Ubisoft Announces Free-to-Play Shooter Tom Clancy’s XDefiant

Ubisoft has announced Tom Clancy’s XDefiant. It is a free-to-play multiplayer shooter that contains elements of Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon and The Division, but is played in six-on-six teams in battle arenas.

In Tom Clancy’s XDefiant, players can choose from Defiants, characters that they can greatly customize. At the game’s introduction, that character comes from one of four factions: Echelon, Cleaners, Outcasts, and Wolves. The Echelon are known from Splinter Cell and in XDefiant it is a Support class with stealth. The Outcasts are of the Healer class and the Cleaners are Assault persons who have flamethrowers at their disposal. Both are from The Division. In addition, there are Wolves, from Ghost Recon, which are Tank-type and combine heavy weapons with energy shields.

According to Ubisoft, the factions are inspired by the aforementioned games, but adapted for XDefiant and more factions will be added as the game develops. Teams of six compete in battle arenas in game modes such as Deathmatch, Domination and Escort. The game will be available for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Google Stadia, Amazon Luna and for PC via Ubisoft Connect. The publisher is talking about full cross-play when the game comes out. Ubisoft has not announced when it will be released. The development team at Ubisoft San Francisco is developing the game and a test will start on August 5, initially only available to residents of the US and Canada.