When consider the wide pantheon of fantasy settings and jargon, one of the last things you’d probably think of is something as administrative sounding as protocol, yet with its anime action RPG stylings and the potential within for MMORPG team ups, there’s plenty of reasons to be excited by Blue Protocol.
Blue Protocol’s opening moments deal in the distinctly abstract as you take control of the shimmering humanoid form of a white smoke creature confronted in a cavernous hall by wolf-like robotic foes before facing off against a human just prior to a mysterious voice from the heavens weakening you, causing you to explode in a cloud of light. Enigmatic isn’t the half of it, as the game kicks into a full-blown anime title cinematic that shows some of this game’s broader tone and cross-media aspirations.
Bandai Namco has taken an unusual approach with Blue Protocol; instead of publishing the free-to-play game in the West themselves, they’ve partnered with Amazon Games to see the game reach audiences outside of Japan. At the same time, this is Amazon spreading their wings with a new partnership that, while in the same overarching genre as previous MMORPG efforts like New World and Lost Ark, has a thoroughly different style to it.
Speaking about what drew Amazon into this partnership, Franchise Lead Mike Zadorojny said, ” lot of it is the excitement of the art style, the excitement of the combat… we basically fell in love with Blue Protocol the first time we played it. They have a rich world and are building a complicated tapestry in terms of the anime style, plus the story that they’re doing. Allowing us to build our own characters and be a part of that world was really exciting for us.”
With the very basics of combat under your belt before you create your custom character with a tool that’s just strikes the right balance for me of having enough options to be inviting to play with, but not so many that it’s totally overwhelming to create your avatar.
You also have that oh-so-important decision to make of which class to play as, except that this is where Blue Protocol takes a good few steps away from the usual MMORPG fare. There’s five character types to choose from: the frontline sword-bearing Blade Warden, the dual-wielding Twin Striker, ranged Keen Strider, magical Spell Weaver and the Foe Breaker with their awesome-looking cannon warhammer. Naturally I went for the Foe Breaker.
They’re all strongly contrasting character classes, but instead of being pigeonholed into a Tank, DPS or Support role by this initial choice, they’re more like picking a base weapon and then you can lean into a role as you party up and figure out what your team needs you to do.
“[The focus] is not necessarily the role that this class fills, but a spectrum that the class can perform in,” Mike said. “It’s about giving the player choice. Do you really want to be more DPS, more Support, more crowd control? There’s a spectrum in there and that really comes down to the player choosing which skills they’re bringing in, or which items they’re crafting to support the build.”
The way this comes together is in giving you a broad range of weapon skills and abilities to choose from. As you get deeper into levelling up a particular class, you unlock twelve skills, of which you can select four to equip at a time, and your ultimate. Add to that creature summons that can have a broad set of effects, there’s plenty of scope to take that Blade Warden from being a classic tank to soak up damage, to really dishing out damage instead.
Roaming around the open world, I got to put my Foe Breaker to the test, getting to grips with the atypical ammo system for weapon abilities with this class, and how I’d need to reload every now and then. It’s a fun weapon to use though, both with pummelling cannon ball attacks and then hefty wallops when up close. I’m looking forward to seeing what other ideas Bandai Namco can cook up.
However, the real heart of an MMO is when you put the middle ‘M’ to good use and play with other people.
Mike said, “That [ability choice] really allows you to find your balance in there, which is cool, because it means I can play one style playing by myself, but when my friend logs in, maybe I don’t need to go as self-sustaining and switch into a less hybrid role where we can combine our efforts to do other things. Every time we’re looking at a class, it’s like, what are the player fantasies, the power fantasies that they’re trying to fulfil? And it usually comes down to the weapon style, but from that spectrum you can really mix and match and choose how you want that profession to play out.”
Setting foot into one of the early dungeons, and it’s complete and utter carnage as everyone is firing of their splashy abilities, getting stuck in and racing through the environment. We clattered our way through the Dragon’s Rive dungeon, the second in the game, quickly coming up against an oversized foe, a fantasy wild boar with sweeping and bombastic attacks of its own, nicely signposted so you can often avoid them. Our fairly inexperienced group needed a bit of help toward the end as a few of us were downed.
“This was the second dungeon that you played, and the goal is that as you’re going through the story content, you’re starting to better understand the potential of your class. The good news is that a lot of the early content isn’t necessarily about having the right team make-up,” Mike told us.
“For the baseline storylines and early dungeons, it’s OK to have that element [of just rushing in] in there, but with the depth in the combat system, that those hard, top tier hard mode dungeons all applies to force players to have that communication, to make sure they know what they’re trying to accomplish.”
And what of that story? Well, there’s naturally a world-ending danger, as you’d expect, and it’s almost inevitable that you’re going to be pretty key to staving this off, but there’s also plenty of anime quirkiness and fun twists along the way. One of the first characters you meet after waking up with a nasty case of amnesia – look, you can’t spell amnesia without ‘anime’ can you? – and she quickly defies your expectations in a delightfully devious way.
“She’s awesome, and I think she’s one of the early hooks for the game. Here’s a character that is portrayed one way, very story-typical, and then instantly turns on its head.”
As is quite frequently the case for live and free-to-play games, Blue Protocol is currently going through a bit of a staggered launch. The PC version raced to grab 600,000 players shortly after its Japanese release, the launch game having the first three chapters of the story and the initial five classes. For Western gamers? We’ll have to wait until 2024 for our full release, but Amazon knows the task ahead, and is shooting for close to parity between regions as soon as is possible. Console versions are also coming down the pipe.
“We saw a lot of excitement, and it wasn’t just the [Japanese] players,” Mike said, “it was also the Western press and Western players who have been really following the game, which is great. It also means we can redouble our efforts, because we know that Western players really want this game.”
The one bright spark in that regard is that there’s some Blue Protocol PC beta tests coming later this year.
