DEFECT: NCSOFT Bets Big On Empty Vessel

Although the game DEFECT has been announced several months ago, the news we’re covering today is much more recent. Just a couple of days ago, South Korean publisher and developer NCSOFT announced that a strategic investment has been made official in the US-based studio Empty Vessel, founded in March of last year and based in Austin, Texas, which is developing its first official game, DEFECT, a frenetic tactical FPS focused on squad-based gameplay, set in a futuristic cyberpunk world.

What might seem crazy to many on NCSOFT’s part, a high-stakes bet on a relatively new studio, isn’t all that crazy when you take into account that Empty Vessel is made up of industry veterans from extremely well-known studios like Naughty Dog, id Software, Activision, Disney, and Microsoft, whose talents have been part of the development of several iconic titles such as DOOM, Quake, Call of Duty, The Last of Us, Borderlands, Tomb Raider, and Uncharted. The new game from this team, and the first from this new studio, DEFECT, is being developed with UE5, and has generated huge interest since its announcement, racking up a pretty decent number of nearly 2 million views on its launch trailer on YouTube, a video you can watch for yourself just below these lines:

Frenetic Action in a Dystopian Cyberpunk World

DEFECT offers us a fast-paced first-person action game, lots of shooting, and squad-based missions with specific objectives. It’s set in the last city of humanity, where THE SYSTEM, an authoritarian AI, rules with inhuman logic. The game gives us the freedom to choose from a wide range of factions, all of them dangerous, among which we’ll find different gangs that battle for power over the streets, as well as THE SYSTEM’s own police forces, or even rebel police factions, where we can play with friends, both in co-op and in PVP.

In that context, we compete in a brutal and lethal way to complete various objectives, such as smuggling weapons, assassinating targets, arresting suspects, and many more activities. And obviously the varied arsenal is a must: top-tier weapons and tech go with us on each of those assignments, or in other words, they give us the edge we need to live another day. In this world, the scale of justice doesn’t exist, and luck simply favors the strongest, whether that’s the feared law enforcers crushing what’s left of humanity under their boot, or the ruthless gangs that kill anyone who stands in their way.

So…

The official release date for DEFECT will be announced soon, but in the meantime you can go to its Steam page, which you’ll obviously find below, add it to your Wishlist, and while you’re at it check its technical requirements, which are already available. Considering the graphics engine used and what we saw in the video above, it’s only logical that this is not a game for toasters, but as long as you can run it, it’ll definitely be something truly worth playing, don’t you think?

With a staff like that, NCSOFT’s strategic move is more than understandable, a safe bet on the talent that has successfully carried out so many of the industry’s most iconic games. I’d bet on them too, no matter under which studio they choose to reunite! Sure, that’s my opinion, but this is exactly where I ask for yours, because since we have to wait anyway, what better than both of us dropping by the comments and chatting about what we think of this phenomenal proposal? You know gamer, we’ll be reading you! 🙂

Images Source: emptyvessel Official YouTube Channel, DEFECT on Steam