The First Descendant is a looter shooter from Nexon. You shoot things, get guns to shoot bigger things to get even better guns to shoot even bigger enemies. You get the picture. Destiny 2, Warframe, and Borderlands are some games from the same vein.
There is one major thing I noticed when starting The First Descendant. This game is quite possibly the most bland, blasé, and possibly AI generated game I have seen thus far. This isn’t to say the entire experience is terrible per se, especially for fans of never ending content treadmills. There are just so many progression trackers to grind.
As for what makes the game bland and blasé, there is (at least to me) no perceivable evidence of any actual care or effort put into the game. It is entirely devoid of any soul. You start out with a cut scene that lays out a story that looks and feels eerily similar to Shatterline. The dialogue and voice acting are so bland they feel AI generated. There is no emotion whatsoever in the writing as well as the inflections of the voices. Even the animations for the NPC quest givers and enemies look like something you’d get for free in the Unity or Unreal asset store.
One specific example that I can think of is when the NPC quest givers talk to you. The camera is looking straight at the character and the character is centered on the screen. This makes it look and feel incredibly amateurish and to some it may bring feelings of nostalgia but that is beside the point. Their face has this rubbery look to it as they move their mouth to the dialogue and this is something I’ve seen for AI automated lip syncing in other video games. It looks pretty silly because it appears as if the characters lack any bones in their face.
Now I don’t mean to disparage games for not handcrafting everything. I get it, it is very time consuming to handcraft everything and developers may not have the time, experience, or skill necessary to do so. However, it does become a problem when the ENTIRE game feels like corners were cut. I’m totally fine with flaws in a game as long as the developer tried and you can feel some redeemable qualities in the core of the game. I’m not fine with flaws when the game is made by a larger studio and corners were cut in quality but not in the manipulative engagement and monetization methods in order to increase “metrics”, with the absolute least amount of effort put into making the game in order to maximize profit.
This detestable behavior seems to be becoming the norm in the world of game development sadly and even defended by developers and PR people themselves, as many have witnessed after the outcry from some absolutely entitled and out of touch people upon the release of Baldur’s Gate 3.
Rant aside, the goofy lip syncing animation isn’t the only telltale sign of cut corners. The level design feels incredibly bland. The first area is a large but lifeless green field with stone cliffs. The scenery is occasionally broken by run down buildings. The second area is the same as the first…just more rockier. These levels honestly feel like an asset flip or something that could be made in an Unreal engine tutorial in an hour or less.
The world is lifeless and you start missions by interacting with a beacon, which usually spawns in enemies. As you can guess, the enemy design and animations feel very canned as well. They will run into walls, cliffs, and other obstacles unintelligently. As for the missions themselves, you usually defend a point on the map, survive for a set amount of time, or deliver a certain amount of objects to a delivery robot.
Now this may all sound terrible or even great to some, but the most important question is, “is it fun?”. My personal answer is while I didn’t find it fun, it was definitely playable in short sessions if you had nothing better to do to kill time. As for other opinions, if we take a look at SteamDB, the playtest had a peak of around 50k players and ended with a slow decline to around 10k. That is a pretty darn good showing for just a week long beta. And during that week, I’ve seen people who actually maxed out their characters, which is insane to think about.
As for why some may find it fun, the shooting felt acceptable. The enemies were pretty easy to kill and this is a bonus to me since I absolutely detest bullet sponges. While the quests were bland and repetitive, they didn’t take too much time to complete and you’re constantly getting new loot, although the performance increase is only incremental at best. The game also has so many progression trackers.
Each weapon type has their own progression tracker, along with a bunch of others. You will always have something to grind and this will either be a boon or a curse depending on your preference. In addition to all these progression trackers, you can also unlock new characters…which also take a lot of grind as they require a lot of resources. The characters do look unique and there are a lot of waifus in this game. If there’s one thing Korean developers do better than others, it’s the character design. I just wish they’d put just as much effort into the actual game play.
This is Nexon we are talking about however.
Overall, The First Descendant just seems like a lazy cash grab. Everything feels so incredibly lazily done. The game is competent enough to play but I feel like I’m settling for something less when there are so many other better made games to play at this point. Will some people enjoy it? Absolutely, just like there are people who enjoy doing cocaine. Just because other people like it, doesn’t mean it’s good or good for you. I think I’m doing cocaine a disservice by comparing to The First Descendant however.
Additional Info
Steam Store Page : https://store.steampowered.com/app/2074920/The_First_Descendant/
Review Score: N/A as the game isn’t out yet (09/27/23)
Developer: NEXON Games Co., Ltd.
Publisher: NEXON
Release Date: Coming soon
MSRP: TBA
Time spent: 5.9 hours
Achievement Score: N/A
Ducky Obrien 