Brink is a first-person shooter with a focus on parkour-style movement. Online multiplayer servers hold up to 16 players. You can play cooperatively or competitively or against bots. You can customize your character and buy items with experience points, which you earn by completing objectives. The same experience points can be earned in both single-player and multiplayer. Splash Damage developed the SMART (Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain) System. By noting a player's position and predicting what he is trying to do, it lets players navigate complex environments without equally complex input. There are four character classes: the soldier, the medic, the engineer, and the operative.  The Soldier resupplies teammates and uses explosives to destroy important targets. The Engineer buffs their teammates' weapons and builds stationary turrets. The Medic heals fallen teammates and buffs their teammates' health. The Operative interrogates fallen opponents to get intel on enemy locations, performs acts of sabotage, and disguises himself as the enemy. Bethesda also claims 102 quadrillion total unique characters when factoring in minor variations.

 

The game is set in the near future on an enormous floating city called The Ark, which hovers above an area off the coast of San Francisco. The Ark was meant to house only 5,000 people but ended up having to accommodate 50,000. With this many residents, there was a lack of food, clothing, and water, and the residents became unsatisfied and formed a faction called The Resistance and demanded more of these essentials. The Ark's leaders refused, so The Resistance armed themselves to seize power and freely distribute water and food and claimed that the Ark had plenty of resources. At the outset, The Ark had little need for a security force, but the city quickly began recruitment and went on a firearm shopping spree to defend themselves against The Resistance. Now the only place on The Ark where there is any level of peace is around the capital, where the Ark's leaders are frantically trying to contact the outside world for aid. The Security thinks The Resistance is a terrorist group, and The Resistance sees Security as oppressive soldiers hired by the Ark's "leaders" to crush the Resistance. Both factions are playable.