to wrestle several apparent contradictions into
submission. First, retaining Remedy’s knack
for originality while fleshing out a well-worn,
even clichéd, theme of two military forces
clashing in worldwide warzones; imbuing
characters with likeable personalities and then
putting them in a uniform with death-dealing
weaponry; and, not least, weaving a convincing
narrative around a battle-arena shooter that
a billion players have already made their own.
Our first proper look at the campaign
suggests that Remedy has reconciled all these
different elements. Throughout different story
chapters, Crossfire’s warring military factions,
Black List and Global Risk, are both playable.
Neither is represented as good or bad: there’s
a grey area that allows the narrative to show the
conflict’s alternate perspectives and reveal the
game’s characters in a more meaningful way.
The South American-set Operation Spectre
pitches freedom fighters Black List as
protagonists, and here we meet one of the
playable characters, Luis Torres, a skilled thief
who has been captured by the authoritarian
Global Risk. When his prison bus is bombed,
Torres is taken to a nearby hospital, where he
is liberated by Black List. Now armed and in
firstperson control, Torres breaks out of the
medical facility via intense shootouts along
hospital corridors and through bombed-out
buildings, the action running at a smart 60fps
on Xbox One X. The subsequent vehicle chase,
with Torres and chatty partner Cora firing from
the back of an ambulance, is thrilling, silly and
nicely scripted and paced, hinting at the
potential for some quality Remedy storytelling
yet to unfold. Typically for the Finnish
developer, there’s a signature gameplay
mechanic here too – a version of Max Payne’s
bullet time called the ‘combat breaker’. A perk-
style ability powered up by kills, this unleashes
a slo-mo period that allows you more time to
think, target and surprise enemies.
The dichotomy of war as an entertaining
narrative is something else its storytellers had
to resolve. There is destruction and bloodshed,
but Remedy’s character-led approach keeps
things lighter than, for example, some of Call Of
Duty’s more controversial campaign moments.
“It’s not a super-real, angsty take on war,”
says Taipalvesi. “While Crossfire has always
been fast-paced action, it’s a military shooter
in an entertainment wrapper. So we are able to
do the Remedy way of building characters that
have backstories and do not have just one
function. Hopefully we are able to bring these
characters to life as members of these
factions – they display the themes of their
teams, but at the same time they’re
individuals that have their own pluses and
minuses.” Kinnunen agrees: “It’s more of
a timeless character-focused narrative. We
don’t go super-deep into the really sad side
of war, to see civilian casualties and all those
kind of things. I think it’s more about the
growth of the characters. It is sort of
romanticised for a war game – we’re not going
into the extremes of how war can really be.”
Another surprising aspect of Remedy’s
involvement with the project is that the studio
has embraced firstperson perspective for the
first time. After this, might we see an FPS
from Remedy itself? “That’s a good question,”
says Remedy’s head of communications,
Thomas Puha. “We spent a lot of time on
the firstperson animations early on, and
I think it’s been done well. How does the gun
look? How does it feel? If we don’t get that
feel right then, you know, that’s everything
in an FPS. All of us play a lot of firstperson
shooters, and it is about how it feels when
you aim and get that shot off. That was super-
critical. It’s stating the obvious but it’s hard
to get that stuff right.”
“Never say never,” laughs Taipalvesi.
“Because we’ve spent a lot of time crafting all
the tools and tech to do this firstperson game,
and if you think of all the differences between
third and firstperson, like environment scaling
and everything else, now that we have built
this toolbox, why not find other uses for it?”
A full Remedy FPS is a tantalising notion:
for now, we’re curious to see just how Crossfire
X’s singleplayer campaign is going to stand out
against those in similarly inclined war-as-
entertainment shooters. On this scant early
evidence, it seems war still never changes. QWorld class
Remedy’s world-
building for its own
games has always
been first-class, but
the studio found
plenty of existing
world to build on
with Crossfire. Tuukka
Taipalvesi describes
the process as
“a kind of digital
archaeological dig-
site” as Remedy
gained an
understanding of
Crossfire’s universe.
The team began to
chart a universal
timeline of events in
the game, working
closely with Smilegate
to comprehend its
world. At the same
time, the developer
was not restricted by
the game’s existing
multiplayer maps, says
Mikko Kinnunen: “We
took what Smilegate
has been building and
we were really
inspired by it but we
weren’t really limited
by it, so we got a lot
of freedom to build
on top of that, and go
to places they haven’t
been before.”The team have had to
wrestle several apparent
contradictions into submission
CROSSFIRE X
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