The biggest news of the last week is obviously the revelation of everyone’s favourite xenotope, the skulk! Don’t feed it, it’ll just follow you around. Make sure to watch the trailer below and check out the accompanying dev blog post.

Also of note are some preliminary ideas on how turrets will work in NS2. Some of the big changes include increased damage, a cone of fire à la TF2, and the removal of turret factories.

I’ve also reorganized the megalist to hopefully make it a bit easier to read. Check out the additions since the last update below or feast your eyes upon the glory of the full list here.

• Skulk
  • Updated look!
    
  • Abilites:
    • Wall-running Skulks can drive their sharp leg spikes into crevices to walk on walls or ceilings as if they were the ground. It doesn’t cost energy nor does it slow you down, so it can be used to dodge gunfire, confuse enemies or hide. You can get a glimpse of wall-running in action with the Skulk running up the wall behind the Onos at 0:41 in our teaser video. [viewable in gif form here - thanks Rebel Blob from the SomethingAwful forums]
    • Bite With his powerful multi-hinged jaws, he can deliver a lot of damage very quickly. As in NS1, the Skulk player’s view is from inside his mouth (is this really that controversial or weird?). We’re still not sure what his alt-fire for Bite is going to be. We’ve talked a lot about a grapple type of attack where he could clench down on a marine and do damage to him over time, but that seemed too annoying from the marine’s perspective (and how would he shoot the skulk off of him?). Please give us some suggestions.
    • Leap The Skulk can leap short distances quickly, landing in a pounce and doing damage to its target. In NS1, leap appeared later in the game – now he always has it. Coupled with wall-running, leap allows good players to traverse the map without ever touching the ground.
  • Parasite has been removed, although the dev team are toying with a replacement ability to fulfill the function of ‘provoking’ marines in to attacking.
• Alien Commander
  • Replaces the scout as the primary scouter for the alien team.
• Turrets
• The tentative current plan for turrets [thanks sexyresults for the tip off in our forums!]:
  • beefier, more powerful then NS
  • cone of fire, so it matters where and how they are placed. They can be rotated by the commander when placing
  • probably won’t be able to be knocked down, as that causes all sorts of headaches
  • possibly can run out of ammo so the commander needs to keep an eye on ammo count and reload them
  • no turret factories, currently
  • will be linked to the power grid
  • I haven’t talked to Charlie about upgrades for the turrets, so I don’t know if any are planned or not
  • no talk at the moment about alt fire, though it’s an interesting idea