E3 ‘09: Brink impressions

Bethesda Softworks has been very quiet concerning its new IP Brink, showing off only a not-all-that-revealing teaser trailer (below) just weeks ago. At E3, Bethesda and developer Splash Damage finally took the wraps off this ambitious game, and showed it to journalists behind closed doors for the first time.

Brink is a futuristic FPS set in a place called the Ark, an immense floating city on the sea. The year is 2035, and the Ark has been described as “the last refuge for humanity,” yet when something causes the Ark to lose contact with the rest of the world, two factions assert themselves and attempt to seize control over the city.

One of the game’s biggest ambitions is a desire to “change the way it feels to play a first-person shooter,” and to that end, Splash Damage has crafted a control scheme for moving your character throughout the city that’s fluid and simple. “SMART” stands for “smooth movement across rough terrain,” and it’s the system used by Brink to dynamically help you get to where you’re going. There are no separate buttons to mash for climbing, dropping, jumping, or shimmying; instead, SMART lets you traverse any route you wish — across, around, or through any obstacle — in a way that’s dynamic and intuitive. Similar to Assassin’s Creed’s “high profile” movement mode, SMART automatically reads the environment you move through and sends your protagonist jumping or climbing or what-have-you in whatever way works best. It’s simple and effective.

The Ark is vast, and when you’re in a mission area, there are no rails or cinematics to get bogged down in; instead, you go where you want, in the manner you choose. The visuals pop with vivid, colorful details, and both large indoor and large outdoor areas. Character models are photo-realistic yet slightly caricaturish, with angular features and disproportionate bodies.

The game puts a lot of focus on character customization. Once you’ve selected which of the two warring factions you want to join — the Resistance, or Ark Security — you can create an avatar with nearly limitless customization options. Meeting objectives or carrying out kills will earn you experience points, which you can then spend on power-ups. In an ambitious twist, Brink will ship with two full single-player campaigns — one where you fight for Security, the other Resistance — each with different maps and/or different views of the same maps. You can join up with a friend with full drop-in/drop-out co-op throughout the single player campaigns, and of course multiplayer action is planned as a major component of the game.

The feel of the game was sort of a combination between Mass Effect’s beautiful futuristic vistas and customization, and BioShock’s “discover what’s happened here” sea-based storytelling dynamic.

Images: Copyright 2009 ©Splash Damage.