FBC: Firebreak Keeps a Vital Remedy Tradition Alive

Remedy games usually have a very distinct tone, one that's quite difficult to describe in words. Generally speaking, they lean into supernatural and psychological horror, presenting players with intimidating enemy designs and spooky imagery. Remedy games also have plenty of action, giving players the opportunity to face these terrifying threats head-on. FBC: Firebreak follows these conventions.

But that's just scratching the surface of Remedy's unique vibe. One core component that makes something quintessentially Remedy is absurdism, and more specifically, finding humor in the bizarrely ordinary. FBC: Firebreak keeps this tradition alive and well also.

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By Cameron Swan

FBC: Firebreak Keeps Remedy's Humor Alive, For Better and For Worse

How FBC: Firebreak Blends Horror and Humor

FBC: Firebreak carries forward most of Control's enemy design, which gives the game a wealth of terrifying adversaries to throw at unsuspecting players. Once FBC personnel, these enemies have been corrupted by the Hiss, turning them into zombie-like creatures with powerful paranatural abilities. These Hiss enemies are very unsettling in terms of both visual design and gameplay behavior, firmly cementing FBC: Firebreak's horror tone from the outset.

But much like the Remedy games that came before it, FBC: Firebreak doesn't focus on horror for its entire runtime. Following in the footsteps of Control and Alan Wake, Firebreak has plenty of brief moments of absurd humor. It'll often take something otherwise ordinary and mundane, and evoke humor by injecting it with otherworldly properties.

The perfect example of this can be found in FBC: Firebreak's "Paper Chase" mission, where players are tasked with destroying thousands of sticky notes that have covered the walls and floors of the Oldest House's Executive Sector. This mundane task quickly turns to absurd, as the sticky notes littering the ground appear to be alive. This subtle gag is taken to the next level during Paper Chase's second and third acts, when players encounter the new Shuffler enemy type.

These enemies are humanoid creatures that are covered head-to-toe in sticky notes. Shufflers are the perfect encapsulation of Remedy's horror-humor dichotomy, with their visual design and movement animations being simultaneously amusing and unsettling.

Remedy's Sense of Humor Doesn't Always Work in FBC: Firebreak

In Remedy's previous single-player, story-driven titles like Alan Wake and Control, these bursts of bizarre humor tend to be fleeting. Players usually see the gag, it alleviates the tension briefly, and they move on to the next story beat without lingering on it for too long.

This approach doesn't really work in a multiplayer game like FBC: Firebreak. In Firebreak, players are given five unique Jobs to handle, each one being split into three acts that need to be completed sequentially. An average round of one of FBC: Firebreak's Jobs usually takes 15–30 minutes, depending on difficulty level and team skill.

To get their money's worth, players are expected to complete each of FBC: Firebreak's missions multiple times. Naturally, this repetition doesn't go hand-in-hand with Remedy's unique brand of humor that relies heavily on taking players by surprise. The sticky-note-covered Shufflers are funny and weird the first time players see them, but by the fifth or sixth encounter, they've lost the element that made them special.

This is far from FBC: Firebreak's biggest issue, but it does serve as an interesting comparison point between Remedy's single-player formula and its new multiplayer approach.

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