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Riot’s Project A isn’t Overwatch – it’s “very lethal and very tactical”

Despite early appearances, Project A is definitely not a hero shooter

Riot Games has reclaimed its ‘s’ in a big way by announcing a massive spread of new games last week. One of the biggest surprises was Project A, an FPS which looks at first glance like a cross between Overwatch and Counter-Strike. But the studio is keen to make sure you know this is not a hero shooter, and that the real emphasis is on tactics.

We got some more Project A details from Riot CEO Nicolo Laurant at the League10 event in London. “Project A is a tactical shooter,” Laurent says. “It’s very lethal, and it’s very tactical. You’re going to have very limited windows to use your abilities.” This focus is also why the game doesn’t make use of the existing League of Legends universe.

“We can’t have Pantheon leaping from the sky and causing havoc, because the focus needs to be on the gunplay,” Laurent says. Similarly, champions like Teemo and Malphite would present such distinct hitboxes that it wouldn’t work for the tactical shooter the studio is trying to produce. “In the end, it made more sense for us to create a brand new IP instead.”

Laurent says “We understood that forcing League of Legends champions into the shooter game wouldn’t make a lot of sense. It’s a tactical shooter, so everyone has to have the same hitbox and the same weapons.”

Despite initial appearances, it seems that Project A is definitely veering away from the hero shooter concept. But considering it doesn’t even have an actual title yet, it’ll likely be a long, long time before we see if Riot’s effort can rank among the best FPS games on PC. (Here’s hoping, though.)