Highguard's already a failure (Pt. II)

2026-01-20 18:06:09

        This one will be quicker...there's not a whole lot to say for the rest of the video.

I typed the first sentence before actually writing the rest of Part II...I apologize for lying to you.

They do some quick cuts to some characters, not sure if they are playable or not but the designs look fine. Nothing to write home about but at least it's not Concord...design-wise I mean.

Then the drop of "From the makers of Apex Legends and Titanfall". I always have conflicted feelings about these kinds of statements. Usually a studio will do this for their own previous games. Like if Bungie were to advertise Marathon with "From the makers of Halo". It is a meaningless statement usually because the "studio" as an entity didn't make Halo, the people employed by the studio did. By the time Marathon was being made, were the people working on Marathon the same ones that brought us the original Halo?

The "From the makers of..." statement for Highguard is a little different in the sense that these are actually the people who worked on Apex and Titanfall and left Respawn to create their own studio. So it's a little more accurate but still, a handful a people does not a Titanfall make. There are a significant amount of ways a game can have people who captured lightning in a bottle fail to do so on a new franchise.

The next couple of seconds of the video show more, extremely scripted actions by our main character. We've also apparently switched away from Highguard-kun to Claw-kun I guess? They do a few action-y things then another drop and this one is pretty laughable. "Comes a new Breed of Shooter" says the text. So far there has been absolutely nothing in this trailer that comes off as a new breed of anything. Everything shown so far is more like your Garden Variety Breed of Shooter.

The time is now at 00:45. A beefy boy with a hammer hits us with it and sends a shockwave to break some walls, shotguns a random scripted NPC then starts turns and starts shooting another. Shockwaveman then launches some kind of ability that presumably knocks the shield off of the second enemy before shooting him for the finisher.

Now...the next sequence is a bit of a nitpick...I know, surprising...but at 00:54, when the camera cuts to this new person taking the red orb out of the chest of the guy that Shockwaveman just killed, there's a couple of discrepancies that just get under my skin.

1. The characters are not in the proper position. If you look at 00:53, both characters moved forward, past a building thing on the right and a block structure on the left. At 00:54, when the camera cuts to the woman taking the red orb, those two structures are no longer present. They've moved this staged scene back further in the level.
2. The lava path wave thing on the ground is no longer present. Right before the cut, Shockwaveman had launched a lava wave of some description at the enemy and was still glowing on the ground right before the cut, only to be missing after the camera cut.
3. This last one I can forgive because it's common in a lot of games. After the cut, the woman character isn't holding her gun but right before the cut she is. This is forgivable though because I assume this is some kind of precanned animation like a finisher or something and a lot of games don't take into account the currently held object.

Then it shows some level design stuff, interesting to look at, nothing explaining what it is which is fine I guess. Just kinda showcasing battle areas presumably.

Then, at 1:00, it cuts to what is at first, an interesting image showing characters running out of a Viking-esque Great Hall surrounded by a large blue bubble. Presumably a shield. I thought this looked pretty cool actually but then I saw things that just...made me go huh?

The shield is clipping through some objects...perhaps to add some visual flair to the scene but it opens up some questions I have. Namely...how does physics work with this shield? I assume if an object transverses the shield and the outside of said object is damaged or otherwise destroyed, the shield will fill in the gap so that there's not a hole in the shield. So far so good...sure.

But at what point does the shield know to do this? If I'm inside the shield...and I build a ladder...after the shield is up, can I push the ladder through the shield from the inside? If so...surely I can't do it from the outside right cause what's the point in the shield? Or does this shield operate on Dune rules where a sufficiently subsonic, non energetic weapon can penetrate the shield?

Then what happens if I'm outside the shield, and I blow up the part of the column clipping out? Can I collapse the entire column thereby making it fall into the Great Hall from the outside? We just saw Shockwaveman slam the ground with his hammer and have a directed path of energy go through and destroy some walls...can I do the same thing with this column? If I hammer the top of the column, can I send me shockwave into the shield and start damaging things on the inside thereby bypassing the whole point of the shield in the first place?

Could I even drill a hole through the column, leaving the surrounding stone intact, and slip through it if It's wide enough or pour something through the resulting hole to get into the Great Hall? Later we'll see Not-Mei do some ice powers...could that character pour their ice powers through the hole in the column?

The point is...I'm already primed to nit pick this trailer because this game isn't interesting to  look at or listen to. But c'mon...did you hire the guy who built the Death Star? You have a womp rat sized hole in the thing that's supposed to defend your Great Hall!

It's already 1:00 and the trailer isn't even half over...