Remember back in March, when John Smedley resurfaced teasing a new game headed up by PlanetSide 2 devs Matt Higby and Tramell Isaace? Well, today, we’re finally getting a bit more info on that game, starting with the fact that it’s actually called Reaper Actual and the studio is actually called Distinct Possibility Studios.
Yes, if you Google “Reaper Actual,” you will find that it’s the name of a major brand of hot sauce, which is funny as hell. Our headcanon is that Smed picked a spicy name on purpose and not that marketing forgot to Google it first. OK, OK, the pitch:
“Distinct Possibility Studios is thrilled to announce REAPER ACTUAL. This fast-paced FPS throws players into a relentless, ever-evolving battlefield fueled by dynamic faction warfare. As an elite Reaper on the war-torn island of Marova, survival demands more than just firepower. It is a brutal test of strategy and skill. Build your base, forge alliances, and lead high-risk raids against rival factions in a world where every bullet fired is a tactical gamble. REAPER ACTUAL delivers a shifting battle where players fight each other as well as embedded factions who are constantly at odds. Keep an eye over your shoulder as the next firefight could come from anywhere. Built with the open world persistence and the progression of an online game, REAPER ACTUAL hosts an ever-evolving battlefield where Reapers grow, trade, and form lasting bonds in warfare.”
Is it an MMO? Well, yes and no; the PR says the game “fuses the scale and persistence of an MMO with the intensity of tactical FPS combat” and that it’s “[l]ayered with meaningful character progression and a living battlefield.” It kinda sounds exactly like PlanetSide 3, which would make it at least an MMOFPS; we’re looking at 200-person battles, the same persistent world focus, outfits (what PlanetSide called guilds), base-raiding, a full-scale player economy, and so forth, all on massive maps.
One thing MMO players will not be impressed with, though, is that the studio will run a regular MMOFPS version of the game then a second version encrusted with Web3 junk gamers don’t want: “A separate version of the game will leverage the Etherlink blockchain to facilitate ownership and trading of in-game assets for players that want to engage with Web3 functionality.” If you want to avoid all that, you can just play on the Steam version where it’s blocked, but it certainly sours the vibe that they’re trying it.
Signups for the game’s early testing are available through the official site using Discord, Steam, and Epic accounts; the pop-up promises “a limited set of Foundation Access Packs soon.”
In case you’re newish to the genre and don’t know who Smed is, allow us to recap: He was the president of Sony Online Entertainment for almost two decades, overseeing the likes of the EverQuest franchise through the biggest years of the MMORPG genre. In 2015, SOE was spun out as a new entity called Daybreak Games, and shortly after he left the company. He’s made a few attempts at new games since, including an indie OARPG known as Hero’s Song that was cancelled, with its staff brought on to work under him on a new venture at Amazon Games in 2017. He left that company in 2023 and has presumably been working on Reaper Actual since then. As we’ve written before, he’s a controversial figure in the MMORPG industry, owing chiefly to some bad decisions made during his reign over SOE and Daybreak, but it’s pretty easy to rattle off a list of his essential contributions too (and we did). Suffice it to say, we’re expecting plenty of spicy hot sauce from his new game indeed.
