It has been almost two months since Rant Gaming, Nikita Buyanov’s new studio, unveiled Fragmentary Order. This ambitious hardcore sci-fi shooter is a world away (literally) from Battlestate Games’ Escape from Tarkov, but in many ways, it’ll emerge with the same operating model when it eventually launches.
It’s being pieced together now by a large team of dedicated developers, some of whom boast a staggering legacy in the film and video game industries, and paired with the Unreal Engine base, things are looking impressive.
I was lucky enough to get a first look at in-engine screenshots from Fragmentary Order, guided by Nikita Buyanov himself, to learn exactly how this game is coming together.
Fragmentary Order is Not Just Tarkov in Space
Once again, I cleared things up with Nikita Buyanov, who is leading the charge at both Battlestate Games (Tarkov) and Rant Gaming (Frago). Fragmentary Order is not another extraction shooter like Escape from Tarkov, and it’s way more ambitious in every way.
For instance, while ‘Frago’ boasts a multiple-map format, each environment is several times bigger than the average Tarkov map. Nikita explained:
It’s like five times more (bigger) than a typical Tarkov location, basically.
The first location, called Blue Mars, it’s on a partially terraformed Mars, but other locations will be on different areas… a space station, on Earth, on Venus, and more to come.
It’s almost post-apocalyptic in nature. Nikita was eager to point out that it’s a future-predictive kind of model. It’s grounded in reality as much as possible, but it’s a flash-forward to sorts of what could be in our own future. He gave me a deep review of the game’s lore:
This particular location, it is some kind of post-apocalyptic vibe. It was a thriving community and colony ruled by COR3, the super-corporation, but after that, a new force started to gain control, called PCF. They thirst to be the one and only rulers of Mars, but it created the age of strife, basically.
Mars was cut off from outside supplies, basically it was forgotten for a long time.
In the game, we start to infiltrate that with our clone operatives to start hunting for materials, resources, and clues, stuff like that. You can consider it like the Wild West in the solar system.
In terms of moving away from the extraction element, Nikita cut a clear picture of how this is not that. It’s a session-based game, but it uses different mechanics from Escape from Tarkov. It’s more survival-driven, and the idea is that a consistent, long-term session model exists, allowing players to play a single raid for ‘one or two hours’.
There will be multiple objectives, various ways to approach the game, and while players can extract when they see fit, they can ‘clear out the whole area’ or ‘have an option to basically survive; you will not need to extract at all.’
The team is also planning multiple game modes, adding controllable entities that players can assume command over, and encouraging a more open environment with sandbox mechanics, the likes of which don’t really exist in Escape from Tarkov.
It’s just bigger and broader overall, right down to the map traversal. There will be vehicles in Fragmentary Order, for instance, like you can see in the screenshot below:
Fragmentary Order’s Player Model
Fragmentary Order will be a PvPvE-focused game, bigger in scope than Tarkov, but it’ll also accommodate a PvE-focused mode at launch. The size of the game means that more players can occupy each map. Nikita advised that ‘up to 40 or 50’ players could compete on one map at any one point, along with ‘locals and drones’ and any other PvE element in the space.
For the uninitiated, Rant Gaming pushed out an ARG (alternate reality game) a few months back. This was the first touchpoint players had with Fragmentary Order, long before it was revealed. Through this game, players could manipulate a ‘terminal’ system, solving puzzles and uncovering tidbits of lore, and it was later revealed as something much deeper.
Through this ARG, the game’s foundational players could start building their profile, locking themselves in for the earliest access to the game. But, as I spoke to Nikita, he explained that it’s not all about the ARG. To get access to Fragmentary Order, it’s advised to access and enjoy this ARG, to explore the foundation of CORIE.
The idea that we are building something… We want to break the limits again, to make something really interesting. For us, it’s huge, big, and high-budget work to create this next-generation simulator, and to fulfil that, we need the right people in, to make it right, to make it balanced.
We need to build the fanbase. Not only the fanbase, but the actual helpers; the founders that will help us to shape the game, together.
It needs to be tested, it needs to be played, we need to inhabit this world with the right people. The idea is this is the game for decades. Like Tarkov, which will also be for decades… We need to start building this community before we start everything.
The first batch, the founders, they’re super dedicated players that will have access to the game earlier than everybody, but we want to achieve that – not like an early access, but we actually want to utilize this force to fix the game.
Escape from Tarkov’s fanbase will inevitably gravitate to Fragmentary Order, but it’s being built and marketed in a way that new players unfamiliar with Battlestate’s work can enjoy it. It’s hardcore, sure, but that shouldn’t be too much of an off-putting element for new adopters.
Rant Gaming has spent an immense amount of money, time, and effort bringing to life this intricate, detailed world complete with original items, pieces of equipment, weapons, and more. Nikita was transparent and said that it’s taking much longer to fully create even a single weapon for Fragmentary Order than it would for Escape from Tarkov, but it’s all part of the bigger picture for players.
The milestone now at Rant Gaming is to finish a playable build of the game with ‘good FPS, good networking, good interactions’, but a lot of work still needs to be done. Nikita is simply not willing to make the mistakes he and the studio did with Escape from Tarkov, and they want a more perfect picture for players:
It needs to be perfectly playable. I decided to do that just because I had this huge experience with Tarkov.
Tarkov releases, and all the technical issues, and I’d hate to feel all that again. I really want to publish this game, to make it live, with the best technical quality possible.
For me, I should spend more of my time and more of my money just to polish it at the early stages, not to have the mess of everything connected together, and people struggling to play it.
It’s not yet clear when the first playable build for Fragmentary Order will be available for testing, but Nikita assures me that it shouldn’t be too long. But as he said, this is the ‘ultimate, super-grounded, and true experience in terms of sci-fi games’, so there’s a lot of faith from the studio and the guy leading it all.
Are you looking forward to learning more about Fragmentary Order? Let us know what you’re thinking about this project on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out our preview of Arizona Sunshine ‘flatscreen’
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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