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Going back to playing games released decades ago is a strange experience, as you look at the simpler mechanics and level designs, and marvel at how far we’ve come. If developer That’s No Moon’s ambitions prove true, its new game, Crossfire, will have us looking at old shooters in the same way.
That No Moon revealed Crossfire in its Summer Game Fest 2026 trailer – and yes, it’s set in the same universe as the 2007 first-person shooter of the same name that was popular in South Korea and China. But the remake is a radical departure, ditching Counter-Strike-style team competition for a narrative-heavy single-player journey. Judging by the new technology that the studio is using for the first time in the game, there is much more than just a new story awaiting players.
I joined other media on a visit to That’s No Moon’s office north of Los Angeles International Airport. Part cubicle filled with desks for a group of roughly 230 Los Angeles-based employees, and part performance-capture studio for the game’s stars, the space feels functional yet cuddly. Facing the offices is a wall full of caricatures of developers. In the corridor directly behind it, the signatures of voice actors and famous visitors are written. Nearby is the soundstage, which was previously used to record motion-capture demos for the first and second Uncharted games — and later, for Disney’s live-action movie The Lion King and TV show The Mandalorian, we’re told.
It was all part of the tour to communicate the importance of That’s No Moon’s first game, which certainly seemed like a great ending to the preview. As we sat in the theater, the auspicious forward tone continued, confirming that the studio’s game would herald a new era of third-person shooter combat. But when the developers showed renderings of the technology they’re using in the game to develop the next generation of cover shooters, I sat forward in my seat.
Think of cover shooters like Gears of War or the Uncharted series, and you’ll imagine the protagonist hiding behind a box or barrier, completely safe from enemy fire until he emerges to return fire. How can you develop this type? Make the cover dynamic by reviewing the visibility rules. The demo showed a visualization of the new studio system where light vectors stretched over the character model like grids in an oval balloon, all of which indicated vision – and as the character climbed over uneven, rocky terrain in the open, the green vectors turned red one by one to indicate where they had been spotted by enemies.
This could free up developers to create the geographic area they want and players to explore the way they prefer. Instead of having a fixed pair of players visible or hidden from chests, navigating trench-like paths highlighted in yellow by the developers, That’s No Moon’s technology enables players to find their own paths, progressing naturally around what appears to them like cover.
Naturally, this technology will make its debut in Crossfire and could actually be one of the big things that sets the game apart from the third-person shooters players are familiar with. The story could have been another big draw — but aside from a few key details, That No Moon has been very coy about what’s going on in its first title. Here’s what we can say outside of the trailer for a game that has a lot of promise but no release date yet.
How will you fall in Crossfire
Crossfire stars two mercenaries with their own agendas who are uneasy allies despite being at an ideological crossroads. Laila Qasim, the player-controlled character in the game, is a strong believer in changing the world, even though this belief may lead to chaos and anarchy. Non-player character Delroy Cross is a rival agent forced to team up with Layla to fight an existential threat, while fighting for institutions and stability.
Layla is modeled after and voiced by Claudia Doumit (The Boys), while Cross takes on the role of Ricky Whittle (American Gods) and voices him. Eagle-eyed fans will know they’ve seen these actors portray these precise roles before – in Episode 7 of the TV series Secret Amazon level Series titled Crossfire: A Good Fight. The episode ended with each character’s fate ambiguous, and it’s unclear if it will feed into the upcoming game.
From the vague descriptions of That’s No Moon, this odd couple will form the core of the rich narrative as they grow closer under duress. They will also shoot enemies in stealthy third-person combat, choosing precision over intense gunfights to overcome the odds against a superior force. If bonding through horrific violence sounds familiar to fans of Uncharted and The Last of Us, a number of Naughty Dog developers make up the That’s No Moon team, including creative director Taylor Kurosaki.
“We love those single-player character-based games, and they seem to be becoming few and far between. We want to keep this art form relevant and active,” Kurosaki said.
While those at the studio experimented with first- and third-person games, they found the latter to be more emotional.
“In terms of creating that emotional connection between the player and the character they’re playing, being able to see them on screen is a great tool that you don’t have in a[first-person shooter],” Kurosaki said.
The gameplay we saw in the live demo looked challenging, with a strong emphasis on stealth combat and guerrilla warfare. We saw several encounters on a bridge over a rocky ravine where Layla and Cross had to face six enemies. There was extreme precision in the setup, from grabbing armor plates to manually loading spare magazines to grabbing resources from downed enemies. Layla fell easily after a few seconds of continuous shooting, and there was a lot of backing away to lose sight.
The new cover technique was evident when Layla was crawling over uneven boulders and boulders, and it was not clear whether she was out of sight of enemies, an uncertainty that would likely force players to make judgments at the moment. Without playing the scenario myself, I couldn’t know how much it would change my behavior — but without pre-set cover lanes like in most modern third-person shooters, I had to pay close attention to my surroundings for fear of getting caught.
The difficulty pushes the player as Layla relies on her fragile AI-controlled ally, Cross. Necessity mixed with the friction of ideological disagreement leads to deeply personal moments.
“Everyone, for the most part, is doing the best they can with their flaws and mistakes,” Kurosaki said. “It’s not about saying you’re a bad person, it might be about us disagreeing and let’s figure out a way forward.”
More details will come later, including the central existential threat that binds Layla and Cross in their uneasy alliance. What This No Moon wants to communicate are technical innovations that will hopefully immerse players deeper into the single-player story than previous games.
What it takes to reinvent the cover photo shoot: A new studio free from tradition… and old technology
In a conversation with Kurosaki and Crossfire game director Jacob Minkoff, they made two things clear: their new technology would set the game apart, and it could only be built from scratch within a completely new company.
“We couldn’t have done it if we were at an existing studio with an investment in some other technology, a team that was used to building games in a certain way,” Kurosaki said. “We had to learn how to build games.”
Minkoff admitted to being a “huge Siggraph nerd,” citing the annual computer science conference where technical reports are published. He remembers seeing research on neural networks for facial functions 12 years ago, among other cool animation techniques, that could be used in third-person action-adventure games… but that wasn’t the case. Unreal Engine 5, which Crossfire uses, has been a key focus for realizing new ideas in games, especially with Nanite technology for massing polygons on assets and Lumen technology for their lighting.
“I knew the technology existed to navigate incredibly complex organic environments, and no one was using it,” Minkoff said. “Existing teams that have 25 years of investment in their technology stack and have well-known brand names…are less likely to take the risk of using that technology to make something new.”
Complex, organic environments are another cornerstone of Crossfire’s design ethos. In traditional gaming doctrine, players expect objects in the environment to be only certain heights: ankle height for anything that is accidentally walked over, leg height for objects that need to be stepped over, hip height for objects placed behind them, and so on. There are rarely things in between, so as not to confuse the player or require additional functionality.
But That’s No Moon built objects in a wide range of heights and a system for characters to dynamically move and flatten themselves when hidden, which – combined with dynamic cover – theoretically allows players to move around the environment in Crossfire in ways they never did in previous games. Objective points and other display elements that distract players have also been stripped away. All that remains is the path the player invents for himself, and what he chooses to take cover in. When the double cover is removed, everything becomes a cover.
“The experience I’ve had by playing this game that I’ve never had before is the way it keeps me completely immersed in my analysis of the space around me, which is the way I would do it if I were in real life in this situation, because we’ve modeled the complete biomechanics of how a human moves around this environment,” Minkoff said.
This dedication to technical ideas is accompanied by a unique focus on the game. Crossfire is a single-player game, full stop, so you don’t have to worry about adapting this technique to multiplayer. There are no microtransactions. There are no other media.
“It’s really only in a single-player experience that you can innovate like we did. We have to make a well-rounded game that has a beginning, middle and end, is well-paced, and ties together,” Kurosaki said. “For players, they don’t have to scrape off the edges and have a little bit of innovation that still fits in with all of these (other game modes) in this larger universe. We can innovate to the max.”
