Gambling On The Shadow Drop: Highguard Behind Closed Doors

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Earlier this month, Wildlight Entertainment invited a whole host of media and content creators to take a hands-on look at Highguard–a 3v3 “raid shooter” whose big reveal was the closer to last month’s Game Awards. Reaction to that trailer was decidedly mixed. This article isn’t about my thoughts on the game itself, which you can find here, but rather what it felt like to attend an event for a game which was already being treated by some online as gaming’s next Concord. What’s it like to be one of the first people outside of the studio to play something that so many had already written off despite not really knowing what it was even trying to be?

The Highguard Launch Event, as my lanyard calls it, was an all-day affair held in Los Angeles that was scheduled to run from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Making the trek from Long Beach, I boarded my Lyft (paid for by Wildlight) at about 7:45 in the morning, and despite my best efforts at being punctual, didn’t arrive at the venue until about 9:15. Being stuck in a sea of cars on the I-110 gave me a lot of time to think about what the day ahead had in store.

While players experiencing the game for the first time today will have an entirely different experience, myself and the other folks who experienced the game that day only had the TGAs trailer to base our expectations on, and it hardly told us anything about the game at all. None of us knew what a “PvP raid shooter” was, nor did we know anything about the moment-to-moment gameplay beyond a short description on the Steam store page: “From the creators of Apex Legends and Titanfall comes Highguard: a PvP raid shooter where players will ride, fight, and raid as Wardens, arcane gunslingers sent to fight for control of a mythical continent.”

9:16 AM – January 21 – NYA West, A Hazy Recollection, And Coffee #2 (and #3)

The first thing I noticed upon arriving was a faint feeling of deja vu. I’d been to this venue before, I thought. It took me a few moments to realize that I’d been in this same part of town for EA’s own preview event for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor back in 2023; I wondered if the members of Wildlight in charge of picking the place had still been at Respawn back then. After checking in at reception, I walked into a lobby filled with fellow members of the press from all over the world. I grabbed my second coffee of the day, some yogurt, and an apple Danish from an assortment laid out in front of me; besides the coffee I’d grabbed earlier that morning I hadn’t yet had any breakfast, and the longer-than-expected commute had me starving.

Conversing with other members of the press, I confirmed what I’d already assumed; none of us quite knew what we were about to play. Despite this, there was a quiet hope that perhaps the trailer was a misstep, and that the game itself might impress. I spoke with GameSpot‘s Jordan Ramée and another L.A. native freelancer friend of mine, Luis Joshua Gutierrez, among a few others, as I scarfed down my food and coffee.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Geoff Keighley. The Game Awards host was the only person outside of the development team who might be able to answer our questions as to what exactly Highguard is, as he’d played it the previous summer before asking the team to let him put it in his December showcase. Had he selected a surprise hit, or attached his brand to another live-service dud?. I downed Coffee #3.

9:52 AM – So, What On Earth Is A “PvP Raid Shooter,” Anyway?

The event running slightly ahead of schedule, we were shepherded into an auditorium. Once everyone had been seated, we got the whole spiel–who Wildlight are, how Highguard came to be, and what being a “raid shooter” actually entails. Roughly 4 years ago, when Wildlight was only about 5 members big, the team spent some time playing shooters all day in search of inspiration. As the team put it, “we were trying to figure out what the question was that we wanted our game to answer.” Inspiration itself came from the experience of riding to and raiding bases in Rust; the team wanted to figure out a way to distill those experiences into something repeatable, without all the busy prep work that survival crafting games require.

Of course, everyone wanted to know why the team had opted for radio silence since the game’s reveal; the answer to that was twofold. We were given one half of the answer there and then, with the other coming just a bit later in the day. Originally the team had intended to shadowdrop the game, much as they had done with Apex Legends when they had still worked at Respawn. As it so happened, the Game Awards trailer only came to fruition at the eleventh hour after Geoff Keighley had offered up the spot upon being impressed by the game during his personal demo earlier in the year.

In hindsight, given how complicated the game’s systems are to explain and the TGAs’ strict runtime, it’s little surprise the trailer struggled to land. The radio silence, then, was equal parts a return to the original plan as well as an acknowledgement that the game would perhaps best speak for itself. Still, rather than being tossed in entirely blind and letting the game make its own impression, press and influencers had to watch a thorough overview of the shooter’s mechanics and systems before getting our hands on the controllers and keyboards laid out for us.

Entering the auditorium, I saw the venue was split in two halves. On the right were groups of PCs, 6 a piece, paired with some very expensive Dell 4K OLED monitors. While by default players could play with mechanical keyboard and gaming mouse, Wildlight quickly noted that anyone who wished to play with a controller could request either a PlayStation 5 Dualsense or an Xbox Wireless Controller, and they would bring one right over. On the opposite wall was a collection of 3D models of in-game assets, heaps of concept art showcasing the game’s world and its characters, and more.

11:30 AM – Probing the Vibes

With lunch scheduled for noon, I only had time for a handful of matches. IGN‘s Travis Northup had his first interview with the team scheduled early, leaving myself and the other member of our impromptu group–GameSpot‘s Jordan Ramée–to wander over to the art that caught our eye. I wondered how the artists that had drawn these felt about the reception to the game’s reveal.

It occurred to me at this point that the event took up a great deal of space, especially when considering the modest number of press in attendance. There were a couple dozen of us, by no means a small amount, yet the venue was so large that it bordered on feeling empty. I wondered if the team had expected or planned for a larger audience when they’d booked the location; there was certainly room for double, maybe even triple the number of attendees. Maybe the crowd during the influencer session, held a day earlier, had been a lot bigger. I grabbed Coffee #4 from a concessions table while waiting for the lunch spread to be set up.

After gorging myself on sandwiches, wraps, an energy bar and at least one more cup of coffee I played a few more rounds of the game before heading off to a set of interviews with some of the game’s core designers, as well as the studio’s cofounders. As the day progressed, it was fascinating watching folks slowly come to grips with some of the intricacies of the gameplay loop. You can read my hands-on impressions here, or decide for yourself now that the full game is live.

5:12 PM – Winding Down, and Cacio e Pepe Pizza

The event was set to go until 6PM, but with the memories of my agonizingly long ride to the event I had no intentions of grabbing my Lyft home right in the middle of L.A.’s notorious rush hour traffic. There were no plans for an afterparty, though we had been given per diem cards to help pay for food and other amenities and a few of us had the same idea—we decided on grabbing some pizza and drinks from a bar close by that came recommended.

While waiting in line to order my first drink, I witnessed what felt like a microcosm for the day’s events as a whole when the bartender tripped up and spilled a drink order for one party. She quickly adjusted, repouring their beers and bringing them over successfully with the second attempt, ultimately no worse for wear. I doubt the two gentlemen who’d ordered them even remember the spilled drinks; I get the feeling that Wildlight is banking on something similar. If Highguard can ultimately speak for itself, then will it matter in the end that they messed up with the reveal trailer? No one will remember. Well, except maybe Geoff Keighley.

Scanning through the menu, my eye was drawn to an unorthodox-sounding pizza flavor; Cacio e Pepe, like the pasta dish. Evidently I was the only one at the table that was familiar with the flavor, and we ordered the pie to give it a shot. It was delicious, and I’d only wish it hadn’t been devoured so quickly–I would have loved a slice or two for the ride home. Sometimes it’s good to take a chance on something different.

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