Today, 2K games and 31st Union finally revealed Project Ethos, the studio’s first game since it formed in 2019. And uh, it looks…well…have you ever played Overwatch? Or Fortnite? Then a lot of this will look familiar.
Formed in 2019, 31st Union is a studio led by former Dead Space director and Sledgehammer Games co-founder Michael Condrey. The 2K Games studio has been quietly working on something for a few years now (and also laying people off, too). And on October 17 the studio finally unveiled its first game: Project Ethos. It’s a free-to-play third-person extraction hero shooter with roguelike elements. Here’s a trailer for this game, which looks a lot like something that was greenlit in 2019 or so, back when everyone was trying to make a hero shooter.
So far the rollout of Project Ethos hasn’t been great. The game was supposed to have a big reveal on Twitch, but as I write this at 12:45 p.m., the game’s live stream is still showing the same sizzle reel over and over and promising to start soon. Meanwhile, influencers who are supposed to be playing the game on stream to show it off are waiting for it while players watch in the hopes of getting a key that will let them take part in a short playtest happening later this month.
An IGN preview for the game was not particularly encouraging, suggesting the shooter was just fine, but felt like it was already dated. Online reactions to the reveal of Project Ethos haven’t been any better. It’s mostly been a mix of people joking about that it will share the fate of Sony’s short-lived hero shooter Concord, comparing Project Ethos negatively to Fortnite and Overwatch, or commenting on how it feels like we’ve gotten so many of these colorful free shooters in the last few years and none of them have made much of a splash. Perhaps Project Ethos will be different? I bet 2K is hoping so.
Project Ethos’ first public playtest will start on October 17 and run to October 20. You can join by getting a key from watching Ethos streams on Twitch. 2K says players can sign up for future chances at later tests. The game is set to arrive on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC sometime in the future.
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