When Harmony made its gameplay debut on the current PlayStation State of Play presentation in Might, it’s truthful to say that the response was combined. Whereas some praised the colorful, characterful vignette, which noticed a bunch of rag-tag characters bicker over a job gone unsuitable, others weren’t so eager.
The explanations for the tempered reception come down to a couple issues. Firstly, from a purely personality-based standpoint, the quippy, bantering Guardians of the Galaxy-em-up model of dialogue has fallen out of favour with many. Whereas we don’t subscribe to the concept there was no option to do authentic odd-couple dialogue pre-Marvel, the prevalence of it in all types of media has understandably made audiences bitter.
The opposite, and maybe probably the most related component, is that when the fantastically rendered cinematic was carried out, what adopted was a 5vs5 hero shooter—a style that’s divisive at greatest in 2024 and, at worst, a complete turnoff for a portion of the participant base.
“Yeah, that trailer,” displays Kim Kreines, Harmony‘s director of IP. “That second is such a tiny slice of all the pieces that we’ve been engaged on for years and years. We’re excited for the sport and for the IP, and for the sport to be in folks’s fingers.
“I’m very excited for people to delve into the Galactic Information if that’s one thing they select to do, for our vignettes to come back out on a weekly foundation, they’ll begin to fall in love with the depth of the characters. None of that’s one thing you will get in a tiny little slice of it.”
Clearly, solely a lot of the sport may be conveyed in such a brief area of time, to not point out how tough it’s to reveal Firewalk Studios’ ambitions for its lore and narrative in a 4-minute sizzle.
Lately, VGC had the prospect to spend three hours with Conord forward of its beta launch, and whereas it may not do a lot for gamers who’ve totally written off hero shooters, its storytelling ambition is really spectacular, and will probably affect the best way stay service titles inform tales going ahead.
We may be heroes
What would a hero-shooter be with out heroes? At launch, Harmony may have 16. We acquired to play with ten of them, and from what we will see, there’s real selection and a studying curve that can make team-building participating for gamers.
Firstly, there’s Lennox, the inexperienced scaley chap you noticed within the trailer from State of Play. He’s cocky and brash and carries round a pair of revolvers. His gameplay is up shut and private. Whereas he doesn’t have a lot well being, he can heal himself and deal an enormous quantity of harm in shut vary.
1-Off, who’s a bit like a dustbin on legs, has a vacuum cleaner that absorbs all injury and gadgets on the sector, then flings it again in direction of the opposite staff with devastating results. One other character, Roka, launches up into the air and reigns rocket fireplace down from the sky, including an surprising verticality to fight.

There’s additionally your bread and butter FPS character Teo, your healer Daw, and your tank Star Youngster, a constant thorn in our sides throughout our play periods.
Like the most effective hero shooters, there’s an evolution within the complexity of the characters, which means that though you’ll in all probability begin off with Teo, while you get right into a recreation and see a 1-Off on the opposite staff, you immediately need to learn to play that character correctly. There’s a studying curve however by no means does it really feel unbalanced.
The characters are additionally very readable, an attribute that lead character designer Jon Weisnewski tells us is examined by way of the “around-the-corner take a look at.”
“The concept behind it’s that it’s a aggressive PVP recreation, which implies that for gamers to be competent, they want to have the ability to make a split-second combat or flight choice. It’s an asymmetrical recreation, so some characters have benefits that others don’t.
“When two characters run across the nook right into a fight area, we want gamers to have the ability to see a personality and get a extremely robust learn and perceive who they’re up towards.”

At no level throughout our session did we really feel confused as to who was who, and what we must always count on from them. That is very important for that split-second decision-making, and the silhouettes of the characters really feel diverse sufficient to make even the busiest fights discernable for gamers.
As is typical, every character can solely be picked as soon as per staff, which means that strategic staff constructing is necessary to doing properly. Whereas we didn’t get an awesome sense of that in our preview, and most of our staff appeared to be selecting characters based mostly on who seemed the best (together with us), some early methods did emerge.
There aren’t any limits on what number of of a sure sort of character can be utilized, so throwing collectively a staff of the 2 bulkiest characters and the three lightest was no subject. Every little thing appears to have a counter, and whereas each character has its professionals and cons, all of them appear equally defeatable. After all, a recreation’s stability solely usually emerges when there are a whole bunch of 1000’s of individuals enjoying a recreation, not actually ten, however nothing felt extraordinarily damaged.
The character of the characters additionally interprets to the gameplay, however at no level turns into overbearing, which means that gamers who’ve little interest in lore in all probability gained’t discover, however those that interact with Harmony’s bigger world will get one thing out of it.
Kreines tells us: “It’s unbelievable, the concepts that our artists provide you with to assist symbolize among the backstories, the concepts that our artists provide you with that payment into that. What’s so cool about this course of is neither gameplay, nor narrative, nor artwork drives, all of us steer collectively.”
We have been proven three modes throughout our session with Harmony. The primary, named Trophy Hunt is a tackle the Kill Confirmed-style modes which were in a number of shooters over the previous few years.
In brief, you don’t win purely based mostly on kills, as a substitute, it’s a must to kill your enemy, after which bodily journey to that location in an effort to gather an merchandise from their corpse. The primary staff to succeed in the goal rating wins.
It wouldn’t be a Kill Confirmed mode with out folks in our staff blankly refusing to gather the gadgets that drop from the folks they kill, so in that sense, it was very genuine. This was additionally the one mode we performed whereby we have been capable of respawn, making it fertile floor for making an attempt out the entire completely different characters.
The subsequent, Conflict Level, sees each groups combat over a single level with no respawns. In our session, each groups have been charging collectively and virtually immediately wiping, however with extra expertise, we will see this being one of many recreation’s most tense modes.
The stability between working in with a really high-damage dealing staff versus being cautious and utilizing a staff that may take in injury is a push and pull that shall be attention-grabbing to see within the closing launch as soon as gamers get a greater sense of the characters and their skills.
That is round-based, and it did turn out to be barely tedious when our staff was getting stomped to take a seat by the entire picks, and loading again into one other spherical, however conversely, when it was shut, it was a pleasant respite between the frantic rounds, so your mileage will differ.

The ultimate mode we performed was Cargo Run. On this mode, groups begin at reverse ends of a map and should cost to the middle to get well a Blue Buddy robotic.
As soon as a staff has carried out this, they then should take it to an extraction level and guard it. This match sort can also be no respawn, and we discovered that to be considerably of a problem. Whereas the preliminary battle to seize the Blue Buddy was all the time enjoyable and chaotic, there didn’t really feel like there was a lot level to the extraction component.
Both the staff that collected him had sufficient gamers the place defending the extraction was trivial, or all gamers on one staff would die, ending the sport.
It looks like, maybe there ought to be no respawning till the robotic is collected, then the staff that didn’t seize it might respawn in an try to steal it again. Because it stands, there’s not lots of push and pull, making this our least favorite of the three modes we performed.
Standing on the shoulders of giants
Harmony’s gunplay is superb, and that gained’t come as a shock to anybody who has paid consideration to the staff that’s making the sport. Firewalk is made up of veterans from the most important and greatest shooters of the final decade. Former Name of Responsibility, Apex Legends, Titanfall, and Future builders make up the Harmony staff, and it reveals.
Once we have been requested by colleagues following our time with the sport, to sum up how the taking pictures feels, it’s most simply summarised as, “Future taking pictures, with barely slower motion, and round double the time-to-kill of Name of Responsibility.”
When you’ve performed as many shooters as we have now, you realize precisely the place you’re working while you hear one thing like that. Weapons really feel weighty, but exact. Whereas hit-scan weapons in hero shooters can typically really feel such as you’re enjoying a light-gun recreation at an arcade, Harmony’s taking pictures feels hefty and offers nice suggestions as as to whether you’re hitting your photographs or not.

“The gameplay basis was an enormous emphasis for the sport. It’s one of many issues that made me need to work there,” Weisnewski tells us. “As a gameplay designer, understanding that the founders of the studio have been constructing a staff fabricated from veterans who know how one can make good gameplay was big. Once I noticed the staff and I heard the imaginative and prescient for the sport, I knew this was the place I needed to work.”
We requested if it was in any respect irritating from a gameplay growth perspective that as quickly as anybody begins exhibiting a stay service hero shooter, everybody brings up Overwatch.
“I’m not bothered by it in any respect,” says Weisnewski. “Overwatch is a good recreation and that staff did some unbelievable stuff for the style. On the similar time, I strongly consider that our recreation has an id that’s distinctive to itself and that it performs like nothing else on the market.”
Guardians of the Galactic Information
The ultimate, and maybe most shocking component of Harmony is its strategy to narrative and lore. Stay service video games have been making an attempt to inform tales in concurrence with their gameplay for a while. Within the likes of Warzone, big map-changing occasions are rolled out on occasion, which normally features a quick cutscene that almost all gamers attempt to skip by.
Fortnite, in some ways the progenitor to one of these storytelling, has been producing large-scale cinematic trailers to coincide with its weeks-long in-game narrative arcs.
Going additional again than that, within the early days of Overwatch, exterior of the introductory cutscene and some character trailers, the sport’s narrative was largely conveyed by way of voice traces, and breathless articles on-line transport characters collectively.
Harmony is taking a way more excessive strategy. Throughout every season, weekly vignettes shall be launched in-game. These cutscenes discover the world of the characters, their backstories, and the overarching story of that season. Firewalk says it has a lot of these episodes mapped out and plans to proceed them for the foreseeable.
There’s additionally the Galactic Information. This looks like an in-game model of the extent of lore that almost all stay service video games disguise on an internet site, or in a bodily lore bible. Basically, the entire galaxy of Harmony is mapped, and you’ll learn details about every of the planets featured.

This, at the side of the vignettes, renders the world of Harmony, and Firewalk says it’s their most significant storytelling instrument. It’s simple to think about a future season whereby the season-long risk is first teased in an replace to the Galactic Information for gamers to seek out. Maybe a brand new character makes their debut on an of-ignored planet within the information.
Firewalk itself is aware of that not each participant goes to have interaction with this.
“It’s an added layer for people that need to put money into it and it’ll come throughout to everyone who’s enjoying. You’ll get little items, even when it’s not your jam, that’s completely nice,” says Kreines.
“So even in case you’re any individual who’s simply there for the gameplay, we hope that the flavour you take in enhances that, and it looks like all a part of the package deal. If that’s not the place you need to make investments time, you don’t should, if that’s the place you do need to make investments, we provide you with that choice.”
That is, on paper, thrilling. The Galactic Information reminded us of a type of interactive CDs you’d get within the early 2000s with a map of the entire planets in Star Wars. When you’re a lore nerd, there are hours of details and historical past to pour over.
Our solely hesitation is the dimensions of the content material promised. If Harmony begins off gung-ho with constant vignettes each week, that’s a cadence that Firewalk can’t actually afford to drop. Marry that to the expectation of content material like new maps, and it’s simple to see a world wherein the staff will get overwhelmed.
“We’re in a fairly distinctive area right here,” Kreines tells us. “There was by no means a time when this narrative and this lore wasn’t going to be an enormous a part of what we have been growing, we have been simply on the lookout for one of the best ways to roll that out to gamers.
“How will we give people an opportunity to fall in love with (the characters)? How will we get that info to them? How are we going to permit gamers to discover the galaxy?”
Charge to pay
Harmony shall be priced at $40/£35 at launch, with all future characters and maps coming totally free. So, on this planet of ballooning budgets and video games having to earn money perpetually to help live-service prices, how is Firewalk planning to try this?
“We’re going to launch with our 16 characters, 12 maps, and 6 modes,” Kim Kreines tells us. “That’s all included while you purchase the sport, and seasonally we’re offering new maps, new modes, and new characters, alongside their unfolding story.
“There are purely beauty items which you could select to additional customise the look of your character, which you could select to buy. These don’t have an effect on gameplay. We consider so strongly that the total expertise ought to be accessible to all of our gamers.”

Firewalk is saying all the proper issues. It’s additionally made a recreation that, based mostly on our early playtest, feels nice. Whereas the current reveal was arguably a misstep (a sentiment echoed by most members of the media in attendance at our session) it doesn’t painting the high-quality shooter that Firewalk has produced.
Nonetheless, with the hindsight of now understanding the lengths that the staff goes to make lore such a key a part of the general package deal, it is sensible why the choice was made to steer with that within the State of Play, even when some viewers acquired the unsuitable finish of the stick.
What Firewalk must spend way more time doing is exhibiting off the sport’s gunplay, which, if it reaches the proper viewers, has actual endurance. We need to play extra, see extra maps, and meet extra characters. Largely, we simply need to shoot extra weapons.
That’s the viewers the sport should hook if it’s to be PlayStation’s second live-service smash this yr. It’s not PlayStation’s Overwatch. It’s extra like PlayStation’s Future-Valorant-CoD-em-up. Attempt becoming that right into a trailer.