‘LawBreakers’ Breaks Gravity With Announcement From Cliff Bleszinski And Boss Key
The free-to-play first-person shooter from Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski was announced Wednesday after much teasing. LawBreakers, formerly Project Bluestreak, takes place on a future Earth where gravity is broken, which will come to play in the fast-paced arena style action.
LawBreakers was announced on a Twitch livestream by Bleszinski and fellow Boss Key co-founder Arjan Brussee. The game takes in 2105, where government testing on the moon splits its surface and causes a massive earthquake on Earth. This catastrophe is known as “The Shattering,” and breaks gravity on the planet.
The people of Earth moved on and learned to survive and thrive until cartel gangs worldwide joined together as “Breakers” and came to America. These gangs flooded the streets with “narcotics and war” by 2105, with “near super-human abilities” from the mixture of gravity manipulation and drugs. This forced law enforcement agencies to organize and fight back against the Breakers.
This all sets the stage for five-on-five arena-style multiplayer matches between the Law and the Breakers. Players will be able to manipulate gravity in matches to gain an advantage over their opponents, along with jet packs, grappling hooks, plus a mix of old and new weapons, including aim-down-sights guns and rocket launchers. Bleszinski described LawBreakers as a very vertical game where players do not want to spend much time on the ground, which he said can essentially be turned into lava.
The game’s playable characters will be split evenly between male and female characters. We’ll find out more about the game on Friday, August 28, when the first gameplay footage is released.
The free-to-play model that LawBreakers will use was not brought up during the livestream. However, Bleszinski discussed his thoughts on free-to-play previously during a PAX East panel in March.
“Free-to-play doesn’t have to be Game of War, it doesn’t have to be Candy Crush,” the Gears creator said, according to GameSpot. He is, of course, alluding to the addictive treadmill-like nature of those games that encourages players to plop down money via microtransactions.
Bleszinski pointed to League of Legends and Dota 2 as examples of free-to-play done the right way, and said that he has no plans to make LawBreakers “pay-to-win.” That’s a common refrain from every free-to-play game developer, but he did mention that every item in the game that can be purchased can also be earned in-game.
This Friday, 6am PT / 9am ET we will debut gameplay and a day later, it’s playable in Seattle for all of YOU. Details to come: @lawbreakers
— Boss Key Productions (@BossKey) August 26, 2015
LawBreakers will launch for the PC first in 2016, with the possibility of a console release later. The game is being published by Nexon. The company is primarily based in the Japan and South Korea, but is moving into publishing more games in North America and Europe. Nexon is also the publisher behind the recently well-received Dirty Bomb release on Steam.
[Images via LawBreakers]