Escape from Tarkov Creator's New Shooter Fragmentary Order Could Be Five Times Bigger

The creator of Escape from Tarkov has finally given players a closer look at his next major project, Fragmentary Order, with a 14-minute gameplay reveal showcasing what could become one of the most ambitious tactical shooters currently in development.

Developed by Ren Gaming, a new studio led by Nikita Buyanov, the game shares some familiar elements with Escape from Tarkov, but its overall vision appears to be considerably different. Rather than focusing entirely on the traditional extraction shooter formula, the developers aim to create a larger combat simulation where exploration, survival, and objective completion play equally important roles.

The new footage offers a glimpse of enormous environments, detailed firearms, tactical movement, looting, and inventory management.

However, those are only some of the features planned for the project. Fragmentary Order is also expected to include ground vehicles, drones, futuristic weapons, dynamic environmental events, and multiple planetary locations with different gravitational conditions. Some maps could reportedly be four or five times larger than those found in Tarkov, while individual missions might last one or two hours.

Set in 2251, Fragmentary Order takes place in a future where humanity has expanded throughout the solar system, and enormous corporations have effectively turned warfare into a business. This creates an interesting foundation for the game's world, particularly because the developers want you to experience combat as part of a much larger environment rather than simply entering a map, collecting equipment, and finding an extraction point.

During an interview with GamesBeat, Buyanov explained that the team doesn't necessarily consider Fragmentary Order another extraction shooter. Instead, the developers are approaching it as a combat simulator, with extraction as just one part of the overall experience.

You can already recognize some of Tarkov's influence in the gameplay footage, particularly through its weapon mechanics, tactical movement, looting systems, and inventory management. However, the futuristic setting and the scale of its environments could make the experience feel quite different.

One of the first major locations introduced is Blue Mars, a partially terraformed region of Mars that once hosted a thriving colony.

Since then, things have fallen apart, leaving abandoned infrastructure and industrial facilities as different factions fight over territory and resources. Buyanov compares the situation to the Wild West, but the frontier is now on another planet.

The developers appear to be treating this location as a large, post-apocalyptic environment where you can spend considerably more time exploring and completing different activities. Rather than entering a relatively small map, fighting a few enemies, and escaping with whatever equipment you manage to collect, you could find yourself moving through enormous industrial regions, investigating abandoned facilities, completing assignments, and encountering other groups operating throughout the same area.

The scale of these locations also explains why the developers are planning to introduce ground vehicles. With some environments expected to be four or five times larger than a typical Tarkov map, traveling entirely on foot could become impractical. The team has yet to unveil what vehicle gameplay will look like fully, but transportation seems like an important part of the experience.

Missions are another area where Fragmentary Order could move away from the usual extraction shooter formula.

Buyanov has discussed assignments that could last one or two hours, giving you considerably more freedom to decide how you approach each situation. Extraction won't necessarily be mandatory in every scenario, and the developers are experimenting with missions where you can stay inside a location, pursue multiple objectives, or try to clear an entire area of hostile forces.

This could make the gameplay feel more like a grand-scale tactical survival experience than a traditional extraction shooter. You could enter an industrial plant to scavenge for valuable materials, discover another nearby abandoned building worth checking out, or stumble across a group of players battling over an objective. Instead of rushing to an extraction point before a timer runs out, you can choose to keep exploring, complete more contracts, or exit with what you've collected.

The exact rules surrounding these missions haven't been fully explained, so it's unclear how much freedom players will eventually have. However, the developers seem interested in making extraction one possible outcome rather than the defining objective of every mission.

These massive environments could also support between 40 and 50 players at once, alongside NPC enemies, drones, and other hostile units. That means you'll potentially share the same location with dozens of other players, some operating independently and others working together in squads.

The developers have discussed teams of around four players, although the exact limits could vary by location.

With so many players spread across such enormous environments, encounters could become difficult to predict. Different groups might be working toward completely separate objectives, meaning you won't necessarily know what another squad is doing when you come across them. This could create situations where avoiding a fight is just as important as winning one, particularly when you're already dealing with environmental threats and other hostile units.

Interestingly, Fragmentary Order isn't being designed exclusively around PvP. The devs are also planning on having a dedicated PvE-focused mode at launch, giving players another way to experience the game's environments and combat systems. Buyanov has additionally discussed situations where cooperating with other players could become more beneficial than immediately treating everyone as an enemy.

This idea ties into the dynamic environmental events planned for certain locations. Some disasters may be so dangerous that players need to seek shelter, forcing rival groups to work together to survive. For example, you might be out on Mars with your squad when another squad shows up nearby.

Before either side can engage, an environmental disaster could make staying outside extremely dangerous.

In that situation, both groups might decide finding shelter matters more than fighting each other. This could temporarily turn potential enemies into allies, creating unexpected encounters that go beyond the usual shoot-on-sight mentality of multiplayer survival games.

The developers haven't demonstrated these environmental events in detail yet, but Buyanov has specifically discussed survival scenarios where cooperation could become necessary. It's an interesting approach because some of the most memorable multiplayer experiences come from situations where you have to make decisions beyond simply eliminating whoever crosses your path.

The environmental mechanics could become even more important as Fragmentary Order expands beyond Mars. The developers are planning locations throughout the solar system, including Earth, Venus, the Moon, and various space stations. Each destination could introduce different challenges, so the equipment and preparation needed for one mission might not work as well in another.

Buyanov has confirmed that gravity is expected to influence gameplay depending on the location you're visiting. Moving around on the Moon could feel different from operating on Earth or Mars, while your equipment might also behave differently under varying gravitational conditions.

However, the developers aren't currently planning full zero-gravity gameplay.

Buyanov explained that introducing such a system would practically require the team to design another game around it. Instead, the current plans involve different gravitational conditions, electromagnetic effects, and additional environmental hazards that could influence how you approach each mission.

This means preparing for an assignment could eventually involve more than selecting your preferred weapon and armor. You'll also need to consider the environment you're entering, how your equipment might perform under different conditions, and whether certain technologies suit the location. Although the team hasn't demonstrated all the gameplay consequences yet, they intend to introduce far more environmental variables than you'll find in Escape from Tarkov.

Another interesting possibility is huge industrial stations, isolated facilities, and dark corridors, where threats could come from other humans, remotely operated combat units, or even the location itself. Buyanov has also discussed the potential for giant ring-shaped stations akin to the giant constructions from science fiction worlds such as Halo and Elysium.

These comparisons, however, are not to be taken as confirmation of any particular completed map.

Fragmentary Order looks to be shooting for something much bigger than a standard extraction shooter, with large planetary environments, long missions, varied gravitational conditions, and unpredictable encounters. You can definitely see the influence of Escape from Tarkov, but the devs seem committed to crafting an experience where exploration, survival, and completing objectives matter as much as combat.

We still haven't seen much, especially regarding vehicles, environmental events, and how the different planetary locations will affect gameplay. Still, the 14-minute reveal is a hopeful first look at what Ren Gaming is trying to accomplish. If the devs can deliver on the scale and freedom they're talking about, Fragmentary Order could offer a very different take on tactical shooters.