XDefiant Closed Beta: First Impressions

ign.com:

Ubisoft’s XDefiant is an upcoming free-to-play first person arena shooter that, if I’m being honest, I didn’t originally feel interested in at all. I had no real connection to any of the factions from different Ubisoft games showcased in XDefiant, and the gameplay didn’t capture my interest. However, I got to play for about an hour in a closed preview event and I was surprised to find that I was wanting to get more playtime in after the servers closed down.

An hour isn’t really a lot of time to give a full preview in any game, so this is just a first impressions piece I wanted to share with you all. I had actually played XDefiant in 2021 with one of Ubisoft’s extremely NDA-ed closed tests, and this was a huge change up from that iteration. It’s a great sign to see that Ubisoft has taken feedback seriously and made some major changes.

In my opinion, XDefiant really didn’t have a sense of identity when the first closed test opened. I couldn’t figure out what the game was trying to do or how the game was supposed to feel. There was no real guidance on how to play the game or who the characters were. But loading into XDefiant now, there’s more structure to it.

Let’s start with Factions. There’s no story or narrative on why these agents from each Faction are in XDefiant. In speaking with Safy Saada, Creative Director, I was told that there’s no underlying story or reasoning for these characters being in XDefiant. They were merely inspirations.

Each Faction is really just like selecting a class with different Abilities and Ultras (ultimates). There were five Factions available in this closed beta and I detailed their abilities and class-specific traits below:

Each Faction has their own traits and abilities to make them stand out