June 27th 2021 11:57pm — Fred Toms, Programmer / Project Management - @Tommy2Doors
The world of Spectre is just a little bit different since the last time I wrote a devlog. Now, the Reaper trailer is out, which means that a lot of the cards we were holding close to our chest have been revealed by way of the trailer.
Necksnaps? Confirmed. Tasing similar to Chaos Theory? Confirmed. Co-op moves? Confirmed. Ziplining? Confirmed. Controllable spy cams? Confirmed. Among others...
The Reaper trailer was a huge challenge. A common "complaint" of that trailer was that it didn't show enough Reaper. And I actually, in a way, agree with that. The Reaper trailer was meant to be a showcase of the Reaper character. Prior to the trailer release, we had never publicly revealed what that character looked like. When we announced in January, we had very basic gameplay finished. To us developers, this is very evident based on what we showed in the trailer: some climbing, hacking, aiming and... that's sort've it.
Since that time, Spectre has progressed big time. We now have a bunch of features that we want to show off. Like co-op moves. Like tasing. Like spy cams. And it's no wonder that we have more Spectre stuff done than we do Reaper stuff - our Reaper model was only delivered late March / Early April. So we ended up with a lot more Spectre stuff to show, and unfortunately, a lot less Reaper stuff... but obviously the expectation was to show the Reaper. Let me be clear right off the bat - I love our Reaper trailer. There isn't much I'd change about it. But, admittedly, it does spend a lot of time fleshing out the functionality relating to the Spectre. And this is because, much like our first "announcement" trailer, we haven't spent as much time in development of the Reaper as we would've liked. Instead of delaying the trailer even further, we put together the best demonstration of where the game is at now - in a cinematic way. And, dammit, I'm proud of that.
Good things incoming.
- Fred