B
ack in 2019, just as free-to-play
multiplayer shooters seemed to be all
anyone was playing, Remedy bucked the
trend by releasing Control. But even as the
Finnish developer was bullishly making its
case for story-led solo games, it was also hard
at work collaborating on the world’s biggest
free-to-play multiplayer shooter.
That would be surprising enough had it
meant 100 Max Paynes running around an
island. But the game on which Remedy is
collaborating is one you may not even have
heard of, despite it being the world’s most-
played, with one billion players at last count.
Tactical FPS Crossfire is the work of South
Korean developer Smilegate, and across Asia
on PC it has racked up numbers that would
make Fortnite and PUBG green with envy. Even
so, it was pretty much unknown in Europe and
the US until the announcement at last year’s
XO19 that a console version, Crossfire X, is
coming to Xbox One – with a fully-fledged
singleplayer campaign provided by Remedy.
At first it seems an unlikely pairing. Remedy
is a tour de force of singleplayer storytelling,
as evidenced by Alan Wake, Quantum Break
and Control. However, most war-based
shooters tend to eschew invention in favour of
machismo and pseudo-political flag-waving –
worlds away from the more out-there concepts
with which we associate the studio.HY
PE
Publisher
Developer
Format
Origin
ReleaseSmilegate, Xbox Game Studios
Smilegate, Remedy Entertainment
Xbox One, Xbox Series X
South Korea, Finland
2020CROSSFIRE X
Asian multiplayer phenomenon gets
a Remedy for western success
“If you think ‘Remedy and a military
firstperson shooter’, most people do a double-
take,” admits executive producer Tuukka
Taipalvesi. “But then when we started to dig
into the game, we realised what kind of chances
and opportunities it gave us. If you play a lot
of the different multiplayer modes in Crossfire,
they go really out there – it’s super-strange at
times. That really plays to our advantage. If the
original IP already has some Remedy qualities
to it, or oddities, we can play around with that
and extract as much fun for us as well.”
Those Remedy qualities are central to
Crossfire X’s campaign. Art director Mikko
Kinnunen is keen to assure us it has all the
studio’s distinctive flair, with the aid of its
Northlight engine, that will make the game
stand apart from other military shooters.
“When we think about a firstperson shooter,
household names like Call Of Duty and
Battlefield come to mind, but Crossfire X is
a much more character-focused game. And
especially on the art side, we’ve been much
more inspired by games like Metal Gear Solid,
even Resident Evil, when it comes to the
aesthetics and adding more out-there ideas,
and merging that with what we’ve come to
expect from an FPS. There’s definitely still
a lot in Crossfire that’s unexpected.”
Unexpected or not, in creating Crossfire X’s
campaign, Taipalvesi and his team have hadFrom top: art director
Mikkon Kinnunen;
executive producer
Tuukka Taipalvesi