Exclusive Preview: Killing Floor 2
Jeff O'Donnell
|
Recently we had the opportunity to sit down with the upcoming video game Killing Floor 2 from Tripwire Interactive and get you guys the skinny from a couple of the game’s principal creators.
One of the things about games like Killing Floor is that there’s very little story to draw players in. That being said, Killing Floor 2 is brimming with atmosphere. We were interested in how this lack of storyline impacted the artists who designed the level. Was there some story that they had in mind when creating a level or an enemy?
“Since there is no direct narrative in the game, we had to have our artists, who were given as much creative freedom as possible, creative a narrative within the level by design and let the user fill in the blanks,” said art director David Hensley. “For instance in the Paris level, we wanted to create a feeling of abandonment; that’s why the windows are boarded up, etc. It’s fun to think of the players themselves imagining what led this sprawling city to go to Hell.”
With this being the second game in the franchise, we inquired what was learned, if anything, from the experience of making the first game, and how was that knowledge applied to Killing Floor 2?
“For Killing Floor 2 one of our biggest focuses was on the balancing of the weapons in regards to the difficulty level the user is playing on,” said John Gibson, President of Tripwire. “In the first game, you could take out the lower level enemies with one good shot in the head. The weaponry felt spot-on and powerful. Once we added the Hell on Earth difficulty, etc., all of a sudden that same enemy would take 5 shots to the head and the weapons ended up feeling unnatural and more importantly some gamers even felt cheated. They were like, ‘Hey, wait a minute! I spent all of this time ranking up to be more powerful, and now the enemies just have more health?!’ Now, in Killing Floor 2, you shoot someone or something at close range with a shotgun, it’s gonna get dropped, regardless of what difficulty level a gamer is playing on. So how do you go about making the difficulty and weaponry feel more balanced? The answer was simple… the higher difficulty level you play on, the more attacks an enemy will exhibit. Just as you become more deadly, so do your foes, but it’s not by just giving said onscreen enemies more health. Giving them more attacks was the ticket! It’s not at all easy getting a headshot on something when all of a sudden it’s flipping around and doing Kung-Fu moves!”
From our time with Killing Floor 2, it became apparent that the variety of enemies has also been amped up. There are some returning characters, but there’s also a host of new ones.
Gibson continued, “In the original game you have your standard zombie or Clot as we call them. You’ve seen it a lot. Over time their play-style and look morphed a bit, but overall they always acted pretty much the same. Here we have the Alpha Clot, which is similar to the Clot in the first game. He’s big, bad and perfected. Now there’s also the Undeveloped Clot, who let’s just say could use a bit more time in the oven. His skins all loose-wrinkly and kind of translucent and he’s there as more of an assist to the Alphas and only has one purpose… to try to eat you. A horde of these can be especially deadly. Then there’s the Slasher Clot, who is the smartest and most aggressive of the Clots. They’re just psycho and completely out of control. He’ll be scratching and pounding and rolling on the ground. Anything he can do to kill you, he will do. We really wanted to give these things, these Clots, more capabilities and roles than the average enemies from the first game.”
Hensley chimed in, “They all look completely different, but it’s apparent that they all share traits. We paid a lot more attention to the Clots’ silhouettes in the game. There are times in Killing Floor 2 that you can see these things coming, and judging by their silhouettes, you can get an inkling of an idea what to prepare yourself for… are they Alphas? Slashers? Are they of the bio-mechanical variety, etc.”
One of the things I immediately noticed about Killing Floor 2 is that there are no crosshairs in the game. Was this just an early build, or will crosshairs or reticules of some sort be added in later?
“There’s a lot of internal debate about the addition of crosshairs,” says Gibson. “Tripwire is kind of famous for not having crosshairs in our games. We think a lot of times crosshairs can put a players focus ‘here’ when it should be elsewhere. With Killing Floor, when we tested it in the office, the game became easier than we had thought it would. We felt it made the game less scary. That being said, we do realize that there are gamers out there who feel differently, so right now with this build there’s an option in the user interface that lets you switch between crosshairs on or off. We cannot say yet that this option will launch with the game when it’s ready.”
Look for Killing Floor 2 April 21, 2015 (PC version only via Steam Early Access) Price: $29.99 (US), ₤19.99 (UK), €26.99 (EU). No word yet on the PlayStation 4 release.
Synopsis:
In KILLING FLOOR 2, players descend into continental Europe, where the outbreak caused by Horzine Biotech’s failed experiment has quickly spread and gained unstoppable momentum, essentially paralyzing the European Union. Just one month after the events in the original KILLING FLOOR, the specimen clones are everywhere and civilization is in disarray; communications have failed, governments have collapsed, and military forces have been systematically eradicated. The people of Europe know survival and self-preservation too well, and lucky survivors have gone into hiding.
Not all have given up hope though… A group of civilians and mercenaries have banded together to combat the outbreak and established privately funded operation bases across Europe. Upon tracking specimen clone outbreaks, players will descend into zed-laden hot zones and exterminate them.
KILLING FLOOR 2 is developed and published by Tripwire Interactive for the PC, SteamOS, and PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system and is slated for release in 2015. This title has not yet been rated by the ESRB but Tripwire Interactive anticipates a rating of “M” for Mature.
For more info visit the official Killing Floor 2 website, “like” Tripwire Interactive on Facebook, and follow Tripwire Interactive on Twitter.
Categorized:Horror Gaming News
