Paragon
Publisher:
Epic Games
Developer:
Epic Games
Platforms:
PC, PS4
Genre:MOBA
Release Date:TBA
Paragon is a free to play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game that has been developed and published by Epic Games. Epic has developed the game to appear exclusively on the PS4 in consoles and on PC. The game was released on early access in March of 2016 and has been in open beta status since August. The game is just the latest MOBA that has been offered as free-to-play on consoles and is using Unreal Engine 4 in order to drive the graphical output.
Development
The Epic Games development team has said they had their choice to make any kind of game they wanted when they started creating Paragon. The team decided the MOBA was the way to go, but wanted to include elements of third person shooters and more mobility in the players than most people have seen in this genre.
While there was not a ton of info about the game prior to the official announcement that it was entering early access, it was announced players could purchase “founder’s packs” on March 14 and those packs would be playable in the game on March 18, 2016. The development team said they wanted the maps in Paragon to be shaped like a kind of a bowl. This was supposed to allow players to see the entire map when they respawned.
Early access for Paragon was officially launched on March 18, 2016 and those who were willing to purchase the Founder’s Pack had access to all 18 heroes available in the game on that date. The development team also announced there would be weekends where anyone was able to play the game during this early access period.
In June of 2016, several new heroes were added to the game, including a character named Khaimera. At the same time this new character was announced, the developers announced Paragon would enter a new stage where it would begin an open beta, all-access version. This open-beta period was announced as beginning at the end of August. The development team also announced there had been new balancing and a mode called “draft mode.” On August 16, 2016 Paragon officially entered Open Beta. There has not been a date announced where the game will officially reach full release. In August, the game did release a retail version titled Paragon: Essentials Edition that featured the ability to buy more characters and essential in-game items.
On November 10, 2016, Epic Games announced they would be unveiling a new map for Paragon called Monolith. This new map will be arriving on December 6, 2016 and the new map will have other gameplay balances as well as other in-game items that have not been specifically unveiled.
Story
As is the case with most MOBAs, Paragon does not have a campaign as such, despite the fact that there are a number of different characters that appear to be coming from several different worlds. There are some characters who appear to be coming from a planet that is quite a bit like Earth.
Other characters appear to be coming from the same world, where sentient robots are the dominant race. There are also some characters that are very clearly from unnamed alien worlds but may have lore added to the as the development of the game continues. The only lore that appears to be obvious is that there are two teams of heroes that are doing battle in order to gain dominance of the world Paragon takes place in. There is not explanation of how these teams are formed or why they are fighting beyond “dominance.”
Gameplay
The game has some elements of the classic MOBA gameplay but there are also things that developers have done that make it look and play more like a third-person shooter. In the Paragon maps, the two teams are tasked with first infiltrating through brute force and then destroying the enemy base, including the opponent’s core. The base can be reached using three lanes provided in the game.
Each lane have a number of towers that serve as another way to protect the bases from incoming attackers. The defensive towers will fire at enemies once they come within range. The lanes are surrounded by jungle terrain and in these jungle areas, players can find in-game objects that will allow them to fight their enemies and take down the towers. Each match has 10 players and the teams are divided into five heroes each.
There are also a number of cards that can be used in order to power up heroes and the points to “purchase” these cards are accumulated by defeating other heroes in the game as the matches go on. Players can also use real-world currency in order to purchase in-game boosts and in-game items that will help players win the matches they play in. Each of the characters are divided into a number of classes and these classes have various specialties that help them fight and help teams to determine which characters will be used in a match.
Characters
Paragon started out with 18 characters and as of the end of November had a total of 25 characters. The development team has said there will be a new character added to the roster every three weeks. These characters are divided into a number of different classes and these classes help determine what kind of abilities each character has.
Each of the characters have a number of different abilities that unlock as the character powers up while some of the other abilities are unlocked the longer the game goes on. Most of the more powerful character abilities have a cool down after they have been used. So far, the character classes are not divided up evenly and it hasn’t been explained how or when a class gets a new character. There is only one character that is listed as being “any” and there are just two assassins. The other classes have at least three characters each.
Any
- Crunch
Assassin
- Countess
- Kallari
Fighter
- Kwang
- Greystone
- Khaimera
- Feng Moa
- Grux
Caster
- Lt. Belica
- Iggy & Scorch
- Howitzer
- Gadget
- Gideon
Tank
- Narbash
- Riktor
- Severog
- Steel
- Rampage
Support
- The Fey
- Dekker
- Muriel
Ranger
- Grim.exe
- Twinblast
- Murdock
- Sparrow
Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game