Day 1 also, in the best interests of the wildly changing landscape, had to do away with allowing a prone position, which is always ideal for sniping, but awkward in implementation when you could be humped over a hill one moment and bent over backwards the next at the bottom of a trench. They also didn’t allow Jet Brody to ‘hug’ up against cover. Very little is stationary on a Fracture battlefield, with crates, barrels, and boulders getting tossed around with trampoline-like enthusiasm, not to discount the screen-shaking explosions, dust, and debris scattering every which way. And while there’s little “verticality” to worry about (an up and coming buzzword in action-shooter gameplay), having to draw a bead on an enemy that’s rarely on a level plane with you can be challenge enough.
Not only is Terrain Deformation required to manage the battlefield, it also serves as a puzzle-solving tool once the bullets stop flying. Jet Brody doesn’t make a habit of looking around enemy structures for door keys, though he can push gates open with the Entrencher. He may not have a person on the inside opening gates for him to progress through, but he might lower the terrain to uncover a hidden tunnel or weak point in the infrastructure. Or a set of stairs may be blasted completely away, but reaching the second story of a building is doable with Spike Grenades (which lifts a pillar of earth into the sky that can be ridden to upper levels). It is a world built around and for Terrain Deformation. Little of what I previewed is designed without this tool in mind, and without it there’s very little progression through the world.
I’ve been proceeding with a stop-and-go frequency through an underground Pacifican facility populated with plenty of bad guys, plenty of exploding barrels, plenty of destructible stalactites, and an always-fun cart ride through it all. I’ve also been given a glimpse of an unfathomably enormous enemy -- a four-legged, 800-foot tall land-stomping robot -- that will be emerging later during the climax of Fracture’s first act. The size of the thing, and the sheer airspace it will take up, is something Day 1 has kept under wraps so far, but gave us a quick glimpse of during their opening presentation in the LucasArts Theater.
Barring that, I was equally impressed with a puzzle-solving room I’d encountered at the tail end of our one-hour play session. Jet Brody is in a room that serves as a conduit for the construction of Hydra Balls (explosive, spherical constructs that are essentially rolling landmines). One drops into the center of the room, and I need to utilize the Entrencher to carve a pathway that will make the Hydra Ball route properly and explode against the surrounding machinery. It’s the perfect opportunity to turn the otherwise chaotic Entrencher into a more surgical tool for Terrain Deformation.
Let me be clear: The videos and screenshots for Fracture have been underwhelming at best. My previous criticisms of the bland environments, Jell-O ground warping, and low-gravity vehicle airiness all stemmed from a place of genuine concern (and perhaps some bad Taco Bell that day). But once I got my hands on the game, it became quite impossible not to enjoy the time given. The Day 1 programmers deserve an award themselves simply for overcoming the unheard-of technical hurdles that the design team devised. (“When we put the list of what we wanted to do, next to the list of what we could afford to do … the lists were nearly identical,” said Day 1.)
And while I lazily wrote off Fracture as nothing more than a “gimmick” from the beginning, seeing how fully-integrated Terrain Deformation works throughout the game will undoubtedly force anyone to reexamine their preconceived stance. I don’t want to overstate that, however: This isn’t necessarily a “coming to Jesus” moment with everyone in the audience swooning with an inexplicable change of heart, but I’ll admit that when broken down into its chemical components, it’s hard not to grow increasingly impressed with Fracture’s ability to seal its own deal. Plus the story arc, though served with a generous helping of vanilla when it comes to characterization -- at least so far -- at least pushes beyond the “aliens are attacking; so kill ‘em” industry standard for action-shooter storytelling. In short, Fracture is a game that probably won’t change your mind about it until you get some actual face time with its mechanics.
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