Summary
- Concord's shutdown less than two weeks after launch was unprecedented in the gaming industry.
- The Galactic Guide in Concord was praised for its engaging lore and depth of the universe.
- The fate of Concord's Galactic Guide is sealed with the shutdown of the game, leaving it inaccessible.
Concord was an unprecedented failure for PlayStation. It sounds incredibly harsh, but never before has a first-party live-service game been shut down less than two weeks after its launch. While some may argue that the writing was on the wall for Concord the moment its reveal trailer dropped, that doesn't make its shutdown any less tragic for the hardworking developers, some of whom apparently spent around eight years working on the game.
A heavy criticism of Concord was that it felt too generic in terms of character design, gameplay, and art style, but that doesn't mean that its developers didn't try to instill as much passion as possible into the project. This passion led to a few diamonds scattered among the rubble in Concord, and the game's Galactic Guide was certainly one of those, delivering pages upon pages of engaging, intricate lore that gave Concord's universe a surprising amount of depth. But the Galactic Guide has gone down with the rest of the ship, and its disappointing fate is probably sealed.
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Concord's Galactic Guide Has Left a Tragic Legacy
Concord's Galactic Guide Was Packed With Interesting Lore Tidbits
Available via Concord's main menu, the Galactic Guide presented players with an overhead map of the titular Concord galaxy. Players could freely navigate their cursor through the galaxy, highlighting planets, space lanes, and other important points of interest. Each and every planet in the Galactic Guide had a page of text explaining key parts of its lore, such as its background and role in the galaxy's economy. As players continued to play on the planet's maps, they'd unlock more pages of lore in the Galactic Guide, and the same was true for the game's playable Freegunners, who would appear near their home planets on the map.
Though it could be overwhelming at first, Concord's Galactic Guide was packed to the brim with genuinely interesting lore tidbits. Players could learn about the Tempest disaster, a space storm that appeared out of nowhere decades ago and tore the galaxy in two, or the crew of the Implacable, the first Freegunner ship that blazed a mighty trail, or the tyrannical Guild, a merchant organization that rules the galaxy through coercion and control.
After a while, these puzzle pieces would come together to form a complete picture of Concord's story, and it was a surprisingly exciting one. For fans of Wild West-inspired Sci-Fi franchises like Firefly, Concord's Freegunners vs. The Guild story felt familiar but fresh. There were also plenty of intriguing morsels for fans of Hard Sci-Fi, like Dune and Star Trek, such as the planet of Silo which The Guild threw an asteroid into and proceeded to build a Spire that extends from the planet's surface to space, acting as an ominous reminder to the rest of the galaxy of its power.
Concord's Galactic Guide Is Probably Gone Forever
It was clear that a lot of thought and effort went into creating Concord's lore, but with so much of it being hidden away in the Galactic Guide, many players would have missed it completely. And with Concord's servers having been shut down, there's now no way to access the Galactic Guide. Theoretically, the Galactic Guide could return if Concord ever reemerged, but the likelihood of that happening anytime soon isn't too high, with the game's infamy simply being too high to risk another failed launch.
Concord
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 64 /100 Critics Rec: 23%
- Released
- August 23, 2024
- ESRB
- t
- Developer(s)
- Firewalk Studios
- Publisher(s)
- Sony Interactive Entertainment
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
- Multiplayer
- Online Co-Op, Online Multiplayer
