14 DAY TRIAL // The team working on the new Killzone: Shadow Fall at Guerrilla Games says that the design of the new Black Hand organization is used to expand the game world and give players a deeper mythology to explore.
Ray Postma, the art director, tells The PlayStation Blog that, “Their costumes are a crossover of design elements from both main factions, combined into a whole new look. The Black Hand are not an official army – they’re not equipped like regular soldiers. They hide and live among civilians until they’re activated, so the basis for their costumes is Vektan civilian street wear.”
The studio is trying to tell a Killzone story that offers more background for the player and for his actions, creating a morally gray universe where both sides know only part of the truth and are not ready to share and collaborate.
Dan Calvert, an assistant art director, adds, “the identity of the Black Hand is defined though chaos. Their goals are to unsettle the Vektan populace with random attacks. Chaos is their manifesto, so it’s something we express through their character design – the mismatched clothing, the haphazard gear and bags, the loosely attached projector straps that flail around as they move.”
Guerrilla Games wants to perform world building by mixing Helghan and Vektan elements on the costumes used by the Black Hand.
Killzone: Shadow Fall takes place 30 years after the events of the most recent home console installment in the franchise.
Helghast refugees and Vektans are forced to share a large city, with only a wall diving them and a limited force of Marshalls policing interactions between them.
The core mechanics of the game are mostly unchanged and a new graphics engine is designed to use all the extra power of the PlayStation 4.
Killzone: Shadow Fall will be out at the same time as the new Sony console.