New Killer Idea: The Fossil (from Horror Express)

danielmaster87

This killer idea is something I pulled from the obscure horror classic: Horror Express. I implore you to watch the movie or read the plot to get a better idea on what I'm about to describe, and also to avoid spoilers.

Lore & Description

The creature was originally an alien that was left behind by the rest of its kind and wound up on prehistoric Earth. It could not survive Earth's environment and atmosphere so it transferred its mind into an animal's, but it didn't stop there. Its consciousness is comes from, and enters into, the eyes. Eventually it enters a caveman's body where it is frozen in ice until it is dug up, rediscovered, and thawed in the early 20th century. Believed to be dead, it is locked in a crate and loaded onto a train headed from Shanghai to Moscow. It escapes the crate and starts killing passengers by absorbing their memory through making direct eye contact with them. He grabs or strangles them to hold them still while he does it. The victims eyes bleed and turn white as a result. This ability is only achievable in the dark for whatever reason. When it becomes gravely wounded, it transfers its consciousness to the nearest host: someone on board the train. It even has the ability to command the bodies of the people it has killed using its memory-absorbing ability.

Here is how the monster looks:

It's basic but scary, covered in fur and displaying its red glowing eye. There are scarier picture of it out there, but this one provides the most detail and gives you a bigger picture of what it looks like.

Here's how one of its victims looks after their memory has been absorbed:

Wouldn't want to be him.

When he is inhabiting a human host, he looks like a normal person. But when using his memory-absorbing ability, he looks like this:

Very eerie. Who knew a human simply having red eyes could be so scary?

Gameplay Ideas

The Fossil's basic attack would be a claw attack. His killer power could be getting close enough to strangle a survivor and gain their memories, which would be an ability he can use later to see the auras of survivors or generators being worked on or something. You could make his mori something similar, but with more flair of course. He would be 115%, because there's no reason for him not to be.

He needs another ability besides aura reading for him to be viable, so maybe he could do something with the survivors he's killed. I'm not saying turn them into AI zombies, but something not too OP along those lines would be cool. Or he could turn down the lights and give himself a boost of some sort. But maybe that's a strange idea because most of the maps in DBD are already pretty dark. And no, he should not be able to be disguised as a survivor, because that idea has been thrown around before and SWF breaks it every time.

As for perks and add-ons, the devs will figure all that stuff out.

Map & Survivor Ideas

I can think of only two good map ideas. The first is the moving train of course, but moving maps is something the game cannot handle I can assure you. So the second and more realistic option is the train station in Shanghai, which we get to see a bit of near the beginning of the movie. Maybe some of the train would be available to walk on as well.

The survivors should be pretty obvious: Saxton and Wells (Lee and Cushing). If those actor's likenesses can't be used, just make "close enough" faces for them like what was done with the Stranger Things and Silent Hill survivors. Or you could pick one or two of the side characters, but I disagree with that idea for the most part.

Conclusion

I doubt anybody has heard of Horror Express or is gonna think "Wow, this is an amazing idea." but I just like throwing cool ideas out there. Maybe it will get implemented, maybe it won't. Something Tru3 said recently was "if Pyramid got in, anybody can get in." and I truly believe that. Feel free to critique or applaud my idea; feedback is always welcome (and is kind of what we do posts for :) ).