2K has announced Project Ethos, a new “third-person roguelike hero shooter” — yes, that’s another one of those — from 31st Union, the studio led by Michael Condrey, the director of Mission Co-founder of Summons studio Sledgehammer Games. Do not implement the Callisto Protocol.
If you need a quick refresher, before forming 31st Union in February 2019, Condrey developed a series of CoD games that were all hugely successful at Sledgehammer, so he brings a lot of shooter pedigree to the project.
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If you look at the screenshots and footage, because it’s a hero shooter, I can’t guarantee you very much that you won’t have Overwatch’s Tracer saying “Here comes the Trooper” on repeat in your head, or Thoughts will eventually be drawn on the entire Concord saga, and sadly, the state of play for any such game seems likely to launch in 2024. Here’s the thing, though, just because one game goes through a rough patch doesn’t necessarily mean another one will too.
The game will be free-to-play out of the box, so the difference between it and Concord is that it’s still being touted as something “in development,” so its arrival doesn’t seem too significant. Coming soon, though there will be a community playtest taking place over the next few days (October 17th to October 20th). Details can be found here.
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Project Ethos has a draw mode called Trials, which sounds like what you’d expect – stay longer and you’ll take risks, but with a chance of better rewards. Its roguelike element comes from the selection of random upgrades that change your character’s attacks and abilities and are earned during matches. I guess you get that by photographing good people.
We’ll have to see what Project Ethos develops into, and whether it can shake off the bad vibes of Overwatch-style hero shooters that have emerged from the 2024 cast. Hopefully it’s popular enough that people won’t jokingly try to bring it back into the market after release.
