We speak with Cliff Bleszinski and the Boss Key team about the upcoming title, and what differentiates them from comparable games on the market.
LawBreakers features gravity-defying technicians, with characters able to effectively play ‘the floor is lava’ by using special jump moves, jetpacks, along with other abilities. This provides an extra challenging dimension to the game which Boss Key hopes will set it apart.
When asked how they intend to create LawBreakers accessible in order to players who are not familiar with hero shooters - or first-person shooters in general - Cliff responded by reminding us that ‘Dark Souls isn’t noob friendly’. The team made it clear which they believe not every video game needs to be accessible to any or all players - as well as LawBreakers doesn’t plan to be.
Cliff lamented that there has been the push for more ease of access in games recently, to the point where ‘gamers felt like these were being handheld’. Therefore although there will be a few sandbox experiences with regard to players to learn the mechanics if they need to, these will be implemented in more of a ‘push all the buttons’ design, rather than tutorials which teach the basics step-by-step. Cliff hopes this will deliver ‘more of a core experience’ for existing players.
Having a clear target audience is important - not every game is for everyone, and this precision focus helps create an experience that a particular subset of gamers will really enjoy. Dan Nanni, the lead designer for the title, also made it clear which LawBreakers offers a selection of characters with capabilities that will hopefully appeal to many different people - even those beyond the ‘core shooter player’ audience they are focusing on.
According to Cliff, the hero shooter marketplace is getting crowded, however developers are still carving out their own encounters within the genre. Cliff feels that current hero shooters have often thought about figures and abilities first, and the ‘shooter’ technicians second. With LawBreakers, it’s the opposite: the shooter mechanics are the highest priority, along with aspects such as video game lore not becoming considered until part way through the development procedure, when several figures had already been created.
Dan said that another key difference among this game along with other successful titles inside the genre - for example Overwatch - is the aesthetic. Describing current hero shooters as ‘pastel’ and ‘Pixar’, Dan and the Manager Key team hopes to combat this style, making immediate comparisons between their own title and video games like Counter-Strike: Worldwide Offensive.
But an evaluation to CS: PROCEED causes alarm alarms for me. Although almost all multiplayer games have the potential for bringing out the worst in people, CS: GO is known with regard to having a particularly toxic community, despite using steps to restrict the opportunities players have to abuse each other. If LawBreakers is actually targeting ‘core shooter players’, what is Manager Key doing to make sure their community doesn’t quickly become known as similarly toxic?
When I posed this question in order to Cliff, he indicated that he and the Manager Key team haven’t given it much thought yet. Cliff guaranteed me that LawBreakers will include the classic block and report system, and that it will likely be easy to mute people within the game. The goal will be to search for repeated behaviour of toxicity and eliminate players who are perpetrators of this. ‘I wish I could give more information, ’ Cliff said.