The new killer is disappointing
The visuals, the power, and the animations are a prime example of BHVR being out of touch with their community. Everyone was excited because we thought we were getting a cool cyborg but instead we got a female version of Kano from mortal kombat with a bedazzled mask that walks like a runway model.
The biggest complaint that everyone has, though, is with her power. Scott Jund on youtube does a good job explaining why he thinks this killer takes the worst parts of the game and makes it into a power: stalling the game with a 3 gen. Her power doesn’t help you in the chase but is great for camping a 3 gen scenario and stalling the game with Call of Brine/Overcharge. BHVR took what everyone complained about with The Knight’s design and made a more annoying version of it. She’ll probably need a full rework before the majority of people actually like her.
The animations also scream laziness. Nothing special about kicking pallets or breakable walls, picking up survivors, or anything else. The mori is just a dumbed down version of Freddy’s mori.
BHVR obviously just didn’t try with this chapter, and to make the killer decent and actually fun for both sides they’ll need to do a full rework. Maybe something like the ability to control/move drones. Maybe drones can follow survivors under certain circumstances or instead of becoming exposed survivors become hindered after 10 seconds inside a drone radius. Maybe give her an alternate ability where you can shock survivors who have a claw trap on to help in chase. Whatever happens, I got a feeling that it’ll take a while until this killer is good. Hopefully they’ll do a full character redesign too.
Comments
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I agree with your criticisms of the chapter, but I disagree in the sense that the Devs didn't at least try.
I think they just churned out something mediocre despite their best expectations. I don't think any dev team plans on their content to be terrible or low effort, I'd argue that they played it safe with this chapter, which sucks because the best decisions come from big risks.
I do hope they improve her kit and provide her the desperate QoL she needs, or at least, a better more functioning rework that addresses the community's complaints. I personally would've loved to see more of the theme of technological augmentation to egregious extremes, but unfortunately, waifu bait is a go to for selling product even if in terms of overall character design, it doesn't make sense.
I think the easiest place where this is displayed is League of Legends, for instance. A lot of the time it's a skinny waist and busty frame with petite clothes, typically meant to draw appeal to the character. That being said, I think sexualization does have place in a character design, so long as it's practically applicable and adds value to the character. Take, Evelynn, a seductress who's entire schtick is innuendos. Or, Bayonetta; who's sexual up-frontedness is part of the fact that the character radiates confidence and owns it. Here with TSM, it's misplaced and impractical.
TLDR: I think devs do try to put out good things, it's just that this time it sucked. I hope BHVR listens to the community and gives her the QoL she needs and I think that her design was played too safe and was slightly sexualized for waifu bait which detracted value from a pretty boring design.
E1: I think it wouldn't hurt to listen to the community more. I would've loved to see a cybernetic horror rather than some billionaire that threw on a mask and claw. Booooring!
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I disagree that they didn't try. I think they were trying to do something really different but it just didn't really come together.
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How did no one at bvhr see the anticipation of terminator / a cyborg of some kind and say guys we need to delay this reveal and remake her. Blame a gamebreaking bug. Or be honest and just say on second thought guys, we need to redo her design.
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I kinda feel like everyone who got so invested in the idea of a cyborg/cybernetic killer that they became convinced it was definitely coming has nobody to blame but themselves. It was a cool idea, but it was just one possibility of what the teasers could mean- basically just a guess.
BHVR are not to blame here.
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I see what you’re saying. You definitely make some good points. I probably should’ve worded my post a bit differently. I would find it hard to imagine a developer making this chapter and saying “I don’t care, let’s just get it done”. So they do deserve some credit for the things that they did right (such as the cool Shelter Woods rework, drones are kind of cool being made out of a skull, etc).
I think a better way to phrase it is that the devs didn’t care enough to actually listen to player feedback from the previous chapter and they also didn’t take the time to think about how certain things would be received by the community. For example, people are still complaining about how The Knight’s design makes it so that he is best suited for stalling the game in a 3 gen situation, slowly wearing survivors down with gen kicking perks until one mistake dominos into them losing the game; BHVR didn’t listen and made a new killer with the same type of design, and survivors really hate playing against her.
I will still stand by my original argument that the devs were straight up lazy with the killer’s visual design and animations, though; no excuse for how bland and uninspired they are. For visual design they obviously got the idea to do the mask like Kano from Mortal Kombat (metal covering part of the face with 1 red glowing eye) and Predator’s gauntlet blade. The animations are a similar story. She’s got a futuristic exo-arm that’s probably very strong but kicks pallets and gens with her foot the exact same way most other killers do it? She obviously likes slashing as evidenced by the new mannequins in Shelter Woods but her mori is a single backstab that looks exactly like Freddy’s mori?
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I believe this chapter was meant to be licensed, based specifically off the Predator / Prey film from Disney. But I’m thinking that the deal fell through and BHVR basically scrambled to salvage the work they’d already done, which left us with this. I don’t believe they didn’t try, or that they intended for what we have received.
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Respectfully, I personally disagree. In the trailer BHVR obviously teased us with the idea of body being fused with technology in a creepy way with the skull that had blinking lights/electrical components. Turns out that the new killer just has them on her drones for decorative purposes, as she could easily use metal or some other material to hold the wiring and components of the drone.
We see this futuristic trailer and then get a killer where part of her weapon is attached to her arm with…… duct tape :(
BHVR releases a trailer with a creepy skull/mechanical abomination and then we get a killer with a karen haircut and a bedazzled mask that looks like it came from a runway model fashion show.
There’s a reason why nobody has complained about a killer’s design since The Trickster was released YEARS AGO. Even then, it was mostly just because people thought that he just wasn’t all that scary, not that he had a bad design, unlike with The Skull Merchant.
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