In our travels of the E3 2009 show floor we had a chance to sit down with Fallen Earth LLC’s upcoming apocalypse based MMO Fallen Earth. Our readers will remember that we recently did a Q&A with their product manager, Jessica Orr, and we were really looking foreword to checking out the game. Thankfully, we got our wish.
Fallen Earth is set in a post apocalyptic world using the real life area surrounding the Grand Canyon with huge surrounding areas to explore. (cont)
At launch you will only be able to explore a small fraction of the huge landscape but that area in itself is huge and can take several hours to walk from end to end. At its core Fallen Earth is an ambitious MMO which seems to rely heavily on its faction based system and crafting.
Fallen Earth starts you out in a character creation mode with tons of customizing options and no skill points at the beginning. As you move through the tutorial you learn how to loot, shoot, and other things needed to take off into the wasteland. Once the tutorial ends you are treated to a video setting up the story of your character being a clone of someone who recently died and sent out to find the alpha clones by a mysterious woman.
The game is very faction based as you have different factions to align yourself with and can even mix and match your factions. Who you choose to align yourself with can determine if one faction loves you or another faction really hates you. Each faction has a specific role like those following anarchy or simple gypsy’s that roam the desert.
Fallen Earth is a classless system where you don’t need to fall under a certain role. Sure you can go out and farm nodes or scavenger items for a few hours and tat will yield great success. Feel like going out and just exploring where that telephone wire leads? You may just find yourself winding up in a science bunker or in a small town used as a quest hub. There is literally hours and hours of exploring to do if you want to stray off the story path.
Crafting is a huge part of Fallen Earth and in my opinion offers the uniqueness that will set it apart from other MMO’s. Everything in the game is crafted from mounts to weapons and can be done so even while questing. Want to build a major item but don’t want to sit and wait for it to finish? Oh you can do that as well as log off the game and the item will still progress. With such a large amount of things that needs to be crafted by the player this will really help in keeping the flow going.
Levels in Fallen Earth are earned by doing the tried and true questing or killing things as you explore. You have a certain amount of skill points you gain as you progress and can put them in tons of categories. If you want to be a better shot you better put some points in that skill or your shots may suffer a bit. From our first look at the game this system could be a bit confusing to new players as there are a lot of options for your skill sets, bordering on overload.
In the end I was pleased by the progress of the game and am very glad to hear that it is doing well in its closed beta. When asked for a release date the developers told us that no official date has been set but may be announced soon. Pricing will also fall in line with other MMO’s but no set pricing plan has been announced yet. They are currently accepting applications for the closed beta at their website and we would like to once again thank the fine folks behind the game for showing it off to us.
