Breach - First Look

On the off chance that you don't remember, back in 2014 Bioware announced {Shadow Realms}. While it had many of the elements that you'd expect from a game made by the studio, it wasn't your typical Bioware game and moved away from the solo role-playing that forms the core of games like {Mass Effect 3} and {Dragon Age: Inquisition}. Instead, the studio decided to make something that concentrated more on the aspects we'd seen more prominently in the multiplayer portions of both of the aforementioned games.

Shadow Realms' unique hook was its asymmetrical structure, a setup which put four players in a team together to battle an entity controlled by a fifth player. It was around the time that Turtle Rock was cooking up its own 4vs1 multiplayer shooter, {Evolve}, but while that game made it to market in 2015, that same year Bioware decided to pull the plug on Shadow Realms.

Fast-forward to Gamescom 2018, and we got our first look at {Breach}, the debut title by QC Games, a studio made up of some of the very same Bioware devs who worked on the abandoned 4vs1 concept back in 2014-15.

It was actually our first appointment of the whole show, and we sat down with some of the key figures from the studio, including game director Gabe Amatangelo (you can see our interview at the end of this article) to find out more about the game. During our session, we got to play the game ourselves as well as discover more about the setting. In a nutshell, two versions of reality have run parallel for many years, but now they're coming together and there's a "breach" between the worlds, and demons are starting to make their way into our version of Earth.

Armed with a better understanding of the lore, and together with the devs who joined us in Cologne, we tackled a round of the game's trademark 4vs1 multiplayer. We played as one of four characters on a team of colourful demon-slayers, as well as getting a good look at what it's like to play solo as the veil demon tasked with stopping them.

There are a bunch of different pre-rolled character classes, and they've all been built around specific playstyles. Whether you want to play as a tank, a sniper, or even if all you want to do is support your teammates, QC seems to have put something together to suit you. We played as a gun-slinger, wielding two pistols and filling our opponents with lead from mid-range, but there was nearly twenty to choose from and we could have easily gone a different way.

<newpage>

Within the confines of the chunky roster, there seems to be even more variety on offer, this thanks to sideways progression that lets you unlock perks over time that can be added to any character you like. There seems to be a lot of room for players to tweak their respective builds over time, but not to the point where you'll be a higher level while your not-quite-as-committed friend struggles to keep up; you'll have more options to choose from when building your character, you won't, however, be more powerful.

Once a character has been picked and tweaked, it's time to get stuck into the action. The four players must move as a team and dodging incoming attacks as an absolute must. The waves of enemies become more intense until eventually, after you've cleared enough areas, a boss turns up and the matter is settled one way or another. The combat takes place in a series of rooms, with either the team or the fifth player earning a point depending on who won that particular skirmish. At regular intervals along the way, you'll be able to open chests that let you recover health, but ammo isn't included as your attacks are all mapped to a series of RPG-style timers.

As genre fans will know, the more powerful the attack, the longer the cooldown before it can be used again, so you'll be spamming enemies with your basic for the most part, stopping only to utilise your more powerful attacks at the right moment. Players are given an overview of the enemies they'll be facing before the game starts, so you can strategically pick characters and abilities that suit a particular type of encounter, but in the heat of the battle, it's all about game management, timing those heavy-hitting moves, and dodging as much damage as possible.

While the team of four scurries around the battlefield looking to thin the herd of evil beasties, the fifth player can lay traps to slow and hurt their opponents. To feel even more connected to the action the fifth player can even take control of individual minions, so if your team is getting sniped from afar the chances are your human opponent has taken over a ranged demon and has found a good vantage spot. It's chaotic stuff and you'll have to keep your wits about you.

In the game we were involved in, we saw the team whittled down over the final round, with players becoming incapacitated one by one until all were crawling around on the floor begging for medical attention. With the veil demon in total control, it became crystal clear that teams are going to have to work in harmony if they're to emerge victorious. The chance to win individual rounds suggests that even losing teams will be able to enjoy small victories along the way, but the goal for both sides is always going to be the overall win.

The 4vs1 battles are clearly the emphasis here, but the developers are building in alternative ways to play, including solo modes for those who prefer to keep themselves to themselves. With that in mind, there's a lot of factors to take into account. There's a wealth of characters to choose from, at least six types of veil demon to tackle/control, a range of modes beyond the one we played, and a bunch of demonic creatures (we were rather impressed by their design, it must be said) to slay. All told that means a lot for QC to balance when the game hits early access in the coming weeks, but they seem confident and enthused, and what they had to show at Gamescom already looked very polished.