Sometimes you see a game and can tell that the developers just get it. No Law is one of those games. Having seen it first hand at Gamescom, it has quickly become one of my most anticipated games from the show.
But first, what is No Law? It’s a first person FPS set in a cyberpunk setting. That topline description does the game a disservice: it is an intelligently built immersive sim from Swedish developer Neon Giant that not only freshens up a setting that’s starting to feel a bit played out, but also offers solutions to long-lasting genre gripes.
It achieves all this while placing you in the shoes of a bulky, hirsute giant of a man. Grey Harkner, a retired military man content to water his plants in peace, is pulled back into a world of violence and intrigue. Why this happened, and who the big players are behind the events of No Law, are mysteries to be uncovered by this walking, talking ode to action movie protagonists of the 90s and earlier. More Jean Claude Van Damme than, well, Keanu Reeves.
I was shown a hands-off demo of a vertical slice of No Law at Gamescom, piloted by one of the developers at Neon Giant. The player was prompted to track someone down in a nearby rental building. On the way, we walked through a bustling street filled with people, walking around and going about their business. The city – Port Desire – is a striking deviation from the standard grisly Cyberpunk aesthetic. Mike Pondsmith, creator of the Cyberpunk tabletop game, envisioned the world through an American lens. The old world stripped away and replaced with a corporate hive of advertising and oppressive brutal architecture. No Law in comparison is proudly European in its depiction. The technical advancements, all the good and ill they bring, are built around aged buildings from time gone by. Drones fly past brick buildings painted in faded pastels, a new cyberised structure sits as a neighbor to an apartment block that very well could exist today. The game has a mediterranean flair: it looked very much to me like walking through Nice or Monaco, the advancements of the future spreading across the streets and walls like mold.
It is also no stranger to greenery. Cyberpunk 2077, perhaps the most obvious comparison point to No Law, places us in a world largely torn from nature. Concrete streets and dark alleys make the world feel alien when placed alongside the America of the past. In No Law, nature is still in the fight. Trees stand tall as if holding back construction, green shoots burst through the pavement. I’m told in No Law, a sort of war is waged against the tide of nature. Bad news for the residents of Port Desire I’m sure, but as a spectator it was a breath of fresh air (pun intended).
Even the act of shopping in No Law is itself impressive. Walking into a store, all the energy drinks, stimulants, and junk food can be individually picked up from shelves and placed into your inventory. You must then take them to the counter and pay for them, or you can bolt out the door with your pockets full of chocolate bars. The sensor by said door can be nicked, too, on your way out, then attached to a grenade and turned into a remote mine. If you get into a scrap with the store owner, killing him will result in the shop being closed on the following day.
According to the developers guiding me through No Law, each building is on a real street, and has a number attached. Street signs, then, are a must. And indeed they were present throughout the main road in the slice of Port Desire I saw. You can apparently opt into a mode where HUD guidance is disabled. “You’ll have to take notes in your notebook”, I’m told as I scribbled away, an idea that I’ll admit was awfully tantalising then, and remains so now.
After a bit of exploration we came to the rental apartment building where the person we were looking for resided. We did so twice: once at day and once at night. During the day, more enemies guarded the complex, and as such a stealthy approach seemed best. After circumventing the perimeter and crouching across a metal eave, we slide inside and talk to the bloated landlord behind the front desk. This guy was ripped straight from a mafia flick, and acted to me as though a totem to the “neon sleaze” tone I’m told is threaded throughout No Law. We can pay him for a key to the apartments, but instead we look around for a passphrase hidden in the nearby washroom.
Onwards then to the upper floors. It’s here that No Law’s intelligent design reveals itself. Have you played the newer Deus Ex games? They’re brilliant, but feature a fundamental design problem. Experience and wider player progression is tied to individual acts. If you pick a lock, you get XP. If you knock someone out stealthily, you get XP. As such, a stealthy pacifist playstyle can be rewarded. The problem is: you’re given XP for killing enemies even if they’re knocked out. As such the most beneficial way to play that game was to unlock every door even if you didn’t need to, and blast away sleeping foes for that extra bump.
No Law, by comparison, provides XP rewards upon completing larger objectives, rather than smaller tasks. You aren’t rewarded for picking the lock to a room, but entering the room itself. I’m told special collectable magazines for individual skills are sprinkled throughout the world that help players specialise into certain skills, but I did not see one personally. This way, regardless of how you approach a problem, you are rewarded equally. During this stealthy section, we use a taser to knock out a guard and choke out another, and slink through a vent. Doing so provided no numerical disadvantages.
After a bit of sleuthing inside an empty room, we discover enough evidence to cement a solid lead in this mission, as it appears our perp is likely in some hidden tunnel, one he has access to thanks to his former job. We snatch a keycard from his safe (0451 was tried, as it must be), and go on our way.
But what if you go loud? At this point in the demo we rewind to before we entered the building and approach it at night. There are fewer guards as rain pours down, and we’re packing a machine gun to help ease things along. What few guards are left outside the apartments are taken out with an electrical grenade that causes a chain reaction of gory explosions, viscera left staining the floor, walls, and porch sofa.
Something about it looked familiar, and it was only when I saw the character stick his leg out and kick a metal security shutter that I realised it. The DNA of Bulletstorm is here, a wonderful (if underappreciated) first person shooter from the 360 era where players could combo together attacks in the name of hyperviolence. The leads on No Law worked on it back in the day. While the action seemed a touch subdued in No Law – it doesn’t scream out as loudly as it did in Bulletstorm – the spirit is still in there. I could hear it growling at me.
We once again talk to the receptionist and are faced with another interesting bit of intentional design. Long gone are the dialogue wheels of games past, where the text you see on screen may not match the tone of the character you’re playing. You are given a selection of topics to discuss, but the manner in which Harker engages with these conversations adapts to how you play. When we went in stealthily he was making more of an effort to negotiate for access to the upper floors. After we turned the neighbors into chunks, he was more aggressive, more threatening.
Ah, another thing that’s clever in No Law. You know when you go off to explore, find a hidden cache of loot and discover a non lethal weapon waiting for you? What a bummer, who wants that? No Law lets you keep your finger on the trigger of your stun gun, pushing voltage through someone until they erupt into flames. A gruesome sight, certainly, but it’s good to know you can have fun no matter the gun.
My time with No Law was short in the wider scheme of things. These sorts of games are made in the hours of exploration and narrative intrigue, not in 30-minute vertical slices. But as far as first impressions go, I was blown away by No Law. It struck me as a real wildcard at Gamescom. If the developers at Neon Giant can pull what looks to be a fairly ambitious game off from start to end, I think this could be a game people regret not paying more attention to.
This preview is based on a preview at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. Krafton provided flights and accommodation.
