Episode 2 pre-release update news

The shuttle you were supposed to catch left you behind, stranded in Mars City.

Your mission is to locate the missing agent Samuel Calloway. One way or the other. As you make your way through the base, you slowly start to remember things from your past.

Assets improvements
Since we released Episode 1, we have been joined by Arl. His role on the team is overall quality improvements to the assets we use. One of the first things he approached us with was an update to the shotgun. It still resembles and works like the old, but it has received a substantial facelift.

Other improvements have been made to the player’s gloves, minor props and more importantly the portraits we use for Samantha Miles and others. It has been a great pleasure to see the details, both big and small receive lifts in quality. Before Arl joined the team we didn’t have much time to spare on these things, but we do now and we will continue to improve the overall quality of the assets going forward.

Item inspection
In Episode 1 we reintroduced the use button for certain tasks in the game.
We have since then expanded the system to include inspectable items. Select items in the world will be able to be inspected. This works more or less like what is seen in many modern games, except you won’t be able to rotate them and not everything can be inspected. We’re limiting this to items that serve a purpose to the story or current objective, so random coffee cups and pencils will not be clickable. This system also makes it much easier to read ingame texts, flyers or the likes.

Autosaves
We’ve added the ability for autosaves at predefined times so the game will remember to save your progress in between scripted sequences and free-roaming play. This way you don’t have to go back to a cutscene if you die before having a chance to save the game.

Health station
We’ve always thought the health stations in Doom3 were a little underwhelming. They seemed very disconnected to the world and somewhat half-baked in that they offered practically no feedback to the player in terms of sounds or visuals. We have modified them to work more like what is seen in Half-Life and games from that area where you hold the click to heal. Feedback sounds are then heard and the health bar slowly restores.

So. When is the release of Episode 2?
Episode 2 is currently in the hands of our testers and the release is pending on their findings. Hopefully this should mean you can expect a release sooner rather than later. We won’t try and put a date on the release at this point, but we will make sure to let everyone know when it’s about to come out. If all goes well you don’t have to wait too long.

Take care out there!