Video Game / The First Descendant

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The First Descendant is a free-to-play Looter Shooter developed and published by Nexon. First revealed in 2019 under the name "Project Magnum," it was then released on July 2nd, 2024.

Ingris was once a prosperous and beautiful planet where humanity thrived. However, upon the opening of a dimensional gate, they were invaded by two forces. The Vulgus, a technologically-advanced alien race; and the Colossi, a race of biomechanical Kaiju that came through the rift on their heels. The Vulgus quickly seized control of Ingris, searching for the Ironheart, a source of infinite energy said to only exist upon Ingris. However, not all hope was lost. The Magisters, the scientific faction of the Vulgus, betrayed their own kind and sided with humanity, sharing their technology and resources to help Humanity survive. They awakened humanity to a mysterious power known as "Arche."

Now, Humanity continues to fight to protect Ingris. The Vulgus, led by Karel, continue their invasion. The Colossi, still under the commands of their predecessors, press on in their rampage. These factions still continue their three-way conflict over the Ironheart. Everything hinges upon the First Descendants, linked through Arche.

The First Descendant contains examples of:

• After the End: Ingris suffered this fate after being invaded by both the Vulgus and the Colossi.
• Aerith and Bob: Out of the fantastic names for Vulgus commanders like Karel and Amon, the main general leading the attack on Kingston is named… Greg.
  • Extends to the playable Descendants too. Along with the usual fantasy names like Esiemo, Viessa, Valby, Jayber and Freyna; this trope is played straight with the presence of Kyle, Bunny, Hailey, and subverted with Lepic, whose first name is Jonathan, but is always addressed and referred to by his last name.
• Alien Invasion: Two invasions. One by the Vulgus and the other by the Colossi.
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: Thanks to the attribute-based attacks (Fire, Chill, Electric and Toxic) being Color-Coded for Your Convenience to make them easier to evade when enemies use them, missions can quickly turn into one.
• A Molten Date with Death: The Pyromaniac, Molten Fortress and - new to Season 2 - Infernal Walker Colossus fights are this.
• An Adventurer Is You: Players can play as a variety of character classes known as "Descendants," each with their own set of powers and abilities.
  • Lepic is the Nuker DPS. He has a suite of damage-dealing skills, a crowd control skill that allows him to hit more enemies with a single use of his damage skills, and a skill that makes his damage skills hit even harder.
  • Ajax is the Mitigation Tank. He has two different shields that he can deploy, and his passive gives his non-shield skills enhanced damage mitigation capabilities when he is charged up.
  • Viessa is The Mezzer. She has a strong emphasis on freezing and crowd controlling enemies with her ice skills. All of her skills inflict enemies with the "Ice Shackle" debuff and her passive grants her bonuses for spreading Ice Shackle around as much as possible.
• Advanced Ancient Acropolis: White-Night Gulch.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Completing certain Journal entries rewards the player with colour swatches which can be applied to Descendant cosmetics. Introduced midway through Season 1 is the ETA-0 exchange center which enables the player to trade vouchers earned from successful infiltration missions for the aforementioned colour swatches as well as hair dye, among other things.
• Animal Motif: Bunny not only wears a rabbit-themed suit and helmet, but is named so by her parents.
• Attack Its Weak Point: A key mechanic of Colossus battles. Each Colossi has a set of destructible armour pieces that will stagger or debuff them when broken off. Each firearm in the game also has a weak point damage stat.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The skill set of Hailey, one of the two Chill (ice) Descendants. Two of them involve obliterating enemies with an impossibly large sniper cannon, which are single-handedly the most devastating one-shot attacks in the entire game when fully built. However, she is unable to move when firing, leaving her very vulnerable to periphery attacks. Her third skill involves summoning a drone that gradually increases the power of all of her attacks, even her skill attacks. However it drastically reduces her movement speed over time, leading to the same drawback as her other skills. This makes Hailey the go-to for killing Colossi, but is usually further down the pecking order for general mobbing missions, although some players would still run her regardless for a challenge.
• Bad Luck Mitigation Mechanic: The Target System is basically a pity mechanic: it lets players target a mission reward, and if said reward is not obtained when completing that mission, it fills a bar that when full, gifts the players that item. The bar gets reset when the player obtains the item after completing the mission, Target System or otherwise. Up to four items can be targeted.
• Boring, but Practical: Toxic Descendant Freyna's skills consist mainly of dousing enemies with poison, leaving them to die in toxic green puddles. She can fire them standing from a distance completely out of harm's way, such as from the top of a ledge down, and simply watch as the poison eats them away. Playing as Freyna or having at least one other Freyna player in the party is a guaranteed mission success, but it will result in either you or your squad members just walking for most of the mission.
• Boxed Crook: Some of the Descendants didn't start off in the military, characters like the smuggler Viessa and mischief maker Bunny were arrested and faced either hard time or have their crimes waived in return for joining the other recruits.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: You can pay microtransactions to instantly unlock Descendants that would take hours at best and weeks at worst of Free-to-Play grinding, especially their Ultimate forms.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Subverted with the companion dogs introduced in Season 2 that serve as aids for managing drops to the player's inventory after successful missions. In-game they are always referred to as 'Fellows' instead of just dogs, although their breed (Hagios Sheepdog) is always presented as such.
• Combat Medic: Yujin. While his Arche skills are least offensive out of everyone, they are the most beneficial to his teammates' vitality. His time to revive downed teammates is also far lower than all of the other Descendants because of this.
• Cooked to Death: Blair, one of the Descendants, is a literal Lethal Chef, whose specialty involves Damage over time by setting enemies on fire. Ironically, in-universe, he is a reasonably good cook.
• Cursed with Awesome: Thanks to the Traumatic Superpower Awakening that every Descendant had to go through, they all had to give up on some aspect of a normal human life in order to just be alive. Sharen in particular, had lost her whole body when her Arche was awakened.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: The Dead Bride and Frost Walker Colossi.
• Faceless Goons: The Vulgus forces consist of legions of these.
• Ghibli Hills: The Echo Swamp.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: A standard part of all Descendants' kits.
• Green Hill Zone: Kingston. Also helps that it's the first environment that the player travels to.
• Jiggle Physics: The developers put more attention into women's boobs than they did into subtitles. Half of the subtitles are missing. All of the boobs are in a Cleavage Window and jiggle impressively even in cut scenes.
• Kaiju: The Colossi are massive alien creatures that regularly come through dimensional rifts. Void Intercept battles are Descendants going into the Void Between the Worlds to stop them before they can fully cross over into Ingris.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: In spite of all the advanced technology, weapons are still ballistics based, firing gunpowder-based bullets though beam weapons do exist. Gameplay-wise, beam weapons are completely outclassed by their kinetic counterparts.The developers attempted to remedy this in Season 2, with the introduction of the Voltia, which has an important unique ability to the main mission type of Season 2.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Somehow, the Vulgus managed to piss off their entire science caste to the point where all Magisters are allies of humanity.
• Pajama-Clad Hero: Some of the paid skins for Descendants involves putting them in pajamas, meaning they can be dressed like a cuddly animal and still kick Vulgus ass.
• Pocket Pet: Battle Pass unlock is With a Cat, a live cat in a back mounted pet carrier.
• Power Incontinence: Not all of the Descendants have full control over their powers and they suffer for it. Valby and Bunny both require containment suits to keep one from permanently turning into a puddle and the other from eventually electrocuting herself.
• Self-Harm–Induced Superpower: One of Gley's skills, which voluntarily drains her HP in order to do damage. The lower her HP, the more damage that the skill does. The HP drain can be somewhat ameliorated with a clever build, but at the cost of attack power.
• Scenery Porn: The developers have really put Unreal Engine 5 to good use, and it shows with the stunning environments of Ingris, which are a blend of natural and industrial. The Season 2 Void Vessel update brings levels that cross over into Scenery Gorn territory however.
• Shifting Sand Land: The Sterile Land, Agna Desert and Hagios environments.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Fortress environment.
• Shout-Out: Some of the cosmetics are a nod to other works. Luna appropriately can get a half-dark/half-white hair style which is a nod to Marvel Comics Luna Snow (First Descendants's Luna is based on her). Valby can get a frog outfit which is a nod to Concord whose sniper character has a similar optional frog costume.
  • Regarding the latter, considering that this game and Concord have had vastly differing trajectories in terms of popularity, this may qualify as a Take That! towards the ill-fated Firewalk Studios.
• Technology Uplift: What the Vulgus Magisters did to humanity after they defected. It's mentioned in the lore that humanity went from fighting with swords and shields to guns and gunpowder thanks to the Magisters.
• The Lost Woods: The Vespers, complete with perpetual fog.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Forms the backbone of every Descendant's backstory as to how they acquired their Arche and became a Descendant. The traumatic event always directly correlates to what the nature of their Arche is, for example Valby's being awakened by almost drowning in a lake, and Enzo's being awakened by a Vulgus ambush that destroyed the artillery he was carrying, leaving him and his squad for dead until that moment.
• Void Between the Worlds: Void Intercept battles against Colossi, as well as Void Vessel Infiltrations - the new mission type introduced in Season 2 - take place here.