Go in, grab what you need, get out, and try not to die. That’s the ethos behind the extraction shooter genre that has blossomed over the past half decade. Exoborne takes that and wraps an exo-rig around your squishy fleshy body, giving extended movement for you and your buddies as you try to gather resources and do missions under the threat of an evil megacorp and the potential attentions of other players.
Earth has been completely wrecked by a malevolent company ironically branded as Rebirth. Once seen as a final hope against climate change, the STRATOS towers that they had their workers build only worsened the forces of nature in a coordinated action, leaving even more apocalyptic storms to ravage what’s left of mankind. And what of the remains of civilisation? Just as Rebirth’s lie was uncovered, they hijacked all of the exo-rigs of their workers, turning them on innocent civilians and protestors.
You’re one of those who was able to break free, detaching your suit from the network and joining the resistance movement as the towers start to ominously come back online. Your role is to head out into Colton County, scavenge for valuable resources from Rebirth and the general area, and bring it back to base.
Sharkmob – last seen with the Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt battle royale – has created a large open world map for their extraction shooter to take place in. It goes beyond roads being littered with abandoned and destroyed vehicles, with bridges having collapsed, the terrain having shifted, and now with major weather events just rolling into the world every ten minutes or so. And when I say major, I’m talking fire tornados, incessant lightning storms that make wearing a lot of metal feel really, really dumb, and more.
As they roll through the world, they’re both a danger and a boon to you. They can transform parts of the map and reveal new points of interest and loot, or more fundamentally, they will often kick up the wind so that you can use just hop up, trigger your paraglide and zoom across the world – it’s great for getting around quickly. Combined with your exo-rig’s grappling hook, this really gives off echoes of mid-2010s Call of Duty and Just Cause here.
Deploying into Coulton County, you pick and choose what gear to take with you. You can have a main gun and sidearm, you need to pack ammo, health kits, a daypack for a larger inventory, and throwables and tactical gear. These are paired with exo-rigs that each have distinct abilities, such as a ground-pounding attack or a force of wind that can knock enemies away.
The first thing to decide is where you actually want to go and what to do – you’ve got 20 minutes before Rebirth can run a trace and reveal your location to other players, and you’re dropping into a dynamic world where teams can join partway through. Opening up the map reveals the scale of this region, but there’s also just a bunch of vague icons and points of interest that don’t really mean that much to me yet – there’s a series of assignments and missions, but early on, they’re things like “extract successfully 2 times”.
This is PvPvE, so heading to map markers will have you running into NPCs to fight, often human, but sometimes Rebirth’s robots and drones. On one occasion, we happened across a downed Rebirth VTOL that had a door to hack open as we fended up a steady stream of bipedal bots, suicide balls and larger minigun bots. We booked it out of there as soon as we’d emptied the cache of its rewards… not least because the VTOL self destructed moments after the doors opened!
It’s tricky to distinguish between the human NPCs and real players, though. Most of our run-ins with other players felt like they were a complete surprise, where the main distinguishing factors were their approach to combat and that they would be downed instead of simply killed off. Of course, if they’re shooting down on an exfiltration point from an overlooking bridge, you can put 2 and 2 together to figure out they’re other players springing a trap.
There’s that rush and relief if you manage to get away as another team tries to take you out, alternating with the annoyance and loss of being wiped out at the last moment. That’s the genre, though, and if you don’t make it out, it’s not just your loot that you’re leaving behind, but all of your gear as well. You’ll then have to buy it all again, or draw from your stash of exo-rigs, guns and other gear.
If you’re on a bad run, that can really sap all of your reserves, and there’s no way to insure your gear against loss. Instead Exoborne has a fallback baseline Exo that can’t be modded, can’t have equipment, but has that core functionality, letting you go scavenging on the entry-level map and tiers without risk.
We’ve only scratched the surface of what Exoborne offers, and from our handful of runs during the latest Exoborne playtest, I think there’s something potentially really appealing to this take on the genre. It’s toeing that line between mil-sims and sci-fi shenanigans, having to lean heavily on the ostentatious weather effects to stand out from that generic military feel, but then that should appeal to a certain cachet of gamers who decry over-the-top cosmetics. Also, the audio-visual feedback as you land shots and crack armour is right up there with the best of them.
Oh, and I’m happy to report that jumping into the rotor of the extraction VTOL will down you immediately.
