Concord: Launch and the adventure ahead
With Concord’s launch next week on August 24, PlayStation Australia is delighted to share the adventure that lies ahead with the launch just the beginning. The beginning of not only the vision for Concord, but also the beginning of it will be supported and grown with you, the players.
The base game is a foundation to be built upon over time, through systems that will expand the universe, introduce new ways to play and master each character, give players hundreds of unique rewards to earn and unlock, and narratives to unfold week after week, alongside seasonal updates that will introduce new characters, new maps and worlds, new modes, new stories, new features, and more.*
As we look ahead to launch, here’s a glimpse of what’s to come in Concord:
Concord Season 1 launching this October
From the very beginning, Concord was designed to be a complete experience, where all core content is available to you on day-one and moving forward—not gated behind paid expansions or a Battle Pass. We take your investment in the game seriously and want to ensure that all players are brought along for the journey.
The first major content drop will arrive in October with the launch of Concord Season 1: The Tempest. Season 1 will mark the introduction of a brand new playable Freegunner, as well as a brand-new map, new Freegunner Variants, more earnable cosmetics and rewards, and a new season of weekly Cinematic Vignettes that will continue the story of the Northstar crew.
With season 1, an in-game store will also be introduced for those looking to personalise their Freegunners further with additional customisation items and to continue to support the game. These will supplement the hundreds of rewards earnable through progression and will be solely cosmetic, optional, and have no gameplay impact.
Firewalk Studios is also hard at work on future seasons, beginning with Season 2 launching in January 2025 and more seasonal drops throughout year one of Concord.
The continuous evolution of your crew
When Firewalk first formed, they thought a lot about the type of game that they wanted to make and what they could add to the multiplayer FPS genre. They knew they had to focus on the fundamentals that can make an FPS game great: precise, responsive gunplay and fast, fluid mobility. Those qualities had to be the bedrock of everything.
However, they also wanted that special spice provided by character abilities. Beyond the impact their abilities, roles, and kits could have in moment-to-moment combat, they saw exciting opportunities to add strategic layers to how and when you choose to deploy them throughout a match. In effect, they wanted to infuse the theorycrafting of a deck builder with a PVP first-person shooter. This became the root of our Crew Builder system.
Crew Builder allows you to create Custom Crews of Freegunners that you bring into a match. Every Custom Crew offers 12 configurable slots, which you can fill with characters from what will become a growing roster of Freegunners and their Variants. Each Freegunner will have multiple Variants, which are unique versions of each character that have special modifiers to their base abilities and can be unlocked by completing various in-game challenges.
Each Custom Crew must have five unique Freegunners, but you can stack up to three copies of any given Freegunner’s Variants, empowering you to really focus on specific characters that you like to play as and that align best with the broader makeup of your team, the modes you’re playing, or your general playstyle.
However, while Crew Builder enables you to hone your own unique approach to combat strategy, it’s also meant to inspire experimentation with different characters as well. Each Custom Crew comes with four Back Up slots, which are randomly populated with Freegunners not otherwise in your Custom Crew.
Crew Builder also incentivises you to populate your Custom Crews with characters of different roles. Unlike traditional archetypes, like Tank or Support, each Freegunner in Concord is meant to deliver high-DPS and be effective in a gunfight. Instead, our characters are defined by one of six distinct roles and the impact they can have in combat—whether that’s locking down an area, dominating long sightlines, or flanking enemies.
Balancing your crew with Freegunners of different roles can give you an edge through special in-match benefits called Crew Bonuses. When you deploy Freegunners of different roles for the first time during a match, you’re granted special bonuses that can increase mobility, improve weapon recoil, reduce cooldown times, and more that apply to any character you deploy from that point on.
When you combine all of these systems—Crew Builder, Back-Up Slots, Freegunner Variants, and Crew Bonuses—there’s so much depth to how you can craft, refine, and master your builds in Concord as your experience grows. It also allows the meta to evolve continuously in exciting new ways, as you unlock new Freegunner Variants and new Freegunners and Variants are introduced over time with each season.
Ultimately, when they step back and think about what drew us to make Concord and what they love most about multiplayer games, it’s exactly that: the potential for continuous evolution. It’s the thrill of the potential possibilities of where they can take the experience moving forward. And it’s the sense of adventure of finding out, together.
Prepare for launch
We can’t wait to welcome you to the Concord galaxy and see how you learn and master each Freegunner and all of our systems in new and exciting ways, beginning with Concord’s Early Access launch for Digital Deluxe Edition owners on Wednesday, August 21 and followed by our global launch on Friday, August 23 (3:00 AEST Saturday 24 August). Pre-load for all editions on PS5 will begin today, Wednesday, August 14.
Servers for Concord’s Early Access launch on August 21 will go live at 3:00am AEST.
About the Author
Adrian Gunning Adrian lives in Melbourne Australia and has a huge passion for gaming, technology and pop culture. He recently finished his a Bachelor of Journalism and is currently focusing on games journalism. When not writing and playing video games, Adrian can be found in Comics 'R' Us debating the pros of the DC Universe and cons of the Marvel Universe.
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