Crossfire was revealed today during Summer Game Fest's opening ceremony. This is the debut title from That's No Moon, an independent studio featuring key talent behind the 2019 Modern Warfare reboot's campaign, and Naughty Dog before that.
That’s No Moon, a studio formed in 2021 comprised of veterans from the likes of God of War and The Last of Us, has announced Crossfire, a narrative-driven shooter that is looking to change the foundations of cover shooters.
Check out the trailer.
The post That’s No Moon Unveils Crossfire, A Story-Driven Game That Looks To Redefine Cover Shooters appeared first on PlayStation Universe.
That’s No Moon has revealed Crossfire, a tactical sci-fi shooter, a story-driven adventure from veterans of Naughty Dog, Infinity Ward and more. It’s a part of the Crossfire franchise from South Korea’s Smilegate, but looks to expand the single-player side of the IP.
Two operators from opposing sides have to put their differences to one side to deal with a mysterious threat in the Atlas Mountains. You’ll only play as one of them, mercenary Layla Qassem, who is forced to partner with Tier-One Operator Delroy Cross, who gets the drop on her thanks to his full cloaking device. They’re stranded in the mountains, facing a fight for survival, and having to put their differences to one side.
A key part to the game is the new traversal system that That’s No Moon has developed, the Adaptive Cover system allowing Layla to dynamically adjust her stance, crouching and how she shifts and shuffles along the ground to maintain cover. It’s a more active system than in many shooter games.
“I’m looking at it through the lens of that Delroy and Layla are both the protagonists of our story, and Layla is the player character. She’s the player protagonist. So they are both protagonists,” said Taylor Kurosaki, chief creative officer, in a press briefing. “I’ll imagine myself as the player here, I’m rooting for them to succeed, I’m rooting for them to survive, and I know that if their fraught alliance doesn’t hold, then they won’t succeed. So, in that way, and through that lens, Delroy is as much a protagonist as Layla is of this story, but Leila gets the special role as player protagonist.”
This does look rather better than the last time that Crossfire tried to branch into single player. CrossfireX Remedy Entertainment’s effort back in 2019 was more of a misfire, but the scale and popularity of Crossfire in South Korea – an equivalent to Counter Strike that has managed to surpass 1.1 billion players through its global reach – has meant that they can have another go. Smilegate invested around $100 million into That’s No Moon.
via Gamesbeat, Xbox
Nearly five years ago, former Infinity Ward, Naughty Dog, and Sony veterans founded That's No Moon with $100 million in funding from Smilegate, and we know now their debut game is a single-player, story-driven action/adventure game based on the popular Crossfire IP. The game follows Layla, a gun-for-hire on a reconnaissance contract in the Atlas Mountains whose mission quickly devolves into a harrowing struggle for survival. Cross is an opposing operator: trained, lethal, and the last person Layla would choose to trust, but staying alive overrides ideology, and their fragile alliance becomes the only path through the existential threat ahead. […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/crossfire-thats-no-moon-announcement/
When we started That’s No Moon, we had the vision to combine cinematic storytelling with grounded, innovative stealth combat; Crossfire is the culmination of that ambition. We’re so excited to share our debut title, a single-player, narrative-driven, tactical action-adventure game with a genre-reinventing cover and traversal system called Adaptive Cover. Experience cinematic storytelling with tense, lethal combat that rewards strategy, tactical thinking, and experimentation.
Check out our Announcement Trailer below:
In Crossfire, mercenary Layla Qassem embarks on a clandestine mission in the Atlas Mountains. However, what begins as a routine operation soon devolves into a harrowing struggle for survival. To overcome an existential threat, Layla forges a fragile alliance with Tier-One Operator Delroy Cross, the last person she would choose to trust. But trust isn’t the point; survival is. Stranded, the ideologically opposed operators must put their differences aside to overcome the threats ahead.
Our vision as a studio is to deliver character-driven narratives at the highest quality and to push the medium forward. In pursuit of that, we created Adaptive Cover, a dynamic new cover and traversal system that fundamentally changes the player’s relationship to their environment.
Our game director, Jacob Minkoff, explains that “With Adaptive Cover, the player character, Layla, dynamically responds to the complex terrain around her and enemy positions to adjust her stance to maintain cover. This creates a greater sense of immersion and becomes an active skill to refine and master.”
Crossfire is available to Wishlist now. This is just the beginning, and we cannot wait to share more in the future. From all of us at That’s No Moon, we’re incredibly thankful for your support!
Stay updated on our Twitter/X, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky and TikTok.
The post Unite to Survive in Crossfire, a Narrative-Driven, Tactical Action-Adventure from That’s No Moon appeared first on XBOX Wire.
Single-player games were out in full force during Summer Game Fest, from Final Fantasy 7 Revelation to Resident Evil Veronica. However, there were some interesting efforts from smaller studios like That’s No Moon, which unveiled a new narrative-driven tactical shooter called Crossfire.
And if you’re thinking that the name sounds familiar, yes, this is based on Smilegate’s competitive shooter of the same name. Of course, this is a single-player-focused adventure that focuses on two characters – Layla Qassem and Delroy Cross. The former is on a “clandestine mission” in the Atlas Mountains where an existential threat (read: Snyder zombies) emerges.
To survive, she teams with Cross, a Tier-One Operator, whom she’s “ideologically” opposed to. Does this have to do with Global Risk and Black List, the factions from the multiplayer shooter? Probably, but they’re forced to work together regardless or, as cringeworthy as it sounds, die alone.
The main appeal is Adaptive Cover, which seeks to offer a “dynamic new cover and traversal system.” As game director Jacob Minkoff explained to Xbox Wire, “The player character, Layla, dynamically responds to the complex terrain around her and enemy positions to adjust her stance to maintain cover. This creates a greater sense of immersion and becomes an active skill to refine and master.”
This probably refers to her leaning and crouching behind cover dynamically depending on the situation rather than rigidly sticking to objects and peeking out. It’s certainly interesting, but judging by how the last campaign experience from Remedy worked out, we’ll withhold judgment for now.
Crossfire is coming to Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC with a release date still pending.
I’ve mentioned before how being a games journalist, there’s little room for surprises around my favourite medium. I’ve become so ingrained in its proceedings, that I’m always in the know, often ahead of times. To that end, I was kept almost completely in the dark in the lead-up to what would be the reimagined Crossfire, and it was a genuine shock to see.
While the official announcement happened during the Summer Game Fest 2026, CGMagazine was given an exclusive first-look at the bold new interpretation of Crossfire. Chief Creative Officer and Creative Director, Taylor Kurosaki and Game Director Jacob Minkoff of That’s No Moon—the development team behind the game—gave us an exclusive look at their vision and some pretty revolutionary design that may not change how this game is played, but how all stealth-action games are played in the future.
“We have a saying at That’s New Moon that we are all storytellers, and this is kind of why that’s kind of present in our studio culture,” said Kurosaki, adding, “And this project is no exception.” He explained that the studio’s two pillars of development is design and narrative and that executing the highest quality isn’t, “for vanity or because our graphics are best or anything like that. It’s purposefully done because the higher the fidelity, the more immersion the player has, the more they really feel like they are occupying and inside a world.”
Now, we were given a glimpse of Crossfire in action, but because of embargo reasons I am not at liberty to say what I saw. What I can talk about is their new gameplay innovation—what Minkoff referred to as “Adaptive Cover.” As he explained, “The way third-person cover-based shooters work is that everything is rectilinear. Everything’s very boxy. You enter a combat space and you’ve got a bunch of crates and fallen over pillars and stuff that just happen to be the right height.”
He continued to explain how, the way taking cover usually works in games is kind of a binary state. You press a button, and you enter a cover state. You’re either protected (or unseen), or you’re not. This kind of design was very limiting for creators because it makes it hard to create realistic spaces. As Minkoff described, it’s a very “sticky” state because of the limitations of technology that have existed for years.
To get even more technical, as Minkoff explained, “Basically, the metrics that every one of these games work on is from about zero to six inches, that’s your step height that you can just automatically step over. From about six inches to about 24 is you’re not allowed to build anything as a designer. From about 24 to 36, that’s your cover height. From about 36 to about 100, don’t build anything. And then from about 100 up, that’s your high cover height or your high mantle height.”
However, this changed through the use of Unreal Engine 5. As Minkoff explained, Nanite and Lumen allow for infinitely complex environments (so long as it fits into the memory). This allowed them to actually go out into the world and scan realistic environments and map them into the geometry in the game. “In real life, soldiers use what’s called defilade. Defilade is anything between you and the line of sight of your enemy. Humans look at that, and they organically choose to change the height of their stance, given the line of sight blockers.”
Using those principles, the team created an egg-shaped “danger-zone” around the player, that naturally changed based on enemy line-of-sight, and any obstacles in the way. Taking that into account, the player character will take natural positions behind cover in a way that makes sense and feels organic. It plays into Crossfire’s other gameplay mechanic, which is a high lethality within combat.
“The damage model is blood pressure based,” said Minkoff, adding, “What we say is every bullet matters.” He continued, “So, you have your helmet and your armor and once those are broken through, any bullet after that is going to cause damage to your blood pressure. And then it’s going to keep ticking down until you bandage yourself.” The intention is to create situations where the player needs to be highly involved, highly immersed and consistently thinking about every decision they make.
It’s still early on, but it will be exciting to see where That’s No Moon’s interpretation of Crossfire goes, given how much work they’re putting in to completely redefine how stealth-action games are played. The team is clearly going above and beyond to combine storytelling and gameplay in a way that really connects the player to the world and it’ll be exciting to see what other innovations they bring to the space.
Players can Wishlist Crossfire on Steam.
That’s No Moon has revealed Crossfire, a tactical sci-fi shooter, a story-driven adventure from veterans of Naughty Dog, Infinity Ward and more. It’s a part of the Crossfire franchise from South Korea’s Smilegate, but looks to expand the single-player side of the IP.
Two operators from opposing sides have to put their differences to one side to deal with a mysterious threat in the Atlas Mountains. You’ll only play as one of them, mercenary Layla Qassem, who is forced to partner with Tier-One Operator Delroy Cross, who gets the drop on her thanks to his full cloaking device. They’re stranded in the mountains, facing a fight for survival, and having to put their differences to one side.
A key part to the game is the new traversal system that That’s No Moon has developed, the Adaptive Cover system allowing Layla to dynamically adjust her stance, crouching and how she shifts and shuffles along the ground to maintain cover. It’s a more active system than in many shooter games.
“I’m looking at it through the lens of that Delroy and Layla are both the protagonists of our story, and Layla is the player character. She’s the player protagonist. So they are both protagonists,” said Taylor Kurosaki, chief creative officer, in a press briefing. “I’ll imagine myself as the player here, I’m rooting for them to succeed, I’m rooting for them to survive, and I know that if their fraught alliance doesn’t hold, then they won’t succeed. So, in that way, and through that lens, Delroy is as much a protagonist as Layla is of this story, but Leila gets the special role as player protagonist.”
This does look rather better than the last time that Crossfire tried to branch into single player. CrossfireX Remedy Entertainment’s effort back in 2019 was more of a misfire, but the scale and popularity of Crossfire in South Korea – an equivalent to Counter Strike that has managed to surpass 1.1 billion players through its global reach – has meant that they can have another go. Smilegate invested around $100 million into That’s No Moon.
via Gamesbeat, Xbox
