Global Agenda

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Global Agenda is a Third Person online Shooter slash MMORPG by the Georgia-based (no, not THAT Georgia, the US one) Hi-Rez studios.

Set in the future of a fictional universe, where Britain never lost control of its American colonies. After World War Three destroyed much of the Earth, Avatar, a benevolent AI assisted in the creation of The Commonwealth, to prevent a similar war from occurring ever again. Unfortunately, by the time the actual game runs around, the Commonwealth has become an Orwellian nightmare, ruling much of the world through superior technology and vast amounts of disposable Mecha-Mooks, with the few states free of its control left to rot in poverty under total embargo. You play a member of an admittedly fractious alliance of frontiersmen and dissidents trying to form a new state free from the corruption of the Commonwealth.

The game features visceral combat involving four character classes with clearly distinguished roles and unique playstyles, classic MMO-style open zones with quest hubs and mob hives, four player co-op and ten player horde defense PvE missions, ten-on-ten PvP brawls with standard gameplay modes as well as hex map warfare a-la Risk between player-controlled Agencies.

More game modes and content are being added to the game regularly through expansive patches.

You may find the game's home page here.

Featured classes

Assault

  • An Axe to Grind
  • BFG - All of the Assault's specialty weapons.
  • Drop the Hammer
  • Flaming Axe - Assault's unique melee weapon, the Radiant Axe. Its edge is MADE of fire. It cuts things by burning through them.
  • Foe-Tossing Charge - The "Super Smash" Limit Break.
  • Gatling Good
  • Implacable Man - A tank-spec Assault backed up by a competent beam medic and a robo packing a power station can turn into this. They just. Won't. Stop.
  • Magikarp Power - For the first few levels, Assaults are underwhelmingly weak. Once you get enough skill points to invest into their class-specific massive health bonuses and unlock weapons of different types, they become the most demanded class on the battlefield.
  • Mighty Glacier - As an exception to the "even base stats" rule (see Competitive Balance below), they have slightly slower movement speed and much larger bodyframes than other classes, but compensate for it.
  • More Dakka - Related to above Gatling Good. iMiniguns and Inferno Cannons fall into this trope.
  • Playing with Fire - Magmalance Recoilless Rifle, Inferno-X Cannon, Heatwrack Maser, Radiant Axe.
  • Spam Attack - Power Stim lets you do this with anything, most notably grenade launchers.
  • Splash Damage - Assaults specced into the more explosive style of the Destroyer tree are good at this.
  • Stone Wall - If you choose to build yourself entirely as a tank and ignore offensive skills, you get this.
    • A tank assault can be dangerous with their minigun or inferno cannon. They just do not have the punch to really kill a target on their own. Usually, the tank will end up weakening it where one of the damage dealing players will come in and mop it up. Tanks have few kills but LOTS of assists.

Medic

  • Agony Beam - The Pain Gun.
  • Combat Medic
  • Deadly Doctor - One of their skills is even called Death Medic.
  • Healing Shiv - Beam Heal guns and Nanite guns. Not to be confused with their melee Weapon of Choice which does exactly what a shiv is supposed to do.
  • Jack of All Stats - Many consider Medics to be this, due to how well-rounded their arsenal of poisons and healing devices is and they don't really have to sacrifice their healing ability for offense.
  • Life Drain - The Life Stealer melee weapon, and the Soul Stealer grenade.
  • The Medic
  • Playing with Syringes - Medics get an oversized combat knife with a built-in syringe with blades tacked onto it as their melee weapon. It's aptly called the "Poison Injector". Then there's a pimped-out version dubbed the Life Stealer, which looks like a portable steam-powered blood pump.
  • Poisoned Weapons

Recon

Robotics

  • Artificial Limbs - The Repair Arm, an additional third arm. It's even used as an actual limb in various animations, like hanging from a ledge or doing a handstand.
  • Attack Drone
  • Deployable Cover - Featured as both a common ability and a Limit Break.
  • Enemy-Detecting Radar - deployable Sensor.
  • The Engineer - of the combat variety, outfit with the most advanced weaponry and frontline equipment in the game's world.
  • Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me - Mace'n'Shield in 1.3. Of note, any melee weapon can be used to block other melee attacks and doing so reflects the damage to the attacker. Mace'n'Shield also doubles it.
  • Mecha-Mooks - Drones and turrets all qualify. In AvA there is also an item that deploys a squad of androids, typically given out to Robotics as they are only ones who can repair them.
  • The Turret Master - The only class that can deploy turrets and keep them repaired.
Tropes used in Global Agenda include:
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Averted. The Commonwealth only started going off-kilter when Avatar was booted out and is actually rather Luddite.
  • Airborne Aircraft Carrier - The CNS Trafalgar, on which agents can play a Scramble game type, carries a large complement of fighters.
  • Allegedly Free Game - Since going free to play in April 2011. A free player doesn't get loot drops from missions; instead he can only purchase loot using tokens. Buying Elite Agent status will give you loot drops from missions you win as well as doubling your XP, credits, and tokens.
  • Beehive Barrier - Anything that is a Deflector Shield usually comes in this flavor. The Assault's class specific personal shields are an exception.
  • Body Armor as Hit Points - The 'n' type armor mods explicitly do this by increasing players' health by a small amount.
  • Boss Banter - It can be hard to hear them over the chaos of the battle and its accompanying music, but almost all of the bosses and important enemies are quite chatty - even the Elite Assassins give away their presence by being unable to keep their mouths shut. "Waaaiiit for it..."
  • Boss in Mook Clothing - Guardians of all varieties. Except for the one case as a low level dungeon boss, it shows up as a special mook in all Player Versus Environment missions, especially raids. They have a large amount of health, have a ranged attack that at long ranges has a shotgun like effect of splattering an area with damage and being almost a death beam in shorter ranges. A second attack shoots a volley of three, high damage missiles that will kill anything under an assault in one barrage, shuts down turrets like an EMP and does this TWICE in succession. Add that they spawn far away, take forever to fly in close, and when they do they like to dodge behind obstructions to pop out, launch a volley of attacks and go behind cover again.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory - Elite Agent status permanently doubles your XP, credits, and tokens. Boosters give you 2,000 free tokens for every day the booster is active and further double your XP, credits, and tokens.
  • The British Empire - In the backstory, the American colonies never seceded from the British. Now, if only they weren't destroyed to make way for an Oceania-style oppressive regime.
  • Capture the Flag - Demolitions PvP game mode, with an interesting twist. The flag is a hundred ton, heavily armored and armed robot that you have to escort to the enemy base airship to blow it up.
  • Character Customization - Naturally. You get to pick a set of "skills" (which work much like talents in World of Warcraft) and can mod your weapons and armor to have the particular stats you are interested in, be they damage, range, power consumption or whatever else.
    • Prior to 1.3, instead of a weapon rarity and mod system you could distribute 15 device points (levels, basically) among all your 5 devices - excluding the jetpack, morale boost and melee weapon, which came free of charge.
  • Character Level
  • Cherry Tapping - Deploying the Deconstructor, a Recon device that applies a small amount of damage every half second or so, can actually be a very valid method of dealing damage to a boss when timed correctly.
  • Civil Warcraft - The entire idea of AvA hex warfare. Apparently La Resistance's idea of fighting The Empire is slaughtering each another over various factories and facilities.
  • Competitive Balance - Every character has exactly the same base statistics, regardless of class, which increase only through skills (talents) rather than simply through leveling up. All weapons have averaged out damage-per-second values, with differences between them being purely in style and function.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard - What, you think that the most common mook is an exemplary stormtrooper? Haha, good luck. In addition to improbable accuracy, a lot of common mechanics, like weapon damage faloff at long ranges, do not apply to mobs. The AI is simple enough to be exploited mercilessly, but if you slip up for even a second you won't be shown any mercy either. See tropes above for shining examples of how this game can make your life miserable.
  • Cool Airship - In Demolitions, both teams have to blow up each another's.
    • CNS Trafalgar.
    • There's also that fancy dropship that you begin majority of both PvP and PvE missions in.
  • Crapsack World - There is a lot that makes the world of Global Agenda a nightmarish place to live. First, there is a looming threat of a possible, horrible virus outbreak that affects the nervous system that started in developing countries. The United Nations is disbanded, the world a segregation of political super powers and mega corporations that are trying to beat one another to the remaining few bits of Earth's energy resources seeing as most of the world's oil is used up. There was a third world war that killed off over half the globe's populations, left many areas desolate, radioactive ruins that no human can settle in. This of course had a wonderful effect on the Earth's climate, melting much of the polar ice and reducing the available land mass a great deal, some countries are completely submerged with Australia now being just a large island instead of a continent. What remains tends to be landscapes ravaged by war or are deserts with little vegetation. A power hungry AI created The Empire and banned the development of advanced robotics to not disturb its monopoly on power. The parts of the world not under The Empire or a corporation's control are akin to Fallout as bands of tribes fight one another for what resources there are. The dome, the player's home, is story wise to be besieged by The Empire and a hive minded collection of robots intent on taking all technology through lethal force to keep expanding outward.
  • Critical Existence Failure
  • Cybernetics Eat Your Soul - The official launch trailer pokes fun at this. The characters themselves don't seem any more or less human.

They always warned us: if we're not careful, our technology will outrun our humanity... The way I see it... (Robotics' repair arm raises over the character's shoulder) it's finally getting interesting.

  • Cyborg - All the agents.
  • Deflector Shield - All over the place.
  • Do Well, But Not Perfect: The better you do, the worse your teammates will be in future matches due the matchmaker's balancing algorithm.
  • The Commonwealth!
  • Escort Mission - Payload and Demolitions game modes, see above.
    • And now the Dome Defense Raids, where you have to protect Dalton Bancroft.
  • Every Bullet Is a Tracer - It's never really explained if the weapons in the game are ballistic or energy-based, but even the clearly conventional nailgun projectiles on Vandal robots are highly visible.
  • Evil Brit: The Commonwealth being entirely British may have been Retcon'd, but that still doesn't mean they don't talk like this.
  • Exponential Potential - You start the game with a lousy baseline SMG/Assault Rifle, a class-specific device and a few offhand gadgets. By the time you reach level 30 you'll have enough stuff to support about a dozen playstyles for each class. And they keep adding more.
  • Expy - In terms of gameplay, the classes are like this towards Team Fortress 2 classes.
    • Assault is either Heavy, Demoman or Soldier, depending on how you spec.
    • Medic is... duh. What really drives the point home is the pretty healing beam. Poison spec medics also draw allusions to Pyro, as both are meant to harass and soften enemies up for their allies through damage-over-time effects, and both are highly popular due to weapons that completely eliminate the need for aiming.
    • Recon is Scout mixed with Spy and Sniper.
    • Robotics is EVERYTHING, with everything the Robotic's class get, they can more or less fill any requirement. Most evident is how well they can be played the same as a Spy, Demoman or Scout.
  • Flunky Boss: While all of the Super Prototype bosses count, Thinktank gets extra points for specializing in this, even calling in mini-bosses from behind her Force Field.
  • Form-Fitting Wardrobe - Female armors, despite being amazingly practical otherwise (although female Assaults, of all people, have some Combat Stilettos).
  • Gameplay-Guided Amnesia - You begin the game as a freshly cloned Commonwealth Super Soldier midway through being programmed when the La Résistance frees you.
  • Hit Scan - All full-auto weapons work this way.
  • Informed Britishness
  • Insane Troll Logic - City Chat in Dome City. Remind you of anything? Barrens chat.
    • Almost always having to do with the Jungle Zone and bacon.
  • La Résistance - Your character is part of one.
  • Limit Break - Morale Boosts. Every class gets a powerful 10-second buff that provides massive benefits to their entire team. This buff can only be activated when the Morale gauge fills up, which happens after taking, dealing or healing enough damage actively participating in combat for a lengthy amount of time. Apt usage may turn any battle around.
  • Mecha-Mooks
  • Meganekko - The Think Tank boss.
  • Mini-Mecha - The Vandal robot, available in several modifications for AvA matches, for Robotics to use as their Limit Break and as the central objective of Demolitions game mode.
  • No OSHA Compliance - It's not uncommon to see corridors that double as firing ranges, with warning signs.
  • No Plot, No Problem - The game started out as this, but has been remedied with rich backstory.
  • No Scope - The game actively encourages you to avoid this playstyle.
    • The standard-issue SMG that everyone gets used to have a massive 30% damage bonus when scoped. It has since been replaced with a less powerful 30% range bonus.
    • Sniper rifles require you to wait a few seconds before firing after scoping and can't be fired without the scope at all.
  • Respawn Point - One is always static, the other is a Respawn Beacon that you can move anywhere on the map to gain tactical advantage.
  • Screw You, Elves - No Elves is the game's motto. Observe.
  • Short-Range Shotgun - Played straight. Shotguns actually used to have decent stopping power before, represented by knockback on target, but a patch reduced it to be barely noticeable.
  • Socketed Equipment - All equipment (armor, weapons, offhands) can be given additional stats using mods.
  • Sticky Bomb - Recon's Sticky Poison Mines and Venom Bomb, Assault's AfterShock Grenade Launcher.
  • Super Soldier - Lore states that Super Agents, such as the ones you play and the Elite Mooks in Player Versus Environment missions are the results of the Commonwealth Playing with Syringes to make a smarter, faster, and stronger spy. Obviously, your characters are the ones who's Brainwashing wasn't completed properly.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill - Tac-Nukes are available for use in AVA combat, guaranteed to sterilize at least half the map. You can bring more than one.
    • Recons get a smaller version as a morale boost. It doesn't instantly kill players most of the time, but it does have a huge blast area, instantly destroys most mechanicals, and has a very long stun against anything that doesn't automatically die to it.
  • Tron Lines: Oh so very much.
  • Urban Warfare - Any of the missions taking place in Commonwealth Prime qualify.
    • The escape mission at the start of the game gets bonus points for taking place on the city streets themselves.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential - You can slaughter innocent workers on many levels. There is no reward, but most players don't think twice at all before pulling the trigger.
    • It's just a safety mechanism, really. When everything you encounter is capable of ending you within a single second, you don't want to take chances.
      • Most times, people do not even know of their presence! With rooms full of Ballistas, sentinels and elites, that lowly worker just sitting at the console is just collateral damage in the ensuing frag storm that comes about.
    • That, or they are just too concentrated on killing anything that moves, makes odd sounds or looks at them funny.
    • There is a small subversion with the maintenance droids. They look like hovering golf balls with mechanical pincers. All they do is float around, and spout out things such as "Please don't shoot me" or "The commonwealth is your friend!" Most probably do not know of how insidious those flying golf balls are until they encounter a room with several of them and elite mooks or fight the level's boss. The bloody things heal EVERYTHING, including one another. After sometime, everyone learns to kill them on sight unless they want to have the various mobs run away to get healed up and back into the fight at full health.
  • Zerg Rush - On Max Security, Ultra Max Security, and raids (Sonoran Raid and Dome Defense Raid). For Max, it's waves of Minion Androids and Alarm Responders (football team) if you're not careful. On Ultra Max, it's Balistas and Sentinels, and even doubly so for the Alarm Responders. On raids, it's wave upon wave upon wave of androids, ants, spiders, and guardians. Then, at the very end, comes That One Boss.
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