Killing Floor 2 announced, will be very gory

Killing Floor 2, Tripwire Interactive's sequel to its co-op zombie-based FPS, has finally been officially revealed.

Earlier this year its presence was leaked in a Steam snafu, but the studio stayed mum on the situation so it only remained a rumour. Now PC Gamer has an exclusive reveal detailing Tripwire's sequel.

The first Killing Floor began as an Unreal Tournament mod, but was fleshed out into a full game where it went on to sell 2.5 million copies. At the time Tripwire was comprised of 10 people, but it's since expanded into a 50-person studio. Given the first game's success, this sequel will be a significantly higher budget affair.

At least partially set in Paris, Killing Floor 2 will feature motion-capture for just about everything, including reload animations and melee attacks. "This project on an animation end has been a dream come true for me," creative director and Tripwire co-founder Bill Munk told PC Gamer. "This is the first time we had the budget for me to do mocap for everything and try to make everything look as sick as possible."

One of Tripwire's biggest focuses this time around is on gore, and the developer is introducing a new system called MEAT - i.e. Massive Evisceration and Trauma. Every zombie will have 95 death animations based on where they took damage - a feat made possible by mo-capping 3000 enemy animations. "You can blow chunks off their head to reveal skull," said art director David Hensley. "Keep shooting the skull and it explodes, revealing brain cross sections. You can cut them in half vertically, horizontally." Oh, and smeared blood will stay on a level during the entirety of the match.

Melee combat has also been reworked to include four-way directional swings and both light and heavy attacks.

Another addition to Killing Floor 2 is newly calibrated difficulty. Last time out the harder settings simply increased enemies' speed and health, but now they'll have all new abilities and behaviours, so tricks that worked on Normal might have an adverse effect on the hardest Hell on Earth setting.

Tripwire is placing a lot of emphasis on making Killing Floor 2 moddable for fans with Steam Workshop integration and its own SDK. "Every system that we make we're looking at how to make it extensible to modders," Hensley noted. "We'll design a system and then go 'oh, that's not going to work for modding. So we'll redesign it to make it easier for modders to access."

Killing Floor 2 is slated for a PC and Linux release on Steam Early Access, though no release window has been given.