Do you enjoy the thrill of endgame dungeon content, but hate the hundreds of hours of grinding it takes to get there? Enter the PC-exclusive Fellowship, a new multiplayer online dungeon adventure (MODA) that hopes to combine the best aspects of MOBAs, ARPGs, and MMOs for all the fun of the loot hunting, strategizing, and cooperative play without the arduous grind.
Fellowship is the brainchild of Stockholm-based studio Chief Rebel Games, where developers from the likes of Helldivers, Just Cause, Diablo, World of Warcraft, The Division, and more of the best PC games have come together to create a brand-new gaming experience. In a recent hands-on preview, I spoke with CEO and game director Axel Lindberg, design director Bretton Hamilton, and community director Hamish Bode as we formed a team of heroes to take on Fellowship’s range of content together.
From the outset, I’m hooked. While Fellowship’s roster of heroes is limited in this early alpha stage, I’m already impressed by their diversity. Launching with six options, the roster will expand to include heroes of all motivations, origins, personalities, and abilities when the full release rolls around. During the alpha though, there are two tanks, two DPS characters, and two healers to choose from – also known as the MMO holy trinity.
Helena is a Warmaster and takes on the tank role. She has a unique mechanic called Toughness, which reduces the damage she takes during combat. Her fellow tank is Meiko, who works as a hybrid melee fighter and uses combinations to their advantage. These buff stats, attacks, and grant access to unique finishing moves. Vigour is a healer that I don’t see in action during my playthrough, but when he uses offensive abilities he can trigger a unique buff that can reduce the amount of mana needed for spells, or the length of time it takes to cast them. Sylvie is a really interesting healer who leaves behind flowers that I can step on to heal myself, or Flutterflies that follow teammates around to slowly heal as we go. Ardeos is a Firemage, a ranged spellcaster who engulfs his enemies in flames. He has access to embers, which can be collected to cast a detonate spell that can devastate a battlefield.
I choose Rime though – she’s a ranged caster who uses ice to damage her foes. As she uses her basic abilities, a bar fills up to grant Winter Orbs that I can use for more powerful abilities. The main reason I choose her though, is because her character design is incredibly cool – pun intended. She’s decked out in a fur-lined outfit, has a blue tinge to her skin and sharp haircut, with huge pointed ears and glowing skin markings, as well as a large, icy claw that she uses to cast her abilities. She’s a far cry from Ardeos’ bulky, armored appearance, or Sylvie’s woodland creature inspired aesthetic. Immediately, I fall in love with her.
When we’ve all chosen our characters we launch into the Stronghold, Fellowship’s base of operations. The hub zone is a somewhat homely environment, with target dummies for practising character abilities, a mission table for selecting dungeon adventures, a blacksmith for forging equipment, and more. If it feels bare in its pre-alpha state, it’s because Chief Rebel intends for this to be a social nexus where players can gather in their parties, or chat to solo adventurers who may be looking for a team. It’s also where the likes of daily challenges and leaderboard progress will be accessed.
As we head to the mission table, Bode explains that we’ll first attempt a quick play dungeon. This is a 10-15 minute experience in a non-competitive setting with the only objective being to slaughter as many enemies as we can to fill up the kill score bar. When this reaches 100% we can forge forward to defeat the dungeon’s boss. Lindberg tells me that these quick play dungeons, known as Adventures, take inspiration from ARPGs, “providing players with a quick-blitz style for content that is just as challenging and offers all the bells and whistles of the larger dungeons. This style of content isn’t something we’ve seen too much of outside of the ARPG genre.”
We head through relatively unscathed, and the team do a great job of explaining Rime’s various attacks to me while preventing me from near-certain death with Sylvie’s life-saving healing flowers. The synchronicity of a team like this will come with time and experience, but it’s clear that you don’t actually need to know much about Fellowship to have a great time. We fly through as a unit, our tank positioning itself in front of me to mitigate some of the incoming damage, while allowing me the space to stand still and use my Winter Orbs to cast powerful AoE attacks on groups of enemies.
When the game launches into its alpha playtest, you’ll have the opportunity to quickly matchmake for these shorter dungeons. You’ll be able to find players that complement your existing team’s composition, or find your own ideal role in a group of soloists. Each boss has unique mechanics and abilities, and the Chief Rebel team is super helpful in calling out incoming attacks, while advising where to stand to take the least damage. After the boss is felled, which takes us perhaps two or three minutes, we’re rewarded with a chest that drops loot.
Heading back to the Stronghold gives me the opportunity to check out the my new treasures. Instead of loot being collected from where it drops or found in specific areas, it’ll be found in the Stronghold’s equipment chest after completing the dungeon run or beating the final boss. This aims to encourage players to stick together and work cooperatively instead of running off on internal side quests to get stronger gear like an annoying little magpie – definitely not something I’d ever be guilty of. The gear I earn improves various stats and introduces new attributes, meaning some pieces might be better for specific dungeons. Of course, the visual aesthetic is important too, and I’m pleased to see that Rime now sports a much more striking set of shoulder armor that has the added bonus of increasing her critical strike damage.
With my new gear equipped, my teammates and I head into a ranked dungeon playthrough. This is the main way to progress in Fellowship as it offers greater rewards, but the duration is longer as a result. These dungeons, as I soon discover after falling victim to an enemy’s special attack, are the endgame content Fellowship promises, and I’ve only been playing the game for 15 minutes.
Ranked dungeons come with the addition of ascensions and curses – modifiers that drastically alter the way you experience the dungeon. Some of these could include molten fireballs raining from the sky, an ever-ticking timer, or enemies that explode and afflict your team with poison if you stand too close. The more of these you apply to a run, the greater the rewards are at the end. These ranked, modified dungeons take between 30 and 45 minutes to complete, with each dungeon having multiple bosses to defeat along the way. What’s more, the dungeons have endlessly scaling difficulty, so you can really ramp up the challenge along the way if you enjoy punishment, or keep it simple to get to grips with a new hero.
I asked Lindberg what inspired the team to remove one of the most frustrating elements of MOBAs and MMOs and give players access to endgame content from the outset. “We were playing a bunch of MOBAs together like League of Legends and Dota 2 and we were having a blast, we love that, but after our sessions we would hang about and think, ‘This is such fun. They’re cool mechanics. We wish we could play this in a PvE-style adventure, a PvE MOBA should exist,” he explains. “We knew we would need to do some tuning to the concept to make a PvE MOBA, but the essence is it’s a game that [needs players] to work together. It has challenges and players really need to communicate and coordinate.” From my foray into the dungeons with the Chief Rebel team I can confidently say that if we weren’t working as a team, I’d have died many more times than just the once.
I’ve only had a glimpse into Fellowship so far, but what I see excites me. So many popular MMOs are almost inaccessible to new players due to the nature of the extensive grind. If you want to kick back with a few friends, or even matchmake solo, Fellowship bypasses all of that, letting you spend an hour having an engaging, exhilarating, interesting experience with great rewards for your time.
Chief Rebel is looking to integrate more features in the future, such as raids and a narrative storyline, but I’d urge anyone with even a passing interest in the MMOs, MOBAs, and ARPGs that Fellowship takes influence from to give it a spin. Chief Rebel promises to put players first, as the game is for you. “The highest priority is always to make a good game, everything else is subordinate,” Lindberg explains.
Fellowship’s closed alpha test period begins between August 15 and August 20, and you can sign up on the Fellowship website.