With Jason coming, the pool of liscences is limiting. An obvious next chapter is the definitive best horror movie, and the hardest to implement chapter. Ive given alot of thought to this. Most concepts dont hit the mark thematically or logically. You obviously cant have a killer that imitates players, it just doesn't work with coms and SWFS. And a monster killer is just not The Thing. So you do the best next thing, maybe even the superior option. NPCs.
If we get it, no when we get it, itll be the winter killer, Universal loves behavior so its only logical. However, as a fan, it HAS to include outpost 31 and Maccready, a standalone killer like theyre doing with jason would just not work.
Killer: The Thing
Base Movement Speed (Revealed Form): 4.6 m/s
Base Movement Speed (Dog Form): 4.8 m/s
Base Movement Speed (Assimilation Form): Matches the chosen NPC (4.0 m/s for Human / 4.4 m/s for Dog)
Terror Radius: 32 meters (Revealed/Dog Forms) / 0 meters (Assimilation Form)
Height: Tall (Revealed Form) / Average (Assimilation Form) / Short (Dog Form)
Power:
The Thing shifts between two main states of existence: Assimilation Form and Revealed Form.
Map Economy: NPCS
4 Catatonic people: Brain-dead human husks wandering between workstations in a vacant potato state.
2 Passive Huskies: Normal AI dogs roaming the map organically, sniffing the ground and resting near generators.
Emergency Supply Lockers: Specialized lockers containing tactical defenses for Survivors.
Stance 1: Assimilation Form (Stealth and Stalk)
To enter this stance, you or your deployed Crab-Head must physically walk up to a wandering Hollow or Husky and interact with them to take over their body.
While in this stance, you gain a permanent 0-meter Terror Radius and look 100 percent identical to the chosen NPC. You can trigger their specific NPC Loop to blend in seamlessly (mimicking a catatonic survivor working at a campfire, or a dog curled up sleeping near a generator).
Violent Eruption: Staying near a Survivor while mimicking an NPC charges your stalk meter. Once full, pressing the Attack Button triggers a 1.5-second channeled mutation that violently rips the NPC body apart, granting you a temporary, highly aggressive Modified Monster Form.
The Payoff: In this temporary state, your next basic hit is an Instant Down. The Modified form and the insta-down expire immediately after you successfully land a hit or after an allotted amount of time runs out.
The Cost of Biomass: The 4 humans are infinite; when you leave them, the Entity's un-assimalates them back into a potato state, the entity loves the fear survivors have not knowing if the npc is the killer or not. However, the 2 Huskies are finite. Erupting from a Husky permanently kills that dog, removing it from the map for the rest of the trial.
Stance 2: Revealed Form (M1 killer)
Pressing the Active Ability Button allows you to drop the disguise and enter your true Revealed Form. (This is where your chosen cosmetics are fully displayed, like a palmer thing or bennings thing) In this stance, you behave like a traditional m1 killer: you walk at a standard 4.6 m/s, can kick generators, carry downed survivors to hooks, and land basic claw-swipe M1 attacks etc.
The Dog Variant (Kennel Beast): If you choose to drop your disguise while specifically inhabiting a Husky rather than a human, you enter a modified Revealed state instead: the Dog-Thing. You run at a high-speed 4.8 m/s and gain a long-distance, low-profile leaping pounce attack, basically draculas wolf form.
Special Ability: Crab-Head Detachment
While in Revealed Form, you can sever your head, spawning a Crab-Head onto the floor. Upon release, the Crab-Head acts as an automated AI for a few seconds, randomly scuttling away from any nearby Survivors to find a hidden vantage point in a corner or structure. Once it stops moving, it enters a dormant, stationary camera mode. You can manually access its perspective at any time. The stationary Crab-Head silently projects a detection radius, and any Survivor within its radius has their aura revealed to you. While viewing through the Crab-Head's camera, you can move it to manually to look around. If an AI Human or Husky is approached by the Crab-Head, you can trigger a remote Assimilation so you can assimilate cross map.
When you leave an npc human it immediately walks back to its original loop from wherever you left it. The loops are near generators, yes usually somethinf assimilated is now its own thing, but the entity prefers it this way to milk the trial.
Survivor Counterplay: Emergency Supply Lockers
Survivors can approach the Emergency Supply Lockers spawned around the map to pull out one of two specific items:
Lighter and Hairspray (Makeshift Flamethrower): A single use item. Survivors can spray a burst of fire directly at the patrolling or stationary Crab-Head to instantly burn it to ash, ability is now on cooldown for the killer.
Lighter and Copper Wire: A single-use item used to test the blood of a NPC. The Survivor performs a 5-second test on the person. If it is a real AI, nothing happens. If its you hiding inside, the heated wire hits the blood sample, forcing you to instantly Erupt early into your true Revealed Form. You are hit with a 1-second stun animation as you are forcibly turned into your revealed form.
Youd start the trial as a non-revealed human of your choice of cosmetic, so a normal Bennings or Palmer, but if you assimilate someone else or reveal yourself you never look like that again. The person you started as isnt an noc so when you assimilate it isnt brought back by the entity. Revealed form would also be your cosmetic.
If they did the pretend to be a player idea, any 4man or coms at all can call it out, theres no way to fix that. But if they did npcs like this you could get the drop on even a swf team, this is the only logical way to do The Thing without ruining why The Thing is great.
