Remedy Entertainment has released an in-depth “Community First Look” for FBC: Firebreak, the recently announced multiplayer title, giving first details on the game’s setting, gameplay, and development.
Announced during the recent Xbox Partner Preview, FBC: Firebreak is Remedy’s first-ever multiplayer game and is set in the same universe as 2019’s Control. It was a bit of a surprise announcement, as back in May, there was a report that Remedy’s multiplayer game, then called Codename Condor, was cancelled. Throughout the video, you can see a bit of new gameplay, with a lot of details on Remedy’s design process and how Firebreak came about.
Firebreak is a cooperative three-player first-person shooter where players fight off the invasion of the supernatural entity known as The Hiss. The interdimensional beings were the primary threat in Control, but this time, you’re playing as part of a new unit organized to combat it. Interestingly, the game’s name draws inspiration from actual firefighting.
“That name Firebreak actually comes from real-life firefights. It’s a physical idea of something that stands between the danger and the thing that needs protecting,” says game director Mike Kayatta. “That’s your job, to stand between the outbreak and what needs protecting — in this case, the bureau itself.”
Firebreak is obviously a huge step for Remedy, a studio that’s always been focused on single-player action. But it’s apparently something that’s been a long time coming, as Kayatta says,
“For a long time, we’ve been looking for a way to take our strengths at building these fascinating worlds and taking our action-focused combat gameplay and combine them into a multiplayer game.”
Kayatta emphasizes that they want to give players the chance to step into one of Remedy’s worlds alongside their friends. To that end, Firebreak has always been a first-person game, with the setting of The Oldest House getting remade to suit the structure of a multiplayer game. Firebreak takes place a few years after the events of Control, and is a completely standalone story.
FBC: Firebreak releases in 2025 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The game will launch day one on Xbox Game Pass and PS Plus Premium, meaning it’ll initially be free for subscribers of those platforms for a limited time.
