Enhance. ENHANCE! Our team of forensics experts here at AusNS have hopped off the catwalk just long enough to comb through the grainy NS2 teaser video with a UV light. Our computer programs bleeped and blooped impressively and yielded multiple clues. Join us as we descend in to the depths of baseless speculation.
YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Super Update: The HD trailer is out so I’ve updated all the screenshots with their high quality counterparts!
Update: NS2 level designer KungFuSquirrel informs me that we’ve missed something! A useless prize to whoever can find it.
Update 2: Eagle-eyed forum troll Cronium has discovered the missing something. Movement (a skulk?) under the bursting pipe! Congratulations! Your prize is being publicly mocked in this article. Thanks to Taz for drawing a circle on one of the screenshots I took: (check below under the skulk screenshots for a higher res capture)
- With a hair tingly moan akin to the start of Burial’s Untrue, the teaser opens with a silhouette of a marine claiming some dirt for his team. Nice work! Presumably the dubstep started soon after. But wait! Are we looking at an NS2 marine? Flag replacing knife: confirmed.
- The scene opens with a shot of the classic NS hallway, now sporting dynamic lighting (who puts lights in air vents?) and particle effects! Look at that fan twirl!
- Egads! A crate?!?!? What could it possibly contain? A sniper rifle? Light machine gun? A blurry mess of pixels? You be the judge:
- Ah, a door. Sounds like fun on the other side (beefy gun firing sound effects!) The door wisely reminds you what key the ready room is bound to and then hits you in the face.
- You come to and find yourself looking in to the hive room. Oh, and there’s a huge god damn Onos as well. The hive is partially visible over the shoulder of the Onos, complete with a warm glow
))))))). It’s good to be the alien commander. - While flexing our pectoralis muscles, we noticed some movement over the Onos’ other shoulder. We passed it down to that goth chick who is good at computers. She typed on her keyboard and did what she could with the grainy images, all while listening to Placebo. It appears to be a skulk! It also appears to have a tail? Or some spines or something? I don’t care if you say those are compression artifacts, we’re running it as NEWS!
- And then we come to the money shot. It appears the NS Onos has mated with a member of species Gorilla gorilla in the intervening years, harbouring this lovely terrifying new Onos. Notice the chest plating! Hinting at directional damage, mayhaps? Confirmed.
Rebel Blob from the Something Awful forums has made these two awesome animated gifs that clearly show an updated look for the skulk:
So there you have it. A bunch of words I typed up to make it look like this website actually has content.
