Defiance recently celebrated its first anniversary and a new minisode of the television show tie-in has been revealed to tease what lies ahead for the "transmedia" endeavor.

Defiance launched in two forms last year with the video game from Trion Worlds and the television show from Syfy. While the two share the same universe, the big selling point was that the game would interact with the show, allowing events in one to influence events in the other. Thus far that’s been a rather loose-fitting connection, and while the concept is innovative in conception, it still needs some work to deliver on that special connection that Trion and Syfy promised so many years ago.

During the second half of 2013 and into 2014, Trion picked up its pace with development on the Defiance MMOG, launching DLCs in December, February, and March. A new fifth DLC was recently announced with Arktech Revolution, which is scheduled to launch sometime this month.

The new DLCs have made vast improvements to the MMOG, which was in a bit of a mess at its official launch. And one of the upcoming updates will include a number of changes to the EGO progression and weapon rating system, making loot a desirable commodity, something that you would think would be a given in a regular MMOG launch. Unfortunately, it’s taken Defiance a while to find its footing with that aspect of the game, but the upcoming changes should provide more incentive for players to reach for that next piece of loot.

Difficulty will also be getting a revamp. Trion will add scaling difficulty with the next DLC, making encounters increase or decrease in challenge based on who is participating in the event. So that gear we were just discussing will be even more important.

With those changes out of the way, the first season of the television show loosely connected some events to the game. This came in the form of one player’s character being added to the game by way of an image that briefly appeared in one episode. Players were also tasked with collecting elements for a cure to a zombie-like plague to aid the people on the television show at one point, but it’s hard to say if that specific event was hard wired to succeed or not.

Another crossover is scheduled to occur in Season 2 with the appearance of Alethea, a character voted on by the players in a contest that belongs to another player. The Irathian character will appear as an ark hunter in an episode of Defiance during the second season. Though maybe having the player appear in a cameo or walk on role would have been a better prize, we’ll have to see how this one turns out.

And that brings us back to the upcoming debut of Defiance’s second season. At the end of the first season, we were left with a bit of a cliffhanger as to Irisa’s fate. This new minisode comes in five parts, the first of which you can view below. So enjoy the latest addition to the Defiance saga check out the rest on the Defiance website.

Season 2 of Defiance debuts on the Syfy channel Thursday, June 19, 2014 at 8PM ET.





To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Defiance Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Stacy "Martuk" Jones was a long-time news editor and community manager for many of our previous game sites, such as Age of Conan. Stacy has since moved on to become a masked super hero, battling demons in another dimension.

Comments