Rant Gaming, Nikita Buyanov’s new studio, recently unveiled a whopping 14 minutes of incredible gameplay from Fragmentary Order, the team’s debut title. It’s an ambitious tactical sci-fi shooter with extraction elements, and while it has something in common with Escape from Tarkov, it’s not a sequel.
I recently sat down with Buyanov himself to discuss Fragmentary Order, Escape from Tarkov, and everything (quite literally) in between. I was eager to learn how the games are connected and why Fragmentary Order isn’t just Escape from Tarkov 2.
Fragmentary Order and Tarkov Share a Universe
Being a huge Escape from Tarkov fan, I jumped at the opportunity to sit down with the face of the brand, Nikita Buyanov, for another epic chat about what he’s working on. We touched on the extraction space, the recent reveal of Fragmentary Order, and how Battlestate Games and Rant Gaming might work together to produce a linked universe.
Put simply, Escape from Tarkov and Fragmentary Order share a timeline. I was eager to learn exactly how they’re linked. But it started with me asking Nikita Buyanov a very simple question: ‘Why is Fragmentary Order not just Escape from Tarkov 2?’
Here’s how he explained the situation:
It’s linked only in some points. Fragmentary Order is like a saga; it’s wider. It’s the whole solar system. The powers, the factions… It’s not about Earth, it’s about the whole solar system; it’s about tens of billions of people living in the solar system. It’s more epic. It touches not the local conflict and a little bit of the world, like in Tarkov. It touches a much bigger scale.
Tarkov was just one clue, one detail. It was just one simple thing. If you consider Tarkov was a piece of the puzzle for the bigger one.
The sheer scope and scale of Fragmentary Order is nothing short of hugely ambitious. During a gameplay walkthrough of the recent video released by Rant Gaming, Buyanov explained that there’s a concept of ‘if you can see it, you can get to it’ in FragO. It’s huge, it accommodates more players (the team has tested the large-scale maps with 45-50 players so far), and it has proven much more expensive to build than Escape from Tarkov ever did.
Next, I moved on to the concept of this shared universe. I put this question to Nikita, asking him how the two games are linked. My words were, ‘Is this Tarkov, but in the future?’
Yes, basically. This is it.
Basically, the factions will have remnants from the old ones; the COR3 Corporation is linked to the Unheard, basically. When I was designing this universe, especially the COR3 universe, I intentionally kept the endpoints to connect all of that.
I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do that because it’s different companies, different legal stuff. But right now, I understand I can do that.
But not only was Buyanov able to settle those legal concerns and start setting up the connections, but he was also actively supported by his partners at Rant Gaming, and then he dropped another tidbit about the link:
My partners from Rant Gaming, they’re happy about connecting it all together.
There’s quite a high chance that Battlestate Games will be publishing Fragmentary Order.
Despite Buyanov’s big push to get Fragmentary Order in front of as many gamers as possible, he’s not giving up on Escape from Tarkov. This isn’t a conquest to make something bigger and bolder than Tarkov, even though that’s what Fragmentary Order is. It’s more of an alignment project, to have both games running in parallel.
That’s what Nikita said, and he even made a tongue-in-cheek reference to the ‘social media nickname’ for FragO:
It’s a tricky thing for me to promote everything at once. People think I’m killing Tarkov at times, but it’s not that. You can consider it like a next-generation game with extraction mechanics, but it’s not like Tarkov in space. It has a lot of functionality from Tarkov, but it’s done differently.
People can say Space Tarkov. It promotes the new game for the audience.
Nikita’s Fragmentary Order will enter a playable phase in December, with the recent Prime Batch program allowing users to get access to test builds. At the same time, Escape from Tarkov’s second PvP season will arrive on the scene.
Are you looking forward to the future of Escape from Tarkov and Fragmentary Order? Let us know your thoughts on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
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Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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