The loot shooter The First Descendant celebrated a strong release in 2024, but since then has lost a large portion of its players. Now, a new update fulfills a pressing need from the community.
What game is it about? The First Descendant is a free-to-play loot shooter with 4-player co-op, in which you embody various classes – the so-called Descendants – and defend humanity against the malevolent aliens “Vulgus”.
The Descendants all have different abilities that allow for a unique gameplay experience. Ajax is a tank with effective shields, Freyna is a damage dealer with poison attacks, and Yujin is a classic healer, who deals rather low damage.
Now the developers have announced a new update during the Summer Game Fest 2025 and showed a first cinematic trailer for Season 3: Breakthrough. Here you can watch the trailer:
The First Descendant brings one thing that fans wished for at release
What wish are the developers fulfilling? Not much is known about the upcoming update yet, as more information will be revealed at a showcase on June 12. However, the developers have already mentioned three highlights of the third season:
- The massive Axion Plains field
- A new Colossus Field Raid
- A hover bike for transportation
Especially the hover bike could delight many players. Already at release, there was a desire in the community for mounts or vehicles to be added to the shooter, as these were entirely missing. Since players are often sent back and forth between different objectives within a mission, they spend a lot of time wandering. This can take a lot of time when farming materials, time that players would prefer to use for the grind for gear. A vehicle like the hover bike can accelerate the gameplay loop.
What about the shooter? The First Descendant was released in summer 2024 as a free-to-play game for Steam and PlayStation and Xbox and has since been regularly updated with new content. However, the heyday of the shooter has been over for months. While the game had up to 264,000 players on Steam in July 2024 (127,000 on average) and the lead designer had to apologize to fans for the success, there have only been an average of 6,000-10,000 players online in recent months.
