At the conclusion of last night’s Killer Instinct tournament, Microsoft Studios creative director Adam Isgreen joined the broadcast to discuss the title’s upcoming season.
One of the earliest pieces of information Isgreen provided about the future of Killer Instinct came up in October 2014, and he was finally able to confirm that Tusk will be joining Kim Wu in season 3 to round out the classic roster. Both will be available at launch, in fact, with retro costumes reflecting their appearances from previous installments.
As for legacy bosses like Eyedol and Gargos, however, their future is still unclear. “Eyedol’s tough,” Isgreen explained. “Maya was tough, and we figured Maya out and made her look great, in my opinion, compared to what she looked like in the old game. But Eyedol is tough. It’s like this weird Harryhausen monster with satyr legs and a giant club and he had like two moves and he was super cheap.”
Despite all that, Isgreen wouldn’t completely rule out those old, hidden cast members, so fans needn’t give up all hope.
While gameplay details weren’t plentiful, some interesting tidbits surfaced when Isgreen was asked about future character betas, similar to those done for TJ Combo and Battletoads guest Rash.
“We were able to test Rash because of how the pre-production schedule was created for this season. We built him really, really early,” Isgreen said. “And now that we’re moving into real production, it’s become harder to get working because we’re building all of the features and elements for season 3 right now.”
“The issue of doing a beta right now is the systems. We have a ton of new systems and engine work that’s being done this season. The old and the new cast won’t really function correctly if we don’t have all of the features done when we put them in,” he continued. “We’ve changed a lot, and if we were to put out a beta, the character would either be half of the character or they wouldn’t be where we want them to be to show them, even visually. So, I don’t believe that we’re going to be able to do another beta of another character.”
The discussion also turned towards a statement Isgreen made previously about a couple of characters being “reworked” in season 3. While he divulged that folks like Aganos and Glacius will receive what he calls “tweaks,” his previous comments pertain to changes that are larger in scale.
“The ‘rework’ thing is that we’re actually fundamentally changing some of the way that the character plays, or how they go about doing their damage or getting their meter. Two of the characters in the game are getting that treament,” Isgreen said. “It’s really more just because we felt the characters that we did this to weren’t necessarily having to work for all of their ‘things’ as hard as the other characters, in terms of being successful with that character. It made the characters feel a little flat to us.”
This is only a small portion of the topics discussed during this interview, so be sure to visit the stream archive for more. The conversation in question begins around .
Killer Instinct season 3 will launch on Xbox One and PC sometime in March.
Source: Killer Instinct via DSOGaming, NeoGAF
