Exoborne Preview: An uneven attempt to revolutionise extraction shooters

I can appreciate developer Sharkmob's vision for the extraction shooter Exoborne. They have taken an increasingly popular concept and looked to flip it on its head by introducing extreme weather effects and powerful exosuits, turning a typically quite methodical and slow-paced type of shooter into a much faster and more extreme variant. On paper, the idea behind Exoborne has a lot to be excited about, but in practice, I'm much less inclined to agree after spending several hours chipping away at the ongoing playtest.

While I will say that the extraction shooter genre is not for everyone and requires a specific kind of player to be able to really enjoy it, the core concept isn't where Exoborne lacks. As far as offering an extraction experience where players drop into a map, cram their backpacks full of loot, and then attempt to leave before another group of players appear and attempt to steal it off your still warm corpse, everything that makes an extraction shooter an extraction shooter is here and functions as you would expect.

In fact, I'd go a step further to note that the gameplay is actually quite strong as well. The levels that Sharkmob has designed are broad and offer great verticality, and the gunplay is tight and thrilling with excellent and thumping firearms that make the action feel all the more visceral. The exosuits are also fantastic tools that enhance the movement systems in place significantly, allowing you to sprint at high speeds, effortlessly climb steep surfaces with the additional aid of a grappling hook, and conquer the more-often-than-not brutal weather conditions as though they are a steady summer breeze rolling through a daisy-leaden meadow. The fact that tornadoes tear through the map and lightning strikes occur on a frequent basis are the least of your concerns in this game, and yes, all of this does often lead to a grand visual spectacle when all the pieces fall into place.

Yet, I will also add that the exosuits lack feeling special otherwise. They are meant to have unique design elements and to command how the combat unfolds, but this is never the case in reality. The suits open the door to the odd extra ability and provide the aforementioned movement enchantments, but beyond that, they feel more like a gimmick that serves its best purpose as being an eye-catcher on the cover art or in trailers. Granted, this playtest only served up a few exosuit options to test, so I will eat my own words if any further variants shake things up more, but if these few are an example of what's to come, I do think it will be challenging to keep fans engaged by what this feature serves up. It's one of those cases where in trailers you see squads working in tight units and exploiting each other's abilities, but when in practice this level of cooperation never truly comes to fruition, meaning the suits feel isolated, less relevant, and again, gimmicky. The gameplay needs to be designed and balanced in such a way that it almost forces this level of cooperation, else it never really works. The best comparison that comes to mind is how teamplay functions in Overwatch 2 when compared to Marvel Rivals. It's night and day, and that's because of core gameplay design and systems that are in place.

Anyway let's move onto the maps. I mentioned that they are broad and have plenty of geographical variety and that absolutely holds true, but beyond that, when you zoom in on the micro, they feel very stale. There are a handful of points of interest to visit, each of which tend to be very similar making you beg the question as to why you'd explore. While many are inhabited by computer-controlled enemies, the enemy forces are usually a minor nuisance that you can blast into pieces in a minute or two. The human enemies are typically the most mediocre as the robotic enemies do bring unique attack styles and variants that shake things up. While the PvE side of the game certainly isn't a game changer, it does work and serves its purpose, the same of which can't be said for the loot.

This is where Exoborne really starts to lose me because for an extraction shooter to feel interesting and worthy of the risk it's asking of you, the loot in question needs to feel important and powerful. That's not the case with the game. Looking past the fact that your backpack and inventory space is typically so small that you can only carry a handful of loot in the first place, the loot around the map is almost all worthless junk. You'll find canned food, cracked smartphones, cabling, aluminium piping, microchips, circuit boards, commonplace weapons, consumable items like armour repair kits... the list goes on. While some can be useful, like the latter two I mentioned, I've found that the useful ones aren't worth much money and the valuable stuff is usually such pointless crap that you wonder why you're carrying it in the first place. The idea of killing a rival player and opening their backpack to steal their hard-earned loot is absolutely trampled on and replaced with soul-crushing devastation when you discover that they have been wandering around with a box of cornflakes, a smashed laptop, and some stainless steel tubing. Sharkmob must think its playerbase is solely made up of magpies...

Exoborne is a game that is all about making money and completing challenges and tasks regarded as Activities. You hop into a raid and have to find weapon parts to help the war effort or defeat a number of human enemies known as Bodkin, all to be rewarded with some loot you can probably find in raids anyway. The progression simply does not feel rewarding or fun, especially when it takes a significant portion of time to reach a point where you have quality and decent loot, only to be slayed while trying to extract and lose every single item you had on you. Yep, that's right, nothing on your person is saved when you die in a raid, meaning you can go from having a loadout valued at 45,000 credits to one worth 9,000 in the blink of an eye. While there will be some extraction shooter purebloods out there who enjoy that kind of experience, to me, it's heart-breaking to witness so much progress and time wasted and lost in the blink of an eye.

Earlier I mentioned that the exosuits serve their best interest in trailers and I think that logic actually applies to Exoborne's story and narrative presence too. Extraction shooters are notoriously known for having weak story elements, and despite Sharkmob clearly attempting to rectify a similar issue in the battle royale space with its former game Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt, in Exoborne there's evidently a world with interesting narrative and story to unpack, but in-game, there's little to no development on this front. The beginning tutorial phase opens a space for something interesting to fill it, and then after four hours, you realise that this space is still completely vacant, albeit for a few thrown away lines of dialogue and cinematic cutaways that pop up after you spend too long completing some mind-numbing checklisted and often fetch-quest-feeling Activities.

Sure, there is an idea here that has potential and the presentation and core body shows elements of quality, but at the same time there's far too much that other extraction shooters either still do better or did first and pioneered its parameters for all to follow. This seemingly always co-op (you even queue into a game before a full team has been matchmade for you, which makes me irrationally mad...) PvPvE setup that is crammed with too many currencies and live elements almost makes my want to cry when I boot it up and have battle pass-looking mechanics and store vendors crammed down my throat. While it had its vices, Bloodhunt also did a lot well and presented a fun battle royale formula at a time where everyone was trying to do the same. From my experience, Exoborne does not manage to do this for the extraction shooter space.