Tom Clancy's XDefiant is an upcoming, free-to-play FPS from Ubisoft. While it may have the military shooter aesthetic of the popular Call of Duty: Warzone, its 6v6 gameplay will likely play out more akin to a combination of Overwatch and traditional Call of Duty multiplayer, though its customization features could set it apart.
Unlike Ubisoft's own Rainbow Six Siege, a tactical multiplayer shooter that's relatively slow and methodical, XDefiant is speeding things up. So far, its gunplay appears to be more like Call of Duty than the usual hero shooter in the moment-to-moment, but it comes with character abilities like that of Apex Legends and Overwatch.
There are four player factions in XDefiant, each of which features characters inspired by past Tom Clancy's games like The Division, Ghost Recon, and Splinter Cell. Regardless of faction, each XDefiant character can use any custom loadout - which include traits, abilities, ultras, primary and secondary weapons, attachments, and a device - and can even swap between them mid-match. Warzone lets players create loadouts prior to entering a game, but once they hit the battlefield, there’s no changing them. Custom classes are non-existent in Apex Legends, Overwatch, and Fortnite. This level of customizability will likely pose a challenge for balancing, so it will be interesting to see how XDefiant incorporates the various weapons, abilities, and factions.
How Tom Clancy's XDefiant Will Differ From Other Shooters
XDefiant’s game modes, meanwhile, seem reminiscent of many classic shooter modes: Domination is likely the same as the zone-capturing, objective-based Call of Duty mode of the same name, while Escort will likely see players transferring a payload to the other side of the map, a la Overwatch's Push. Rather than following the trend of battle royales, XDefiant seems to be combining Call of Duty multiplayer and Overwatch under a Tom Clancy's theme.
Though its gameplay may be similar to traditional Call of Duty, XDefiant's live-service aspect will likely follow that of Warzone, Apex Legends, or Overwatch. Ubisoft has already promised more characters in post-launch updates, so players can likely expect new maps, cosmetics, and battle passes as the game lives on.
Though the hero shooter genre is crowded and notoriously prone to failure, its advanced customization and its ability to pull from past Tom Clancy's games could allow Tom Clancy's XDefiant to stand out amongst its competitors. There are more than 40 Tom Clancy's titles to pick and choose aspects from, so, at the very least, XDefiant has a large pool of potential ways to keep things fresh.