The Ghostface reveal!
A Nintendo Switch port announcement!
The long-awaited Freddy rework!
A… late night show-like band?
That last bit may feel out of place, but all of this and more was on display during the livestream by Behaviour Interactive, highlighting three years of their asymmetrical survival horror game Dead by Daylight. Presented live in front of the entire development team, and streamed on platforms such as YouTube, game director Mathieu Cote hosted the two-hour special this past Friday, and the amount of new content coming to the game in year four is, in a word, plentiful. Given that, as Cote himself mentioned in the broadcast, that the team accomplished about 95 percent of what was on the year three roadmap, and even delivered some content not originally on it, fans can more or less count on Behaviour to make good on every promise made in the year four roadmap.
While you can watch the entire stream for yourself below, here is the word on the new content, and when it is coming. Starting this Tuesday, June 4th, the Public Test Build (PTB) for Ghostface, the highly-anticipated new Killer straight from the Scream franchise, goes live for PC players who have opted into the beta. Starting on June 14th, all players on all platforms will enjoy a Double Bloodpoint event, lasting through June 18th, when players can get their hands on the Ghostface DLC.
The reveal trailer for Ghostface was humorous, keeping in line with the horror-comedy tone of the films, but his power threatens to be one of most interesting and methodical powers yet. Dubbed “Night Shroud,” the power allows Ghostface to play the stealth game unlike any Killer before him. He can peek around corners and stay hidden behind objects, then activate his power to shrink his Terror Radius (also known as the “heartbeat” among players) to zero and stalk individual Survivors, much like Michael Myers / The Shape does with his “Evil Within” power. In Ghostface’s case, stalking a Survivor for four continuous seconds will “Mark” the Survivor, applying the Exposed status effect, which means a successful attack can take the Survivor from healthy to dying in one hit, as opposed to two. If a Survivor breaks Ghostface’s focus by looking directly at him for so much as one second, though, the stalking ends, and "Night Shroud" goes into a cooldown before it can be used again.
Ghostface’s perks look to make for some potentially interesting builds for not just Ghostface, but any Killer. "I’m All Ears" reveals Auras of Survivors who perform rushed actions such as fast vaults and sprinting out of lockers, giving away their location. "Thrilling Tremors" blocks unoccupied Generators when the Killer picks up a downed Survivor, slowing the game down a bit and forcing the Survivors’ hands. "Furtive Chase" is an Obsession perk that will rotate the Obsession status based on who performs the hook rescue. When the Obsession is hooked, the perk gains a token. Each token, up to a certain number dependent on perk rank, takes away 4 meters of Terror Radius range when the Killer is in a chase. I’m personally less excited about the last one, but "I’m All Ears" and "Thrilling Tremors" are bound to make for some fun Killer shenanigans.
During the mid-chapter update, slated for later this summer, the much-ballyhooed rework of Freddy Krueger / The Nightmare will finally be realized. The Springwood native is widely regarded as the worst Killer in the game, and that is a goddamn shame given his credentials. Instead of having to aim the power and wait seven seconds to hit a Survivor, sleep will be a passive mechanic, though waking up Survivors remains the same: fail a skill check or wake each other up with a channel. One of the highlights of the Dream Demon rework is his ability to teleport to the nearest generator after a five-second channel.
This can make for some mind games, as the channel can be cancelled out of at any time before the five seconds are up. The proposed dream pallets, which will fool some looping Survivors, and dream snares, which will serve as a slow-down version of something like The Trapper’s bear traps, will make Freddy a much more active Killer, as opposed to a stalling, game-slowing Killer like he was before. His home turf, the Badham Preschool, is also slated for a rework, meaning Freddy is really coming to prime time, bitch!
The next developer stream, slated for this Friday, June 7th, will feature an extensive Q&A about the Freddy reworks as a whole.
Later this fall, in the mid-chapter 13 patch (for reference, Ghostface will be chapter 12), The Archives are slated for release. This will provide a new set of quests and mini-challenges for players, beyond just “use your power, hit the Survivors, hook ‘em, repeat.” Completion of Archive challenges will provide rewards such as Bloodpoints and cosmetics, but also unlock backstory for the characters in the game. Finally, it seems that Behaviour is making people give a damn about which character they play as. In the case of Survivors, no one has a set ability, and the perks, once teachable, are cut and paste. This new mode will incentivize players to play the game top to bottom, using every character available, and always give the player something to do beyond log on, play, repeat.
As previously reported, the Nintendo Switch version of the game is set for release on September 24th. A mobile version is also slated for later this year, though nothing is set in stone at the moment. The developers of the mobile port will have Q&A sessions in the coming weeks to talk about this new venture. I’m not much of a mobile gamer myself, but I can definitely appreciate the fact that the success of the game has led them to this port.
For the cosplayers and costuming aficionados out there, the Dead by Daylight team has announced that they are developing cosplay guides for the most frequently imitated characters. These guides are intended to help seamstresses and cosplayers hit the high points of their favorite characters, and the first guide is for The Huntress. As someone who has a Huntress-inspired costume in their wardrobe, I am thoroughly excited for this and future guides.
A true highlight of the show comes from the Dead by Daylight band, which plays songs from the soundtrack in the interludes. For those who wish to watch the full livestream, I highly recommend jumping to the 1:05:00 mark in the stream (on the YouTube version), as the interpretation of the main title theme is just amusing. I had my reservations about the band at first, but that version of the song did it for me.
This isn’t even everything that was talked about in the stream. Watching the stream made me even more excited for the game’s future. The bang-up job that Behaviour did with the year 3 roadmap has me stoked for what is to come.
See you in the Fog!