Launch and the Adventure Ahead – PlayStation.Blog

With Concord of With Concord launching next week on August 23rd, we wanted to take a moment to talk about the adventure ahead. We see the launch as just the beginning. The beginning is not only the vision we have for Concord, but also the beginning of how we support and grow the game with our players.

The base game is the foundation we build on over time, through systems that will expand the universe, introduce new ways to play and master each character, give you hundreds of unique rewards to earn and unlock, and ongoing stories every week, along with seasonal updates that will introduce new characters, new maps and worlds, new modes, new stories, new features, etc.*

As we head towards launch day, here’s a glimpse of what’s coming up at Concord:

Concord Season 1 Releases This October

From the start, we wanted Concord to be a complete experience, where all of the core content is available to you on day one and continues to grow—unlimited by paid expansions or Battle Passes. We value your investment in the game and want to make sure we bring all players along for the journey.

Our first major content release will be coming in October with the launch of Concord Season 1: The Tempest. Season 1 will mark the debut of a brand new playable Freegunner, as well as a brand new map, new Freegunner Variants, more cosmetics and earnable rewards, and a new weekly season of Cinematic Vignettes that will continue the story of the Northstar crew.

With Season 1, we will also be introducing an in-game store for those who want to further personalize their Freegunners with additional customization items and continue to support the game. These will be in addition to the hundreds of rewards that can be earned through progression and will be purely cosmetic, optional, and will not impact gameplay.

We’re also working on future seasons, starting with Season 2 launching in January 2025 and more seasonal launches throughout Concord’s first year. We look forward to fully revealing what we have in store for Season 1 before launch in October.

Continuous development of your crew

When we first founded Firewalk, we thought a lot about what kind of game we wanted to make and what we could add to the multiplayer FPS genre. We knew we had to focus on the fundamentals of what makes a great FPS: precise, responsive gunplay and fast, fluid movement. Those qualities had to be the foundation of everything.

However, we also wanted to add a special spice to the character’s abilities. In addition to the impact their abilities, roles, and kits could have on moment-to-moment combat, we saw interesting opportunities to add layers of strategy to how and when you chose to deploy them throughout the match. In fact, we wanted to infuse the crafting theory of a deckbuilder 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 take into battle. Each Custom Crew offers 12 configurable slots, which you can fill with characters from the growing roster of Freegunners and 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 challenges in the game.

Each Custom Crew must have five unique Freegunners, but you can stack up to three copies of any Freegunner’s Variant, allowing you to really focus on the specific characters you enjoy playing and that best fit your overall squad, the mode you’re playing, or your general playstyle.

However, while Crew Builder allows you to hone your own unique approach to combat strategy, it also means inspiring experimentation with different characters. Each Custom Crew comes with four Back Up slots, which are randomly filled with Freegunners not in your Custom Crew.

Crew Builder also encourages you to include characters with different roles in your Custom Crews. Unlike traditional archetypes, like Tank or Support, each Freegunner in Concord is meant to provide high DPS and be effective in gunfights. Instead, our characters are defined by one of six distinct roles and the impact they can have in combat—whether it’s locking down an area, dominating vision, 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 first deploy Freegunners of different roles in a match, you’ll be granted special bonuses that can increase mobility, improve weapon recoil, reduce cooldowns, and more that apply to any characters 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 a lot of depth to how you can craft, tweak, and master your builds in Concord as your experience increases. It also allows the meta to continually evolve in exciting new ways, as you unlock new Freegunner Variants and new Freegunners and Variants are introduced over time with each season.

Ultimately, when we step back and think about what drew us to Concord and what we love most about multiplayer gaming, it comes down to exactly that: the potential for constant growth. It’s the excitement of the potential for moving the experience forward. And it’s the sense of adventure that comes from exploring together.

Preparing to launch

We look forward to welcoming you to the Concord galaxy and seeing you learn and master each Freegunner and all of our systems in new and exciting ways, starting with Concord’s Early Access launch for Digital Deluxe Edition owners on Tuesday, August 20, followed by a global launch on Friday, August 23. Pre-loads for all versions on PS5 begin today, Tuesday, August 13.

Concord’s Early Access launch server on August 20 will go live at 10:00am PDT | 7:00pm CEST | 2:00am (August 21) JST.

For all the latest Concord news, be sure to follow us on Twitter/X, InstagramAnd TikTokas well as by participating in the community Concord Official Discord.

*PlayStation Network account and internet connection required. PlayStation Plus membership (sold separately) required on PS5.