FBC: Firebreak News

Is your PC ready to face the Hiss?

Hi, this is Julius, Community Manager on FBC: Firebreak. We know you’ve been eagerly awaiting the minimum and recommended system requirements for FBC: Firebreak and today, we're happy to reveal them!

Please have a look at the image below to check if your rig is ready to take care of some pesky Hiss.


Whether you're running lean or fully kitted out, now you know what you’ll need when it’s time to dive deep into the Oldest House.

FBC: Firebreak launches on June 17th.

IT’S TIME TO CLEAN HOUSE

Hello, Firebreakers! This is Julius, Community Manager on FBC: Firebreak. As the June 17th release of FBC: Firebreak approaches, let's dig into Crisis Kits.

Before delving into the depths of the Oldest House, every Firebreaker selects one of three Crisis Kits. They are pre-configured loadouts tailored to how you want to complete objectives, support your team, and survive the next hostile anomaly.

The kits are built from the ground up to suit specific roles in the field and come with their own specialized equipment: a Tool, an Improvised Device, and an Altered Augment - our take on a powered-up “ultimate.” Weapons, grenades, and perks aren’t tied to any kit, so you’re free to pair them however you like to suit your playstyle.

Let’s break down each Crisis Kit and what it brings to the fight against the Hiss.

[h3]Jump Kit – Movement and Field Control[/h3]

The Jump Kit is all about electricity, positioning, and field control. This kit is perfect for Firebreakers who want to leap into danger, zap enemies, and keep the flow of power going.

Tool: Electro-Kinetic Charge Impactor

• A heavy-duty, charge-based impactor that discharges electricity through a conductive plate. Use it to stun enemies, quickly power up electric devices on the field, or even launch yourself across the map with an electrified jump.
  

Improvised Device: BOOMbox

• An improvised enemy-attractor with a musical twist. Deploy it, charge it with your Impactor, and nearby enemies will swarm toward the music - until it explodes.
  

Altered Augment: AI19 “Garden Gnome”

• This augment lets you unleash a brief but intense paranatural lightning storm by launching a walking garden gnome at enemies using your Impactor. Think lightning and chaos waddling straight at you with murder in its tiny eyes.
  
• Warning: the Gnome is known to be moody and will just as readily attack you and your crewmates as the enemies. Beware the Gnome!
  

[h3]Fix Kit – Repair and Crowd Control [/h3]

The Fix Kit is the toolkit of choice for those who believe every problem looks like a nail waiting to be hit with the hammer that is the Wrench. If you're the type to run headfirst into danger with a wrench and a plan, this one’s for you.

Tool: Wrench

• This isn’t your average toolbox special. Use it to quickly repair broken field devices - or knock enemies flat on their backs. The Wrench’s rush attack is great for clearing a path or staggering foes.
  

Improvised Device: Swivel Cannon

• Deploy this cannon strapped to an office chair and bring it online by hitting it with your Wrench. Once assembled, it’ll automatically target enemies and fire at them until it eventually breaks down.
  

Altered Augment: AI16 “Piggy Bank"

• Once activated and attached to your Wrench, swinging it into enemies detonates the Piggy Bank into a metallic storm of coins, damaging everything around you. Then the piggy re-forms paranaturally, with the coin storm returning to you and damaging anything caught in its wake.
  
• Warning: Your crewmates won't appreciate getting hit in the face with coin shrapnel. It’s considered rude. Be aware of their location when using this augment!
  

[h3]Splash Kit – Support and Elemental Control[/h3]

The Splash Kit is all about water-based control, team support, and harmful conditions. It’s ideal for players who want to extinguish fires, cleanse allies, and turn the tide - literally.

Tool: Crank-Operated Fluidic Ejector (COFE)

• This industrial hydro cannon launches globs of water capable of dousing flames and removing harmful conditions. The COFE can also prime enemies for further elemental punishment.
  

Improvised Device: Humidifier

• Deploy this healing device and fill it up with the COFE. Once full, the Humidifier will spray restorative mist around itself, healing and cleansing you and nearby allies.
  

Altered Augment: AI44 “Teapot”

• Once activated and attached to your COFE, the Teapot boosts your water globs to superheated levels, igniting anything they hit. Yes, water that lights things on fire.
  
• Warning: Hitting the Humidifier with superheated water will not create restorative mist, quite the opposite!
  

[h3]Loadouts, Perks, and Customization[/h3]

Each Crisis Kit is fully customizable beyond its core gear. As you level up your Crisis Kit rank, you’ll unlock up to nine perk slots. Perks are at the heart of progression in FBC: Firebreak and each perk provides you with a unique twist to your gameplay, allowing you to create specialized builds:

Want a focused build with three powerful shared perks that also help your crewmates? Go for it.

Prefer versatility with nine weaker but unique effects? That works too.

Or maybe four strong perk effects to boost your loadout in specific ways? All up to you.

And while Crisis Kits define your core role in a Job, you’re free to bring any weapon or grenade into the field. Pick your loadout based on the Job, your team comp, or just your personal favorite tools of destruction.

Hint: The Crank-Operated Fluidic Ejector is pretty handy with the shock grenade, because water + electricity = dead Hiss. Shocking.

[h3]Kits Work Best Together[/h3]

FBC: Firebreak is a cooperative game built around synergy, and Crisis Kits are designed to complement each other. Splash clears fires and cleanses crewmates; Fix protects the squad and repairs critical tech; Jump controls crowds and powers up electric objectives. Combine their strengths, coordinate your tools, and face the paranatural - together.

No matter which Kit you choose, you can always take care of each problem - just less efficiently. For example, you can extinguish fires manually, but it’s slower and dangerous. With the Splash Kit, you can hose them down quickly and safely.

Which Crisis Kit will you pick when FBC: Firebreak launches on June 17th?

IT’S TIME TO CLEAN HOUSE

Hey everyone, FBC: Firebreak Game Director Mike Kayatta here with an update on where we are with the game as we count down to launch day, June 17th. While we’ve been hard at work finalizing your day one experience, we’ve also been spending the past few months snapshotting and stabilizing different versions of the game to share with different groups for different purposes.

This has included a user research build to test progression and replayability with a selected closed group of players, a hands-on build for press and content creators that we also played live on our Developer Update stream back in April, and a slimmed-down technical test build to improve our networking and matchmaking capabilities for launch that you might have seen advertised by us recently. Because each of these custom versions was built with a specific purpose in mind, they have invariably lagged behind where we actually are in the game’s development (and generally by a few months—a very long time at this stage of making a video game).

So, all that being said, we thought this was a good time to talk a little about where we are with the game and how we’re focusing our time from here until launch.

We received invaluable feedback and data from the events mentioned above, some of which we already had in our plans, and some of which is now being added to our plans or reprioritized. Just normal game development, to be honest.

There’s a lot to it, but here’s a high-level look at some of the key focus areas that we hope to improve from what you’ve seen so far:

GUNPLAY AND COMBAT

• Guns are upgradable in Firebreak, but we now think we went too far with how weak they felt at the earliest levels. In response, we are making all level one guns radically more powerful, while adjusting other parts of the game to maintain the challenge balance. This also ties into some feedback regarding ammo scarcity, which we are improving in tandem with gun power changes.
  
• The double-barreled shotgun, in particular, drew some commentary about it not feeling “right” yet. We agree, so we have taken a long look with the team at how this gun plays and feels to make sure it meets the expectations of its shooting style.
  
• In terms of general combat intensity and difficulty levels, everything has been overhauled from what’s been shown so far. Among other things, we’re tying different enemy types to different threat levels, adjusting wave frequency and composition, and removing awkward lulls in the action.
  

CLARITY

• Some of the feedback we’ve heard is that it takes a bit of time to understand the game’s systems and the role of the Crisis Kits, but once you “get” those, players are having a lot more fun in the game. On the other hand, we’ve also heard how joyful the organic discovery of new systems and interactions has been for many people, who’ve asked us not to jeopardize that feeling. It’s clear to us that we must find a strong balance between these ideas. To help, we’ve added dynamic tutorials for global and job-specific actions and new “sub-objective descriptors” in the HUD to help better describe the specific actions required to progress against an objective. This should give players a clear path forward without limiting them from discovering alternate ways of going about things.
  
• Another part of clarity is visual clarity. We love how chaotic and intense this game is, but the chaos stops being fun when players can no longer make meaningful decisions based on what they’re experiencing. So, we’re cleaning up and reducing a lot of effects in the game, both on-screen and in-world. This should reduce the visual noise, so you no longer struggle to understand what’s happening during intense moments.
  
• Speaking of noise, another vital aspect of clarity is auditory clarity. So, just a note that we are now in the process of doing the final audio mixing and balancing ensuring players can focus on the right things at the right time. We are well aware that the general in-game volume has been very low in all of our builds to date, and getting the final audio mix in tends to happen at the later stages of game development. We also love hearing how much you like the “escape” music!
  

UI

• One of the significant changes to what you have seen from the game so far has been to the user interface. Multiple components have been or are about to have been updated based on what we’ve learned from user research and player feedback.
  
• The Perk system has been entirely overhauled, though it fundamentally works the same way we’ve always explained it. You can buy three levels of a Perk, and each level you equip will take up a different number of slots. Level one is weak, level two is strong, level three is strong and shared with your crew.
  
• The other significant change (and source of some confusion for people who have followed certain previews) is to how Clearance Levels and Corruption Levels will work. The most important thing to know now is that you’ll be able to fine tune the challenge using a combination of Threat, Clearance, and Corruption, which affect combat, session length, and modification respectively. We’re going to explain these systems in more detail soon, so, look forward to that in an upcoming post.
  

TECHNOLOGY

• We’re continuing to work on performance testing and improvements to nail down our minimum spec and recommended spec on PC. We’ll share those results as soon as we’re confident in them.
  
• Finally, just a note on the multiplayer side. Thanks to everyone who joined our closed technical test; we have found and fixed countless connection and performance bugs across all platforms. We’re still working on it, but we’ve already made great strides forward.
  

We’ve still got a lot to do to make the launch experience the best it can be, but the team is feeling really good about where we are. We’ll do our best to keep you updated along the way and can’t wait to play with you all on June 17th.

IT’S TIME TO CLEAN HOUSE

FBC: Firebreak is proof of Remedy Entertainment’s continued effort to expand on and flesh out the rich, connected universe of their catalogue of games. The AAA studio’s latest project expands on its 2019 action-adventure game Control with a smaller in-scope but addictively engaging three-player cooperative first-person shooter.

I got to spend roughly two hours with an early build of FBC: Firebreak, where two others and I were given access to three levels present in the upcoming co-op shooter. As the game takes place within the world of Control, players who jump into FBC: Firebreak can expect all manner of paranormal chaos in the form of the Hiss, which have run amok in the Oldest House. As far as the story goes, FBC: Firebreak takes place six years after the events of Control, with the eponymous building entering a quarantine lockdown due to a state of crisis, due to increased Hiss activity, setting up the impetus of the multiplayer shooter.

As part of the... Read more

Hello, Firebreakers! This is Julius, Community Manager on FBC: Firebreak. I know many of you have been asking for a playtest before the game launches and I’m glad to say that opportunity is here! The FBC: Firebreak Closed Technical Test will run from May 15th, 6AM PDT/9AM EDT/2PM BST/4PM EEST, until May 19th, 1:59PM PDT/4:59PM EDT/9:59PM BST/11:59PM EEST.

While we are communicating about this Closed Technical Test publicly to get a large amount of participants, this is a closed test, meaning you will not be allowed to share your experiences with the game publicly. That means no talking about the game here on the Steam forums, posting images online or streaming the game to a public audience.

The Technical Test will help us test the matchmaking and balancing of the game with a large audience and will give you the chance to experience two of the Jobs of the game, Paper Chase and Ground Control. On top of that you’ll have access to all 3 kits with all their equipment unlocked (this includes the Garden Gnome, Teapot, and Piggybank) and 3 of the guns in the game.

Sign-ups are open for all now but please have a look at our system requirements below before signing up:

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
  
• Processor: Ryzen 7 3700X or equivalent
  
• Memory: 16GB RAM
  
• Graphics: GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
  

Note that the above system requirements are only for the Closed Technical Test and not the final game when it launches on June 17th.

You can sign-up here: https://firebreak.firstlook.gg/signup/tech-test-may-2025

Crossplay is supported so Firebreakers on all platforms can play together! You might even see some of the FBC: Firebreak developers matchmaking with you!

Capacity for the Technical Test is limited so signing up does not guarantee access. Director Faden has yet to approve the Unlimited Firebreakers Ordinance (U.F.O). Sorry about that.

If you have any additional questions about the Closed Technical Test, check out our Closed Technical Test FAQ. If the FAQ doesn’t answer your further questions, feel free to drop a comment in this thread.

Hope to see you in the Closed Technical Test!

IT’S TIME TO CLEAN HOUSE