The first extended look at Remedy’s co-op shooter FBC: Firebreak is completely bonkers

Remedy Entertainment is no stranger to unconventional ballistics. The Finnish game developer is well known for its eclectic, boundary-pushing approach to third-person shooters with titles such as Max Payne, Alan Wake, Quantum Break, and Control. But a co-op first-person shooter where you fight, among other threats, a sentient swarm of Post-it notes? That’s a new one.

On Thursday at Future Games Show, Remedy debuted a new trailer for FBC: Firebreak, the studio’s upcoming first-person shooter set in the Remedy Connected Universe. Taking place six years after the events of 2019’s Control, the game centers on Firebreak, a team of volunteer “first responders” who act as the first and last line of defense between the remaining members of the Federal Bureau of Control and the Hiss, the hostile supernatural resonance that’s possessed their former co-workers. FBC’s Firebreak team finds itself trapped inside the extradimensional office building known as the Oldest House, with the Hiss trapped alongside them, waiting to attack.

The trailer, titled “Paper Chase,” shows a three-player team working together to clear out an infestation of malevolent sticky notes that have overtaken the executive sector of the Oldest House, along with a swath of Hiss-possessed FBC employees. Using improvised weapons and tools including what appears to be an electrified pneumatic jump firearm, a high-pressure water cannon to blast away sticky notes obscuring a player’s field of vision, and an explosive Object of Power resembling a piggy bank, players move between various containment zones and safe rooms collecting ammo and items. 

The trailer culminates with players fighting against a group of anthropomorphic masses of sticky notes before facing off against a massive monster referred to simply as “Sticky Ricky.” It’s impressive, exciting, and unabashedly bonkers.

Polygon attended a virtual press event on March 11 where Remedy showed off an extended playthrough of the mission featured in the trailer, as well as a presentation on the game’s core pillars led by FBC: Firebreak game director Mike Kayatta. 

“From day one, we asked ourselves this question over and over again anytime we had an idea we wanted to pitch out to the others in the team: Could this happen only in Control, and could this happen only at Remedy? Is this something that only us weirdos on the team were willing to put into a game with the Remedy label on it, and if the answer was yes, then we thought we were on the right track,” Kayatta said.

At its core, FBC: Firebreak is designed to prioritize pick-up-and-play potential, ditching the engagement stress of daily check-ins, monthly grinds, and battle passes that bifurcate experiences between casual and hardcore gamers. “However much you’ve played or your friends have played, no matter how good you are versus how good they are, it doesn’t matter,” said Kayatta. “We want to have some way of playing this game with anyone who wants to play it with us, and we’ll give you a lot of options to kind of create that experience.”

Those options boil down to three major factors at the outset of the game. The first are “jobs,” FBC: Firebreak’s in-game terminology for missions that players can choose to tackle. Each job is set in one of the sectors of the Oldest House with its own unique objective. The second is “Threat & Clearance Level,” which are essentially modifiers that players can select before embarking on a job that determines the combat difficulty (Threat) and the number of combat zones from one to three (Clearance). The Threat & Clearance Level you choose can afford for greater challenges and the possibility of greater rewards. Finally, there are Crisis Kits — weapon and skill loadouts that give players the ability to emphasize one of three unique play styles that players can switch between mid-job. 

In addition to all these options, players can also collect and equip Research Perks that entail different abilities that modify your skills, à la Control’s Personal Mods, and become stronger when paired with perks of the same type. The result, in theory at least, is an interoperable core experience that emphasizes teamwork, creativity, and moment-to-moment spontaneity.

When prompted as to whether or not players would have to play Control in order to fully understand or enjoy FBC: Firebreak, Kayatta emphasized that Remedy’s 2019 action-adventure game is intended to be complementary to this new game, not compulsory. “It’s really important to us to kind of protect two groups of players with this game. One are the Control people. We don’t want you to feel as though you have to divert into a genre you don’t feel comfortable with to follow the story of these characters and to understand what happened. We also want to protect non-Control players by making sure that they don’t need to have that backstory to fully understand anybody that we present them with.”

All post-launch downloadable content, such as new jobs, will be free for all FBC: Firebreak owners, with optional cosmetic items available to purchase. Cross-play will be supported, allowing those who own the game to play with one another regardless of whether they own the game on console or PC. While Kayatta and co. were cagey about the exact details of what Remedy has in mind for the game’s post-launch content map, it’s likely that FBC: Firebreak will at some point in the future bridge the gap between the events of 2019’s Control and the upcoming Control 2, which is currently in production. 

As a longtime fan of the studio, I’m impressed with what I’ve seen of the game so far and eager to dive back into the paranatural shenanigans of the Remedy Connected Universe when FBC: Firebreak launches on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X this summer.