While games companies scramble to follow current trends and remain market-relevant, there are others attempting to look beyond the current (and arguably) stale landscape for that next big thing, and in Defiance’s case, it’s transmedia.

Transmedia might sound like a marketing buzzword, and we’ve definitely seen plenty of games, studios and publishers dip their toes into the area, but none have attempted what Syfy Imagine and Trion Worlds are attempting here.

To easily wrap your head around the concept, it goes like this: a persistent co-op shooter with an ever-expanding game-world is launching (almost) alongside a television show on the Syfy network, all set in the same universe where one feeds off the other. On its most basic level, that’s the best description I can give it, and while we did play the game and were lucky enough to be exposed to the pilot for the series, the breadth of this relationship couldn’t be fully understood.



We were recently flown out to San Francisco (where the game’s setting takes place), to jump into a full hands-on session with the game in both co-op form, as well as a little taste of PvP and PvE. Obviously the initialisations mentioned inform you that Defiance does indeed have MMO hallmarks, but its strength lies more in the Borderlands-esque four-player co-op component, which sees various groups running around in the same persistent world, taking on main quest-lines, side-missions, challenges and more. Moreover, the game has a strong emphasis on loot and, while free-to-play, it does feature an online shop where you can buy credits to speed up your in-game purchases to really deck out your character early on.

From what we saw, however, you can just grind it out and play the game the old-fashioned way, though in the state we played it was bordering on a little easy (except for the PvE example, which no one could seemingly topple). There were also a bunch of load-in and pop-up problems, but by and large it was playable, and clearly not final code. We’ll reserve judgement until a review copy lands, and with a promised day-one patch, hopefully it all rocks out smoothly.

So what, exactly, is Defiance about then? Well, 33 years ago (in the future, so, say, present day), aliens came to Earth. But it wasn’t just a single race, rather a collection of races known as the Votan -- all seeking refuge on Earth and in our solar system after theirs was destroyed. The Votan armada mysteriously hovered above the Earth, however, while negotiations with the Earth governments took place to find the misplaced ETs a home among humans and on our soil. The negotiations didn’t work and a war erupted, decimating the planet and much of the human race. Add to this sections of the armada -- destroyed -- orbiting our planet until they finally breach our atmosphere and come crashing down, unleashing planet terraforming technology, and you have a recipe for a post-apocalyptic setting starring multiple alien races and a familiar-yet-unfamiliar environment.

It’s all very tantalising, to say the least.



While we can’t divulge any info on the actual TV pilot we saw, we can tell you that the environments represented throughout the game mirror the concept’s set-up. There are strange animals that now inhabit the Earth as part of the terraforming pockets that took hold, and this all represents a nice change from most other post-apocalyptic games (and settings).

The human contingent is unsurprisingly cliched, especially where the military is concerned, but it’s all part of that familiarity angle I mentioned. In the game you have a choice between a male or female human character, or the same as an Irathient -- one of the more dominant races in the piece so far. You can also choose your origin, as either a Veteran Soldier, a post Arkfall Survivalist, an Outlaw (mercenary) or Machinist (engineer). How these varying archetypes play out in the long run will remain to be seen, but there’s also a fairly extensive abilities and perk system built around EGO (Environmental Guardian Online) that are very much in league with the special abilities found in Borderlands (such as Overcharge, Decoy, Blur and Cloak).

After a short stint on foot, you’ll be given the chance to summon a four-wheeler to kick around the overly large game-world on. You can also buy newer vehicles that can carry more people, and while the world is persistent, you won’t physically hit your teammates or other players trouncing about. Enemies and the environment at large, however, are on your physical plane meaning you can hang up (or drive hilariously over) structures, or just plow into the badguys.

As with most MMOs of this nature, environmental baddies respawn, and do so pretty quickly, while certain mission areas actually restart missions if you’re in them, even if you’ve already finished the objective. It sounds annoying, but you can always just move on, or abandon the mission from your menu. The UI throughout is well-designed and reasonably easy to navigate, at least on PC, and it didn’t take long for myself and my Aussie cohorts to start romping about the game-world. And on the whole, we had a lot of fun in our crew, but the real meat of this game is going to be what the two sides of the same coin can coalesce with their bold transmedia idea.



On the surface it all sounds good, especially when we were told that season 2 of the series would actually have more input from what gamers have been doing in the game. Exactly how this will work is anyone’s guess, but it’s potential cannot go understated. And with a new IP it’s relatively easy for this to be explored. As we see it now, events from the first season of the show will help introduce new and fresh content to the game, and, conversely, the outcomes of PvE and player feedback is in line to affect the direction of the following season (should both products remain lucrative enough to be kept on an active roster).

The added beauty of a game like this is incrementally it can change based on player feedback and the direction of the show, and again, we can’t mention anymore about the pilot we saw, but there are more than a few people who were involved in Battlestar Galactica involved, and we all know how that show turned out. So there’s some serious hope here for the co-op potential between the two entities.

At the moment the game does need some polish, but again we didn’t see or play final code, so the verdict is still out on that one, but as a concept, it’s an ambitious product fraught with terror and potential -- here’s hoping all involved can tame one, and capitalise on the other.