NetherRealm Studios has given new information about their upcoming fighter, Injustice 2, including details on the game’s brand new gear system.
In an interview with GameReactor, NetherRealm Studios associate producer Ray McCaffrey gave a few details about Injustice 2, including information on the gear system, environments, and special moves.
“[We’re taking a] totally different approach,” McCaffrey explains. “In Injustice 2 we have the tagline ‘Every battle defines you’ and we really wanted to take that to heart. So, the big feature that we’ve added this game to really evolve the franchise is, we’ve added a gear system. Between each fight, whether you win or lose, you will actually be getting drops of gear. The gear will have different effects on your character.”
It is known that the gear that players can equip will not only change the fighting attributes of the characters, but it will change their appearance as well.
“You can make [your character] look exactly how you want,” states McCaffrey. “You can make your Batman look the way you want your Batman to look. It also effects their stats so, they’ll have increased attack, increased health, things like that.”
The gear system in Injustice 2 is designed to allow gamers to focus on their style of play, and enhance that style based on the gear they acquire.
“I think the best way to describe it actually would be to give you my example,” McCaffrey says. “Batman is my favorite character, I’m a rush-down player, I’m going get in there and do as much damage as I possibly can. The problem with that is that every time I get in there, if I make a mistake, I’m going to take a lot of damage. So with the gear system, what I’ve been doing is stacking on as much defensive gear as I can, so when I rush in and play the way I like to play, if I make a mistake, I won’t take as much damage.”
When it comes to visual customization in relation to gear assembly, the options will be limited. However, McCaffrey reassures players that they will not have to trade good looks for gameplay:
“Right now the plan is to have the stats tied to specific pieces of gear… I think they all look pretty cool, so players will be able to grab the best stuff with the best stats and still look awesome.”
McCaffrey also touches on some of the changes that are being made to the combat system for Injustice 2.
“We’ve added a few new elements to the combat from Injustice 1,” McCaffrey explains. “There is a dash roll you can now perform in combat. Additionally, we also have an aerial escape that you can do while being juggled. Both cost bars of meter, but they’re different effects you can do to sort of augment how you play your character.”
McCaffrey also gave details on how characters will interact with their environments in Injustice 2.
“The environments have two really awesome qualities that we love to put in our games,” he states. “We have the environment interacts, which are different things you can connect with in the background to either say deal damage or escape from an opponent. We also have level-transitions. This is a big game, Battle of the Gods, can’t be contained to one environment. So we have the level transitions where you can knock your opponent from one stage to another.”
Every character will have their own special moves in Injustice 2, but McCaffrey stated that this feature will be expanded by the revised combat and gear system.
“Each character has their own unique move set. One of great things about the gear system is that we’ve been able to give players what they like the most. So if you’re a character that really love to zone, for example, like Batman, you can throw those Bat-a-rangs, you can get extra stats that throw more bat-a-rangs, things like that.”
Injustice 2 will release in 2017. Unfortunately, McCaffrey did not give any details on Injustice 2’s story mode or the final roster size.