April 6, 2022

Ubisoft has a bit of a funny history when it comes to shooter games. Yes, there’s been a few hits, but in recent years they’ve not exactly had a good time of it, especially whilst attempting to chase popular trends.

Earlier this year Ubisoft announced it was closing down its battle royale game Hyper Scape; just two years after the game originally launched. Hyper Scape, which from memory had a decent enough reception at launch, failed to build any sort of momentum and then just petered out. It doesn’t seem like Ubisoft were even that interested in reviving the title either since major updates for the game were actually ceased just a year after launch. Officially Hyper Scape will shut down later this month on April 28. Then there’s XDefiant. Yeh, remember that? Another free-to-play, fast-paced arena shooter that was seemingly so bad it hasn’t even managed to get out of testing following a reveal in early 2021.

Despite this, the developer is supposedly working on yet another new battle royale third-person shooter game called ‘Pathfinder’.

According to a report by Exputer, penned by well-known insider Tom Henderson, the ‘Pathfinder’ project has a very similar style and look as Hyper Scape.

“Pathfinder appears to be a slightly different take on a Battle Royale, where a team of four players will drop into the map and find their path towards the center to fight the main AI boss,” Henderson claims. “Players need to navigate their way through two walls (an outer wall and an inner wall) that have a series of gates around them that can be reachable. The catch? Different gates are breachable or locked every single game, making each game different in terms of the path you need to navigate.”

“In order to get to the middle of the map, players will need to fight AI enemies to level up and get stronger, with AI getting noticeably more difficult the further toward the middle of the map you get. Presumably, the game will be PvPvE, as you’ll be dropping into the map with other players, so the AI will not be your only threat.”

In addition to this different take on the BR formula, Henderson claims that the game will feature some sort of hero class system too, with characters having different abilities they can use in combat. There’s also supposedly a “Destiny Tower” shared social space where players can head to a firing range, join an event, go to a shop, or have races with vehicles.

Everything is supposedly still in very early development, but right now it sounds like Ubisoft is attempting to use some of the bones of Hyper Scape and fusing it together with little bits of Destiny and many other third-person shooters. But whether this next title can overcome Ubisoft’s recent shooter hoodoo is anybody’s guess.