FBC Firebreak is dead on arrival, but it didn't have to be this way

I've started to consider multiplayer spinoffs from story-driven games a recession marker. This is, admittedly, not a political science endorsed by world economists. Instead, it's predicated on my memories of that time. Occupy Wall Street. Recession pop. Shrinkflation. Tacked-on multiplayer. We've been teetering on the brink of a global recession for what feels like forever, so perhaps the emergence of multiplayer games like FBC Firebreak and Elden Ring Nightreign is inevitable.

Remedy's first multiplayer game isn't "tacked-on," but perhaps it would've been better received if it were. FBC Firebreak's Steam reception hasn't done it any favors next to its $40 price tag, but that's only one side to the story. We can't peek behind the walled gardens of Game Pass and PS Plus to take a look at how it's faring as a 'free' product on subscription-driven platforms, but after the lengthy queues I've been sitting in at peak time since launch, I can't imagine it's doing much better. Set six years after the events of Control, FBC Firebreak sends us back into the Oldest House as the cleanup crew. The first response team. Some kind of suicide squad. And we know how well that goes.

It didn't have to be like this. Bioshock 2: Fall of Rapture is one of the more egregious examples of tacked-on multiplayer, but even Digital Extremes understood why Bioshock was so beloved. Its brief story interludes may be perfunctory, but they are an olive branch for fans who had long ruminated over the events of that fateful New Year's Eve in 1958. After the myriad tales told through fitful audiologs and contextual corpses, to reduce the fall of Rapture down to player-versus-player mayhem, with incremental upgrades, felt like a betrayal. Sure, you've witnessed firsthand the brutal and inhumane procedures involved in a Big Daddy's creation - but hey, you get to become one in multiplayer and win the match!

Nevertheless, the fateful moment when Apollo Airways Flight DF-0301 crashes through the apartment window in Fall of Rapture threads a needle through Bioshock 2's multiplayer and Bioshock 1's opening cutscene, crafting a connection in a game mode that felt so disconnected from its principal story. The same narrative crassness extends to FBC Firebreak, but there is no such connective stitch. Instead, we're to assume that the FBC's Firebreakers are locked in some kind of Sisyphean struggle against a force that had, by all accounts, been defeated by the end of Control.

And where is Jesse Faden? "I wasn't ready for this crisis. I didn't even see it coming," she admits in Control's true ending. "But I promise I'll be ready for the next one. I mean, what good is a Director who can't hold her Bureau together?" Six years on, and I'm asking the same question. We get a meager attempt at an explanation in the loading screen between matches, but these memos are so incidental as to go ignored. "Jesse Faden? More like Jesse Fade-OUT," one reads. In FBC Firebreak, she is as absent and remote as Director Zachariah Trench in Control.

On the face of it, that's not necessarily bad. Halo 3: ODST is one of my favorite FPS games because it dispenses with the singular protagonist. It reframes the war against the Covenant from the perspective of regular human soldiers, not an Übermensch with brand-supported plot armor. I understand Master Chief's absence because the conflict is galaxy-wide. It's the same principle as Mass Effect 3's multiplayer horde mode, where players assume the role of a war asset in Commander Shepherd's forces. The unspoken assumption is that Shepherd is off in some other corner of the galaxy during the events of Mass Effect 3. The same cannot be said of the Hiss invasion. If Jesse's absence in FBC Firebreak is a setup for Control 2, it doesn't fill me with much excitement.

Elden Ring Nightreign's story, vague as it is, doesn't rankle when so much of Elden Ring's lore is impenetrable to the average player. Even so, it raises a few eyebrows. Why is the Nameless King here? Why is Wylder wearing Artorias' clothes? The story justification is that the Nightlord's influence has worn away the fabric between worlds, but even director Junya Ishizaki admits that these callbacks "serve a game design purpose rather than a lore purpose." They are here for spectacle and fan service, not for any grand revelation that FromSoftware's worlds coexist in a multiverse.

Likewise, several of FBC Firebreak's objectives are a rehash of the events of Control. The sticky notes in the Executive Sector, Black Rock Quarry, the Furnace in the Maintenance Sector - all of them are lifted straight from Control. Unfortunately, once the initial point-and-exclaim moment wears off, all this familiarity breeds contempt. Just as the Nameless King is diminished in the eyes of Nightreign players, so too is the Hiss reduced to an infestation that's more an annoyance than a credible threat. The difference is that the Nameless King is not Nightreign's focal point.

Like FromSoftware and Nightreign, FBC Firebreak is Remedy's first-ever multiplayer game, and it shows. Both are so desperate to get players into their ecosystem that their respective tutorials are perfunctory at best, forcing solo newbies to pick up on their nuances by trial and error, to the detriment of experienced allies. Neither has a built-in communication system; their respective emotes and sprays are more tools of self-expression than anything of real substance.

Firebreak does have promptable voice lines, but they're so rote that they might as well be a ping system. Its matchmaking has thrown me in with teammates at wildly different levels, from complete beginners to the certified Firebreakers who've been playing non-stop since the servers went live. Situated as I am between these polar extremes, I experience the chafing from both sides. Like Nightreign, Firebreak delivers kid-glove leave penalties in the form of temporary matchmaking bans. Its report system to address player abuse is opaque, with no way to track its efficacy.

So what differentiates FBC Firebreak from any other co-op game out there? Some might say it's the aesthetic of the Control universe, but I don't think that's true. Consider Ahti, Control's paranatural janitor. He's the closest we come to a blue-collar FBC employee, and yet, even he is as buttoned-up and unassuming as they come. Contrast this with our Firebreakers, the would-be janitors for the paranatural 'spillage' flooding the Oldest House. Their practical coveralls are the undergarments of an avatar enslaved to player expression.

There are no 'everymen' here. Instead, we have dieselpunk samurai, paint-splattered grease monkeys, and bandana-clad welders with emojis scrawled on their kneepads. Aesthetically, Control is so striking because of the collision between order and chaos, but FBC Firebreak's dedication to the player's self-importance is only the peak of this slippery slope. It descends to level design. Where there is satisfaction to be found in disrupting the FBC's neat and orderly spaces in Control, Firebreak's maps are already in disarray.

Just to be clear, FBC Firebreak doesn't have to have an identical likeness to find success. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood's multiplayer was more of an imposter game than it was a co-op version of itself (see Hitman's Ghost Mode for what that might have looked like), and it was all the better for it. Instead of trying to take the Assassin's Creed experience and transplant it into fun with friends, it gave us the singular experience of getting into the programmed mind of an NPC. It even had a story justification. AC Brotherhood's multiplayer is by no means the best of the tacked-on bunch, but there's a reason fans are still trying to revive it after the server shutdown in 2022.

Really, it's not the multiplayer spinoff format itself that's inherently inferior; it all comes down to how it's executed. Ideally, FBC Firebreak should enrich the original experience in some fashion. What do you think of when you think of Control? After concrete, it's probably the Altered Items, Remedy's take on SCP-style phenomena: mundane items like fridges, rubber ducks, and 'get well soon' balloons that prove lethal under the wrong circumstances. FBC Firebreak's Corrupted Items are ostensibly the same, although their effects are significantly dumbed down. In Control, getting Altered Items back into containment is closer to a puzzle than a battle. How do you neutralize their equivalent in FBC Firebreak? The same way you interact with almost anything in Firebreak: by shooting at it.

Have you ever wanted to determine the most optimal way to destroy thousands of sticky notes in the shortest amount of time? How about lugging portable heaters around, or (shudder) fixing generators? FBC Firebreak's objectives are so tedious that it's almost laughable. Compare this to The Outlast Trials, whose own extraction-style format leans into what made Outlast so memorable. It gave us villains like Mother Gooseberry and Leland Coyle, who stand shoulder to shoulder with the most sick and twisted of the mainline series. In Control, we're fighting the same waves of generic Hiss agents in the same configurations of the Oldest House to complete the same objectives. It's so grounded in one static reality that it stands in total counterpoint to what defines the New Weird, and by extension, Control.

Worse still, FBC Firebreak is the first live-service game I've played that openly admits that it's deliberately hamstrung your kit right out of the gate, ostensibly so you can spend longer on the progression hamster wheel. Growth is essential in any leveling system, but it's built incrementally upon a strong foundation. Nightreign's relics are a prime example; while the RNG system produces its own problems, their effects never undercut the core abilities of the Nightfarers themselves. The same cannot be said of FBC Firebreak, where key components of each class kit are withheld until unlock requirements are met.

With enough time and dedication from Remedy, FBC Firebreak might one day rise to become one of the best free PC games for anyone who's been chasing the 360-era high of Left 4 Dead. It does have its fans, though if its Steam player count is anything to go by, this cohort is already shrinking at a rapid pace. Needless to say, the outlook is bleak. Remedy has promised big changes, but so far, it's all in pursuit of getting the "nice toys" in the hands of players earlier. The short-term benefits are obvious. If Firebreak is to succeed, it must improve player retention. However, this focus also betrays a lack of long-term vision.

As Remedy toils away at improvements to Firebreak's onboarding, the closer it comes to fall-off at the other end of the scale. Once Firebreak's most dedicated players have exhausted its five levels and unlocked everything, what then? Remedy's roadmap promises more content in the fall and winter - but if the endless deluge of content updates from Epic Games, HoYoverse, and other live-service providers has taught us anything, it's that successful live-service games run on Hotel California logic: "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave." Remedy is the beleaguered night man struggling at the check-in desk, while its VIP guests are already walking out the door.

I gave Nightreign a 6/10 with the caveat that its "biggest issues can and will be fixed." FromSoftware has done exactly that, deploying a raft of balance adjustments, a relic drop rate boost, and a solo mode adjustment that makes it actually viable. So, why has Nightreign succeeded where FBC Firebreak is on the cusp of failure? In short, it's Nightreign's variability. Limveld is a compact space with limited points of interest, but its constant reconfiguration presents a new iteration of the same challenge every run. It's not a perfect formula, but it bought FromSoftware enough time to keep its audience engaged until it could implement those crucial changes. Now that it's found a foothold, Nightreign's new weekly bosses offer tougher challenges to keep Nightfarers locked in for the long haul.

Summarily, it's not just that FBC Firebreak doesn't have the 'it' factor. It's that it undercuts the identity of the action-adventure game it's riffing on, and doesn't even bring something new to the table to justify it. Against all odds, Remedy has tripped at the first, most essential hurdle - to enrich the world it uses as its template. That enrichment is still within reach; I'm just not sure FBC Firebreak's audience will stick around long enough to grasp it.