Anssi Hyytiäinen, Remedy’s lead designer on FBC: Firebreak, and studio veteran of more than 25 years, is “one of those really dangerous designers”. This is how his colleague, the game’s director Mike Kayatta, puts it to me in a conversation at Remedy’s predictably stylish HQ in Espoo, on the quiet, grey outskirts of Finland’s capital Helsinki. Kayatta means it as a compliment, although with maybe just a tinge of truth to it as well. He’s dangerous because, as Kayatta puts it, he’s one of the rare few designers who can “make his ideas manifest faster than he can tell you what it is.”
FBC: FirebreakPublisher: Remedy EntertainmentDeveloper: Remedy EntertainmentPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out 17th June on Steam, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
An example, per Kayatta: “Anssi will be like, Okay, what if we had this guidance drone that helped players?” and before Kaytatta can respond with an “I’m not sure about that,” it’s already in the game – “No, no, I’ve already built it, it’s a gigantic inflatable duck and it floats around and– woah woah woah!”
It all sounds a bit dysfunctional at first, as far as game development practices go. But then you play FBC: Firebreak and realise, actually, it might also be kind of brilliant. In talking to Kayatta for instance, as well as Hyytiäinen himself, I also realised this is emblematic of FBC: Firebreak’s development as a whole. This is a game that’s truly come together only now, in the final few months leading up to its mid-June launch. They both argue that’s part of making these kinds of games, the kinds that come with a heavy reliance on systemic design and cause and effect. They argue that the controlled chaos of development is essential, somehow, to FBC: Firebreak’s nature as an inherently, intentionally chaotic kind of game. Having played it for a couple of hours, I think that’s at least partially true. FBC: Firebreak is nothing if not chaotic.
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The premise with Firebreak is that you’re one of a team of three, slightly haphazard backroom problem-solvers called Firebreakers, dropped into a variety of multi-stage scenarios where an enemy force known as the Hiss (basically: Control-themed zombies) have overrun some deep corner of the Federal Bureau of Control building and stirred up some trouble. This premise itself is also a perfect example of Firebreak’s on-the-move track-laying.