Highguard - Concord 2.0?

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This game just reeks of generic. I know people will dive into the characters, and while they’re not ugly like those in Concord, they’re just generic.

For anyone who played this game: is there anything that makes it stand out from other PvP games other than its 3 x 3 PvP?
 
Haven't played enough to come to a hard judgement but it's somewhere between a 4 and a 6 out of 10
Got to around the 8 or 9 hour mark. Haven't played it in a week, don't plan on playing it again. I'd say 5,5/10 overall, there's a bit of an effect where it gets better as you play it, you realize stuff using the hammer tool breaks rocks which makes the looting phase a lot smoother and gets rid of the tedious mining minigame, but that just further highlights flaws you already realized like why is the tedious mining minigame there to begin with and why is this looting phase so fucking tedious that 95% of the players are willing to give up the tool slot which could hold something like a rocket launcher just to make it more bearable. There are just so many confused mechanics like that in the game. There were a handful of plays where I really popped off and actually felt like I was playing a great shooter, but it was such a slog putting up with all the other bs to get to them.

I'd say one of the biggest sins that damned the game that I don't see people talking about is how it tried to have esports gameplay. The premise of the game was base wars, with that you imagine chaotic back and forth gameplay, but in a competitive format it's super rigid to the point it's like you're playing 3 different games. You play fortnite looting for 2 minutes until a flag spawns then you play halo capture the flag for a round until someone captures it then you play a round of rainbow six siege at their base. And this strict format really killed any hope of the game ever getting updates more interesting than new hero new gun.

The fantasy when you think of base raiding is tf2 ctf_2fort where you got the two fortresses and you have the snipers guarding the field and the spies sneaking through the sewers to infiltrate the base and the engineers guarding the base with sentries or sneaking teleporters into the enemy base and the soldiers and scouts rushing the top floor while the heavy+medic pairs slowly advance through the main floor and some little kid is trolling as pyro in the swimming pool. If you could actually make something with that kind of variety and chaos and counterbalance but actually have it be a little balanced and have the objective matter unlike tf2's version, it'd be epic, but highguard is like the polar opposite

And having 3 players just makes solo queuing miserable, one retarded teammate or guy who leaves and it's 20 minutes of your life wasted (well, more so than it already was wasted playing highguard). 5v5 was somewhat an improvement but it wasn't balanced for it which turned the base siege part into a clusterfuck

And of course a lot of the common complaints still apply. There was no reason for this game to have AAA fidelity. It did everything to leave a bad first impression. There were maybe 3 heroes in the game with somewhat interesting kits and visually they were all bleh. I didn't see one person wearing a premium skin in all my playtime so I doubt it made much money at all.
 
So Highguard is Concord 2.0, Marathon will be Concord 3.0??
And Horizon Hunters will be Concord 4.0 and Fairg$mes will be Concord 5.0

It's actually fucking crazy that there are enough Concord clones to populate an entire Avengers squad of terminal failure.
 
Fairg$mes
Oh god I forgot about that one (lol, uh-oh Sony)! Man I can't wait for that one to faceplant off the high-dive. I hope to god they keep the dollar sign in the name. That irony will be so sweet it'll give us all diabetes.
 
"Hey guys, this game I worked on flubbed fucking HARD, anyways, can you hire me for level design plz??"
Holy fuck these are the most entitled faggots in the world.

Fleek is a real nigga

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How the fuck do these dipshits even get off lying so hard?
Even if you liked the game, the "best fps in years"??? you're making it too obvious you didn't even play this fucking garbage and only pretend to like it to own the chuds.
Except you're not owning shit, the entire internet is laughing at you seeing through the lies.

How many times does a game for "!MODERN AUDIENCES!" need to flop before they realize they're not catering to a modern audience?
Can't fucking wait for Horizon Hunting grounds or whatever the fuck it's called to fail it already has
What I despise is the people saying word of mouth kneecapped the game.

You had nearly 100K players. You genuinely had 100K pairs of hands playing the game. You can't actually believe word of mouth convinced that many people who already were using the product to just stop. There isn't a single person in the whole world who would try a game, love it, and go "This is awesome but John Nobody on Facebook said he thinks it's bad so I shouldn't play this anymore."

Imagine a restaurant where that many people ordered the food, ate, and walked out with unfinished meals. There isn't any feasible reason other than the service they sat down for was bad. Even Morbius, infamous because it sucked so hard, didn't get people to actually watch it. Highguard got every single favor imaginable and was given the greatest and most genuine chance in the world and fumbled so hard it's like accidentally setting off a nuclear detonation by pouring cereal that was already half-poured by somebody else.
 
So Highguard is Concord 2.0, Marathon will be Concord 3.0??
To me marathon doesn't look appealing at all. Looks very busy visually. Sentiment on social media is mixed and the people defending it are defending it like it's the 2nd coming of Christ. They won't bother playing it. Too much jurnoscum pushing for it which indicates Concord 3.0.

Time will tell. Socials are blasting bungee for teaming up with burnt peanut from arc raiders fame to push to bring in an audience... But burnt peanut audience is not the target audience and the target audience is pissed off bungiee is giving him monies.

Kinda lol. If they cancel it, and this annoying faggot trashes marathon, it'll be hysterical, and if they don't cancel it the target audience will trash marathon and it'll be hysterical.

Whoever is making these beds really needs to stop shopping at Ikea.
 
To me marathon doesn't look appealing at all. Looks very busy visually. Sentiment on social media is mixed and the people defending it are defending it like it's the 2nd coming of Christ. They won't bother playing it. Too much jurnoscum pushing for it which indicates Concord 3.0.
The OG Marathon trilogy was a Mac-exclusive (already giving it a very different audience than what most FPS games back then had) shooter with some unique gameplay elements and engine quirks that made the whole thing really fucking fun to play (solo or multiplayer), and had some of the first "navel-gazing sci-fi philosophy-from-half-crazed-computers" storytelling among the FPSes.

The world-building was phenomenal. Part of the p'fun (sorry) of the original trilogy was the coffee-dripped story from the various terminals aboard the ship, watching an assortment of onboard AIs slowly going insane as they realize they've been left in charge of such important ship functions as "opening and closing the doors" while aliens with names with T'oom'Anya'Posto'phe's in them fought each other and the ships' agents and AIs. It was so stupid, silly, over-the-top, and utterly delightful in its absurdity. And they pulled it off with an also-ran Doom engine clone, on a platform not known for gaming, as an unknown developer just trying to make a name for themselves.

It worked. It was fun.

This looks like Standard Procedure Multiplayer Arena Shooter Product™ Mark VI, with enhancement modules for Nostalgic Brand Name and Logo™ [brand: "Marathon"] and Unexpected Inexplicable Bright Neon Misplacement™ [flavor: yellow-green] added. They had to remove the Stolen Yet Still Somehow Generic as Fuck Artwork™ package at the last minute but there's plenty of Drab Ironic Corporate Overlord Branding™ blobs still left in, so presumably there'll still be something for players to interact with on launch day when Cash Shop Flagship Engine™ 9.41 goes online.

There's not enough sarcasm or irony in my to adequately describe my disdain for the "new" Marathon. Absolute 100% generic corporate multiplayer FPS slop with branding that honestly deserved better than being smeared on this cookie-cutter churn.
 
AZ does a response to Josh Sobel's "I'm not blaming the gamers, but I'm blaming the gamers" rant. I noticed at the end of Josh's post there's shoutouts, and one is Kahlief Adams who was a staunch SBI nigger defender.
 
So Highguard is Concord 2.0, Marathon will be Concord 3.0??
As one of the sub 50,000 people or so who have ever played Marathon, it's not actually that bad. If you can get over the art style (I actually like it) it's a fairly competent extraction shooter. It felt unfinished, but I suppose that could've been a symptom of it literally being unfinished. The gunplay feels good, the only gameplay complaint I really had is that the hero abilities were kind of pointless as there's only one that's actually good (the one that lets you turn invisible) which just totally overpowers every other ability.

I got in for 2 tests, the first one and then a later one a few months ago. The game improved a lot visually in that time and felt a bit better the second time. It still might flop though, the plagiarism controversy might just be too much to overcome PR wise.

The main problem is with its identity, it tries to be a casual-friendly extraction shooter, something that previously would have been considered an oxymoron. Arc raiders kind of solved the problem but only through effectively disincentivizing pvp, which Marathon doesn't and won't do. The AI enemies are actually pretty well programmed and not total pushovers, so I suppose they could take it in a more pve direction to appease the Destiny 2 crowd. That's probably the right move for them financially, if they can convert even just half of the dedicated player base from that game it'll have no issue sticking around for years.

What I'm saying is, don't be disappointed if it doesn't flop.
 
I think High Guard will be historically notable for one thing, and one thing only.

It is the (so far) climactic end product of over 2 decades of chasing big hits and design by boardroom/committee, High Guard is the very apex of this design philosophy, just a checklist of shit, none of them, not a single one done well, all of them are elements of successful products.

More than Concord 2.0, i think it is 1.5
Half-based, half-failure.

That requires good characters
Screenshot 2026-02-12 174512.png
That's a roster of 8, and the sum of all of them has less charisma than the Doorman's pinky.
Two things I give Highguard its flowers for: its medieval, mystical FPS hybrid design and its inoffensive character design. Although, that's more on how the gaming industry has regressed than anything Highguard has achieved itself. Come to think of it, the whole game feels AI generated.

A group of shareholders are at a committee or board meeting discussing the most popular video games out now. Somebody demands an idea. Random shareholder goes to ChatGPT, asks it about popular gaming trends, then it spits out something "original" in concept. No human oversight at all, just use machine to make game.
 
Two things I give Highguard its flowers for: its medieval, mystical FPS hybrid design and its inoffensive character design. Although, that's more on how the gaming industry has regressed than anything Highguard has achieved itself. Come to think of it, the whole game feels AI generated.
Aesthetically I've always found it repulsive, the whole game looks like it was ripped straight off the front page of ArtStation.
 
Aesthetically I've always found it repulsive, the whole game looks like it was ripped straight off the front page of ArtStation.
It's generic. It's not blatantly woke or "based," just generic. If somebody would've told you that Highguard was a fake video game in a movie, you'd believe them. Then, when you realize that somebody took the time and effort to ACTUALLY make a game for a movie, you'd be commending their attention to detail.
 
"And from the minute it was released, it was decided"

Who? Who decided what, exactly who decides for who? Who is the leader to tell everyone else what to decide??

This is why their mentality is so fucked up and will never get this right. Gamers saw it with a fresh mind, and tonssssssss of them immediately saw.... Concord 2.
Because you decide it to be! You designed the characters, you decided the story, you decided the trailer, you decided the gameplay, and you decided to be so self indulgent that you think this is the best thing ever and cannot see all the signs because the ego is at it's peak.

Gamers saw Concord aesthetic all over the place, the gamers didn't know and talk to each other, then you DECIDED that you should not put out any more marketing materials.... ZERO. Because in your hubris you still believe gamers are going to be surprised when they touch this masterpiece... Then you released it.

Hundreds and thousands of people decided to give it a chance. They got kicked out and can't even play, so you decided that they are assholes who won't even finish your tutorials. Then more people tried and get to play..... And finally the gamers decided, "yeah, this was turd, Concord 2"

And at the end of all these, your blame is still "the gamers are evil, they have collectively hate on it and we failed because of their hate!"...

This is why these developers 100% deserve all their failures. They have decided that they can never be wrong, and you gamers are always the problem.
 
Finally gotten around to watching Episode 2. This dumpster fire really needs an larger cast than just eight asset flips, and hinting at an PvE ain't going to save this trainwreck
 
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So Highguard is Concord 2.0, Marathon will be Concord 3.0??
Marathon was the original Concord 2 before surprise announcement of Highguard. I'd say that technically, Highguard is actually Concord 3.
Marathon is fucking gaudy. I would've loved narrative-driven FPS, or faithful reimagining akin to Doom 2016 instead of this extraction shooter slop - that's the sort of idiotic direction you can only expect to come from above, from people who knows fucking nothing about gaming and just thinks that trend-chasing = profit. I can just feel that no one working on it actually wanted to make it. Just like how no one wants to play it.
 
These people really make it their life, huh? They do realize outside of a core crew, basically everyone is contracted now in games, don't they? You hav to expect to move on.
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Posted by the 'character outsource manager.' So what did she do exactly? Get paid to make bad decisions while Koreans and jeets and Chinks did the heavy lifting?
1770972371245.png
 
What I'm saying is, don't be disappointed if it doesn't flop.
Nah, it's a Bungie game. It'll do "okay" at the very least, just on the Bungie name and the Marathon name. It certainly isn't Marathon, but I doubt they're aiming at the original audience anyway. And I think Bungie would have to fumble VERY hard to have a flop on their hands of the caliber of Concord or Highguard.

These people really make it their life, huh? They do realize outside of a core crew, basically everyone is contracted now in games, don't they? You hav to expect to move on.
You can instantly spot these idiots (who've only been in the industry for a decade or less) by this expectation of staying employed after shipping a game. It's been an open secret from the mid 2000's that in most game studios, teams are hired/employed (even as "full time salaried" employees) for a single years-long project and then unceremoniously dropped about a week or two after launch, even if the game does gangbusters. Only the newbies are surprised by this.

I contracted for awhile at the EA studio responsible for Mirror's Edge. There were still photos up on the walls from the recent launch party for the game. Then I noticed ... there didn't seem to be anybody still around in the studio who'd worked on the game or even knew much about it. Never saw (in person) anyone in any of the photos either. The fucking sysadmins there knew more about the game engine than the guys working on the [unnamed product] I was grinding on.

You're a cog in that industry, more so than in the other shades of the IT realm. You grind, you take your pay, and you fuck off. You give zero fucks about what you worked on and you leave it behind when you walk out of the building on your last day (which you can predict accurately by locating "launch day" on the calendar and calculating '+14 days'). Plan accordingly, and whatever extra duration you get from the gig is just extra cash in your pocket.
 
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