Hello! More about the new map below!
The first item on today's list is the new enemies. There are four new enemies added as of now plus a boss which will be a surprise. The new units are all Grajiiks, which you may remember as the heavily armoured "Pirates" from the exterior balcony area in the demo. They have been fleshed out into an entire faction and you will get to explore their warrens and discover their society and how it differs from surface dwellers.
The first new unit is the re-worked Grajiik Pirate, an unarmoured mobile and light enemy which wields a Scattergun. They can also draw a super-heated knife which we are affectionately calling the Barbecue Fork. This weapon is being worked on and will be useable in the July update!
The second unit is not featured in the video, but has been shown in earlier screenshots. It is the Grajiik Beast, or "Turtog." It is a critter with a shell and an anglerfish lure on its head. It can roll and leap and moves very quickly, but can only attack in melee, serving as a bit of fodder to increase the difficulty of rooms without turning them into a hail of bullets.
The third unit is the Grajiik Scout, a new sniper enemy which uses the all new Flare Rifle weapon (more below.) This enemy tracks the player with an aiming laser much like the snipers from the demo and contributes to interesting stealth puzzles. Its projectile also deals a percentage of max HP as damage over time, killing in two hits on lower difficulties and outright on higher ones. To prevent this, you must either heal during the DoT or put out the flare using water. More on this in a later update!
You may recognize the Scout design as being inspired by a specific enemy from another game which we have been making lots of visual callbacks to lately. : )
The final new enemy uses the old Pirate sprite which we are now calling the Grajiik Heavy. Recently, we've played through the first two Halo games again and we were struck by how dynamic combat becomes because of the Elite energy shields imposing an order of priority in battles. This is what we tried to re-create with this enemy. The Heavies have energy shields which block Balance Damage completely, preventing you from quickly stunning and taking them down. This forces you to vary your playstyle and try approaches with new tools. They also make the new elemental weapons more interesting since they bypass shields. Wait, elemental weapons you say!?
The two new elemental weapons are the Cable Gun and the Flare Rifle. The Cable Gun is an electrically powered speargun which can deliver a start-up jolt of power to electronic devices or to unsuspecting patrols. It stuns aware enemies and knocks out from stealth, making it our first stealth-oriented weapon! But it is also very useful in combat since it can instantly drain the energy shields of the new Grajiik Heavies.
The Flare Rifle is a semi-precision fire damage weapon which deals a percentage of max HP over time, as mentioned above. It is very useful to tackle high-HP enemies due to the scaling mechanic and can usually two-shot when combined with a quick Scattergun blast. This percentage effect will be diminished on bosses, however. Because we can't let you have too much fun. As an elemental weapon, it also bypasses shields, making it another great choice to take down Heavies.
There is also the mysterious Barbecue Fork, which will be revealed as we work on it more. Heated snacks will surely be had by all.
Speaking of snacks, our next section is the Security Ball and Incinerator. The Security Ball is a new type of challenge we created in an effort to add creating more conventional stealth gameplay. It behaves essentially like the rollermine from HL2, except it blows up if you get too close to it. In order to safely dispose of it, you will have to drop it into an Incinerator chute, which you will find at strategic locations. Of course, since we are obsessed with food interactions, you will be able to put your rations on the lip of the Incinerator and fire it to cook them. You would expect no less from us at this point.
The other conventional stealth thing we are adding is Security Cameras. And they almost work the way you'd expect, detecting the player or bodies when under their vision cone - except, to switch it up, we decided to make it so that they work with a progressive scan which you can avoid with timing and acrobatics. They will also detect dead bodies, as we mentioned, which involves a nice new feature which I'm keeping for the next update. ^^
The video also shows the new environmental hiding points such as lockers. They function exactly like in Metal Gear. That's about it.
Finally, here is a demonstration of the new sort-of-hacking-puzzle, Switch Repair. When a switch is broken by another environmental interaction, you will now have the option of repairing it by actually re-soldering its internal components. If this sounds complicated, it is! But Mozah will have access to a nice interactive scanner which highlights the problems with the circuits. There will also be a difficulty slider which scales the complexity of these puzzles, for those who are concerned. Also, so far we don't have any moments where you need to do this; it's mostly to access secrets and such.
Well, that's it for today. Recording all this was actually a huge endeavour. (" -﹏-)
We will be returning somewhat soon with one more big news post with videos on the new content and features, and after that it's back to the crunch and see you in July!~
-Team Fortune