Single-player campaign

The campaign

Eight chapters, twenty-one missions each: 168 missions from a fallen Los Angeles to Mars, and a boss at the end of every chapter. One Orbit operative, and the truth about who opened the sky.

8Chapters
168Missions
8Bosses
14Roles to play

The story

Everyone calls it first contact. It isn’t. The rifts opened from here, and someone you were supposed to be able to trust turned the key.

Twenty minutes ago the sky over Los Angeles tore open. Orbit was the private outfit hired to handle anomalies. This was not an anomaly, and most of Orbit died on day one. You are one operative in a city coming apart, with a role, a callsign and whatever you can carry.

The rifts open in a pattern, node by node, as if someone were aiming them. So you follow the incursion backward. Drive it, scavenge it, break into it. The enemy is the weather you cross, not the point of the trip.

Day one of the incursion. The sky opened over the Pacific, and it did not close again.

Los Angeles fell in an afternoon. What holds the streets now came down through the rift.

You are an Orbit operative. Everyone who could leave has left. The rest are counting on you.

Clear the cordon. Hold the line. Then find out what is on the other side.

The opening cards, as they read in the game

The chapters

Twenty missions a chapter, then a boss at twenty-one. Every mission in a chapter is finished before the next chapter unlocks. A cleared chapter stays open, and everything you carry crosses with you. Frames are captured in engine from the beta build.

  1. The operative in third person on a cracked Los Angeles avenue, a silver coupe beside them and a white sports car and a blue sedan stopped ahead, glass towers down the street
    Chapter 01 · Los Angeles · 21 missions

    The Fall

    Hour one. The sky tore open twenty minutes ago. Get off the street, reach the evac muster on Grand Avenue, and find out why the rifts open on the power grid in an order, node by node.

    BossThe Hive MotherVoidborn colossus
  2. Night on a Las Vegas street: the lit GOLDEN HOUR marquee over glowing storefronts, a red muscle car and a white sports car stopped at the curb, the operative on the sidewalk
    Chapter 02 · Las Vegas · 21 missions

    The Signal

    A voice on a dead Orbit frequency promises beds and clean water on the Strip. The casinos never closed and the house still counts. Find the receiver before you trust the voice.

    BossThe HouseMachine colossus
  3. A Paris street at dusk, windows lit in brick and stone blocks, a horned gray brute towering over the operative in the road
    Chapter 03 · Paris · 21 missions

    The Archive

    Paris went dark in one night and stayed lit: the street lamps burn on power nobody is generating. Follow the light down, through the metro, the ossuary and the river, to an archive someone tried to bury.

    BossThe Archon of the SeineArchon colossus
  4. A New York avenue as a canyon of towers, a blue sedan at the crosswalk and a QUARANTINE banner down the block, the operative in the foreground
    Chapter 04 · New York · 21 missions

    The Holdout

    Manhattan is a canyon they use as a funnel, and the Hudson is the exit. Behind the barricades the last resistance still has sentries, a working kitchen, and people who expect morning. It will not hold.

    BossGridlockMutant colossus
  5. A Hong Kong junction at night: dark towers under the stars, lit signs and shopfronts along the crossing, a few people on the far sidewalk and glowing pickups in the road
    Chapter 05 · Hong Kong · 21 missions

    Floors Still Held

    A city fighting floor by floor. Below the white sheet on a third-floor railing the street is lost; above it, someone is cooking rice. Streets, podiums, towers, and the harbor mast at the top.

    BossThe Podium QueenVoidborn colossus
  6. The white station concourse, a wide stair rising to a dark bulkhead door, the operative in black and red armor aiming up the hall
    Chapter 06 · The Station · 21 missions

    Hard Dock

    Hard dock on a dark station that is not empty. Deck by deck: power, the reactor, the core, and the burn that points it at the Moon.

    BossThe PilotMachine colossus
  7. The drop-craft on the gray regolith of the Moon under a black sky, a hazard-striped crate beside it and habitat domes on the horizon, the operative small at its base
    Chapter 07 · The Moon · 21 missions

    The Gate

    Starfall Field, Mare Tranquillitatis. One-sixth gravity, no air, no sound. The drop-craft is the only place to breathe; outside the airlock your tank is a timer, and something under the crater field is still running.

    BossThe Ark-HeraldArchon leviathan
  8. The red plain of Mars under a dust-orange sky: the Progenitor, a hunched green colossus with a spined back, striding past pyramid-shaped hills toward the tiny operative
    Chapter 08 · Mars · 21 missions

    The Source

    A third of your weight, a hundredth of your air, a butterscotch sky. An Orbit survey pad beside ruins that were here before anyone, and the end of the line you have been walking since Los Angeles.

    BossThe ProgenitorVoidborn leviathan

Missions are verbs

Eleven kinds of objective. Break into a terminal on a timing lock, find the key that opens a door, hold a radius while a wave comes every nine seconds, walk a survivor out, drive to the far side of the city.

Take any car

Walk up to anything parked or moving, press G, and go. Twenty-six ground vehicles fill the streets, from sedans and taxis to buses, trucks and police cars, all at real lengths.

Streets that move

Up to fourteen cars drive each Earth city on their own, waiting at signals and queueing in jams, and up to twenty-two civilians walk its sidewalks. The Station, the Moon and Mars have no traffic.

A pack that follows you

A weight-limited pack survives death and crosses chapters: twenty-two firearms from a sidearm to a rocket launcher, nine melee weapons, armor from street plate to a powered shell, medical kits, keys and salvage.

Off-world rules

The Moon is airless: outside a habitat your oxygen is a 240-second timer, and an airlock refills it. The Moon pulls at one-sixth gravity; Mars at 0.38 g under a dust-scattered sky.

Day, night, weather

A 45-minute day over every city, from dawn to a starlit night, and four weather states from clear to storm. First or third person on one key.

Story on cards

Every city greets you with an arrival line and every mission with a briefing card. A cleared chapter ends on a completion card and carries you to the next map.

The operatives

Fourteen roles and twenty-two operatives, each with a different body. A role is a trade, not a rank: base carry is 40 kg, an Engineer carries 54, a Heavy 58 and a Wizard 34, and every point of armor is paid for in speed or carry.

What is out there

Four species and five sizes, on two legs, four legs or in the air. At most twelve creatures are live in the world at once, so a colossus in the street is an event.

Species

Voidborn

The invaders. Hide, horn and armor. They hunt in packs.

Species

Archon

The angels. Pale bone-metal and gold bio-light. They did not come to save anyone.

Species

Mutant

Earth wildlife twisted by the Fall. Dark ragged hide, toxic-green light, one arm longer than the other.

Species

Machine

Autonomous security hardware still running its last orders. Steel and one red eye.

The bosses

The twenty-first mission of every chapter. Each has its own name, body and health bar. Bosses enrage at two-thirds and one-third health, call in their own kind, and stomp the ground every third swing.

Play the campaign

All eight chapters are in the beta. Sign in, download, and start in Los Angeles.

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