As some people may know, about a year and a half ago Sony restructured their Cambridge studio into a sister studio for Guerrilla Games, the creators of the Killzone franchise. Now dubbed Guerrilla Cambridge, this studio set out to develop a new entry in the Killzone series for the PlayStation Vita. Killzone: Mercenary released last year to strong reviews, but didn’t sell particularly well. It was only on the Vita after all. More recently, the studio has revealed in a new job listing that they are looking for staff to work on “forthcoming projects in a high profile, multi-million selling franchise.” Now what high profile, multi-million selling franchise does this studio have experience with? Killzone. Of course, Cambridge Studio is responsible for MediEvil and helped on the development of Heavenly Sword, but I would not consider either to be “high profile” IPs anymore. With Guerrilla proper off working on something that isn’t Killzone, I’ve had ideas for a sequel to Killzone: Shadow Fall floating around my head for some time. The key to this idea however, was that Guerrilla Cambridge would be the driving force behind the development. Now that there is evidence towards this actually happening, I’ve decided to write up all the stuff I’ve been keeping locked up in my head for the last few months. If you haven’t played Shadow Fall and want to avoid spoilers for the story, now is the time to close this tab.

*** SPOILER WARNING ***

THE PLOT

Now I’m far from being a decent writer. I’m talking in terms of writing a movie or a show or a game or whatever. I’d like to think I can come up with some decent premises, but connecting all the plot points is difficult and I just can’t write good dialogue. So I won’t be getting to crazy in detail, but here’s how I would like to see things play out in… Well, let’s call it Killzone: Shadow Fall 2 for now. Maybe by the end of this post I’ll think of a new subtitle. At the end of Shadow Fall, we learn Echo has survived as she goes on an infiltration mission to assassinate Sinclair, the leader of the VSA who is pushing for a new war against the Helghast. Echo, the half-Helghast half-Vektan and friend of now-deceased protagonist Lucas Kellan (shot in the head by Sinclair himself) kills Sinclair with a bullet to the head. Now there are two possible ways to interpret this ending. Some say Echo was sent on a mission by the Helghast to assassinate Sinclair in an attempt to avoid war. For the purpose of my story and because it’s much more interesting than another special ops agent being sent on a black op, I’m going to say that Echo went rogue and killed Sinclair not just to stop him from sparking a third war between the two nations, but in retaliation for him killing Kellan in cold blood. Echo does say the words, “For Kellan…” right before she pulls the trigger at the end of Shadow Fall. Yes, I am setting Killzone: Shadow Fall 2 up to put the player in the shoes of Echo, the most interesting character the series has had since they made the grave mistake of killing of Scolar Visari back in Killzone 2. Fans have been begging to play as the Helghast for years, and if you read the extensive lore created by Guerrilla you would know that the Helghast aren’t quite the Space Nazis they are portrayed as in-game, and Shadow Fall only slightly touches on the Vektans being not-quite-so-innocent. Placing the player in the shoes of a half-breed who is the Helghast equivalent of a Shadow Marshal checks off a lot of the things fans of this series want, and has the potential to open up some interesting places to take the story if they wanted to tackle issues such as race and the cost of war. The latter of those was also touched on in Shadow Fall, but it seems like Guerrilla just hasn’t been willing to go all the way and commit to tackling a serious subject (or subjects) in their stories. Shadow Fall ends with the screen cutting to black just before the bullet impacts Sinclair. Imagine KZSF2 opening with a black screen, hearing Echo say, “For Kellan…,”, the sound of the gun shot, and then the screen comes to life just in time to see Sinclair finished off with a clean headshot. VSA soldiers are immediately on high alert, trying to locate the shooter. Civilians listening to the speech panic, politicians are quickly escorted onto ships and out of the district, and Echo escapes unseen and attempts to return to the Helghast side of the wall. As I’ve said, this was in part a revenge mission that Echo took on without orders, and the Helghast leadership is not happy about this. Shadow Fall has shown that the relationship between Maya “Echo” Visari and her mother is already in rough shape, and helping Kellan escape Helghast custody on top of her rogue mission to assassinate Sinclair will destroy what is left. Echo is cast out in an attempt by the Helghast to avoid war, and they offer to turn Echo over to the Vektan government to pay for her crimes.

With the setup for Echo now in place, this is where things can get interesting. The big hook for my story for KZSF2 is to combine the storylines of Shadow Fall and Guerrilla Cambridge’s first entry into the series, Killzone: Mercenary. At the end of Mercenary, Arran Danner escapes with another half-human, half-Helghast, a child named Justus Harkin. Both are fugitives and and the weapons dealer Blackjack wipes any evidence of the two so they can stay off the radar. Both of Justus’ parents have been killed, and he is only ten years old during the events of Mercenary so in my story I would have Danner adopt Justus and raise him as his own. Fast forwarding roughly thirty years to the events of Shadow Fall, Danner is in his mid-60’s and Justus in his early 40’s. While they have stayed off the radar and lived relatively normal, if not secluded lives on Vekta, Justus is compelled to come out of hiding to assist Echo. Justus and Echo are two of only three known half-breed characters in the Killzone universe, and the backstory of the universe shows that the Helghast and Vektans are varying shades of grey, rather than black and white, or good and evil. Setting up a story where you are now a “neutral” party that has been cast out and is wanted by both factions allows the story to show these two sides as morally ambiguous, as well as opening the door to introduce some of the elements that Killzone: Mercenary introduced with the black market and customizing your loadout. With Echo in custody and set to be turned over to the Vektans, Justus will turn to Danner to help him plan a rescue mission. Danner, who has kept some ties to his mercenary past, gets in touch with Blackjack in order to acquire weapons for the mission. He then helps Justus plan an assault on the convoy bringing Echo across to the Vektan side of the wall. With Danner guiding Justus over comms, Justus succeeds in freeing Echo, pissing both the Helghast and Vektans off considerably and igniting the Third Extrasolar War.

Here’s a thought: Seeing as my story focuses on Echo and Justus, let’s rename Killzone: Shadow Fall 2 to Killzone: Outcasts. Is that decent? I’ll refer to the game as Killzone: Outcasts from here on out.

THE GAMEPLAY

Things should go quicker from here on out, the big thing I wanted to talk about in this blog post was the plot. As for gameplay, one of the biggest mistakes I feel Guerrilla has made is that each Killzone game feels different from the last. That can be a good thing, but the differences are in key areas and while it may bring new players in, it also alienates a large chunk of the fans of the previous game. There are Killzone 2 fans that hate KZ3 and Shadow Fall, Killzone 3 fans that hate KZ2 and Shadow Fall, and Shadow Fall fans that hated KZ2 and KZ3. The goal here is to keep things similar enough to Shadow Fall that you aren’t going to eliminate that player base, but also reintroducing elements to please the older fan base. The major key here is the gunplay. There are just three tweaks I’d really make to things here. The first is the first shot accuracy. In KZ2 if you fired a shot when you were standing still, that bullet would go exactly where you were aiming. From there, recoil would kick in and you would see the bullet spread you are used to in a shooter. This effect on gunplay has either been toned down or removed, and it’s something I would like to see reintroduced. Along with it, would be a slight increase in the kick of the weapons. Most guns in Shadow Fall had very little recoil, adding it back in can help each weapon feel unique. Second would be to slightly increase the effectiveness of hip fire. I’m not saying revert back five years to the way it was in Killzone 2, but firing from the hip was almost useless with the majority of guns in Shadow Fall. This is understandable, as Shadow Fall‘s multiplayer maps were generally close quarters and focused around choke points, but you should not have a game mechanic that basically doesn’t work. Finally, something needs to be done about character movement. Even if it’s just updating the animation, it looks awkward in Shadow Fall and can feel clunky at times. I’m not advocating for removing the weight of the characters that I and many others love, but cleaning up the animations and making them feel smoother would go a long way to improving the overall experience.

When it comes to Outcasts’ campaign, I’d like to see the game try and stick more to what they achieved in the first few chapters of Shadow Fall. The further KZSF fell into standard corridor shooting and painfully linear levels, the worse the campaign got. Design levels that are more open, somewhat like mini-sandboxes, give the players a number of objectives to complete and let them loose. Along with this, improved stealth abilities would be absolutely vital to giving the player a full range of options to play the game. Shadow Fall‘s options were limited and felt unrefined, but when you’re giving the player the ability to customize their loadout before entering a mission and choose the way they play, stealth needs to be just as viable as going guns blazing. This wasn’t quite the case in Shadow Fall and it would completely undermine what I would be going for if I was making Outcasts. The freedom of being able to explore and tackle objectives in multiple ways will not only encourage playthroughs, but create a more gameplay-oriented game that doesn’t rely as much on the set pieces that first person shooters are known for. Gamers are tired of the Call of Duty-style campaigns that make the story an excuse to loosely string multiple set piece moments together. While it’s a totally different genre of game, the allure of the Souls games is that they are almost purely gameplay. Being able to play out and create the crazy moments rather than having control taken away from the player so they can be shown a cutscene makes for a much more satisfying result.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk multiplayer. Killzone has been known and loved for its “Warzone” game type, rotating through multiple objectives in the same match. It’s a fantastic way to keep every game feel different and fresh, though some of that was lost in Shadow Fall‘s multiplayer. There are a few mistakes to rectify right off the bat: Bring back the Assassination game type, a fan favourite that many were upset to see go. Make sure there is a fully-fledged clan system in place at launch. Hell, just lift and drop the clan system from Killzone 2 into Outcasts if it’s possible. While I’m not a fan of it myself, bring Operations mode back to add some more variety to the competitive multiplayer. Make sure it works on more than three maps this time too. Finally, have a co-op mode — whether it’s a variation on Intercept or something new — in the game at launch. This is where I start to get a little more creative with restructuring the multiplayer balancing. The Support class in Shadow Fall has too many abilities at its disposal, so much so that important abilities end up being ignored often. Splitting the class into two is my solution. The Support Class is reworked slightly. Revive is still its’ primary ability, with secondary abilities including the Supply Box and Support Teleport. The new class will take on an old name, the Tactician. This class will have the Spawn Beacon as its’ primary ability, with the Air Drone and Sentry Turret as secondaries. Of course the other classes in the game — Assault, Scout, and Insurgent — should all be carried over as well. Removing established content in a direct sequel is just silly in my mind. That means including all the guns currently in KZSF, introducing new ones, and hopefully bringing back some more classics like the VC32 Sniper Rifle. That also applies to the abilities: keep all the ones currently in the game, and add some new ones for each class. I myself would like to see 20 multiplayer maps available on the disc at launch. 10 brand new maps for Outcasts, and then two maps from Killzone, Killzone 2, Killzone 3, Killzone: Mercenary, and Killzone: Shadow Fall remade and included. I think a smart move would be to have the fans vote on which classic maps they want through social media and the Killzone.com forums. Continuing to offer new DLC maps for free is a must, money can be made through the major expansions, aesthetic items, and season pass. Also, please include at least some of the customization options in the season pass. Give people one set of icons, one camouflage set, and one voice pack for free every month or whatever the guys who decide what is “financially viable” is best.

CONCLUSION

The goal with Killzone: Outcasts is to create the best, most feature-rich Killzone game that can possible be made. Something that the developers will be proud of and that the fans will love. I would hope Sony will give any potential Killzone sequel three to four years of development, as there’s undoubtedly some series fatigue right now and the extra time to polish and add content would do nothing but good things. Maybe this is all too ideal for the real world, but this is my basic idea for what I would make if I was in charge of a sequel to Killzone: Shadow Fall. Guerrilla Cambridge doing the bulk of the work with help from a small support team at Guerrilla Proper, getting fresh hands and eyes on the series can really help revitalize it after what I felt was a solid first step in a new direction in Shadow Fall. Combining the clean, vibrant look of Shadow Fall with the grittier design of the early titles would help create a hauntingly beautiful Vekta that is being ravaged by yet another war. Giving the player control of Echo allows them to see through the eyes of one of the series’ most interesting characters; a half-Helghast and a female, since that seems to be a big talking point in video games these days. There it is. Killzone: Outcasts. Maybe Guerrilla reads this and likes my idea, or maybe this will never happen. Who knows. I’m still not sure about that title.