Defiance - First Impressions

I made the jump last night and pre-ordered, in the final hours you could, Defiance.  Despite my bad luck with shooters this intrigued me.  

One, it was a MMO, but a shooter based one, without a monthly subscription fee.  Apparently they are going to make money by charging for DLCs only.  It sounded like no micro-fees for costume elements or abilities.

Two, it is tied in with a live action TV series related to but based in a different part of the same continent.  Apparently the game is based outside of San Fransico ruins, while the series is in the ruins of St. Louis.

I got the game through STEAM, but I couldn't make heads or tails out of their install procedure.  I got 3 different Codes - but they didn't say you had to have an active account with all three present up and running.  It took over 3 hours to get tech support on the line, and over 2 hours more after that to get the full game patched and running.  First day release blues.   Apparently there were lots of reports of bugs, long downloads, bizarre glitches.  I even saw the site go "down for scheduled maitenance" early in the evening.  Evidentally with PS3, Xbox and PC users all trying to get up and running together, they've had some heavy server issues.  I was afraid the tech support would drop my call for a while -- I still had 45 minutes to wait when their usual closing time came around.  Thankfully they're working overtime.   

The game reminds me of a more serious version of Borderlands, taking place on near-future Earth, after a fleet of alien Ark ships arrive at Earth and begin to terra-form it .   Apparently that was not finished, but the planet was forever changed because of it.  The remnants of both civilizations attempt to survive and retake the Earth.  Alien plants and animals live side by side with old terrestrial forms.  Human ruins are out there along side  the still falling remnants of the alien ships.  Apparently Earth is ringed in alien ark-ship debris, and chuncks fall to ground repeatedly.  Survivors race to such impact sites to reclaim anything of value.  Mutated humans fight for it as well.

I only got to play a bit before calling it a night.   2 races, 2 sexes, and apparently 3 different roles you can play.  I went with a male alien machinist.  Apparently you've got an AI cybernetic implant called an EGO that allows you to access a few special abilities.  So far I get a cloak.  Haven't got far enough in the game yet to drive a vehicle, but it looks like its coming.  

Two characters I saw in a live action clip from the first episode not set to air for nearly two weeks were in the game.  If this is evidence of game/series tie in, it could be bizarre.   Usually that happens months after the media project is released, not before.  Doing it backwards like that could have some bizarre advantages.  But I wonder how much and how soon game events will be shown in series -- Will they film a half dozen variations of a scene to toss in a throw away line only the players would catch and then edit the episode based on that at the last minute?   We'll see.

I'll know more in the next few days.  Graphics look smooth on my rig so far, and appear to be set mostly at the high end. Right now I'm fighting the controls -- The y-axis is ALWAYS backwards to me in the default on these games.   Trying the keyboard/mouse controls for the moment.  It looks like it has xbox style controls, and I might have to give those a try.