While it is not the next game from the studio that brought us the likes of Titanfall 2 or Apex Legends, Highguard is coming from many former members of the Respawn team--developer Wildlight is about 100 employees and more than 60 worked on Titanfall 2 and/or Apex Legends. Highguard does not look anything like those games, though. The reveal trailer for Highguard saw you riding a horse, not piloting a mech, and casting fantastical magic instead of utilizing sci-fi tech. But the trailer did not do much to tell us what the game actually is. So for about two months now, I have been looking for the answer to one question: What is Highguard?
Having now finally played Highguard, I am still unsure if I can actually classify it. If put on the spot, I would probably describe Highguard as a first-person shooter that follows both the attacker-versus-defender structure of Rainbow Six Siege and the lane-focused bomb-planting format of Valorant, but within the much larger objective-focused, base-destroying scope of the space battles of Star Wars Battlefront 2. And on top of that, the game features an upgradable armament system that combines how looting works in Apex Legends with the "shopping" mechanic of Call of Duty's Zombies mode, as well as hero-character archetypes seen in a ton of different shooters. You have played or experienced pieces of Highguard in other games, but I feel very confident in saying that you have probably not played this exact chimera of pieces before.
You remember that sensation the first time you ever played a battle royale, or looter shooter, or extraction shooter? There are pieces of those genres we can identify in many different games that came before them, but with the earliest games in each of those genres, there was this sensation of novelty and inventiveness. They could not easily fit into the established boxes of the existing genres that inspired them.
Playing Highguard feels like that. I have a few qualms about its balance (which I will get into in a bit), but there is something exciting and fresh about the overall experience. I am not sure if Highguard will thrive in the already crowded live-service shooter market that is dominated by juggernauts with loyal fanbases, but I get the feeling that the concept of Wildlight's shooter will at least persist and inspire more like it. I think other studios are going to emulate the best parts of Highguard over the next decade.
So all that said: What even is Highguard? Wildlight describes the game as a "raid" shooter, which does little to let you know what it is. I will do my best to describe what Highguard is and how it works, but I am saying this all with the caveat that you should just go try the game. It is free-to-play, and each match is only eight to 30 minutes long--you will quickly pick up what the game is trying to put down. You may not like it (and then you can just uninstall it!), but you will understand it.
Highguard's matches are three-versus-three.
In Highguard, you play as one of eight different Wardens on a team of three. When a match begins, your team votes for which of the four bases you want to defend (randomly pulled from a total list of six distinct bases), each of which has a unique structure. The one opposing team does the same, and the two bases form either endpoint of a map, with the two choices informing how the landscape between them is formed. This creates a fairly sizable battleground--bigger than Halo Infinite's High Power but smaller than Apex Legends' King's Canyon. At the start of a match, you have about a minute to work together to reinforce walls and set up defenses in your base. After that, you set out into the map.
While exploring, your team can decide whether they want to stick together or spread out. A mineral called Vesper can be mined to purchase armor and weapon upgrades, both of which are also found in chests scattered across the map. Care packages with more powerful gear drop from the sky as well, and you can kill members of the other team to earn additional Vesper and stop them from grabbing the loot you want.
After a few minutes, a magical sword called the Shieldbreaker spawns on the map. Whichever player grabs the Shieldbreaker is marked on the map for everyone, and the sword regularly gives off a faint blue pulse that makes it easy to find its wielder once you get closer. With this weapon in hand, you can cut open the protective shield that guards the enemy base. If you are killed while holding the Shieldbreaker, you drop it, allowing another player to grab it.
Highguard is more high fantasy than Apex Legends, but the sci-fi elements remain.
Each base starts with 100 health. Breaking a base's shield deals 30 damage. Within each base are two generators and one anchorstone. When you invade a base, your team can plant a bomb at one of those three points if you manage to reach any of them--it takes about half a minute for a planted bomb to destroy a generator and about twice as long for the anchorstone. Destroy a generator and the base takes 35 damage, but break the anchorstone and the base automatically explodes, no matter what.
The base's defenders can disarm the attackers' bombs, and the attackers have a limited number of respawns per attack--if the defenders successfully hold the line and prevent the attackers from destroying any part of their base, the attackers' base takes 30 damage for a failed assault. Every assault ends with both teams returning to their side, and the process begins all over again. The first team to destroy the other team's base wins.
There is a lot more depth to the overall flow and back-and-forth of a match--while Highguard is approachable to jump into, its skill ceiling feels very high--but that's the gist of it. Highguard is a tug-of-war that encapsulates both the tense exploration and pot shooting of battle royales and the frantic close-quarters combat of tactical shooters. While it is very possible to get steamrolled and destroyed in a matter of minutes, my experience with the game saw matches being much closer and often neck-and-neck over the course of a tense half-hour. It was repeatedly very stressful--way more than a typical match in Titanfall 2 or Apex Legends. And as taking out the opposing team's anchorstone is always an instant win, the ebb and flow of a match can change on a dime with a smart and well-executed play--you can never sit back and relax, no matter how far ahead your team has pulled.
Gameplay fluctuates between wide-open skirmishes and close-quarters firefights.
Highguard plays a bit slower than Apex Legends (which is itself a slightly slower take on Titanfall 2's gameplay), but it maintains the same pedigree of quality when it comes to movement. Getting from one point to another is fast and fluid, whether you are running on foot, galloping on a mount, or speeding along a zipline--it is pretty easy to grasp the minutiae of movement in a match or two and quickly fall into a nice flow in the moment-to-moment. This sense of rhythm extends to other mechanics, too. My favorite is how perfectly timing the swings of your melee weapon lets you use your axe to harvest minerals or break down walls more efficiently, as well as unleash a supercharged blow on your fifth swing.
Gunplay feels pretty good, for the most part. Some of the firearms--like the sniper, revolver, and light machine gun--feel balanced, while others--like the full-auto submachine gun--already feel a smidge too powerful. Meanwhile, the shotgun and assault rifles feel like they are in a bit of a weird place, not quite hitting with the level of punch expected, given their aggressive kickback.
Firearms falter the most when it comes to the auditory and visual feedback of hitting your target. Obviously, the Wildlight team could not just copy Apex Legends, but the measly dissolution of an enemy's body shield in Highguard does not come anywhere close to the satisfying crack of breaking an opponent's armor in Apex. In the frenetic chaos of a Highguard firefight, you can sometimes miss whether you have successfully destroyed an enemy's defenses, and losing a firefight because you are not 100% sure how healthy your opponent is--leading you to pull back when you should have pushed forward or vice versa--is irritating.
Kai feels like he will be one of the most popular picks in the game during the first week.
Similarly, some of the playable Wardens feel too important to ignore, while others lack the necessary utility to be viable picks. The stealth-focused Scarlet is my absolute favorite Warden so far (and it is not even close)--she controls sand to turn invisible and pass through walls. The support-focused Mara is also awesome, using dark globules and tendrils to buff allies' shields and create a spawn point for her team anywhere on the map (even the enemy's base). The defense-focused Kai might be the best option from the starting roster (he was the meta for the preview event at least), using his ice powers to create cover and cut off the enemy's advancement, as well as transform into a damage-soaking yokai that will absolutely ruin your day if you run into him in close quarters.
But then you have the likes of Condor, the recon specialist. Her ability to passively note whenever the enemy team is nearby isn't super useful in maps as big and open as the ones in Highguard. And while the ability to scan for enemies and see them highlighted through walls is very useful, her ultimate ability is awful--you forgo control of Condor to instead command her slow-moving hawk and drone strike the battlefield with smoke bombs. It is an extremely precarious ability to use in a shooter as fast-paced as Highguard.
Too often, when I tried to use Condor's ultimate ability, the enemy would already be racing away or shooting my unguarded and unmoving person. On paper, a character that marries Apex Legends' Bloodhound, Crypto, and Bangalore sounds cool, but in practice, it is clear that an information-gathering Warden needs to be as proactive and aggressive as the other Wardens, or they will too easily be left behind or sniped in a fight. Redmane similarly feels less capable than his peers. His skills are geared towards destroying the defenses of enemy bases, but since all characters can carry wall-breaching bombs, base-breaking rocket launchers, or defense-cracking hammers, his toolkit can be easily replicated by anyone else.
I love Condor's design and personality, but her ability kit feels like it could use some work.
But Redmane has one thing going for him at least. In fact, almost all the Wardens do--pretty much every single playable character in Highguard is ridiculously f**king hot, and the Wildlight team seems to know it if the legendary skins that you can unlock for a few of them are any indication. I would risk it all for Scarlet, Kai, or Condor. Yes, I know that Highguard is a first-person shooter, so any unlockable skin would not even be seen during gameplay. I have a problem. It is not under control. And that is fine.
Plus, whether they are hot or not, every Warden has something interesting to say. At the start of each match, your team's Wardens will converse about their existing relationships or past adventures with each other, dropping interesting nuggets of lore and story concerning the in-game fantasy world that Wildlight has created. I want to know more about this cool-sounding world, especially regarding the implication that this was a once-thriving technology-dependent society that now needs to rely on recently discovered magic to survive. Usually, fantasy settings have magic predate tech, so I am intrigued to see it happen the other way around.
While I loved Titanfall 2's multiplayer, I most enjoyed its single-player, and my peak adoration for Apex Legends coincides with the game's story taking off in Seasons 2 through 13. A lot of the folks who make up the Wildlight team have a track record of wanting to prioritize story and using the evolving nature of a live-service game to tell a serial drama akin to a television show. If they decide to do that again with Highguard, I will be seated for its first year of content, regardless of my misgivings involving the balance of the game's firearms and Wardens.
Highguard is available right now. You can play it on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, or PC.
Source
Having now finally played Highguard, I am still unsure if I can actually classify it. If put on the spot, I would probably describe Highguard as a first-person shooter that follows both the attacker-versus-defender structure of Rainbow Six Siege and the lane-focused bomb-planting format of Valorant, but within the much larger objective-focused, base-destroying scope of the space battles of Star Wars Battlefront 2. And on top of that, the game features an upgradable armament system that combines how looting works in Apex Legends with the "shopping" mechanic of Call of Duty's Zombies mode, as well as hero-character archetypes seen in a ton of different shooters. You have played or experienced pieces of Highguard in other games, but I feel very confident in saying that you have probably not played this exact chimera of pieces before.
You remember that sensation the first time you ever played a battle royale, or looter shooter, or extraction shooter? There are pieces of those genres we can identify in many different games that came before them, but with the earliest games in each of those genres, there was this sensation of novelty and inventiveness. They could not easily fit into the established boxes of the existing genres that inspired them.
Playing Highguard feels like that. I have a few qualms about its balance (which I will get into in a bit), but there is something exciting and fresh about the overall experience. I am not sure if Highguard will thrive in the already crowded live-service shooter market that is dominated by juggernauts with loyal fanbases, but I get the feeling that the concept of Wildlight's shooter will at least persist and inspire more like it. I think other studios are going to emulate the best parts of Highguard over the next decade.
So all that said: What even is Highguard? Wildlight describes the game as a "raid" shooter, which does little to let you know what it is. I will do my best to describe what Highguard is and how it works, but I am saying this all with the caveat that you should just go try the game. It is free-to-play, and each match is only eight to 30 minutes long--you will quickly pick up what the game is trying to put down. You may not like it (and then you can just uninstall it!), but you will understand it.
Highguard's matches are three-versus-three.
In Highguard, you play as one of eight different Wardens on a team of three. When a match begins, your team votes for which of the four bases you want to defend (randomly pulled from a total list of six distinct bases), each of which has a unique structure. The one opposing team does the same, and the two bases form either endpoint of a map, with the two choices informing how the landscape between them is formed. This creates a fairly sizable battleground--bigger than Halo Infinite's High Power but smaller than Apex Legends' King's Canyon. At the start of a match, you have about a minute to work together to reinforce walls and set up defenses in your base. After that, you set out into the map.
While exploring, your team can decide whether they want to stick together or spread out. A mineral called Vesper can be mined to purchase armor and weapon upgrades, both of which are also found in chests scattered across the map. Care packages with more powerful gear drop from the sky as well, and you can kill members of the other team to earn additional Vesper and stop them from grabbing the loot you want.
After a few minutes, a magical sword called the Shieldbreaker spawns on the map. Whichever player grabs the Shieldbreaker is marked on the map for everyone, and the sword regularly gives off a faint blue pulse that makes it easy to find its wielder once you get closer. With this weapon in hand, you can cut open the protective shield that guards the enemy base. If you are killed while holding the Shieldbreaker, you drop it, allowing another player to grab it.
Highguard is more high fantasy than Apex Legends, but the sci-fi elements remain.
Each base starts with 100 health. Breaking a base's shield deals 30 damage. Within each base are two generators and one anchorstone. When you invade a base, your team can plant a bomb at one of those three points if you manage to reach any of them--it takes about half a minute for a planted bomb to destroy a generator and about twice as long for the anchorstone. Destroy a generator and the base takes 35 damage, but break the anchorstone and the base automatically explodes, no matter what.
The base's defenders can disarm the attackers' bombs, and the attackers have a limited number of respawns per attack--if the defenders successfully hold the line and prevent the attackers from destroying any part of their base, the attackers' base takes 30 damage for a failed assault. Every assault ends with both teams returning to their side, and the process begins all over again. The first team to destroy the other team's base wins.
There is a lot more depth to the overall flow and back-and-forth of a match--while Highguard is approachable to jump into, its skill ceiling feels very high--but that's the gist of it. Highguard is a tug-of-war that encapsulates both the tense exploration and pot shooting of battle royales and the frantic close-quarters combat of tactical shooters. While it is very possible to get steamrolled and destroyed in a matter of minutes, my experience with the game saw matches being much closer and often neck-and-neck over the course of a tense half-hour. It was repeatedly very stressful--way more than a typical match in Titanfall 2 or Apex Legends. And as taking out the opposing team's anchorstone is always an instant win, the ebb and flow of a match can change on a dime with a smart and well-executed play--you can never sit back and relax, no matter how far ahead your team has pulled.
Gameplay fluctuates between wide-open skirmishes and close-quarters firefights.
Highguard plays a bit slower than Apex Legends (which is itself a slightly slower take on Titanfall 2's gameplay), but it maintains the same pedigree of quality when it comes to movement. Getting from one point to another is fast and fluid, whether you are running on foot, galloping on a mount, or speeding along a zipline--it is pretty easy to grasp the minutiae of movement in a match or two and quickly fall into a nice flow in the moment-to-moment. This sense of rhythm extends to other mechanics, too. My favorite is how perfectly timing the swings of your melee weapon lets you use your axe to harvest minerals or break down walls more efficiently, as well as unleash a supercharged blow on your fifth swing.
Gunplay feels pretty good, for the most part. Some of the firearms--like the sniper, revolver, and light machine gun--feel balanced, while others--like the full-auto submachine gun--already feel a smidge too powerful. Meanwhile, the shotgun and assault rifles feel like they are in a bit of a weird place, not quite hitting with the level of punch expected, given their aggressive kickback.
Firearms falter the most when it comes to the auditory and visual feedback of hitting your target. Obviously, the Wildlight team could not just copy Apex Legends, but the measly dissolution of an enemy's body shield in Highguard does not come anywhere close to the satisfying crack of breaking an opponent's armor in Apex. In the frenetic chaos of a Highguard firefight, you can sometimes miss whether you have successfully destroyed an enemy's defenses, and losing a firefight because you are not 100% sure how healthy your opponent is--leading you to pull back when you should have pushed forward or vice versa--is irritating.
Kai feels like he will be one of the most popular picks in the game during the first week.
Similarly, some of the playable Wardens feel too important to ignore, while others lack the necessary utility to be viable picks. The stealth-focused Scarlet is my absolute favorite Warden so far (and it is not even close)--she controls sand to turn invisible and pass through walls. The support-focused Mara is also awesome, using dark globules and tendrils to buff allies' shields and create a spawn point for her team anywhere on the map (even the enemy's base). The defense-focused Kai might be the best option from the starting roster (he was the meta for the preview event at least), using his ice powers to create cover and cut off the enemy's advancement, as well as transform into a damage-soaking yokai that will absolutely ruin your day if you run into him in close quarters.
But then you have the likes of Condor, the recon specialist. Her ability to passively note whenever the enemy team is nearby isn't super useful in maps as big and open as the ones in Highguard. And while the ability to scan for enemies and see them highlighted through walls is very useful, her ultimate ability is awful--you forgo control of Condor to instead command her slow-moving hawk and drone strike the battlefield with smoke bombs. It is an extremely precarious ability to use in a shooter as fast-paced as Highguard.
Too often, when I tried to use Condor's ultimate ability, the enemy would already be racing away or shooting my unguarded and unmoving person. On paper, a character that marries Apex Legends' Bloodhound, Crypto, and Bangalore sounds cool, but in practice, it is clear that an information-gathering Warden needs to be as proactive and aggressive as the other Wardens, or they will too easily be left behind or sniped in a fight. Redmane similarly feels less capable than his peers. His skills are geared towards destroying the defenses of enemy bases, but since all characters can carry wall-breaching bombs, base-breaking rocket launchers, or defense-cracking hammers, his toolkit can be easily replicated by anyone else.
I love Condor's design and personality, but her ability kit feels like it could use some work.
But Redmane has one thing going for him at least. In fact, almost all the Wardens do--pretty much every single playable character in Highguard is ridiculously f**king hot, and the Wildlight team seems to know it if the legendary skins that you can unlock for a few of them are any indication. I would risk it all for Scarlet, Kai, or Condor. Yes, I know that Highguard is a first-person shooter, so any unlockable skin would not even be seen during gameplay. I have a problem. It is not under control. And that is fine.
Plus, whether they are hot or not, every Warden has something interesting to say. At the start of each match, your team's Wardens will converse about their existing relationships or past adventures with each other, dropping interesting nuggets of lore and story concerning the in-game fantasy world that Wildlight has created. I want to know more about this cool-sounding world, especially regarding the implication that this was a once-thriving technology-dependent society that now needs to rely on recently discovered magic to survive. Usually, fantasy settings have magic predate tech, so I am intrigued to see it happen the other way around.
While I loved Titanfall 2's multiplayer, I most enjoyed its single-player, and my peak adoration for Apex Legends coincides with the game's story taking off in Seasons 2 through 13. A lot of the folks who make up the Wildlight team have a track record of wanting to prioritize story and using the evolving nature of a live-service game to tell a serial drama akin to a television show. If they decide to do that again with Highguard, I will be seated for its first year of content, regardless of my misgivings involving the balance of the game's firearms and Wardens.
Highguard is available right now. You can play it on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, or PC.
Source