Now I don't like to rag on a game for the sake of ragging on it- actually, I like to find a diamond in the rough if a game has something special that very few out there can see. On the flip-side I very much do like to step on the face of game that heaps in undue attention and threatens to spread it's filth if left un-disgraced- such as Assassin's Creed Valhalla- regrettably the most successful Assassin's Creed game to date. (But how many of those buyers actually finished the thing, eh?) All that being said there's something of an underdog slant to Concord that makes me wince everytime I hear a negative headline about it- because this is just a small team of developers given a shot at the big leagues and collapsing under the weight of mandates that probably didn't even come from them. 40$ entry fee in a free-to-play market? Oh, that just reeks of Sony!
That being said the studio are industry veteran refugees from across the space- which is probably what lends to the systematic robustness of what Concord offers- it is not an amateurish game by any stretch of the imagination and that is what probably gave Sony the confidence they needed to charge an arm and a leg for entry fees. It offers quite the gorgeous pastel pallet that stands out just that slightly from other space-themed games that either go full neon colours or the duller gun-metal standard. It's almost drawn from a pulp magazine out of the fifties- and if that style kept up to presentation and perhaps even to performance and narrative that alone could have been a blinding identity to build a brand upon. Modern retro space-opera; that could have really worked! But... we don't live in that world.
See whilst it works, and it looks nice- Concord just doesn't have that special something else to justify a higher barrier to entry than literally all it's over competitors on the market right now. There's very little functionally distinct about what the game offers and that which is distinct don't really feel like leaps forward but rather design choices that are proving highly contentious with genre regulars. The choice to have characters in Ranked becoming locked off after a single round won almost feels like a shot in the arm to mainers- whilst a slap in the face to competitive team builders. Also, strange point here, but isn't this a solved problem? Don't all Ranked modes in hero shooters do 'ban' phases? I don't really know what they were getting at.
People aren't really gelling with the maps either, which is a shame because I always think back to how iconic the original map rotation for Destiny was back in the day and wonder why more people don't set their shooters on alien planets. I guess the art of map design is a lot more complicated than we give it credit for given how recurring of a critique that appears to be- particularly in a game that is solely focused on being a good shooter. You'd have thought that scattered industry vets would know what to focus on but I guess not. Hell, even Overwatch got a slate of memorable locations and those were mostly just a world tour to vaguely famous locales with tech boosts here and there.
But you've got to bear in mind at all times the thing about Concord- it's at the very beginning of it's journey. Only way from here is up. And yet- in order to put yourself on the path on constant improvement you have to hit the track on your feet. Which is exactly what this game hasn't done, launching with player numbers that are poor enough to make your mother cry. I'm talking a worse peak player count than Gollum. Freakin' Gollum! Doesn't that show you the power of disaster tourism? The most players that this online-only game has ever seen at the same time is just shy of 700 players, and it's currently scrapping less than 200 which at the time of writing, is less than a week after launch.
Now concurrent players and current counts aren't everything, of course we don't know console numbers, but what we're looking at here is a game that Playstation paid over a hundred million to acquire the studio for- failing to scrape the kind of players you'd see in a half decent free-to-play title from a team of indie devs. From a failure of optics to an absolute disaster of marketing on the part of Sony- (I'm not sure how they expected people to know this game was coming- freakin' telepathy?) this big budget title with a gigantic promise of support behind it had dropped like a stone in freshwater and those who did bother show up are reporting something either not good enough to recommend or not bad enough to point and laugh at. Perfectly, depressingly, mid.
And beyond the gunplay you have the feel of the game- and I don´t need to tell you how little work is being done in that department. Not a single character in this game has the kind of staying power that Overwatch's cast has- their designs feel derivative or uninspired- like background characters from a scene in Guardians of the Galaxy. (I'm pretty sure 'Star Child' was literally a miniboss in the 'Guardians of the Galaxy' game.) People don't feel attached to this game and thus the one unique selling point of Concord- weekly cinematics to flesh out their cast, falls on entirely deaf ears because no one cares enough to listen.
All this is to say that Concord is not going to survive. It won't last that long stretch of time to build up a core audience capable of sustaining it and I suspect that the studio are probably going to have holes fired in them by Sony as they try to recoup this mess. And that is a shame. It's a shame because these are talented devs, this game is decently competent and there are dozens of other projects far more deserving of being the Internet's punching bag right now- just look at Dustborn. I wouldn't call it a 'tragedy' that Concord never found itself, it's still a reinforcement in the lamentable war to convert everything into a damned live service, but I certainly don't feel good watching it burn in that grave- for what that's worth.
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