Riot's new project called "Project A" FPS.

The landslide of announcements from Riot at their 10 year anniversary celebration included Project A, a character-based tactical FPS. Riot shared some early footage showing some cool character abilities and precise gun play, but little more than that. So far it looks a lot like a cross between CS:GO and Overwatch, and touts that it will make strides to eliminate cheating and flaws in the netcode of shooters. Riot's first entry into the shooter world has some big ideas, so lets look at everything we know about it so far.

When will Project A be out? 

No exact dates so far, but Riot's landing page for Project A points at new information coming in 2020. It's possible that could also come with a beta.

What is Project A's setting like? Riot has confirmed in their announcement video that it won't be set in Runeterra with League of Legends, but instead a beautiful near-future Earth and the footage they shared certainly supports this. The look of the environments is stylized but realistic. Aside from the flashy character abilities, the environments don't look particularly fantastical or sci-fi.

What is the gameplay going to be like in Project A? 

Described bluntly by Riot as a character based tactical shooter with precise gunplay, the easy comparison is to cross Overwatch and CS:GO. However, Riot's VP of IP and entertainment Greg Street deflects this comparison to Overwatch.

Based on Street's comments about "utility" abilities, a far more apt comparison is Rainbow Six: Siege. I'm not sure how much you can really call levitating and throwing knives across the map a utility ability, though.

Riot was very up front about their desire to tackle serious issues in the FPS genre. They specifically called out peeker's advantage as something they're attempting to solve with innovation in netcode and hitbox, and how hard they intend to push anti-cheat protection for it. Ron "Rambo" King was one 10 former FPS pros who were invited by Riot in mid-2019 to test Project A. He had high praise for the fledgling game, and said that it was already polished to the point where he'd have been satisfied if it was released in the state it was then. Rambo also went on to say that it "felt really crisp, really precise, and really rewarding, where my crosshair was when I shot the guns, if I got a kill, it was spot on." He also predicted the game couldn't be too far away with the state it was in when he had his hands on it.