Video Game / Firefall

"Hey! I heard about you! Some new idiota thinking he can compete with the rest of us. Put your crystite where your mouth is, little one. You can find me at the bar."

— El Terremoto, in his pre-Live NPC Amnesia glory

Firefall was an MMO Third-Person Shooter made by Red 5 Studios. It featured jetpacks, The End of the World as We Know It, aliens that came from a sentient radiation storm, and cartoony Cel Shading.

The main premise of the story was this: 20 Minutes into the Future, a massive asteroid impact, the titular "Firefall" occurs. The world shatters, continents are rearranged, and countries are broken and fragmented. But this impact brought Crystite, a blue crystaline mineral that can be used to power just about anything. For example, the Arclight: A massive capital spacecraft that would have been the first ship capable of traversing Hyperspace... except that its reactor overloaded and the ship crashed into Fortaleza, Brazil, unleashing a giant storm called The Melding which starts to cover the Earth leaving only New Eden, a piece of land in Brazil that survives only because the Arclight's reactor is still functional and somehow repelling the Melding.

From out of the Melding came a new species calling themselves the Chosen. They seek to eradicate the human race and Take Over the World.

The game was touted to be in an open persistent world in which "hundreds" of players can play together and try to defend themselves from the Melding. This depends largely on whether everyone shows up for one of the regular world events, which they usually do.

Firefall was officially released for everyone on July 29th, 2014 and shut down for good on July 7th, 2017. The game has received many patches, some of which introduced total overhauls to various parts of the game, so some tropes are applicable only to certain previous version of the game and may have since been removed.

The main website can be found in here. A mobile version was said to be in the works but is rotting in Vaporware as of 2020.

Has a finished tie-in comic, Affinity, written by Orson Scott Card and his daughter.

Has a characters page. Not to be confused with the soft rock band of the same name.

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Firefall provides examples of

• Advancing Wall of Doom:
  • In open beta, melding repulsors could be triggered to gradually push back the melding wall and temporarily hold it at its new front. The wall advances back into place after repulsor charge is spent (with time or due to mobs sabotage). As of 1.6, repulsors can still be found and used when the Chosen take over watchtowers, since this now involves them putting a Melding bubble over it and denying access to humans entirely.
  • Major "town" repulsing towers, if not properly defended in a Chosen invasion event (regular in open beta versions), get destroyed and result in melding gradually, if rather quickly, engulfing the place, wiping out all players still there by that time.
  • In the "Melding pocket" located at the other end of the portal left by a freshly destroyed Melding Tornado, which is optional to visit and is essentially a contracting bubble somewhere withing the Melding. The Melding wall advances in with short pauses, leaving less and less safe space and killing anyone too slow to escape it.
• After the End: After both of them. Surprisingly, humanity hasn't lost its technology; they've just lost population. A lot of it. In fact humanity has moved on and created even better tech.
• A.K.A.-47: Weapons such as the FN P90 submachine gun are replaced with charmingly-named clones like the "Carnage Septu Slayer-Grade".
• Allegedly Free Game: Notably averted. Red Beans (the real money currency) can be bought with in-game currency, and most of the items in the shop are cosmetic in nature or of the "temporary exp/currency boost" variety. The only thing that comes close to an exception is the advanced battleframes, which are still not overpowered compared to their basic free counterparts. In fact, an not-infrequent complaint is that people want to spend money but have nothing to spend it on!
• Animal Theme Naming: The names of all the advanced battleframes save the engineer types have this. The Assaults (Firecat, Tigerclaw) have feline names, the Dreadnoughts (Mammoth, Rhino) are named after pachyderms, the Biotechs (Recluse, Dragonfly) after arthropods, and the Recons (Raptor, Nighthawk) after birds of prey. Also present in some LG Vs, like the Locust and Cobra.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Crystite, a substance first brought to earth by the Firefall event. Its used largely for super-powered generators, and these days everything runs off it. It also is a form of currency. New lore indicates that actual pure crystite is rare. Most crystite is flawed in some way and mixed with other elements.
• Area of Effect: Nearly every frame can equip a signature weapon or ability, or both, that can do this. It's noted as a specialty of Assault battleframes.
• Artistic License Biology: Available in beta versions. The Arsenal Battleframe's passive ability was described as triggering Electromagnetic Pulse discharges upon ability use. Without much in the ways of visualization, it did the same AoE damage to anything from robotic "Chosen Drones" or turrets to organic-matter fauna or human bandits. EMP should be near-harmless to organics.
• Awesome Backpack: Everybody gets a backpack and jet boots/packs (Except for the engineer who has the pack in their left arm.) The backpack holds class specific abilities (Such as Crater for Assault or Healing Wave for Medic)
• The Battlestar: The Arclight, the largest spaceship built by man. Technically meant for 'research and colony aid,' its primary purpose was as a military ship to keep control of the faraway Alpha Prime colony and its vital crystite deposits. First ship to use arcfolding technology. Unfortunately, it crashed when humanity attempted their first arcfolding launch. The resulting crash created a rift to an alternate dimension which allowed the Melding to reach earth.
• Badass Driver: The players, when in vehicles. In addition, users of battleframes are referred to as pilots, and the frames to require similar levels of maintenance and software upgrades to other computerized equipment- like vehicles.
• Beehive Barrier: The Dreadnaught can put up a small one on the end of his minigun to block some incoming damage, and the Engineer can drop a bigger, stationary one.
  • In 1.6, the shield was removed from the minigun and instead made part of the Heavy Armor ability, and the deployable shield was made exclusive to the Bastion frame.
• BFG: The Plasma Cannon for the Assault and the Minigun for the Dreadnaught count. The Chosen also carry Cannons and Miniguns.
• Bilingual Bonus: Aranha is Portuguese for "spider", which is what the alien bugs resemble. You'll also seem them occasionally referred to as "spiders" (in English) as well.
• Boom, Headshot!: Some, not all, weapons deal extra damage on headshots.
  • In pre-"Live" versions, the signature sniping rifles of Nighthawk and Raptor battleframes — among other things, immediately grant a bonus of experience points for scoring a headshot (even if it weren't lethal). If killing a humanoid normally would net some 8 to 10 XP, these sniper rifles send it up to 100 XP with bonuses for one-shot-headshotting.
• Bug War: Among the lower-level mobs, we have Aranhas (skinny spiders), Hissers (bigger spider/crab things), Skivvers (weird crayfish/bug things) and Culexes (giant-ass mosquitoes). They're all attracted to working thumpers, so when you go mining, you're bound to wind up fending some or all of them off.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Not originally, but it is now possible to buy "booster" items that increase things like your health and damage, using Red Beans, the real-money currency.
• Cel Shading: Reminisent of Borderlands, though they were developed separately. The devs have said that they were already leaning towards cell shading even before Borderlands came out. One version of the story even has a collective groan from everyone in the studio as the new design for Borderlands was shown.
• Chainmail Bikini: The female Assault frames have what is best described as armored Daisy Dukes... that weigh in at 8 tons. Unlike the Cleavage Window, the shorts continue to be blatantly visible on the Firecat.
  • At least it's better than the pre-"Live"-patch female Engineer which had one pant leg completely missing.
• Chainsaw-Grip BFG: The rotary weapons of Dreadnaught battleframes (mimicked by if not identical to some bandit weaponry) and Chosen Executioners.
• Cleavage Window: The female models of the basic Assault frame and the Tigerclaw are a bit, um, exposed. Averted by the Firecat.
• Colony Drop: The titular Firefall. Originally one massive asteroid, it shattered for unknown reasons into a swarm of smaller ones. As a result, humanity was not wiped out, just severely fucked up. It also deposited the first crystite samples, though those weren't discovered until some time after.
  • The crash of the Arclight also counts as this. The biggest space ship ever built by man lands on Brazil and proceeds to wipe out an entire city.
• Cool Bike: The Light Ground Vehicles. They come in several flavors, none of which are currently available for purchase, such as the Founders Pack-only Locust, green-painted Ares Pack-only K-12 Cobra, the orange Vapor and the Light-cycle-sounding Omnidyne bikes. Standard grey Cobras can be found in single use call-downs by renting them from specific consoles in the world.
  • It was once possible to obtain a permanent bike via a quest, when you reached the second major Hub City, Dredge.
  • Reaching Level 40 on any frame previously unlocked a blueprint for a permanent blue Cobra.
• Creator's Culture Carryover:
  • Despite the game taking place in a future Brazil, in places such as Broken Shores, there's signage for the American Interstate System.
  • There are various Japanese signs around. Thesemight be HandWaveable due to the Accord being a global government, but it's still incongruous.
• Deadpan Snarker: The Chosen, when you kill them. They sometimes say "Oh, you got me now," in a very sarcastic tone. Considering none of them are even remotely concerned about dying, there's either a Hive Mind involved, they respawn just like the player, or something else.
  • Some bandits make a dying joke - "Oh, you shot me for reals!" or "My face!"
• Death from Above: The Recon frames can call in an artillery strike. There's also the Assaults' "Meteor Strike", which drops the player on enemies.
• Earth Is a Battlefield: Almost he entire planet is covered with by the Melding storm and the few places that are free of the Melding are under attack by Chosen.
• Elemental Weapon: Several signature weapons come standard with an elemental damage type, and others, including secondaries, can randomly have one, or a different one if they have one normally.
  • The Firecat's Phason Thrower and Rhino's Thermal Lance inflict fire damage, or "thermal".
  • All of the Biotech primaries deal toxic damage.
  • A significant number of primary weapons do energy damage: that of the stock Assault, the Raptor, all the Engineers,
  • Nonstandard types include ice and melding.
• The End of the World as We Know It: Twice. First through a massive asteroid swarm that pummels the Earth, and then from a bizarre energy storm that spawns a new race and mutates already existing ones. Poor Earth just can't catch a break.
• Enemy Civil War: According to this post, this is why the Chosen haven't won yet.
  • Their counterparts may be the Ascendants which were hinted at in a June slideshow.
  • A cutscene late in 1.6's new story missions reveals that the melding on Earth is now separate and different somehow from that of its parent universe... the latter attacks Big Bad Serkan!
• Emergency Weapon: In beta, the scanhammer could be used as a melee weapon. Later, a melee button was added that enabled Pistol-Whipping. As of 1.6, you can now equip one of several auxillary weapons that can be triggered at any time and do not consume any resources, which included power Pistol-Whipping for more damage, a Laser Blade for a horizontal slash attack, hammers that use the same sort of attack as the Scanhammer, various elemental grenades and wrist minirockets.
• Energy Ball: The projectiles of the Plasma and Fusion cannons are this.
• Energy Weapon: Several signature weapons, notably all of the Assault primaries, as well as that of the Rhino, Mammoth, stock Engineer, Electron, and the Raptor. Firefall is fond of this trope.
• Everything Is Online: Subverted. Almost everything is now online, via a network called SIN- soldier interfaces, the computers of the homeless, hallucinogenic drugs - but not instant messaging. Justified by the small population of humanity's survivors - now it's easier to give out free internet than military-grade food, but there's less junk data to sift through so hacking is super-effective.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: The female engineer. Downplayed after the "Live" patch, as her lower body armor now is symmetrical, only heavy-handedness is left.
• Fanservice: Some of the female Battleframes are a bit more... revealing than the male counterparts.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: The signature weapon of the Firecat frame, the Phason Thrower, is this.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: The Dreadnought frames' "Charge" ability knocks enemies aside before causing an explosion at the end. Taken up a notch by the Rhino's "Mighty Charge" HKM ability, which actually damages enemies you collide with.
• Gang of Hats: The various human criminal groups are not only themed and territorial, but Color-Coded for Your Convenience.
  • The Black Hills gang all wear dark grey, hooded cloaks, haunt the Northern Shores region, and comprise a significant number of ex-Accord troops.
  • The Rebels of western Coral Forest wear dark green gear and ski masks, speak with vaguely South American accents, loathe the Accord, and yell things like "Viva Brazil!"
  • The Reapers are pirates who wear blue gear and hang out along the southern coast of Coral Forest, around Sunken Harbor. Some of them sound vaguely Australian.
  • The Chimera of Fortaleza Antigua and The Nest are Hollywood Hackers that wear bright green, have overly superior attitudes and like to commit Interface Screw against you.
  • The poachers of Cerrado Plains are the the most generic group, wearing plain brown/black gear and not having motivation other then, well, poaching.
  • Charon's Cultists are probably the worst of the lot, murderous zealots on a Path of Inspiration. Some of them wear bright red and scary glowing-eye masks.
  • The Buzzards of Sertao are rowdy bikers who wear orange gear.
• Gang Up on the Human : Averted; the aggressive wildlife, bandits/Ophanim and Chosen will all fight each other. Humanoid targets will also stop attacking players to fight back against wildlife that wandered by. This is even lampshaded in an early mission where you drop pheromones in a bandit camp. There's a mission where you need to bolster the bandits' morale against the Chosen. Later on, the Chosen will deploy mining thumpers and be completely swarmed by angry wildlife, just like it would be for players.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Arguably famous for this, see Perpetual Beta below. Each update seems to break more then it fixes, though post-update patches were regular and ongoing...
• Gatling Good: The vanilla Dreadnaught has a giant Minigun ("Heavy Machine Gun"). The offensive dreadnaught Rhino has a Hitscan Laser HMG. The defensive dreadnaught Mammoth has a Plasma HMG with projectiles falling-off after some distance.
  • Some of the Engineer's turrets have these (standard turrets upgrade from semi-automatic to raging twin firearms). Beg for mercy if you're at the business end(s) of an HKM turret - two miniguns twice the size of a Dreadnaught's on a turret that's twice as large as the user.
• Glass Cannon: Recon classes have ludicrously high damage, but are also the most fragile of all the Battleframes.
• Goomba Stomp: Land it right, and the assault class can deliver a rather awesome rocket powered one.
• Hitscan: A few of the weapons. The Rhino frame's signature weapon, the Laser HMG, combines this with Gatling Good. Other examples: Chosen Sniper charging rifle, Bastion frame's signature Tesla Rifle.
• Great Off Screen War: The Back Story mentions that the Firefall event was followed up by No Blood for Phlebotinum over the new Crystite resource, resulting in the aptly-named Crystite Wars. Consul Nostromo is a known veteran. It was the last time there was any conflict between major human powers.
• Improperly Placed Firearms: The SMG◊ is a P90, the Burst Rifle◊ is a FAMAS, and the revolver shown here◊ is a Mateba revolver.
• Insectoid Aliens: The aranhas are alien to Earth, having stowed aboard transport ships from the Alpha Prime colony. The hissers were deliberately brought here in an effort to contain the former, that went horribly awry. Averted by the Skivvers, which are noted to be a previously unknown deep-sea species.
• Item Crafting: A heavy part of the game was gathering resources from thumping and from dead enemies, and then using them to craft your gear. This was cut as of 1.6, and never re-enabled. In the end, you could upgraderandom drops by speaking with "Tinker" Non Player Characters.
• Kill It with Fire: This is the entire premise of the Firecat frame. Properly set up, all of your attacks can deal "thermal" damage.
• Kill It with Water: Inverted, in that it happens to ''you''. While you can splash through shallow water and puddles, over a certain depth, and increasingly so with depth, being in water will kill you, sometimes near-instantly. May have something to do with the hundred-megawatt Crystite Reactor on your back. Or the battleframe weighing an awful lot.
• Limit Break: HKM abilities. They can only be activated after dealing a consecutive amount of damage, and involve summoning a weapon/force of mass destruction onto the battlefield. Many of the limit breaks involve arcfolding, and some are just really powerful copies of other techniques.
  • Dreadnaught: Taunts enemies and gives you damage resistance before letting out a major blast. Previously summoned a powerful mortar cannon.
  • Assault: Emits a powerful force wave that travels forward in the direction you were facing.
  • Biotech: Slows down nearby enemies and buffs you and your allies to gain health back when you damage enemies. Formerly, could summon a chemical sprayer that kills enemies but heals other players.
  • Engineer: Summons a giant turret that can be manned by any player (can make noobs REALLY useful).
  • Recon: Summons a missile strike. (It works underground, may be due to arkfolding)
  • Rhino: A Foe-Tossing Charge, dealing high damage. Previously surrounded the player in a dome. The more enemies were inside, the more damage the Rhino would cause.
  • Mammoth: Emits a "Dreadfield" that damages enemies and reduces their damage output. previously caused a violent tremors around the user, periodically damaging anything nearby.
  • Arsenal: Launches a large number of high explosive missiles at whatever the user is aiming at.
  • Tigerclaw: Supercharges your frame, granting unlimted jet energy, increased movement speed and faster ability cooldowns for the duration, as well as amping up the effects of your other abilities. Previously summoned a small dome that causes damage to enemies inside. If they left it, it caused a ton of damage for their trouble.
  • Firecat: Lobs a massive firebomb that sets fire to a large swathe of terrain.
  • Dragonfly: Creates an energy dome that heals other players.
  • Recluse: Surrounds the user in a deadly cloud of poison that quickly kills anything nearby.
  • Bastion: Makes all of your deployables invulnerable and makes them hit harder for a while to boot, but they'll blow up after the duration.
  • Electron: Launches a huge stormcloud that gets larger and does more damage the farther it travels.
  • Nighthawk: Causes slain enemies to explode, causing AoE damage, for a short while. Previously it simply gave you explosive rounds.
  • Raptor: Not only makes the player's gun fire significantly faster, it also causes every shot to cause an energy explosion. Previously, it caused your shots to shoot arcs of electricity towards nearby foes.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The Tigerclaw's "Hellfire" ability unleashes a swarm of wrist-launched mini-missiles, and causes you to hover in place for the duration. Triggering Hellfire while under the effects of Supercharge will double the missiles launched.
• MegaCorp: The massive Omnidyne Corporation, as well its competitors, Astrek and Kisuton. Omindyne and Astrek manufacture the advanced battleframes, as opposed to the basic ones manufactured by the Accord.
• The Merch: invokedA more literal example. The Merch, or Merchai is a free unlockable pet you could get by doing the crystite challenge. True to the comic, it will turn into the Flesh Reaper if not fed crystite. And it shares the exact same type of "insight" as in the comic.
• Microtransactions: Firefall is getting some attention (for example, the Extra Credits team) for its commitment to the free to play model and using strictly microtransactions to fund the game. According to Extra Credits, this game is the first Triple-A quality game to be this committed to this model.
• Mirroring Factions: One of the major themes of the game. At first, it seems like the Chosen are a Blue-and-Orange Morality invasion force from another dimension. But as you slaughter their ranks you'll notice that they act exactly like the human enemies of the game, with slight references to player insults. They even have their own civil wars in the middle of an invasion, just like the Accord and gangs do. On the human side, lots of villains call out the player character for being just as bloodthirsty and violent as they are, which is usually an accurate description for a casual gamer: the Somalian look-alikes are trying to survive while the Accord starves humanity's remaining lower-class citizens (the ones you did quests for in Copa), Black Hills gang members consist of former mercenaries who stopped fighting for the good of humanity and started fighting for exp, money, and fun (much like the player), and the poachers will call out the player on all the death and suffering they've caused other beings while fighting to protect a few dumb animals (and sometimes, the player will kill innocent animals in their downtime for fair game).
• Mutant: The Melding drastically alters living things that it comes into contact with, if they even survive. Less directly, the mosquito-like Culexes are thought to be descended from normal mosquitos that fed on Meld-touched creatures.
• Negative Space Wedgie: The Melding, a colossal stellar storm from hyperspace, that caused the second End of the World as We Know It, and threatens the end of humanity altogether due to the Scary Dogmatic Aliens that arrived with it.
• No "Arc" in "Archery": Mostly played straight by the bullet-firing weapons, but averted in the case of the primary weapons of the stock Assault, Firecat, Mammoth, Dragonfly, and of course the Bastion's grenades, which all arc over a distance. This is deliberately played straight by the Tigercat's primary weapon, the Fusion Cannon, which has straight-flying projectiles to distinguish it from the basic Plasma Cannon.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: Friendly players can simply interact with downed players to revive them, and some abilities make this REALLY easy. Bleeding out is possible. Dying to additional damage (like getting eaten alive by wargrims or toxic grenades) is possible.
  • Some opponents can be executed (not that you get to see many opponents with instanced PvP having been Put on a Bus) and will come back alive. And some V.I.P. enemies will be captured alive thanks to your battleframe's non-lethal weapon settings - even if you shot them in the head with a nuclear-powered sniper rifle.
• One Nation Under Copyright: Sort of. Omnidyne controls the technology, controls most of the crystite, and, therefore, controls the governments. This is hinted not to be a bad thing; Omnidyne influence was implied to be the only thing stopping the various superpowers from going at each others' throats. Again. At least, until the Melding. And even then they retain most of their power as seen in the "Dreadnaught" trailer.
• Path of Inspiration: Charon the Sin Hacker. He uses sin hacks (a data-drug that affects the user's brain implant to trip out) to mind-control his followers into believing that he's leading them to rapture. At first, it looks like he's just another power-hungry drug-lord, but it turns out that he believes his own twisted Melding religion, and will destroy New Eden to lead everyone into this twisted new form.
• Permanently Missable Content: Many limited-time store items were never again available for purchase, such as the Founder's Pack items. Some of the items could be found on the player-run marketplace in limited quantities, at astronomical prices. Things like permanent vehicles and glider pads were rendered unavailable from the in-game store and never re-implemented.
• Perpetual Beta: The game had a protracted beta phase and post-launch, continued to be plagued with bugs and technical issues, some of them dating back to the earliest playable builds. The developers' headcount had been reduced steadily over the years, which only compacted those problems.
  • To wit, there were no official news or updates from May of 2016 until the announcement of its shutdown.
• Poisonous Person: The Recluse frame turns you into one. Like the Firecat, if properly set up the Recluse can deal solely in it's themed element.
• Powered Armor: Battleframes, though some of them look more like powered exo-suits. They're all powered by Crystite reactors, capable of limited flight, and are commonplace enough that the Accord issues them to mercenary contractors, and people in various dangerous professions, including some criminals, have them.
• Private Military Contractors: The Accord selects pilots to perform mercenary work in exchange for battleframe tech and the training to use them.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon: Optionally equipped secondary weapon (possible types: assault rifle, burst rifle, smg, grenade launcher, shotgun) can be switched to from the signature weapon. In "Live" versions of the game, secondary weapons have unlimited pool of ammo, though they need to be reloaded. Before "Live", not having a secondary weapon freed more mass and power limits for perhaps equipping better (and more demanding) gear in other slots.
• Red Sky, Take Warning: The melding appears as a large blue cloud.
• Rocket-Tag Gameplay: You versus large armies / giant angry animals. Your battleframe and its weapons are almost always superior to any equally-leveled enemy, but they more than make up for that in sheer numbers. If you are out in the open, have attracted the violent hatred of every enemy on the field, and don't have enough jet power or the right skills to evade their shots, you are likely going to die in seconds. If you play your cards right, you can pick off their army like flies while they're desperately trying to find and hit you. Giant animals, on the other hand, play this more straight: your attacks will decimate these goliaths in a matter of seconds, but a Claw or a Slinger can kill you in one direct hit. Hell Slingers can do instant-kill damage on fully-leveled players.
• Sadistic Choice: In the Back Story. Consul Nostromo was the captain of the Arclight on what would have been it's maiden voyage. When disaster struck and the ship fell out of orbit, all he could do was decide where it was going to hit: heavily populated Rio De Janeiro, or Fortaleza, which had significantly fewer people... but was home to his own wife and son. He chose Fortaleza, and hasn't been the same man since.
• Scary Dogmatic Aliens: The Chosen. They like to rant about their superiority and your inevitable demise during fights.
• Scenery Porn: Surprisingly for an After the End work, there's quite a lot of greenery and nice views around.
• Secondary Fire: Prior to Update 1.6, all the signature frame weapons had some form of alternate fire. These have been replaced by iron-sight aiming save for the Dreadnaught's BFG spin-up, the Dragonfly's Biorifle, which retains it's alt-fire heal (now powered by your jet energy instead of ammo), the Bastion's mine launcher, and of course the scopes on the Recon weapons.
• Short-Range Shotgun: Secondary weapon shotguns, and some primary weapons' shotgun-like alt-fire. Pellets spread so wide, range other than short is hardly feasible.
• Shout-Out: Crystite originally appeared in the early sci-fi mining sim M.U.L.E., where it was the only commodity that wasn't used for anything.
  • An early equipment vendor in Copacabana was named Kaylee.
  • Consul Nostromo is named after the Joseph Conrad novel of the same name.
  • One set of ARES missions in Sertao has you go looking for the heir to the Astrek fortune. Instead you find Sand Man and Quail.
  • A series of ARES missions are handed out by an Omnidyne manager who, needs you to just go ahead and do this thing. If you could. That'd be greeeeaaat.
  • The game story, context and elements take a lot of elements from other works of fiction. The Arclight warp drive opens a portal to somewhere evil. Out of the portal comes out an evil cloud that spawns or turn humans into evil soldiers^note Warp Storm. Humans that are killed but not "Chosen" are turned into zombie-like carcasses. Human soldiers wear Powered Armor with a large reactor in their back^note Dreadnaughts are especially reminiscent of Marines, and recon look like the Ghosts, Aranhas tend to attack in large swarms that reminds players of Starship Troopers. It's all done so seamlessly that it doesn't look like anything was stolen.
• Smoke Out: The Raptor frame has a smoke grenade ability as of 1.6. Friendlies that stand in the smoke take less damage while enemies suffer reduced accuracy.
• Sole Survivor: A cut plotline involved the player collaborating with an ARES team called the Devilhawks. This culminated in a disasterous joint raid on the Blackwater Anomaly, leaving only the team's female Recon, Fade, alive. Throughout this version of Blackwater you heard transmissions from Fade, the most quiet and distant member of the Devilhawks. She became Not So Stoic, suffering a quiet breakdown, and began to ramble. Nonetheless, she was your sole backup against Blackwater's Final Boss-and she held her own. What happened to her thereafter was never explored.
• Spider Tank: More like Spider Battleships, but still. The Chosen war machines shown so far tend to be on the order or massive, multi-legged, and heavily armed. The small bits that we have seen. They also have a lot of Spiky Doom bits and are darker to contrast the lighter and more shiny parts of the Accord.
• Spiritual Successor: An odd case. An in-development game, EM-8ER (Prounounced "Ember"), is promised by former Red 5 head Mark Kern to be the game he originally envisioned Firefall becoming before he was removed. There was enough bad blood involved that for a time, the EM-8ER team actually honored Firefall pre-orders.
• Spy Catsuit: The Recon frames are not so much armors as extremely form-fitting bodysuits with a few plates stuck on.
• The Capital of Brazil Is Buenos Aires: Mostly averted, however the game takes place in the ruins of Fortaleza in Brazil, and the main town is Copacabana. Most all other non-English (and non-Alpha Primean) terms are Portuguese, however.
• Tim Taylor Technology: The battleframes are readily capable of handling more power then normal. It's even the Limit Break of the Tigerclaw frame, and a less powerful example is usable by any Assault frame. The Biotechs posess buffs that can amp up other players' frames, the Raptor can do this to its primary weapon, and the Bastion can do this to their turrets... though it results in Explosive Overclocking.
• Tele-Frag: The Tier 2 Dreadnaught Mammoth frames have a skill "Teleport Shot" that is basically this, weaponized.
• Teleportation with Drawbacks: Arcfolding is a means of long-distance travel via a Wormhole. It's notorious in-universe for being unreliable, except where convenient for the plot.
• Tripod Terror: Titans. Word of God states that they're not controlled by the Chosen but usually show up when they invade cities anyways. You know, to hammer home the point that shit just got worse.
• Universal Ammunition: Heavy Laser Machine Gun (Dreadnaught), balls-of-plasma-firing Fusion Cannon (Assault), toxin-themed Bio-Rifle (Medic), forearm-mounted Electric/Lazer Gun (Engineer), hyper-accurate fully-automatic Sniper Rifle (Recon), delayed/at-will blast Sticky Grenade Launcher, all have ammo replenished by the universal powerups. When a battleframe is equipped with both the signature and secondary weapons, the two have separate clips/ammo pool, but an ammo pick up restores both.
  • More Dakka: And as of the release date, secondary weapons have infinite ammo. You still need to reload them though.
• Useless Item: Alarmingly prevalent. Crafting was were removed in 1.6 and never re-implemented, rendering the resources useless, and abilities and weapons that were removed from the game were replaced in players' inventories by "broken" versions, which had no use other then to be salvaged for parts that could used to upgrade surviving items.
• Voice with an Internet Connection: Aero Santos, your handler, who serves as Ms. Exposition when another NPC isn't there to do the job. Your dropship pilot, Oilspill, previously served in this capacity, but you heard from him much less in the last version of the game.
• We Will Spend Credits in the Future: An additional currency introduced with "Live" patch is called "credits". It deposed crystite as currency for selling and buying items between players (players can convert their crystite into credits, with a daily quota in place). Player driven exchange of credits with "cash shop" currency (Red Beans) is available.
  • Credits have their uses as instant-revives, but at a price of 250 credits (6250 crystite) per revive, it's really not worth it.
• You Are Number 6: Your character is designated as "ARES three-five". A particular quest chain reveals you were not the first ARES pilot to bear that designation.