Breach, a new action RPG by ex-BioWare devs, is doing assymetric multiplayer right

Breach was announced just in time for Gamescom 2018 and we, being the curious bunch, sat down with developer QC Games during the convention.

So, we met up with Game Director Dallas Dickinson and CCO Gabe Amatangelo who told us more about the dungeon crawler and its asymmetric multiplayer. We even got to play through a breach and utterly obliterate the Veil Demon and its monsters.

With Breach, QC Games are focusing on co-op experience. It’s their goal to “do co-op right” while still maintaining a competitive edge. That’s where the game’s 4v1 multiplayer comes in.

Four players play as the heroes, while one other player embodies the Veil Demon. The heroes’ goal is to clear the dungeon and beat the boss at the end. The Veil Demon must stop them by killing them all with traps or monsters.

If the premise sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because you might have heard about BioWare’s canceled game Shadow Realms. That’s no coincidence since both Dickinson and Amatangelo worked on the game before it got canned. It seems that now they are finally making the game they wanted to make.

We joined Amatangelo and two other members of the studio as a dashing hero, while Dickinson played the demon. We played the Aorus Gladiator class, mainly because it is inspired by Devil May Cry’s Dante.

In the full game, players will be able to create a character from scratch, and choose from dozens of different classes from several “schools of magic.” The game has an open class system, which means players can switch between the classes between dungeons, and even mix and match their skills.

The Aorus Gladiator is an offensive class belonging to the Battle school of magic. Its role is to target the bigger enemies and take them down with devastating combos. To do so, we had several skills at our disposal: We could launch an enemy into the air with a powerful swing, come crashing down with ground pound, perform a spinning attack that delivers multiple hits to the same monster, and use a chain to drawn an enemy closer, Scorpion-style.

Using the right skill at the right time is the key to keeping a combo going. At first, we were launching enemies into the air, sending them down with a ground pound, and pulling them back up with the chains. But we quickly move on to include more and more attacks into the combo and tearing monsters to pieces easily.

This combo system is very intuitive, and it fits perfectly with the game’s action-heavy gameplay. You can even combine attacks by several different characters to create even longer, more powerful ones. We feel it’s important to stress the point that Breach isn’t a MOBA or an MMORPG – it’s a proper action RPG where you are always in control of your character’s attacks, movement, and timing.

You have the freedom to customize your character’s looks, class, weapons, and skills. You can even select the bonuses you obtain when you perform well during a dungeon. These “mini-rewards” help buff your character when you’re in the middle of a match like some MOBAs do. They don’t carry over between runs, but you can unlock more of them when you complete a dungeon.

Rewards are the way Breach pushes you to try different classes. After each match, you unlock more skills, items, and weapons, but not all of them belong to the class you’re currently playing. So while you can continue to level your one specific class, it’s actually more beneficial (and probably more fun) to diversify and mix things up a bit. It’s also much more helpful against the Veil Demon.

Although we didn’t get to play as the Veil Demon, QC Games’ Dallas Dickinson did explain to us everything we need to know about it, and its role in Breach.

The demon doesn’t have a corporeal form and can’t harm the heroes directly. It can only spawn monsters and possess them, or lay down traps that can hurt or stall slow them down. If the Veil Demon can’t kill the heroes outright, it can try and prevent them from completing certain goals throughout the dungeon.

Each sector in the dungeon has a mini-objective to complete before the heroes can move on. These range from killing all enemies to capturing waypoints and protecting a drone. At least those were the objective we had while completing the Tokyo breach.

Since all the monsters in the game are based on legend and mythology, the ones in Tokyo are based on Japanese culture. For example, the dungeon’s final boss is a giant Oni monster. We already know of two other locations set in Egypt and Ukraine, with monsters like the god Anubis or the nightmarish Kikimora.

Breach has plenty of promise. We enjoyed taking on the Veil Demon and destroying the Oni with three other players, mostly thanks to the intuitive and flexible combat, and asymmetric cooperative multiplayer that works.

QC Games are planning on releasing a Technical alpha soon, and you can sign up for a code on the game’s official site. You should.