Firefall

Firefall is First-Person Shooter made by Red 5 studios. Features jetpacks, The End of the World as We Know It, aliens that came from a sentient radiation storm, and cartoony Cel Shading.

The main premise of the story is that after a tragic cataclysm, the titular "Firefall", the world shatters, continents are rearranged, and countries are broken and fragmented. To top it all off a giant spaceship explodes and crashes on earth, unleashing a giant storm called The Melding which starts to cover the Earth leaving only New Eden, a piece of land in Brazil that survives only because it is in the middle of the storm. (At the front page of the website their is mention of repulsor technology that pushes back The Melding but it hasn't shown up in leaked lore yet.)

From this storm rises a new species called themselves the Chosen. They seek to eradicate the human race and eventually conquer the world.

The game is touted to be in an open persistent world in which "hundreds" of players can play together and try to defend themselves from the Melding.

The main website for the game can be found here. Signing up for Forums is equal to signing up for Beta.

Not to be confused with the rock band from the 1970s. Or the Firefall they used to do in Yosemite National Park where they dumped burning logs into the valley for the spectators.


 * After the End: After both of them. Surprisingly, humanity hasn't lost its technology; they've just lost population. A lot of it. In fact humanity has moved on and created even better tech.
 * Applied Phlebotinum: Crystite, a substance first brought to earth by the Firefall event. It's essentially used for super-power generators, and these days everything runs off it. It also is a form of currency. New lore indicates that actual pure crystite is rare. Most crystite is flawed in some way and mixed with other elements.
 * Awesome Backpack: Everybody gets a backpack and jet boots/packs (Except for the engineer who has the pack in their left arm.) The backpack holds class specific abilities (Such as Crater for Assault or Healing Wave for Medic)
 * The Battlestar: The Arclight, the largest spaceship built by man. Technically meant for 'research and colony aid,' its primary purpose was as a military ship to keep control of the faraway Alpha Prime colony and its vital crystite deposits. First ship to use arcfolding technology. Unfortunately, it exploded and crashed when humanity attempted their first arcfolding launch. The resulting crash created a rift to an alternate dimension which allowed the Melding to reach earth.
 * BFG: The Plasma Cannon for the Assault and the Minigun for the Dreadnaught count. The Chosen also carry Cannons and Miniguns.
 * Cel Shading: Reminisent of Borderlands.
 * Though they were developed separately. The devs have said that they were already leaning towards cell shading even before Borderlands came out. One version of the story even has a collective groan from everyone in the studio as the new design for Borderlands was shown.
 * Cleavage Window: The female model of Assault Armor is a bit, um, exposed.
 * Colony Drop: The titular Firefall. Originally one massive asteroid, it shattered for unknown reasons into a swarm of smaller ones. As a result, humanity was not wiped out, just severely fucked up. It also deposited the first crystite samples, though those weren't discovered until some time after.
 * The crash of the Arclight also counts as this. The biggest space ship ever built by man lands on Brazil and proceeds to wipe out an entire city.
 * Demonic Spiders: Chosen Assaults. They're not only extremely tough, but their assault rifles have 100% accuracy and fire in three-shot bursts every two or three seconds. The only way to actually deal with them without losing half your health is to very, very carefully pick at them from long-distance, or make sure they're distracted by the local fauna before opening fire.
 * Drop the Hammer: The "Scanhammer" is a giant sledgehammer that players can slam onto the ground to find resources and minerals. It can also be used as a melee weapon in a pinch. Lampshaded by the game in the intro quest "Drop the Hammer" which introduces the scanhammer.
 * Earth Is a Battlefield:The entire planet is covered with an energy storm and the places that are free of the Melding are under attack by Chosen.
 * The End of the World as We Know It: Twice. First through a massive asteroid swarm that pummels the Earth, and then from a bizarre energy storm that spawns a new race and mutates already existing ones. Poor Earth just can't catch a break.
 * Gatling Good: The Dreadnaught has a giant Minigun.
 * Glass Cannon: Recon classes have ludicrously high damage, but are also the most fragile of all the Battleframes.
 * Hell Is That Noise: The Chosen have a weird Voice of the Legion, and their voices don't decrease in volume with distance. Therefore, as soon as you hear "The dawn of the Chosen is near..." you get the hell out of wherever you are.
 * Item Crafting: A heavy part of the game is gathering resources from thumping and then using them to craft your gear.
 * Mega Corp: The massive Omnidyne Corporation.
 * Microtransactions: Firefall is getting some attention (for example, the Extra Credits team) for its commitment to the free to play model and using strictly microtransactions to fund the game. According to Extra Credits, this game is the first Triple-A quality game to be this committed to this model.
 * One Nation Under Copyright: Sort of. Omnidyne controls the technology, controls most of the crystite, and, therefore, controls the governments. This is hinted not to be a bad thing; Omnidyne influence was implied to be the only thing stopping the various superpowers from going at each other's throats. Again. At least, until the Melding. And even then they retain most of their power as seen in the "Dreadnaught" trailer.
 * Powered Armor: Battleframes. Not much is known about them, other than the fact that most of them can fly somehow.
 * Is now known to be powered by Crystite Reactors.
 * Ranged Emergency Weapon: Each class has a remarkably useful 40-round-clip assault rifle/SMG for when you either want to conserve ammo or need more sustained fire. The clips are depletable, but you have unlimited reloads.
 * They can be switched out later for two other secondaries, the grenade launcher and the shotgun. They don't count as an emergency weapon though and are better described as "Secondary Primary Weapons"
 * Scenery Porn: Surprisingly for an After the End work, there's quite a lot of greenery and nice views around.
 * Spider Tank: More like Spider Battleships, but still. The Chosen war machines shown so far tend to be on the order or massive, multi-legged, and heavily armed. The small bits that we have seen. They also have a lot of Spiky Doom bits and are darker to contrast the lighter and more shiny parts of the Accord.
 * Tripod Terror: Titans. Word of God states that they're not controlled by the Chosen but usually show up when they invade cities anyways. You know. To hammer home the point that Shit just got worse.
 * Voice with an Internet Connection: Aero definitely counts as this.