Play 'FBC: Firebreak' first, if your laptop can handle a return to Control's Oldest House

(Image credit: Remedy Entertainment)

Are you ready to join the Federal Bureau of Control? Remedy Entertainment is opening up a closed technical test for FBC: Firebreak, which will be live from May 15 to 19, and you can sign up for it at the game’s official website.

For those unaware, FBC: Firebreak is a co-op first-person shooter spinoff of Control, where you need to combat eldritch horrors in the Oldest House, the foundation of the FBC.

It’s quite the genre flip from Alake Wake II, where Remedy explored more intense survival horror gameplay. But that’s not a total shock, as Remedy has been experimenting with different genres across the Alan Wake universe.

As someone who’s consumed most of this universe so far, I’m hella hyped for FBC: Firebreak. A game about diving into the untold mysteries of one of the most interesting places I’ve experienced, that I can play with my friends? Give it to me.

But the question is, what will I, and you, need to run this game?

PC requirements for FBC: Firebreak — Is your rig going to melt?

When it comes to graphics, Control, which FBC: Firebreak spins from, pushed the narrative that ray-tracing technology was the next big leap for gaming visuals. I vividly remember running through hallways of reflections, which opened up a world of visual wonders. If you turn ray tracing off, it looks like a normal office building — pretty flat and boring.

So what does that mean for FBC: Firebreak? Well, as expected, ray tracing is definitely a thing. And, while it doesn’t look like you need a brand new rig to play it, the specs are still way more than I’d like current AAA games to be.

But to be clear, the minimum specs provided by Remedy are for the technical test only, so we might have some hope for the final game.

You need at least an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, 16GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. So yeah, an RTX 20-series is old, but a 2080 Ti?

To put that in perspective, an RTX 4060 GPU performs worse than the RTX 2080 Ti. If we’re talking today’s standards, you need at least an RTX 4070 or RTX 5060 Ti GPU. That’s rough.

Swipe to scroll horizontally

FBC: Firebreak minimum specs
OS	Windows 10 64-bit
Processor	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X or equivalent
Memory	16GB RAM
Graphics	Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

I hope those requirements are lower by the time the game launches on June 17, but I imagine that both we and Remedy will get a better idea of what those specs look like after the technical test.

Keep in mind that not many people will have access to the closed technical test. Remedy is even requiring folks to agree to an NDA if they participate. I’m not sure how it’s going to keep that under control. But if things go the way Remedy wants, we won’t even see any gameplay come out of this.

The real goal is for folks to play this and report any bugs or issues found via the official FBC: Firebreak Discord server (you need to connect your Discord to Firstlook Dashboard to get access).

Firebreak: FBC’s closed technical test will run from May 15, 9 AM EDT, until May 19, 4:59 PM EDT. So, if you’re still reading this far along, sign up already before your time runs out.

More from Laptop Mag

Rami Tabari is the Reviews Editor for Laptop Mag. He reviews every shape and form of a laptop as well as all sorts of cool tech. You can find him sitting at his desk surrounded by a hoarder's dream of laptops, and when he navigates his way out to civilization, you can catch him watching really bad anime or playing some kind of painfully difficult game. He’s the best at every game and he just doesn’t lose. That’s why you’ll occasionally catch his byline attached to the latest Souls-like challenge.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.

Recommended reading