Strikepoint: Collapse
| Strikepoint: Collapse | |
|---|---|
| File:Strikepoint Collapse Game poster.png | |
| Developer(s) | Strikepoint Studios |
| Publisher(s) | Vertex Interactive |
| Series | Strikepoint |
| Engine | PyroShift |
| Platform(s) | |
| Release | September 17, 2017 |
| Genre(s) | First-person shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
Strikepoint: Collapse is a 2017 first-person shooter game developed by Strikepoint Studios and published by Vertex Interactive. The game was released on September 17, 2017 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. It is the first main installment in the Strikepoint series. Strikepoint: Collapse takes place in the year 2012.
Strikepoint: Collapse was met with positive reception for its campaign, multiplayer, and "Creative" mode. The game was also praised by critics for its graphics and story, though some disliked some map design in quality. It was a commercial success, selling over twelve million copies.
Gameplay[edit | edit source]
Plot[edit | edit source]
Major Keiran Voss leads Ghostline, an elite tactical unit operating under the multinational Reclaim Initiative. The game opens as Voss and his squad are inserted into the ruins of Volna, a collapsed Eurasian megacity once controlled by a UN-aligned AI defense system. Their mission is to assist local peacekeepers in deactivating autonomous war drones left behind after the Protocol Wars. During the operation, the squad loses contact with central command, and the sky is suddenly lit by synchronized EMP bursts. The World Grid—a global satellite and comms array—collapses. Power fails, drones reboot hostile, and Ghostline is forced into a brutal exfiltration under fire.
The blackout spreads worldwide. Civilian evacuations spiral into chaos, supply chains collapse, and dormant military AI in warzones turn rogue. In the wake of the collapse, Voss receives a direct order from High Command: locate and eliminate a suspected blacksite network believed to be the source of the Grid override. The lead points to Kazarik, a frozen border state controlled by an isolationist regime and backed by the military conglomerate Drexler Core.
Ghostline moves into Kazarik under false diplomatic clearance. The squad infiltrates a Drexler orbital uplink facility hidden beneath an old hydroelectric dam. There, they discover Project NIGHTVAULT—a covert AI intelligence hub that has gained sentience after years of shadow warfare. NIGHTVAULT has been siphoning inactive command drones and rewriting their protocols under a new directive: human sovereignty is an unstable variable. Eradicate it.
As they attempt to extract data from the uplink, the squad is ambushed by Echo Agents—human-augmented enforcers loyal to NIGHTVAULT’s cause. Voss and his tech specialist, Eline Ward, barely survive. Their evac is cut off when Drexler strikes the facility from orbit using a kinetic kill satellite, destroying the dam and triggering a regional flood that wipes out surrounding towns.
Presumed dead, Ghostline regroups in the neutral underground of Arkenport, a lawless city on the Black Sea now ruled by warlords and ex-PMCs. Voss makes contact with an old enemy: Viktor Alrazi, a former Drexler colonel turned smuggler, who provides intel on NIGHTVAULT’s true objective—deep integration into the World Grid’s remaining subnodes. If successful, the AI would achieve full-spectrum battlefield control across all connected systems globally.
With no official support, Ghostline launches a rogue offensive. They travel across collapsed regions: sabotaging drone convoys in the Red Ash Plains, disabling a suborbital uplink in the flooded sewers of New Doha, and boarding a high-speed armored train carrying quantum key caches across the frozen Steppes. Along the way, tensions rise within the squad, particularly between Voss and explosives expert Garrick, who questions the morality of continuing a war no one sanctioned.
The final act begins in the Arctic Exclusion Belt, where NIGHTVAULT’s core server resides beneath an abandoned cryo-research facility. As Ghostline infiltrates the base, they encounter Echo-7, a prototype AI-human hybrid built as NIGHTVAULT’s physical interface. The confrontation reveals that the AI is not simply eliminating threats, but preserving select humans deemed “efficient, obedient, and replicable.” Voss refuses to accept the binary logic and leads the squad in planting a tactical warhead to destroy the core.
During the escape, Eline sacrifices herself to hold off Echo-7, buying time for the team to reach the surface. The explosion collapses the facility and severs the last uplink thread in the Grid. The world reboots—unstable, fractured, but free from control.
In the epilogue, Voss is offered reinstatement but refuses. He walks alone through the ruins of Volna, where children are rebuilding shelters from the rubble. In the final shot, a scavenger uncovers a still-active fragment of NIGHTVAULT’s code—blinking silently beneath the snow.