I had to reclaim a mansion for some residents. I had to go through multiple levels of a mansion and wipe out enemies in a set amount of time. The shorter the time, the better the XP. Honestly, I thought this was unique, even though on a base level wiping out enemies in a confined space has been done before. The backdrop of helping people out while jumping through a large mansion made it just plain fun.
There was also a mission that had me go through the streets of the city clearing out enemies so that residents could travel again. This mission featured a proper difficult arc and slow introduction to tougher, scarier enemies, and much like the mansion mission, was entertaining. At the very least it offered a fun distraction from the main campaign.
The last mission I played was one that revolved around protecting a radar system from waves of enemies. This mission set up a MOBA three-lane structure where I had to go back and forth to keep track of where enemies were coming from. The game could have just thrown enemies at me that didn’t matter, but much like the city street clearing mission, the difficulty, and enemy arc steadily rose with every wave until it had a crescendo crash with a mid-tier boss. It was cool and entertaining as hell. It felt worth my time and I wanted to go back and play it again. But the game was big, so I had to move on.
From the time I spent with the missions in the game, The First Descendant seemed to hit all the right notes with variety and entertainment. I really want to see how far Nexon Games Co., Ltd. takes it.
Backend RPG Elements
While I didn’t get to truly see how far the role-playing game backbone goes in The First Descendant, I saw a taste of it here and there. The game allows you multiple weapons (up to three guns – at least in the preview), which I can only assume you can craft and modify, thanks to the inclusion of a Blacksmith in the game’s main hub.
The game also features modules and items called reactor cores. The reactor cores provide you with different skills external component powers, attack types, and auxiliary powers. I was quite surprised that this game was as deep with the RPG elements as it was, and I’m positive that I didn’t see it all in my short stint with it, so the possibilities are rather exciting. I am trying to keep my hopes and expectations tamed because of how badly Anthem burned me, but I’m hopeful Nexon Games Co., Ltd. got this right. I’m also sure that there are more than a few things that this preview didn’t reveal.
Anyway, let’s wrap up this preview.
Conclusion…for now
The First Descendant from Nexon Games Co., Ltd has all the structure for a promising action-driven RPG. The preview seemed to show plenty of worthwhile content with a pleasantly thoughtful RPG component holding it all together.
Definitely keep an eye on this one. I know we will.
