A long pitch for The Thing

I read an IGN interview recently and was happy to see that Jason Guzzo (Killer designer on Chucky, Dracula, and now Springtrap) also has The Thing as the main chapter he would like to see in future. Seeing that, I felt motivated to post my own pitch for how The Thing could potentially work, because like Chucky used to be, Thing's often been dismissed as incompatible with DbD.

Unless you're willing to ban it from SWF queues, make an exclusive gamemode, have The Thing add extra bot Survivors or etc, I admit that you can't do a social deduction Killer in this game. Most ideas that approach it, like turning into a Survivor as an alternate twist on stealth, end up losing the appeal of social deduction along the way in their attempts to replicate it. Thanks to Discord, players would always know who's human.

But… What if it was a different kind of social deduction/guesswork? I first got the idea for this power ages ago after reading The Things, fanfiction a short story retelling the film's plot from the alien's perspective. One of the fan interpretations it uses is the idea that The Thing's hosts might still be themselves up to a certain point, that large parts of the Thing's bodies, even the brains, might be working as normal depending on the context of assimilation.

So, this power has The Thing's assimilation not as a stealth power for the Killer, but a stealthy status effect seeded amongst the Survivors, and an assimilated Survivor will keep playing the game as normal uncertain if they could be The Thing or not. Now, for the full power:

The Power

Brace yourself, it's unfortunately got to be a long one. The Thing is a Large, 115% Killer with a 28m Terror Radius.

Special Attack: Split Lunge: Split Lunge begins identically to a Basic Attack lunge, but upon ending the lunge, The Thing stops moving as its upper body starts to stretch and lurch backwards ~2m, then launches ~5m ahead as it splits from its lower body. The Thing's lower body disintegrates and reconstitutes with its upper body during the recovery afterwards, or if The Thing's upper body is stunned by any means, it will be destroyed and regenerate at its lower body's location instead.

Split Lunge's lurch and launch can move over windows, pallets, and short obstacles. Colliding with a Survivor during the launch damages them, but Injured Survivors will be put into Deep Wound instead of being downed. During the lurch backwards, The Thing has full rotational control, but its turning is highly restricted during the launch. (Note: The recovery of this attack would be relatively long, so using it for mobility would be a terrible idea and misses would be punishing. During the lurch, your lower body is static, so twisting your camera can cause the upper body to twist around corners or over windows as it stretches out)

Assimilation: With Secondary Power, The Thing switches to Assimilation Mode, which causes all attacks and grabs to inflict Assimilated. Assimilation Mode has no visual indicator for it being active. Once Assimilation is inflicted, Assimilation Mode is replaced with Reveal.

The Thing always inflicts Potentially Assimilated with its attacks and grabs. Survivors can see Potential Assimilation on the HUD.

Reveal: The result of Assimilation. All Reveals start with The Thing vanishing from its location, and end with the Assimilated Survivor becoming a Humanoid Thing that the Killer controls, in an animation that takes a few seconds. Reveals also puts Assimilation Mode on cooldown for 45 seconds.

After a Reveal, all Assimilation and Potential Assimilation is removed, and the revealed Survivor will wake up under the hook furthest from the Reveal's location.

Reveals have two variants:

Active Reveal: The Thing can trigger a Reveal itself via the Secondary Power button, if a Survivor has been Assimilated for at least 30 seconds. The Thing sees through the Survivor's camera, but cannot see Auras. The Thing can press the Secondary Power button again to take direct control of the Survivor's actions. After 5 seconds of direct control, the mutation will begin. Active Reveals cannot be done on Hooked Survivors.

Forced Reveal: Survivors can cause Forced Reveals using Flamethrower Parts. Blood Tests cause a longer mutation animation, and result in half of the normal Humanoid Thing duration. Flamethrower Bursts destroy the host, completely denying other Reveal effects, only causing the subject survivor to wake up elsewhere and removing all Potentially Assimilated statuses.

Humanoid Thing: A temporary state The Thing enters after a Reveal. Humanoid Thing's duration is equal to how long the Assimilated status effect was present on the revealed Survivor, with a minimum base duration of 30 seconds and maximum of 3 minutes. The Power Gauge's charge represents Humanoid Thing's potential/current duration. As a Humanoid Thing, The Thing is Undetectable, has a longer Lunge for Basic Attacks, Split Lunge will down Injured Survivors instead of inflicting Deep Wound, and Split Lunge has a shorter recovery. A Humanoid Thing is capable of Assimilation or Reveals as normal. Once Humanoid Thing's duration ends, The Thing degenerates to its normal state.

Emergency Crates: 10 of these Crates spawn in the trial, each containing 1 Flamethrower Part for Survivors to use. Picking up multiple Parts stacks them, up to 3, at which point they become a Flamethrower with 3 charges.

Survivors can do Blood Tests on the Potentially Assimilated with 1 Flamethrower Part. This removes Potentially Assimilated, or causes a Forced Reveal against Assimilated Survivors.

The Flamethrower can do Blood Tests, but also allows an aimed Flamethrower Burst. Flamethrower Bursts will put Survivors into Deep Wound status (yes, this does mean friendly fire is possible. if The Thing assimilates the Survivor who got the flamethrower…) and can cause Forced Reveals. Hitting The Thing with a Flamethrower Burst will inflict Hindered for a few seconds, and remove 20 seconds of any remaining Humanoid Thing duration.

The main goal of this power is to replicate some of the social dynamics of The Thing, without actually needing to convert DbD into Among Us. Meeting up together for blood tests is the best overall strategy, but if you think you're The Thing, getting close to other Survivors invites disaster, and you're the last person who should have the flamethrower. Instead of just suspecting others, you're suspecting yourself, kinda like the audience suspecting MacReady while watching the movie- And that dynamic works regardless if people are on comms or not. The Thing's goal is to sow discord into your Discord by getting everyone Potentially Assimilated quickly, and causing absolute pandemonium as you try to coordinate blood tests and desperately guess which Survivor it would've chosen to assimilate.

Right, after all that, I'm not gonna do a full Addon list, but I will do three Killer Perks to go along with this. I'd love MacReady as a Survivor too, but I'll just stick with these Killer Perks.

Hex: Language Barrier

Survivors cannot perform cooperative Healing Actions. If multiple Survivors are repairing the same Generator, they suffer -5/10/15% Repair Speed.

"Se til helvete og kom dere vekk! Det er ikke en bikkje, det er en slags ting! Det imiterer en bikkje, det er ikke virkelig! KOM DERE VEKK, IDIOTER!" -Lars

Uncanny Presence

While within your Terror Radius, Survivors will never experience its intensity decreasing until they have left your Terror Radius completely. (eg. if ghoul gets within 8m of you then walks away, you will keep hearing that guitar until completely leaving the TR)

After a Survivor spends 40/35/30 seconds in your Terror Radius uninterrupted, a duplicate of your Terror Radius, with a 24m range, attaches itself to them for 40 seconds. This effect cannot trigger on a Survivor who already has a Terror Radius attached, and has a 60 second cooldown. (note; this means dark devotion will not cause uncanny to proc on the victim survivor, but it could spread to a survivor nearby)

"I'm not sure it is any kind of cell structure… At least, as we know cell structure." -Blair

Mimicry

Whenever you are Undetectable and not invisible, Mimicry activates. While Mimicry is active, Survivors cannot see your normal form, and instead see the appearance of a Survivor mirroring your movements. The Survivor chosen to mimic will be the most recent Survivor you damaged and are not currently in a chase with, or picked at random if that is not possible. (this is very similar to how Mirrored Illusion creates a mirage of a Survivor, and isn't really designed to hold up under scrutiny because you'd still be moving much faster than a regular survivor and etc. it would still have uses though, like tall Killers being able to better use Undetectable in loops, or simply to cause an extra moment's hesistation in chase)

Mimicry deactivates if Undetectable is removed in any way, you are Stunned or Blinded, directly collide with a Survivor, or attempt any action besides moving, vaulting, or crouching. (yes, this means ghostface can turn into your dead friend then tbag you) Mimicry has a cooldown of 80/70/60 seconds once deactivated.

When only one Survivor remains alive in the Trial, you become permanently Undetectable.

"Why don't we just… Wait here for a little while? See what happens." -MacReady

Hopefully someone enjoyed reading this! My real focus with writing… All that is mostly just to convince people there's plenty of design space to get The Thing into DbD. I think post-Chucky many community members have already been convinced anything is possible, but hopefully I got a few more souls aboard the hype train.

I'm curious if people think this power would be a decent adaptation of The Thing? Maybe someone's got an idea on how the social deduction elements actually could be executed, or maybe there's a gaping hole in my idea I haven't spotted yet.