I’ve had my eye on this new IP since last year’s E3 demo, and what they showed this time has me even more excited for it. You play a biker gang member / mercenary with a heart of gold, voiced and modeled after actor Sam Witwer (best known to gamers as portraying the apprentice, Starkiller in the Force Unleashed series). It’s an open world, third-person zombie survival that gives you a ton of options to tackle the challenges before you.
Stealth and on-the-fly crafting are at the core of the action. In the first demo, our protagonist Deacon takes a car’s oil filter and shoves it on the end of his gun for a makeshift suppressor. This time around, during an attempt to save a captured friend, Deacon neutralizes and moves some of the base’s traps in order to use them against the captors.
He then shoots at a chained up zombie to free him and get things rolling. He stealthily takes out a few guys with his crossbow, but before long reinforcements got there and he had to go all out balls out. Ammo wasn’t particularly plentiful, but luckily he had his trusty axe to finish off the last few guys.
Animation was solid, combat and shooting looked smooth and creative problem solving seemed to be well-rewarded. Time and weather cycles are supposed to have a real bearing on how enemies act and react. We’ve seen human enemies, as well as a few different zombie types.
The first demo showcased a large, fast-moving herd that had to be escaped from rather than fought. Some quickly-crafted and well-thrown Molotov cocktails helped influence the zombie’s movement and let Deacon escape.
It’s slated for the end of 2017, but a delay to Q1 2018 wouldn’t surprise me for a game of this size and complexity.
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