Can the creators of Control really make a great multiplayer FPS? Remedy talk hiring and firefighting

Earlier this month I had the chance to check out Remedy’s forthcoming Control spin-off game FBC: Firebreak, which casts you as a bunch of weaponised office gremlins fighting the extra-dimensional Hiss and other “paranatural” lifeforms in the corridors of the Oldest House. The game is a co-op first-person shooter, which is a bit of a departure from the likes of Alan Wake 2. How, if at all, has Remedy had to change to make a game like Firebreak? Have they, for example, hired up a bunch of seasoned FPS devs? I put the question to game director Mike Kayatta and Remedy’s comms director Thomas Puha.

First-person multiplayer blasting isn’t a genre Remedy are “known for”, Kayatta acknowledged, but that doesn’t mean there’s no in-house wisdom to call upon. “Remedy is now, I think, almost 400 people,” he said. “We have people with all sorts of backgrounds and experience that extends far beyond the boundaries of Finland and the boundaries of Remedy itself. And those people have brought in quite a bit of experience and passion from these spaces. So, no, we haven’t done any specific kind of, you know, like [company adjustments] in reaction to Firebreak. Actually, Firebreak was born out of the expertise and the passion of the people that we had.”

Which isn’t to say that Remedy haven’t done any hiring whatsoever with Firebreak in mind, Puha added. “It’s more people who are a lot more experienced with things like the backend, these sorts of things…. Because way, way, way back in the day we made mobile games, and that involved networking granted, but it’s all very, very different than what the requirement is here. That was more of a thing where, OK, clearly here we’re a bit lacking, so definitely we needed a couple of hires there.”

As for making a game with a first-person perspective, Kayatta added, “we kind of started with one person who knew what they were doing with that, and we told him: you have exactly one thing that you are not allowed to do, and that is get hit by a bus at any time, because the game will cease to exist.”

Still, Puha and Kayatta both maintain that all of this builds upon a sturdy existing foundation of insight and skill at Remedy. The company has, after all, been around for three decades, and hasn’t spent all that time working on moody third-person action fare like Alan Wake, Control and Max Payne (which are, of course, very different games in other respects).

The company’s very first game, Death Rally, was a combat racer. As Puha pointed out, they’ve also worked on mobile games like 2014’s Agents of Storm. As is the way of game developers, Remedy have any number of projects that have never seen daylight, such as their cancelled “Kestrel” game for Tencent. Less positively, there’s at least one FPS gig they’d perhaps rather forget. The elephant in the room throughout my chat with Puha and Kayatta was Remedy’s 2022-released single player campaign for Tencent’s CrossfireX. I’ve yet to play it, but the verdicts elsewhere ain’t brilliant.

Still, experience is experience. “Not that we feel like we have to prove it, but there’s people [working on Firebreak] like our lead designer who have been here for like, 25 years,” Puha said. “Like, he’s been on all of the games. And he’s building a lot of systems, and just seeing just how up for it and excited he and many others are – I’m not saying people aren’t excited for the other games, but it’s just something where the challenges are so different.

“And there’s challenges every day, when you make games, and I love seeing that. I mean, there’s lots of new folks on the game, but veterans were like, yeah, I get to do a bunch of stuff, it’s a small team [of 50 people]. It is very invigorating in that way as well.”

Kayatta echoed the point. “I think I’ve realised that Firebreak is Remedy,” he said. “It’s just a Remedy that the world hasn’t had a chance to see yet. And I think that’s honestly what we’re really excited about, is actually showing that we are more than the things that we’ve gained prominence and attention for – although we’re that too, and we’re happy to continue doing that.”

While managing Remedy’s current spread of parallel projects can be “scary and difficult”, Kayatta added, “what it means is that we’re going to be able to put things out more often, and we’re going to be able to put out, you know, a larger diversity of experience.”

Puha noted that it’s “fascinating” to see how developers become associated with specific genres. “You do one genre, and the expectation seems to be that, oh, you’ve got to stick to that. And I always wonder, like, if some of the various prototypes that were under works, when the very painful birth of Alan Wake happened – what if the company had gone with one of those very different games?”

This is perhaps a good time to mention that Remedy have at least one other unannounced project on the hob right now, as revealed during investor presentations. According to Kayatta and Puha, it’ll be a while before we hear anything more about it.