With the blurb “Gear up, get in, and get out”, Exoborne elegantly sets out its stall as an extraction shooter. But they left out the most important part: “Get blown around by a massive tornado”. While Exoborne bears all the features you’d expect from the likes of Escape from Tarkov and Call of Duty: Warzone’s DMZ, the most exciting part of a presentation I saw at Play Days was when developer Sharkmob talked about the weather.
Exoborne’s setting is not postapocalyptic, but rather midapocalyptic, with the world falling apart all around you – the result of mankind’s meddling with the climate. Project Rebirth’s attempts to provide limitless clean energy have backfired somewhat, and now Mother Nature is taking her revenge. Extraction shooters live or die on emergent gameplay, and there’s nothing as emergent as a twister, flood or tsunami.
The weather during a session of Exoborne can change from clement to hellscape in minutes – all of which has profound effects on gameplay, according to Sharkmob. A 10-minute walkthrough video based on a pre-Alpha build of the game began with a short cutscene where a group of teammates known as The Reborn assemble in a dropship and prepare to jump. The character models are based on whatever skins and loadouts each player has selected, so this is a nice chance to show off your flair before the action starts.
The players then skydived from the dropship, parachuting in to the map below. Action kicked off immediately, as this ar.
