Defiance (PC, X360, PS3) (2013-2021)
Defiance 2050 (PC, Xbox One, PS4) (2018-2021)
Developer: Trion Worlds

Review by Faididi and Co.

Ara Shondu would make a fine Governor of California

Story: Average

Trion Worlds' Defiance is an unusual cross-media project, consisting of an online game and a television series on SyFy. Life on Earth grows even crazier when space aliens collectively known as the Votans arrive, settling on the planet and intermingling with humankind. By the year of 2050 in this volatile future, one shouldn't be surprised to see conflict and friendship blossoming among the many factions.

The story initially draws comparisons to movies and shows like Alien Nation, Alive in Joburg, and District 9. In this game, however, don't expect any deeply moving drama or profound insights into the nuances of multi-species society. The simple plot here is little more than a backdrop for Player characters running around shooting bad guys in the face and teabagging each other, and the unspectacular writing leaves the cutscenes being unmemorable at best and awkward at worst. The tie-in to the television series is quite limited, due to differences in not merely production demands but the settings. The game's events occur earlier within California's Marin and San Francisco Counties, while the show's events occur later at St. Louis, Missouri. Joshua Nolan and Irisa appear in only a small number of optional missions, and the Players' collective actions in the game have a negligible influence on the show.

Gameplay: Average

Resembling a simpler, sci-fi take on Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto Online, Defiance is an open-world MMO action adventure with a greater focus on cooperative shooting challenges than on driving thrills. (After its initial release, it has also become free-to-play.) Your character and those of other Players are a group of scavenger-mercenary agents working with the friendly Alliance to battle against renegades and other bad guys across the war-scorched, partially exo-terraformed landscape. While the main story missions can be finished alone, the online aspect allows friends to group up and take down enemies more easily.

The heroes' open-ended development is one of the best parts of Defiance, and the innate abilities are wonderfully flexible. Your character can use one of 4 different special powers, which include gaining a massive offensive boost, moving super-fast, becoming invisible, and deploying elaborate decoys. Your character can also equip up to 9 passive skills, like automatically regenerating stamina, various damage bonuses, and nifty reloading tricks. More abilities can be obtained as your character gains in experience level, and any acquired powers and skills may be freely swapped at any time, encouraging Players to experiment and discover their own ideal combinations.

Your character has plenty of choices in terms of hard equipment, too. The weapons cover every type, including pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles, light machineguns, grenade launchers, rocket launchers, laser blasters, and more. The shield units come in many varieties as well, some providing a balanced defense, some opting for thicker energy shields over extended stamina, and some offering special elemental protection. The firearms and the shield units have randomly determined stats, in the style of Gearbox's Borderlands, but Defiance features a substantial weaponry upgrade system in addition. The guns can gain enhanced core attributes, and they can be further modified by attachments like special scopes and advanced grips.

Of course, this game is nowhere as expansive as Grand Theft Auto Online, and that shows in the repetitive level and enemy designs. The missions often involve fighting past a bunch of bad guys to reach four or five key objects (whether they're control panels to activate, hostages to free, bombs to defuse, and so forth), turning the side tasks boring fast. Worse still, the regular enemies suck up bizarre amounts of damage even if your character wields level-appropriate guns, to the point where they can take multiple sniper rifle shots to the head before keeling over. Besides making the combat look weird, it drags out the missions to weary lengths.

Controls: Excellent

The controls are responsive and intuitive, and the menus are neatly organized. Walking, running, crouching, jumping, driving, attacking, and using the special powers are all easy to do. Although the single-seat design of the vehicles prevent friends from riding along as passengers, every hero has permanent vehicles that may be freely summoned. As for your character's cosmetic choices, the appearance can be altered with real-money options, but the voice may be changed with zero cost.

Graphics: Above Average

The game looks all right. Aside from the heroes' somewhat stiff running animations, the characters are rendered well, and the areas mostly resemble arid valleys filled with oddly colored flora. (The surviving iconic landmarks are few, not being seen until the later chapters. Beware of the Sutro Bath ruins.) The best part about the graphics is its smoothness, because dozens of Players can drive back and forth across the truly open-world environment, fighting gigantic minibosses and other enemies with relatively few performance issues.

Audio: Above Average

The game sounds decent, too. The gunfire, explosions, vehicle noises, and rest of the sound effects are loud and plentiful. The music helps set the mood quickly, and the combat tunes even differ depending on the type of enemies being engaged. Among the more memorable pieces are the meditative background music during the character creation mode and the elite guard's blood-pumping theme in the later parts of the game. Despite the mediocre writing and the NPC allies' repetitive combat phrases, the acting itself is fine. The game-exclusive characters all sound better than Joshua does (lol), and the friendly artificial intelligence who serves as your character's partner and as the game system voice is exceptionally performed.

Overall: Average

As an online game, Defiance needs much more mission variety and a lot fewer tank-like bad guys. Its connection to the TV series is nowhere as deep as advertised, either. Still, this MMO action adventure isn't without its charms. The awesome ability upgrade system and the extensive choice of weaponry provide plenty of ways for your character to grow, and the smooth controls and solid graphics make participating in the open-world mayhem with several other Players a blast. Those turned off by the lengthy logging-in times and the rampant ganking in Grand Theft Auto Online will likely enjoy Defiance.

Rerelease: Poor

Defiance 2050 is a puzzling rerelease of the original Defiance, because it makes ill-conceived changes that ruin the game's strengths while exacerbating old flaws. It stands completely separately from the earlier version, requiring its own installation files and not allowing any transfer of gameplay progress or cosmetic options.

The problems begin with the grossly simplified ability and inventory systems. Defiance 2050 drops their freeform style for an inflexible class-based style. Although your character may earn access to different classes and then freely switch among them, the special powers and the passive skills are strictly predetermined for every class. The stims and the spikes (the self-support and the team-support items) are reworked into the special powers for these classes, so they can't be mixed as desired anymore. Not helping is the loss of a few types of firearms. The hand grenades are now infinite but demand a lengthy waiting period after every throw to magically replenish themselves. This setup no longer allows your character to patiently stock up on bombs and then unleash the whole mass of them at once.

The missions remain virtually identical, except their new minimum level requirements force the heroes to slog through the tedious side tasks before they may proceed with the main story missions. The enemies continue to suck up damage to eye-rolling extents, and, unbelievably, several of the optional missions involving Joshua and Irisa are removed. (Funcom's own rerelease, Secret World Legends, also introduces minimum level requirements for its missions. However, that game has challenges that are actually interesting.)

As far as the graphics are concerned, don't expect any meaningful improvement. The slightly sharper textures might help you better spot the stubble on Von Bach's chin, and the horizon lighting may be a bit more radiant, but the visuals hardly differ from before, including the heroes' stiff running animations and the characters' mouths not moving outside the cutscenes.

Not only does Defiance 2050 make no effort to fix past shortcomings, but it severely cripples the ability and inventory systems, turns the boring side tasks into a mandatory chore, and further reduces the connections to the TV series. There is no reason to leave the original Defiance for this needlessly mutilated rerelease.

Note: Defiance and Defiance 2050 has been shut down on April 29th, 2021. (The X360 version has been shut down earlier in 2020. The TV series has ended in 2015.)