DEFY

A BEAUTIFUL WORLD, RUNNING OUT

Sixty years ago the Severance tore down the orbital grid that held the old world together. Debris fell across the interior and left the Ashwaste. The coast rebuilt; the interior survived. Now both want what is left: river valleys, mountain passes, frozen ridges, craters and quiet farmland, built from real-world scanned terrain and worth fighting over.

DEFY is real-time strategy built on one rule: nothing on the battlefield lasts. Every supply node shrinks as you draw from it, then runs dry. No army can sit still, and no match plays the same way twice.

TWO NATIONS, EACH SURE IT IS RIGHT

The Meridian Concord believes it is restoring civilisation: order, precision, air power and directed energy, every deployment weighed against its cost. Its certainty is its blindness. It sees the interior as disorder to correct, not people with a claim, and it has buried what it knows about how the sky fell.

The Ashpact Horde believes the coast owes a debt, and that it will be collected. Cheap mass, toxins, demolition, stealth and salvage, bound by an oath of survival. Its grudge cannot be bargained with, it spends lives cheaply, and its oath still binds after the truth turns out to be more complicated than anyone knew.

Each side has three sects, and a doctrine is a permanent choice:

• Concord: Skywarden Command owns the sky, Arc Division trades bullets for beams, and Bulwark Group walls itself in and ends the match with siege guns.
  
• Ashpact: Cinder Brigade turns everything into a bomb, Venom Cells poison the ground the enemy needs, and Ghost Network strikes cloaked, through tunnels that span the map.

THE PEOPLE WHO LEAD THEM

• High Consul Aldric Veren: "We are not building an empire. We are reopening a road." He signs every deployment order, and keeps one secret too many.
  
• Marshal Sera Valcrest: "The ground is where you die. The sky is where you win." She will trade any ground for the air.
  
• Commandant Dreya Solmund: "I watched the sky fall once. I built a roof. Then I built something to throw back."
  
• Warlord Vask Orren: "The Pact holds because we have an enemy. I will not be the one who takes that away." She carries a lie she chose to keep.
  
• Caller Yeshka Drost: "I do not kill them. I change the ground, and the ground does the rest."
  
• Firecaller Jorik Brenn: "Give me three demo teams and a distraction. I will give you a hole in anything."

A STORY WITH NO CLEAN SIDE

The Long Dark opens with Act I, The Human War, playable from either side of the line. Both armies underestimate each other, fight over the last good ground and commit to a doctrine. Then the evidence in the ruins starts to disagree with what each side was told. One archivist checks a sequence nine times and is silenced for it. And at the end there is a weapon, and the choice of whether to fire it.

BREAK EVERYTHING

Remember when an RTS map was a toy box? When the bridge was the objective, the farmhouse was cover, and the tank line went straight through the fence? DEFY is built for that, and then goes further.

• Blow the bridge. Wooden spans over chasms and rivers fall when you order them shelled, and the crossing is gone for the rest of the match. The steel bridge never falls, so everyone fights for it.
  
• Buildings come down in stages. Walls crack, roofs burn, floors give way, and a collapse spills rubble into the street and can bring down the building beside it.
  
• Armour goes through, not around. Tanks smash fences flat, crush trees in their path, and ram enemy structures, while infantry vault the fences.
  
• Fire spreads. Shellfire, rockets and flamethrowers set forests and rooftops alight, and the fire jumps from tree to tree and house to house.
  
• Nothing falls harmlessly. A shot-down aircraft spirals in, and its crash damages whatever it lands on, friend or foe.
  
• The war leaves marks. Wrecks stay on the field to be salvaged, rubble stays where it fell, and the ground stays scarred.
  
• The map can turn on you. Volcanoes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, dam breaks, geysers and wildfire.

VILLAGES THAT LIVE THROUGH YOUR WAR

The world is not empty. Farmers work their fields and livestock graze in the paddocks. When the shooting starts, villagers run for the storm cellars and bar their doors, or form bucket brigades to save a burning house. Harm them, and they take up pitchforks, shotguns, hunting rifles and dynamite against you. Wildlife bolts from your armour, and some of it answers violence with its own.

A TECH TREE WORTH MASTERING

Two nations and six sects field more than forty units and forty structures, with upgrades, a general's powers to choose as you rise in rank, and eight superweapons. Climb from the first barracks to the weapon that ends the match. Build infantry, armour, artillery, aircraft, stealth and siege, and learn which of them answers what. Every sect plays differently, and the doctrine you choose closes doors as it opens others.

SUPERWEAPONS THAT END THE ARGUMENT

The Concord calls down the Orbital Lance or a Prism Network Strike, buries a Tectonic Charge or launches an Aerial Armada. The Horde answers with Scrap Storm, Fuel-Air Cataclysm, Plague Bloom and Blackout Pulse. When one fires, the match enters its final act.

WAYS TO PLAY

• Skirmish against AI leaders from Easy to Brutal, on battlefields for 2 to 8 leaders.
  
• Multiplayer for up to eight leaders plus observers over LAN or direct connection, with deterministic lockstep and lobby and team chat.
  
• The Long Dark, the story campaign, from either side.
  
• The Doctrine Gauntlet: six rungs, six sects, each played to its extreme, for Bronze, Silver and Gold.
  
• Training: ten drills, from your first orders to the last resource on the map.
  
• Spectate all-AI battles with a broadcast overlay.

PIP, YOUR ARCHIVE

Ask Pip a question in plain words, about a unit, a hotkey or the history of the Severance. Pip answers from the game's own Codex and guides, with a small language model that runs on your PC with no internet connection, outside matches.

BUILT FOR THE LONG GAME

• Steam Achievements, honours and service ranks up to Field Marshal.
  
• Live performance settings, from LOW to EPIC, adjustable mid-match. Runs on 4 GB graphics cards.

DEFY is an original world. Every nation, character, unit and map was created for this game.