Defiance Preview

Eurogamer has published a fairly in-depth 2-pages preview of Trion Worlds’ upcoming multiplatform MMO Shooter Defiance, in which – aside from covering the gameplay and story – they explain the developers’ ambitious plans for the title. Here’s a sampling:

Nominally set on Earth, near the San Francisco of the far future, the foggy countryside spattered with colourful alien vegetation I see in the E3 demo looks strikingly familiar. (Granted, there’s a rusting hulk of what appears to be a Toyota Prius over there, in place of an S&M inn.) The player characters, though, are bulky, armoured space soldiers, manipulated with twin-stick shooter control schemes, and the camera snaps tight over their shoulders when they aim.

Creative daring isn’t really Trion’s strong suit – this is the developer that, in Rift, brings us such characters as Alsbeth the Discordant (she defiled the Iron Tomb, don’t you know). Perhaps it’s a good thing that Syfy’s TV writers are involved, with a team sitting alongside the developers in Trion’s office. Perhaps not. The channel’s record is hardly unblemished, although we’re told it’s shooting for the substance and quality of its reimagining of Battlestar Galactica with Defiance.

Many years before the events of the game and show, multiple alien civilisations flee their solar system and aim their space arks for the only refuge they can find – Earth – not realising that it’s inhabited. They negotiate colonisation rights with humanity, but human rebels sabotage the alien ships and trigger a global radiation catastrophe.

A long time later, it’s a time of regrowth, and various human and alien factions are competing and collaborating to rebuild the world.

The TV series and game will be kept geographically separate, with the game centring on San Fran and the “human drama” of the show on St Louis. But global political and environmental developments in the show will be reflected in simultaneous updates to the game world, while characters from the TV show might disappear from our screens before reappearing as NPCs on, well, our screens.