Greetings all!
Today we want to share with you a brand-new story trailer we made for INDUSTRIA 2. Maybe you have seen it already in the Future Games Show Spring Showcase or on the product page, if not, have a go here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QHsewJZ7Eo
We put a loooot of love into this one, as we decided to show you a bunch of new levels, one of the main characters and also the new enemies in action. Let me start by talking about Marlene:
(Be aware: tiny spoilers ahead!) INDUSTRIA 2 starts with Nora being stuck in the parallel dimension you might know from the first game. After surviving alone for years, trying to find a way back home, she meets Marlene, a familiar face, back from East-Berlin where Nora is from. Well, 'meeting' is kind of wrong, more correct would be that Nora stumbles into her. After being alone for a long time, Nora is obviously suspicious, and so is Marlene. But the harsh environment and ever looming presence of the dangerous ATLAS presence (the machines) more or less forces them to think of a strategy together.
We are not The Last of Us with a big budget, but nevertheless we wanted to create a memorable NPC you collaborate with to some extent. To make that work, we had to figure out how to animate faces and full body characters. Our animator Ben did an insane job and figured out a system which will be used in the game a lot: a library of facial animations he made we can use to create all the scenes we need to tell a story. And yes, Marlene will fight with Nora. We try to hit a good satisfying spot where her AI is not annoying but actually helpful and memorable (the perfect reference for us still is Alyx in HL2: Episode 2).
Fear not, INDUSTRIA 2 is light on cutscenes and we always try to mix good old Half-Life 2 style in-game cutscenes with a handful of actual camera-cuts. But it's always from Nora's first-person perspective and the game will maintain its unique feel of solitude, even if there are other characters with you in the world.
There are more characters in the game, but we don't want to spoil anything else. In the trailer we also showed exactly one black and white shot. If you played the first game, you probably know what this refers to and I can gladly announce that the Library and its inhabitants still play an important role. We love to mix the familiar with the unfamiliar as Viktor Antonov (Half-Life 2/Dishonored Art Director, who sadly passed away recently) would have said and we will continue that surreal path from the first game.
Well, that's it so far. There is so much more stuff happening of course, but I will keep this for the next development update. We hope you like the direction this project is going and can't wait for your feedback and thoughts!
All the best and until the next dev update!
David & The Bleakmill Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2154070/INDUSTRIA_2/