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With only four days in Seoul, South Korea, I filled my Maps app with restaurants, Buddhist temples, must-see attractions, nature parks, market streets, and more to see. I walk about 10 miles a day and think I’ve seen as much of this great city as I can in my allotted time. My journey from east to west, north to south of Seoul was only possible with the city’s extensive public transportation network of buses and trains. And while I’ve heard “Magnetic” by K-Pop group ILLIT more times than I care to admit through headphones on those trains and buses (when in Korea, right?), I spend most of my time listening to it. Spent watching how other people spend their time waiting. their stop.
Perhaps not surprisingly, everyone is glued to their phones, myself included. But unlike me, doom-scrolling on X (formerly Twitter) before switching back to X, there were plenty of people playing games I recognized, like League of Legends’ auto-chess spin-off, Team Fight. Tactics. But we also have a lot of other games in there that I didn’t know about, like Light of the Stars, Soul Strike and more. While visiting one of Nexon’s Seoul-based studios, Magnum Studio, I asked its head, Beomjun Lee, if mobile gaming was as popular as my public transport commute had led me to believe. The answer was an immediate yes. A study published in February by the Statista Research Department concluded that, according to its 2022 survey, 63 percent of South Koreans play mobile games, with a market estimated at 14 trillion South Koreans that year. Won (or $10.2 billion).
Nexon, the company that invited me to their studio, has a lot of mobile hits like FIFA Mobile and MapleStory M, and a good amount on PC as well. Based on how many PC cafes I saw in Seoul, I can guess whether PC is the biggest gaming market in South Korea or behind mobile. But its flagship console releases have only featured two so far: KartRider: Drift and last year’s The Finals. With its PC and mobile gaming on lock, Nexon is slowly targeting the West, trying to break into global markets and focusing on console releases alongside its usual output to do so. . And what better way to do that than with a free-to-play (easy entry), third-person (ready for customization), loot shooter (a genre popularized by the likes of Destiny and Warframe which dominates a large mindshare of sports)?
Ambitions at Albion
Ambitions at Albion
First Descendant is just that, and even though I was fed up with yet another free-to-play game, and yet another looter shooter at that, after an hour of hands-on time, I’m excited, excited for its release this summer. Also when I can play more.
Revealed as part of Gamescom 2023 last August, The First Descendant is in development at Nexon’s Magnum Studio and has its sights set on a Summer 2024 release. I pushed for a more precise release date, but the team was unwilling to share. It’s clear she’s been working hard to polish it up these past few months, and for good reason — the team has big ambitions with The First Descendants.
“The main feature of The First Descendant is the PvE co-op element,” Lee, who is also the game’s lead producer, tells me through a translator. “It’s an online shooter RPG, and we think it’s the next generation of looters.”
This term surprised me. That’s a bold statement, almost braggadocio, but after speaking with Lee and creative director Minseok Joo and playing the game for an hour, I understand where the team is coming from. In my initial hands-on impressions, First Descendant feels akin to other greats in the genre. Literally, it’s also a looter shooter made exclusively for the “next generation” of consoles, as it’s coming to PC as well as PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, with cross-play and cross-progression. with.
Going hands-on.
Going hands-on.
Dropped into an Earth-like sci-fi world where humanity is on its last legs in a city called Albion, my chosen character is, by the way, searching for something called the Iron Heart. He’s joined by an ally named Bunny (yes, the silhouette of his suit is that of a rabbit). Immediately, arms are crunchy and tactile. I hit every shot and on-screen recoil in the controller, and it feels great. It helps that the entire game, built from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5, is beautiful. I joke with Lee that I’m glad the team is making a console version of the game because the first Descendant would melt my PC, which admittedly needs an upgrade. Seeing words like “frame generation,” “ray reconstruction,” and “ray tracing” in the options confirms my belief.
The weapons are nothing special, though. In my play sessions, I encounter machine guns, submachine guns, shotguns, grenade launchers, and long-range snipers. They all feel great, but the first generation isn’t doing anything new here. Each character’s magical powers are what make combat stand out. Viessa has access to ice, with a passive skill that creates spheres of ice around her body to deal damage and slow enemies that get too close, and four active skills that affect Does area damage, increases run speed and shield, and more. She can even place a blizzard on the playground, damaging and immobilizing those trapped inside.
His abilities are completely different from Wallaby, the water-based character I’ll play later. Wallaby consumes less mana when standing in water and has movement to build stacks, making for a useful ability loop. She can also clear the area around her, allowing her to run through enemies with increased defense and speed. Viessa’s moves are more straightforward, but Valby’s is more rewarding as part of the co-op experience, even if it took longer to get my sea legs.
As I progress, I encounter Karel, the big bad of The First Descendant. He immediately, apparently, kills Bunny, and it’s clear he’s not mincing words. He will do whatever it takes to get the Iron Heart.
Unfortunately for Vesa, as Bunny prepares to take revenge, Karel drowns, leaving a Gravewalker tank boss behind. This boss fight (and the stunningly beautiful boss I’d later play as Welby with a developer from Magnum Studios) was the highlight of my time with The First Descendant. Each boss has its own set of moves and mechanics, including checks that require more strategic work, but how I, the player, fight them is what intrigues me the most. Is.
The first child is fast. Characters move quickly, and abilities, which fly loose, allow them to move around in combat. I can imagine the magical chaos that ensues with the entire team of four. But the grapple hook excites me the most about The First Descendant’s fighting potential.
While fighting enemies, I scan by clicking the right stick to find weak points highlighted in blue. After shooting them enough, they turn yellow, meaning it’s time for my favorite part of the game: grabbing the yellow part and ripping it. It’s a great mechanic and takes an experience I’ve played hundreds of times in looters – shoot the boss – and makes it more dynamic. It’s not just about shooting; It’s about lingering on a weak point long enough that I can overcome it and then work to fix it, shedding layers of bass as I do.
Developing your generation
Preparing your children
Outside of combat, the game offers a fair amount of customization that powers free-to-play experiences, though I don’t know how microtransactions will play out in-game. You can customize the loadout for each character, each with their own weapons and abilities. There are costumes from maid outfits to fire brigade uniforms and more, and you can customize different areas of your character with unique chest pieces, Fortnite-style back pieces and more. You can test them all in Albion’s Lab, a test field with custom dummies to check your loadout’s damage output, feel, and more. Speaking of the team’s commitment to the game and its community, the lab was recently added following feedback from a recent beta.
“This is the first time I’ve seen it,” Lee said as he showed it to me, explaining that it was added recently. He says players can expect the game to change and evolve with the community this way.
I’m always worried about free-to-play games and their associated monetization, but if The First Descendant sticks to cosmetic-focused microtransactions, as opposed to allowing players to perform better in combat, e.g. As, Magnum Studio is on the right. Track with the wealth of options I see for character customization.
I love that so far each character feels completely different, and instead of focusing on a single character for months or years, leveling each one up individually seems like a smart call in contrast to the genre. Knowing that the three playable friends will have different Descendants to choose from, allowing for multiple strategies in how we approach missions, is interesting.
As for keeping players engaged beyond the game’s initial launch, Lee says the team is taking a seasonal approach, with a new battle every drop. As is now standard in the live service genre, each battle pass will include season-specific cosmetics, and you’ll need to play through the new content to get them.
With an hour of The First Descendant playtime behind me, including a studio tour and interviews with the team leads, I’m patiently awaiting its release this summer. Despite my early love of Fate and forays into Warframe at one point in my gaming history, both (and many others in the genre) have passed me by. Jumping back into them today is very difficult and very confusing. But The First Descendant is giving me what I want from those games, with variations on the formula as well. I still have questions, but Nexon still has time to answer them. For now, I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll get to the next beta.
This article originally appeared in Game Informer issue 366.