Defy Aliens with a thousand of your closest friends.
When I first heard about Defiance I was, admittedly, a little skeptical. A cross-platform, Third Person Shooter, that was also an MMO, tied directly to the story of a TV series on the SyFy Network. It sounded really cool, but just too ambitious to actually work.
As more details emerge my attitude shifted to cautiously optimistic, but lately I’ve moved on to full-blown excitement. After being able to see more and more, beyond those first few screenshots, it’s clear that developer, Trion Worlds, have their hearts in the right place and a lot of big ideas up their sleeves.
The shooting mechanics in Defiance, will focus on pixel to pixel accuracy and killing enemies requires skill rather than some abstract ‘accuracy’ stat. That isn’t to say you can’t upgrade your weapons, there is an extensive system for this, but there is nothing going on in the background. You either aimed at and hit your enemy, or you didn’t. Of course, co-op tactics will come into play when you face larger enemy types, but you’ll be lining up your headshots the old-fashioned way.
When you jump into the world of Defiance, you’ll be dropped in there with thousands of other players at the same time, and you can go about your business as you see fit. Everyone will be fighting the same enemies, and experiencing the same dynamic events, at the same time. There will be instanced co-op, and PVP (player versus player) maps that you can queue to join, but you’ll be able to travel around the world while you wait and won’t be stuck in a lobby.
Getting around in Defiance looks like it’s going to be a blast as well. Every player has their own personal vehicle (the only ones we’ve seen so far are ATV’s), that can be summoned from anywhere much like you would summon a mount in World of Warcraft. The vehicles are all fully physics based so you can feel free to hit jumps, run over enemies and flip your ride as you see fit. There will be larger vehicles available for co-op actions that will have multiple seats, and on-board weapons, but no word on if you can get something like that for your personal vehicle.
Character progression will take the form of additional abilities that you can spend your points to buy. Things like invisibility cloaks, and electronic shields can be purchased and swapped in and out as you need them. You’ll also be able to save templates so you can deploy with specific ability sets to suit the situation. You won’t be locked into a particular ‘class’ that plays a specific role like other MMO’s. Just swap your abilities, swap your weapons, and play how you want to play.
From what I’ve seen so far, Defiance is shaping up to be a really fun take on the third person shooter. Defiance is scheduled for a release date of April 2013. Get ready to play the game, watch the show, change the world.
