In a Stellar Jockeys development live stream on Twitch, the creators of 2016’s isometric vehicle shooter Brigador revealed new details about their upcoming sequel, Brigador Killers. While working on a new tank design, developer Jack Monahan described the sequel’s new setting, as well as the new mechanics and vehicles that will be in the game.
Seaside carnage
Brigador has a deeper setting than you might expect from its focus on urban destruction. Its inaccessible presentation through Dark Souls-like text snippets has not prevented community members from piecing it together on the game’s Discord and wiki, making lore and setting hallmarks of the series. Killers promises more accessible storytelling through comic book-style cutscenes between campaign missions, and we’ve learned more about its setting.
In Brigador Killers this setting is expanded to a new planet. The mercenary protagonists who survived the carnage of the first game have retired to a life of comfort and luxury on the planet of Mar Nosso, a world that sees itself as “untouchable” by the violence found on other worlds. This sense of complacency will no doubt prove fatal. The protagonists of Killers have traveled to Mar Nosso on a mission to hunt down this band of mercenary survivors for their crimes, with massive collateral damage sure to follow.
The planet of Mar Nosso is largely covered in ocean, but its location in space made it an ideal logistics hub between worlds. In fact, the shadowy corporate concerns behind the first game’s bloody coup got the jump on the original colonization mission and claimed it for their own, relegating the colonists to the second-class city of Posadachny. If we see Posadachny show up in Brigador Killers, it seems likely to resemble the slums and post-industrial misery of the first game.
There is little above-water space on the planet, so the city of Mar Nosso was built on a major archipelago and expanded with reclaimed land, meaning that the game will feature many seaside locations. Mar Nosso is also highly cosmopolitan, urban, and affluent, and the developers of Brigador Killers have increased the scale of buildings compared to the first game in order to emphasize how alien and imposing this foreign environment is to the off-worlder killers.
Bring your giant wrecking ball to an island of luxury.
On two legs and four
The stream focused on designing returning character Geraldine Poquet’s custom-built tank, a suitably eccentric design that looks something like a Nolan-era Batmobile on ball treads. Poquet will be appearing as one of the boss characters the player will face in Killers’s more story-focused campaign. However, Poquet’s tank, “Another Bad Dream,” will not be the only new vehicle appearing alongside a selection of “fan favorites” from Brigador.
For Killers, the developers were inspired by the frequent comparisons of Brigador to isometric shooter classic Crusader: No Remorse. So they added a new type of unit to the game, the “tac rigs.” They will be powered armor smaller than the first game’s powersuits, leaving much of the pilot exposed to the elements except for some light armored plating and a shield generator.
The flimsy tac rig will no doubt appeal to challenge runners, but it also will feature a major mechanical change. While all larger units can fire both of their weapons together, the tac rig will have the player switch between weapons like a first-person shooter character, making it an even more challenging unit to use. For the truly masochistic, the cannon fodder infantry unit from the first game will now also be playable.
But for those of us looking for something a bit more durable, a second new unit type might prove more appealing. Quadrapedal mechs were experimented with in the development of Brigador, but animation problems meant that they were shelved until the development of the sequel. Four legs means more stability, so hopefully, these units will be able to equip some heavy guns.
The tac rig has a shield, but don’t expect that to protect you from heavy artillery.
We can expect further details on the promised variety of strange new units as the game nears release in 2020. Let us know what you think of Brigador Killers so far!
