Disintegration Takes From RTS, MOBA, Esports — “Thinking Person’s FPS”

Disintegration may appear as just another fancy first-person shooter with traditional gameplay on the surface, but in reality is anything but.

Disintegration may appear as just another fancy first-person shooter with traditional gameplay on the surface, but in reality is anything but.

Set in a dystopian future where the only way for mankind to survive is to preserve their brains in robotic armatures, the upcoming sci-fi project brings many flavors to the table — all with the aim to provide an action-packed experience.

Disintegration is primarily a first-person shooter but also integrates many different ideas stemming from strategy and esports-centric games, battle arenas, looter shooters, and other popular genres and subgenres. Trying to add too many different spices often ends up ruining the whole dish, which can be a fair concern. However, developer V1 Interactive believes that the whole process was necessary to create something truly different and unique.

Speaking with the official Xbox Magazine in a recent interview, studio head Marcus Lehto stated that players jumping into Disintegration for the first time will need to forget everything they know about playing first-person shooters.

Players are expected to immediately struggle as they try to understand everything happening on the screen. Disintegration isn’t the type to let you start pulling the trigger as soon as a mission begins. The whole gameplay is purposely designed to be slow and methodical.

However, that’s not saying the controls are convoluted or movement is sluggish. The real twist in gameplay comes in the units you command on the battlefield alongside your own character. The squad members can be directed to run around, shoot, defend, and time their special abilities, making them vital for your own survival. Hence, why players will need to take their time. The best usage of your units like a battlefield commander might be the only differential.

We like to call it in the studio a “thinking person’s first-person shooter” or an “aerial tactical shooter”. We slowed things down to allow the player to take their time and tactically use those units and play the game more strategically, for people to think about their actions a little bit more. That was the primary goal.

Suffice to say, development was difficult. There weren’t many games out there that V1 Interactive could observe. Hence, why the real challenge was to ready the foundation for Disintegration, a challenge that was befitting for Lehto, one of the co-creators of Halo. It’s another reason that the game gives off such Halo-like vibes.

Building the game was actually one of the most difficult aspects of the early construction because there was nothing else out there like it. We were in this void of trying to make something completely unique and different. It’s been challenging.

Disintegration is still in development and slated for release sometime in 2020. The hybrid shooter will land on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

Saqib is a managing editor at segmentnext.com who has halted regime changes, curbed demonic invasions, and averted at least one cosmic omnicide from the confines of his gaming chair. When not whipping his writers into ...