God Help Me, I Ranked The Concord Characters 

"I'd like to find at least one character we can get behind" John, focus on more realistic dreams, like going back in time and beating Kathy.

"Concord failed because it was is a counter punch to a jab that has was thrown eight years ago." That was a damn good line actually.

I think I understand why I hate the writing. It’s like those events in elementary school where they bring in 30 year-olds to dance and sing about how not smoking is good for you. The vibe is so flat and happy, it doesn’t feel genuine. But that was at least for 8-year-olds. It feels wrong chasing that vibe for an older audience. They won’t buy into it.

The fact that EVERY character quips in the same way is so incredibly grating

Concord is some of the most, like, "art by committee" character design I can think of. All of this looks and sounds like it was sanded down to be as easy to consume, mass-market appeal as possible, and whatever character it could have had got carved out in the process

It feels weird to hear you talk about following Concord because me and a bunch of people in my friend group just straight up didn’t know this game existed until the announcement that it was shutting down.

It's pretty damning that, with a few exceptions, you could swap the characters intro voice lines around and couldn't tell the difference. Star Lord quips don't work when half the character roster is making them.

Concord has intense "yeah, I guess that's good enough" energy

That first guy looks like if a generic raider from Fallout had access to soap, water, and clean clothes.

"You can't have the faces be human faces on alien bodies!" STAR TREK IN SHAMBLES

The thing that drives me mad with this is they went so hard on boring photorealism and a bunch of greebling on the outfits when it’s a super chaotic, visually busy kind of a game and for that you want your characters to read really really well. Like the simpler visuals in stuff like Overwatch and TF2 aren’t just because of a lack of processing power, those simpler designs work in the games’ favour. There’s concepts in these characters that could be great if they had just any actual art direction instead of generic realism, it is infuriating.

It-Z is one of the most painful, because the markings of a GREAT character design are there Her colouring works, purple hair is hard to pull off but it contrasts great against the green skin. Her more "animal-like" features imply shes a very jumpy movement based character. Like its very easy to get what the character is... BUT THEN THERES JUST NO SAUCE This sauceless game just drags the work of a good character, and goes "No, you WILL be budget Tracer"

Teo looks like he's playing Paintball, not going into battle.

The first character in the line-up being John Concord really drives home how bland the whole cast is.

The sniper lady's "there's no hiding from me" line is so emblematic of the "sandblast the personality off" style of writing when you compare it to Widowmaker's denotatively identical "no one can hide from my sight"

What drives me nuts about the characters for Concord is that the concept art for them (or at least, what little has been released) has so much genuine charm and intrigue, especially with the moebius inspired aesthetic, and somehow NONE of it got translated into the final designs

John's got that Dead Eyed Concord Stare in this video watching the character trailers.

Crazy that the woman covered in trash with a bucket for a helmet managed to sneak herself into "Ok i guess"

Honestly some of those gameplay kits actually seem pretty interesting to mess around with, but they are NOT helped by the demo trailers having like ZERO actual action. Feels like they were recorded in bot matches, when they really should have been recorded during internal playtesting.

The Final Gamer meets The Final Game. The ultimate art has finally met its ultimate practitioner. Before the game industry was, Concord waited for it.

my main thing is that i wish they just went FULL TILT into the clear 1970s sci-fi inspirations they were using here in terms of design and also just actually gave the characters for their character shooter *some actual character*

The biggest thing concord did wrong was come out ten years too late and be way too average

Haymar is so obviously a solar Warlock from Destiny it's insane how shamelessly they designed her.

It is so wild to me that you can SEE the straight destiny animation rips like the dodge rolls and knife/grenade throws.

The fact that the robots' pronouns aren't he/him in binary code is so funny to me. Like, there are people who will be very annoyed by pronouns being visible at all. Why not have a bit of fun with it? It would bring the slightest bit of levity to something so benign.

Now to see John's specific fetishes.

The second video about video games that don't exist.

Why is every second character able to deploy a dome that looks like every other character's dome?

“Woke is ruining games” is the most npc ass I download my opinion from the internet ass take. This game would not suddenly work if you replaced every character with a different flavor of monster energy man. I think the real frustration behind the take is with the inauthenticity of it all. I mean, a lot of these triple a titles struggle with the whedonisms, the inability to commit to a tone, the insufferable irony, etc. and that’s so fucking annoying it’s actually completely unbearable. But if you’re a little gamer duckling, and you don’t know why you feel this way, and some bigger gamer comes along and tells you it’s because the west has fallen or whatever, you believe that gamer. Simply because that’s the first gamer you met who has any kind of answer.

I’m wondering if there was something in the overarching character design document about cosplay. They wanted as many of these as possible to be easy to turn into costumes so none of them can be too alien

I do like the vacuum robot. And looking through the comments, everyone else seems to like the vacuum robot. It’s just that his particular lines sound worse when everyone else quips similarly to the *one* joke he made. He does *sound* sincere, the pun works, and the design is one of the best. Props to the team behind that specific character for doing the absolute best they could.

This is the most noodly-looking underwater-feeling shooter I have ever seen.

i think chonky robot deserves a tiny bit of appreciation because i get the impression its "deal" was that it's a repurposed cleaning appliance, thus its vacuum-themed powers and "clean house" quips. it's almost a character! it still got a nice thick layer of corporate slop design on top, like everyone else, but that one was the closest the design team ever got to cooking, imo

These characters look like they are cosplaying as Guardians of the Galaxy OCs with a $20 outfit budget.

The lack of attention to detail really shows in the cinematic trailer when Haymar gets shot in the leg and yet it doesn't affect her for the rest of the cinematic, and she still has the hotsauce bottle at the end when _Lennox shot and destroyed it in the fight_

Good video! Think the point about characters looking like a man in makeup made so much sense. Like alien, who is a lizard man, has completely normal human face and eyes. What a waste lol

No, I disagree on the robot. His weapon is like this vaccuum, right, so him saying "I am going to clean house" is a nice little fun quip, makes him sounds light-hearted. I like this character, I'd like him in a game. Maybe different gameplay, but the design and even the voicelines are solid enough. I also kinda liked the idea of Duchess, but you could execute the concept to much better. Most characters here suffer from this.

The fact I see more videos about fixing the concord character designs than I ever did see talk about the game and base designs speaks volumes about the sheer disinterest people had

19:30, sound like early 2015 cod showcase voices, kinda makes sense with the 8-9 year development

I think the best way to put it about the effort that went into Concord is that there was a whole lot of ARTISTRY being put into something that expresses and inspires nothing, that doesn't amount to being ART.

concord is supposed to look like the 50s sci fi aesthetic? I didn't realize that

"You cannot put any kind of goth girl lower than a C tier." Even the Emoji Movie one?

I do not know why I love your voice so much. The cadence of it just hits different. Activating something in my brain. I really need to watch you more. And I love your video essays.

Emari's character design is giving me red flags

The first character feels like the designers had to begrudgingly design a white guy to put into the game

1:02:06 There's no way. I've seen SO. MUCH. TF2. YAOI. HeavyXMedic, Sniper, Spy, Scout, literally all of them shirtless, ripped, hairy, BRUH how has someone not seen this. Back in like 2009 that was one of my first times seeing gay ships 😭

Zip zap, ya donzo.

Ya'll should watch Kinkymation's take on these character designs. A character designer's/artist's point of view on what a bland nothing this roster is.

Zip zap Concord's done-zo

You know when I think of character who is named "Star Child", I think of like maybe some being or character uses light, sun/star, or cosmic powers and abilities. Like the Silver Surfer, or Captain Marvel or Singularity...... I definitely did not expect so big strong blue furry alien dude with a shotgun and power charge/slam to be named Star Child.

I never really saw any of the gameplay before but in these trailers it just looks so dull. Man with gun, lady with crossbow, man with shotgun, man with gun, maybe they have a shield or a smoke bomb. The way John was so surprised by the most basic recall/teleport ability for the mushroom guy is telling to how uninteresting they all are

25:48 Deadlock isn't even out of Alpha yet and every character has multiple callouts that are uniquely written, and also have 2-3 variants of the same line. Pinging an enemy makes your character point them out by name, and some characters give them nicknames or refer to them as "That *blank* guy". My favorites are Shiv referring to Seven as "Gigawatt", Vindicta calling Mo and Krill "The Mole Man" and McGinnis repeatedly accidentally calling Kelvin 'Kevin' in multiple different lines. A shooter with no story mode needs to take every opportunity it has to characterize. It's not going to happen anywhere else if it's not during gameplay.

The combat flips at first seem interesting but then every other character has it and it's like "Daring today aren't we?" whenever it comes up again

49:48 it could also be that the voice director didnt know what to do with them(which im willing to bet is the problem given its every character), people are to quick to blame the voice actors just because their name’s at the forefront, which isnt to say that voice actor cant be the problem but it’s usually what people blame first and foremost for a bad performance.

Teo looks like his girlfriend tells him not to worry about Oscar Mike from Battleborn.

The point about the voice acting reminds me of the aliens in XCOM: Chimera Squad. Perfectly serviceable performance by the VAs, but the director utterly failed at making them sound alien. Although at least the writing was half-decent enough to give them some quirks.

I love these analysis videos, you can tell that you know your stuff and worked as an animator. Would love to see more videos like this one!

the thing about Concords character designs to me is that while a lot of them are conceptually interesting or have interesting elements to them there's no apparent feeling they're meant to invoke in the viewer. no one is particularly cool or badass or sexy or cute or silly (these elements being what i personally look for in a design). some get close, but its all so watered down that they never quite get there. so you end up with a bunch of characters that dont quite make you feel anything while looking at them dialog wise its all confident vaguely affirmative barking. they all feel like their trying to sell you something. Starchild is the only character with any defining personality because hes the only one who doesn't seem like hes desperate to be liked by a potential player

I didn't know they made a game out of Guardians of the Galaxy background extras.

Back in 2010? I wanna say, I worked at a little studio called BlackBox in Vancouver, BC - it was a studio that went through MULTIPLE restructuring at the hands of a certain triple A developer/publisher ( I was QA, so no one important). During my time at BlackBox we were priveledged enough to attend some meetings where they showcased unreleased titles that did not have ANY media, like ALL game concepts and super alpha stage footage. People got to ask questions and figure out what type of games these even were before the studio devoted a SHIT ton of resources on before giving the green light. All this to say... I'm sure whoever made this game at some point had someone... maybe a programmer, maybe an artist, HELL, maybe even a QA ask... "So this is Overwatch but... shittier and HYPER realistic or some kind of off brand Guardians of the galaxy at home/destiny" and the studio head's answer was "yes", to a resounding sound of studio crickets where no one wanted lose their jobs. it's like you said, no gave a shit, all anyone saw with this was a payday, they all thought "hey, let's do a character shooter, those are popular right?". it's like how for an entire year straight in like 2017 or something all any indie dev ever made was fucking card battlers and deck builders.

I heard of this came within hours of its existence coming to an end. That is IMPRESSIVE in its catastrophe

If the LFAB podcast was still around, Concord would, without a doubt, win biggest shitshow.

45:37 - Duchess earned points with me for looking like a Syndicate noble from _Age of Wonders: Planetfall,_ which is a profoundly me take. Her toting some kind of heavy-duty M3 grease gun also helps, since it feels weirdly apropos for a Flash Gordon sci-fantasy aesthetic.

Genuinely wild how the six multiplayer classes in Space Marine 2 have more dramatically distinct personalities in their voice lines than any of these characters that were somehow meant to be the mascots of a hero shooter

This roster is a definition of "characters with all soul sucked out". Everyone feels like they made in a factory. And not in a good one.

"How does every character get so much worse when you see their pants" Should be one of those endorsement quotes on the back of the box

Won't lie, I'd like if you did this for something you like instead of peak mid. SF6, Tekken, and Strive all have kickass designs and I imagine it'd be fun for you to chomp on that.

You can definitely tell which voice actors decided to have fun with it.

I really want John to tier list the designs for deadlock now, as a comparison. The game is only in alpha but the designs VASTLY beat this game both in gameplay and even more so in designs

Okay so I'm not crazy for calling these shopkeeper/questgiver designs.

I hate how every character has an attack that just throws a ball at the enemy. The balls have different effects but there's no visual or thematic flair to them, they're balls. Also the only character that doesn't use a firearm is the knife lady, which sucks because a lot of the designs feel like they weren't meant to use guns (like the mystical grandma character whose name I forgot).

18:17 I have watch 20 videos discussing Concord and this is the 1st time I heard her voice. I thought she was a going to be a quiet type of person

Oh man, please do deadlock. It would be such a fun comparison!

24:03 I kinda like this design… 24:05 [spits out drink] **FRIENDLY SPACE NINJA?!?!** (It’s the fuckin’ glasses, and I know FSN would be horrified at the implication he would *ever* wear the rest of the outfit, but the association is so strong I actually burst out laughing.)

It feels weird that the line my brain thought was a bridge too far was John trying to find a good character in Concord. Like, I saw the title, and my brain went "Okay, maybe we're taking the self-flagellating content a bit too far now" just as a knee-jerk reaction.

Battleborne also crashed and burned, but at least the characters were way more interesting

It's killing me that no one has pointed out that the robot guy is like a worse version Levi from Scavengers Reign, design-wise and a little in the voice/personality.

The characters remind me of all the gaudy custom clothing in Tekken online where it takes you a second to realize which character is underneath all the junk

Reminder than Awesomenauts exist since more than 10 years now? 2D moba with space mercenaries... With top tier designs.

There is something about Concords colour choices that makes me feel kind of ill. That's not an exaggeration it actually makes my stomach turn a bit. Perhaps its triggering the "this creature is poisonous do not eat" response?

I love your insight on what does and doesn't work here.

I like John starting out optimistic and just getting more and more annoyed as the video goes on.

Thank you for this, I would have never found an entertaining way to see what this game was about with you John

The funniest thing is that it's not just a game that happens to have bad character design, it's a game that was BANKING on it's characters charisma with big plans on releasing little stories of their interactions that you were supposed to be hyped about. It's not like you play a unmodded Bethesda game with bad faces, but it's whatever in a grand scheme of things of their games appeal, here it was supposed to be the main course.

A character boredly quipping "Plenty of firey rage to go around" sent me into a coma. We're only five minutes in.

Every single character's dialogue could have been replaced by any other character's dialogue and I never would have been able to tell.

I like the red starship. Some kind of old tugboat/cargo ship, it could be the hero ship in a 5/10 Star Wars spinoff. So, a Star Wars spinoff.

To be 100% honest, Super Eyepatch Wolf rewriting all of Concord and working with the artists/storyboarders that he works with on the main channel to pitch Better Concord (like how he did Space Jam 2 but taken more seriously, or how he did the end of the Shenmue 3 vid). That would be AWESOME.

I really like the notion that the dialog is being written by the Ubisoft multiplayer showcase demo team. Like, they were going for quippy Overwatch but the person who wrote it was the same person who wrote the E3 presentation for The Division. Good call. BTW; all these people saying do Deadlocked. Nah. Do Paragon. Another dead game. But I feel like they had an extremely similar design vibe to what Concord was going for, retro scifi, except good. Or at least I remember it being good. It'd be fun to revisit.

the entire cast of concord looks like a bunch of Background characters.

These feel like when you’re an adult and you look back at a bunch of drawings you did as a kid when you had this idea for a sci fi comic and all the designs are bad because you didn’t know anything about character design so all you cared about was giving the characters space suits and armors and laser guns

16:43 in a sea of grey, they are beige

Concord was just a Guardians of the Galaxy at home

I think the one cool thing that concord seem to have going for it, is that it seemed like several characters had like....evasive manuever abilities you don't see a lot of that in the other hero shooters games. Maybe if they tried to make the game all about being very mobile while making them tanks VERY tanky maybe they might have had something to go with better.

This game looks like all the low-rank heroes in MHA grew up, but never got any better.

Mom: “We have Guardians of the Galaxy at home.” GotG at home: …

The first time I heard of concord was when it was shut down. Which... kinda is the problem. I feel like there was no marketing behind this game. And ofc the usual suspects declared victory because there was a woman with dyed hair in it or whatever.

John rating It-Z in F tier to overcompensate for how excited he was when he realized she was a furry >>

i think the most generous compliment i could give concord is that it wants to be guardians of the galaxy for hero shooters

dude I went to gay city and everyone knew my name😢