Concord review: "Plenty of characters and little personality"

Concord makes a terrible first impression. After multiple cutscenes where characters speak in two tones - annoyingly glibly or over-earnestly - you're chucked into a tutorial that feels comprehensive… until you actually play the game. Only then do you realize that it teaches you to crawl before demanding you sprint. Chaos and death reign as you try to figure out just what is going on and why a giant "we've got Drax at home" creature keeps pummeling you into an early grave. Fight through it though and Concord begins to show a better version of itself. One that, given enough time, might even be worth sticking with. 

On the surface, Concord takes an Overwatch-style cast of heroes and marries them to fast-paced, Call of Duty-style action. You pick from a crew of 16 Freegunners (the in-game term for the self-consciously wild misfits you play as) and get stuck into the 5v5 team action across a selection of mid-sized maps over a variety of planets. Concord aims for a balance between strategy and skill, with maps designed to suit all play styles - from those who prefer long open spaces for sniping to bunny hoppers who like to bamboozle others with quick movement in tight spaces. While clever play like setting up traps with certain characters or learning the map layout to quickly flank an enemy can grant an advantage, skilled shooters can negate this by landing headshots, making matches an enjoyable contest between brains and brawn. 

Currently though, there's little in terms of modes you won't have experienced before. There's six match types at launch, set between three different playlists. Brawl has Team Deathmatch - does what it says on the tin - and Trophy Hunt, where you need to vacuum up the tags of downed enemies. Then there's Takeover, which puts the focus on the objective-based Signal Hunt and Area Control - where you capture either static or moving zones and fend off the enemy. Finally, there's Rivalry, which is a no-respawn playlist for Cargo Run (take a device, plant it, and secure the area) and Clash Point (control one area or eliminate the rival team).  

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There's a lingering disappointment to the paucity of match types on offer; after all, there are only so many times I can beg my teammates to head to B instead of dying at A. Add on the fact that you're funneled into playlists rather than being able to mix-and-match or even just hit a quick play option and it feels a little light for the long run. But this familiar framework is offset by some bolder choices developer Firewalk makes when it comes to how you utilize its cast of characters that hint at how Concord can stay in your multiplayer rotation.

I need a hero(es)

Each round, you pick a Freegunner who belongs to a specific class. If you go for Teo - your classic soldier type to ease in the military shooter players - you're picking a Ranger, a class that has reduced weapon recoil. If you plump for Lark - a space mushroom who's able to plant spores that buff teammates - you're getting a Tactician, a group which boasts quicker reload speeds. So far, so hero shooter. However,  the ingenious tweak to the formula is the class system gives permanent buffs every time you switch between a different role. 

Let's say you prefer playing as a sniper. If you pick Vale and stay with her, then you'll be dealing with her long reload times and reduced health. However, by starting as our old Tactician buddy Lark, you'll get a permanent faster reloading time buff. If we then swap into Emari, who is an Anchor (increased healing rate), you've suddenly got a far more effective Vale to use later in-game. This would be easy to dismiss as a gimmick if these buffs weren't noticeable, but each character feels extremely different on the battlefield. While Teo feels like you're stepping into a game of Halo, with floaty jumps that enable you to cover ground quickly, playing as the ultra-tank Emari means you will agonizingly plod into danger but absorb a helluva lot more bullets, while the nimble rocket-spewing Roka can triple jump into the air as if Quake never went out of fashion.

Once you get used to this system that naturally incentivizes you to explore the depths of each character, Concord starts to finally offer something more engaging than another average live service shooter. The maps and modes feel overly familiar, sure, but the strategy of creating a squad of heroes who fit how you want to play can make a standard team deathmatch feel much more rewarding as a result.

Motley who?

However, for all of Concord's strong foundations, there is also a peculiar and distracting focus on the lore and characters of the universe. The crux is that your crew of Freegunners have come together on the North Star, each bringing their own baggage in their fight against the Guild and other ships crews who carry out illegal jobs throughout the galaxy. Each week, we'll be treated to a new cutscene that expands on their story, while there's also a Galactic Guide that is overflowing with lore from the planets you fight on to the shipping lanes - yes, really - between them.

There's a lot to digest, and that isn't helped by this committing the cardinal storytelling sin of telling instead of showing. There are pages upon pages of lore in the Galactic Guide that aim to give you a greater sense of the galaxy you're fighting in, but end up leaving you with more questions than answers. For instance, if the villainous Guild is such an omni-present threat, why am I only fighting against other Freegunners? In trying to add depth to the world, it only opens up logical inconsistencies that the game keeps reinforcing. 

Firewalk has clearly put a lot into creating a universe that sits between the childlike awe of Star Wars and snarky adolescence of Guardians of the Galaxy, but the roster has plenty of characters and little personality. The Galactic Guide tells us more than enough about each Freegunner's personality, but that doesn't translate to what we see in-game . The effect is a universe that hits plenty of well-worn tropes without bringing anything either original or compelling enough to offset it. Because there's so few modes on offer at launch, the sheer volume of lore becomes even more baffling, and while Concord's planned updates can address the things it currently lacks, it's hard to see how they'll improve the universe they're set in.

Fight of the Concord

As of now, the main reason to persist with Concord is the Job Board. Here, you earn new cosmetics and character variants - unique passive abilities that are exclusive to that character. While the cosmetics are your standard battle pass fare - although it must be stressed there are no additional costs for them - the character variants offer something actually worth chasing. The first one is for Teo, which changes his ability from increased mobility after a dodge into increased ammo and munitions. This is a change that fundamentally altered the way I played as Teo, pushing into firefights more aggressively and getting more kills as a result. If variants can continue to offer tangible benefits to long-term players, that's at least a tangible way in which Concord could refocus on the game's strengths and hopefully become the best version of itself. 

But this review isn't about what Concord could be, it's about what it is. And right now, it's a multiplayer shooter that has more lore on space trading lanes than it does modes in the game. For all its strong foundations - the genuine difference between characters and the strategic possibilities from its clever class systems - there just simply isn't enough right now to recommend it, especially when the game's characters and setting inspire no strong feelings. Concord doesn't deserve to be a punchline about low player-counts, but it's not offering enough to make it your next multiplayer obsession either.