Red 5 Studios has been working on Firefall for a long time even before the free-to-play multiplayer shooter was finally revealed in September 2010. Today, the developer released the game"s "intro cinematic" trailer which also serves as a way to introduce the game"s backstory to its players.
The trailer shows the launch of Earth"s first faster-than-light spaceship, the Arclight, in the far future. Actually, the ship doesn"t achieve faster-than-light travel. In fact, the trailer shows that the Arclight encounters a very serious technical problem and crashes into the Earth. The ship also somehow created a tear in the space-time continuum that transforms the entire planet and its inhabitants.
The game"s detailed backstory comes in part from well known sci-fi author Orson Scott Card. Firefall itself is a mix of first-person shooter and massively multiplayer game genres where players don power suits called Battleframes and engage in combat against a race of aliens that have also come through the tear in space.
Firefall has been in closed beta for a while and still looks very promising. Red 5 Studios has yet to announce when the game will officially launch but it should happen sometime before the end of 2012.