SWJS DAH!2 Wishlist Article

The Destroy All Humans! remake has been officially released for about a week now, give or take. It’s quite surreal, having any form of a new release in the Destroy All Humans! franchise after twelve years of soul-crushing silence. But, here we are! And it’s selling stupidly well, as a matter of fact, it has hit the top three in the UK charts, beating out bigger names like Mario Kart, The Last of Us Part 2 and GTA V!

    Although it was a quiet week in terms of major new games, there were a number of smaller titles that made their way into the charts. The biggest achiever is Destroy All Humans at No.3. The franchise hasn’t been seen since 2008 and presumed dead after the collapse of publisher THQ in 2012. However, the series has been resurrected by THQ Nordic (previously Nordic Games, who bought the rights in 2013), with the creation of this remake. The last Destroy All Humans — Path of the Furon — launched on Xbox 360 and PS3. That game debuted at No.33, and this remake has sold 50% more units at launch than that title. Again, with digital, it’s likely this new title performed even better. - gamesindustry.biz

It’s incredible to see, especially since the last release twelve years ago averaged a 4/10. Personally, I never would have expected this, I was under such an impression that DAH was an extremely niche franchise. But damned if I’m not glad to be wrong about that.
Destroy All Humans! 2: Make War, Not Love
Destroy All Humans! 2: Make War, Not Love
Image: Google Images

So is it possible we’ll see a remake of the 2006 sequel then? Well, THQ Nordic would have to be as bad a business as their bankrupt predecessor to not capitalize on such success, which is why I want to take this opportunity to discuss everything I would like to see in a remake of Destroy All Humans! 2.

Honestly, I’m at a loss for where to even begin, so in no particular order, I’ll list off things I want to see either updated, redone, or brought back from the original’s remake. Admittedly, there isn’t a lot that could be improved upon with 2 aside from modernizing the gameplay, but there are still a few things I think could use some discussion on the matter.
A More Fleshed-Out Story & Opening Cutscene

Something I loved about the DAH remake was the fact that BFG retroactively added Gastro onto the mothership in the archives. Gastro was always a very underdeveloped character as he only ever showed up in DAH!2 as a weapon launcher and then was promptly forgotten about in other entries, with Locomotive and Sandblast dismissing him as ‘just a gun,’ despite the fact that ‘gun’ had a personality and backstory expanded upon in a few side quests.

With the remake, Gastro has comments on every entry in the Furon Handbook, and his likeness takes up the other half of the screen. But given his significance in 2, I think it would be a great opportunity to expand upon parts of it as well as Gastro as a character.

One way to do that is to feature him more prominently throughout the story instead of just having him turn up halfway through the game as a gun. For example, expanding upon the opening cutscene to make it more impactful. Despite the major role it played in the original, in 2 the Mothership just explodes and Pox with it with little fanfare at all. All we get from Pox at that moment is a startled ‘What the?’

I’d expand upon this scene, perhaps have Gastro cleaning up in the background as Pox experiments, then the ship detects the approaching missile. Gastro alerts Pox to it and they scramble to try and activate the mothership’s defenses only to find out it has none because the last real threat they ever faced was the Martians. So Pox gets the idea to upload his mind into a Holopox unit, which Gastro does the same.

The missile approaches closer and closer as they upload, cutting it close as the missile finally strikes. Cut to Crypto down on Earth attending what’s basically Woodstock when the Mothership’s explosion scatters the festival-goers and the KGB ambush him. Doesn’t that sound much more engaging?

But, stay with me here, instead of Gastro being found as a weapon DataCore in Takoshima, Crypto finds and rescues him alongside Pox in the opening. While Pox directs you along the main quest as normal, Gastro offers an entire new chain of Odd Jobs throughout each map up until Takoshima where he tasks you with helping him recover Furon tech from the KGB and M16 in order to outfit his Holopxunit with guns, thus fleshing out his character and earning him as a weapon!

DAH!2 of course also introduces Natalya, a rogue KGB agent and Crypto’s Bond girl for the game. During the entirety of which Crypto wants to wear her ushanka on his head, if you catch my meaning. Some of the comments can be really funny, especially Natalya’s as she politely rejects him at first but his constant flirting eventually starts to annoy her to the point she threatens to castrate him.

It’s... Kind of obnoxious, honestly, so if we could just redo the entire ‘romance’ part of the story to play out like an actual romance and not a horny teenager begging a hot blonde Russian chick for sex, yeah that’d be great.

It was pretty upsetting for me to learn a 3D explorable Mothership was planned for the 2020 remake but wasn’t implemented due to time restrictions. Obviously with the Mothership being completely done away with as a mechanic in 2, the only hope we’d ever have of seeing that now is as a DLC, which there are no plans to implement currently.

However, what if the assets were used in a brand new side mission in the remake of 2?

Imagine if you will a side quest where it starts off like every other side quest, but as Pox is giving Crypto his orders the KGB attacks them both. Crypto has to escort Pox’s Holopox to a secure location after defeating the agents, but it’s taken damage in the attack.

As a result, Crypto must enter the Holopox unit’s virtual space in order to repair the damage and reboot the system. The Holopox unit’s virtual space manifests as a virtual copy of the Mothership, and throughout it on screens, we can view Pox’s various memories of events from the first game on screens. Upon the final repair, we can view the moments up until the Mothership’s destruction from Pox’s perspective before Crypto is booted from the virtual space back into his own body.
Better, More Permanent Destruction

Current hardware is still pretty limiting, nowhere near as much as the PS2 or Xbox were, after all those explosions would be enough to make Michael Bay cream his $300 designer jeans. But too many particle effects on-screen and Unreal Engine 4 has an aneurysm. In my review for the remake, I stated how I was disappointed buildings didn’t remain on fire permanently, but there were a few more disappointments I neglected to mention.

In the original, you could damage buildings by PK throwing vehicles at them, but this isn’t the case in the remake. It was also disappointing to see that while the Sonic Boom and Quantum Deconstructor blow up buildings really well, they don’t leave any sort of environmental scarring, i.e. cracked pavement or a big ol’ crater. This somewhat cheapens their satisfaction, for a weapon that creates and then literally implodes a huge bubble of space-time, it sure is ‘clean.’ In addition, the death ray will burn most trees, but leave many bushes, shrubs, and rocks untouched.

Home consoles are about to be on par with gaming PCs come this holiday with more processing power, RAM, and storage. This honestly gives me high hopes that a remake of DAH!2 will seriously be able to push the envelope when it comes to destruction, especially given weapons like the Meteor Strike. Buildings catching fire was something I felt was sorely missing in DAH!2, so if there’s a remake I not only hope that it is retained but expanded upon.
Redesign the Missions That Sucked & Keep Optional Objectives

I loved Destroy All Humans! 2, it had some of the most fun and imaginative gameplay of any game from the 2000s. The same can’t be said for its missions. Being a 2000s game meant that the mission structure mostly consisted of point defense, escort missions and fetch quests. One mission saw you escorting a spy in her car all the way across the entirety of London, err, Albion!

A lot of missions are well-remembered by fans, but not for the right reasons. Merely saying ‘those goddamn tents’ will probably cause an immediate fight or flight response in most fans, because defending a handful of tents from cops, the military and even ninjas was not fun. It wasn’t. It was frustrating and annoying, and I can’t ever go camping because I have the uncontrollable desire to pitch those damnable tents right into the fire.

This is one aspect the developers can kindly not apply the ‘faithful remake’ mantra to. These kinds of missions suck, they can be made better, so please do so. And while we’re on the subject of missions, bring back optional objectives!

The optional objectives in DAH! 2020 added so much to the mission variety, as well as adding much-needed length and replayability. DAH!2 not only has main missions but also odd jobs and the Arkvoodle Cult questline that spanned three invasion sites. A lot of those missions weren’t even five minutes long, and one Arkvoodle Cult mission was literally nothing but two or three minutes of talking.

Even if the mission design there wasn’t improved, it would at the very least be nice to actually have something fun to do, not that the dialogue isn’t enjoyable, but c’mon.
More Character Skins for Crypto!

Okay so give a cookie who whoever initially came up with the idea to put skins in the remake. There’s something really satisfying about running around as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and it leads to moments in cutscenes like this. This is also probably the closest you’ll ever get to a Killer Klowns From Outer Space video game, so... Yeah, the skins are pretty awesome.

Scary clown movies not for you? Well, that’s just peachy, because you can also dress Crypto up as Death from Darksiders, or even Elvis! The skins even have great little details, like the jetpack for the Elvis skin being 50s era stage microphones. That said I do wish the skins had gone that extra mile, like the clown skins turning the disintegrator ray into a pie cannon.

For a remake of DAH!2, I’d love to see more skins, way more. As a matter of fact, skins unlocked at the start of each invasion site based on that invasion site in addition to unlockable skins. Just imagine for a moment, if you will, Crypto dressed up as Austin Powers while in Albion. The remake of the first game could have definitely used a Pleasantville or Back to the Future skin. But 2 definitely offers some great possibilities. Also, I really want a Pox skin.

But for the sequel, I’d also love to see some weapon skins! Say the Predator’s disc launcher for the Dislocator. Or perhaps the Killer Klowns popcorn gun for the Ion Detonator! I would even settle for something as simple as changing the weapons’ colors, like being able to make the Disintegrator Ray fur blue bolts or the Zap-O-Matic fire green or red lightning.

On the subject of changing colors, it would be great if we could choose different color variants for Crypto’s suit when not using skins, whether in single player or online co-op.

And finally, I’d really like to see paint jobs and skins for the Saucer as well. perhaps a skin to make it look like the saucers from Mars Attacks, or a skin to make it look like the Klowns’ spaceship from Killer Klowns.
Make DNA Great Again

One of the things I didn’t like about DAH!2 was how the whole DNA collection aspect of the game was essentially thrown out in favor of a currency in the form of collectibles scattered about the map.

For a remake of 2, I’d bring back DNA as the currency for weapon upgrades. However! I’d also keep Furotech Cells and Alien Artifacts. Furotech Cells would be used as an in-game currency for buying skins for Crypto and his weapons, the skins being different values so you really had to be frugal with your cells if you wanted one in particular.

The Alien Artifacts would still be required collecting in order to unlock The Burrow Beast in Takoshima.
Chaos Is Better Together

Something I didn’t really cover in my review of the DAH remake was its lack of multiplayer. BFG decided not to implement any kind of multiplayer because ‘it wasn’t in the original.’ Which I find to be a very weak explanation, given that S.K.A.T.E., transmog, drain, follow, the Repulse-O-Tron and cut mission ‘The Wrong Stuff’ weren’t in the original either. Multiplayer was one aspect the original was sorely lacking, and Pandemic Studios even realized that as split-screen was in 2.

There are a few other more-likely reasons it was omitted, including they didn’t have the time (given modeling a 3D Mothership wasn’t applicable for time restraints) and/or they wanted to save it for a remake of the sequel. (Which would have been a really bad call as multiplayer could have made the game even more critically praised and if the remake did poorly... Well, no chance of multiplayer then!)

But with the remake selling like popcorn at the circus, THQ Nordic is probably going to greenlight a remake of 2. Split-screen needs to be implemented for that classic couch co-op experience of course, but online co-op is just as important, especially with COVID-19 ravaging the planet. Ideally, I’d want to see full free-roam co-op without that annoying tether in the same vein as the Saints Row games.

I also want to see unique cooperative and competitive mini-games. PK Volleyball could be one example, a pretty self-explanatory one. Perhaps a DAH take on Monopoly where the objective isn’t to make money but cause property damage to other players, and the player with the most money left wins.

How about a cat and mouse mini-game where one player is a human and the other is Crypto. Crypto has to hunt down the human player somewhere in the map and probe them to collect their DNA, while the human player must reach a safe house to escape Crypto.

Now, take that same concept and apply it to the Saucer. Just as well, another mini-game could see one player flying the saucer while the other player must use the under-cannons to take out highlighted targets in a time limit. The mini-games in the 2020 remake would make for great multiplayer game types as well!
S.K.A.T.E.

This new ability was awesome. Period. I really want to see it return in a remake of 2. But! I’d also love to see it expanded upon. Like, perhaps an upgrade where we can use it to travel up the sides of tall buildings?
Bodysnatchers from Planet Furon

2 introduced Bodysnatch, which replaced Holobob. Mechanically and visually it was better than Holobob as well. It allowed us to sprint in disguise, but for a remake of 2, I’d love to see the ability to jump in disguise make a return. Just as well, I’d love to be able to drive a car while disguised, the cars in the 2020 remake look so frigging good. I’m a vintage car kind of guy so I’d love to be able to drive these things.

Allow us to use PK while disguised! I want the ability to roleplay as Carrie again. I’d also really like the ability to use the gun of snatched cops, soldiers, and KGB agents, as well as the ability to throw ninja stars when disguised as a ninja. The neon green cartoon blood would likely keep it at a T-rating, or guns could just kill enemies without any form of damage or gore. Anytime enemies got caught in each-others’ friendly fire they’d just ragdoll to the ground.
Mind Over Matter

I did like PK in the 2020 remake once I got used to it and understood how exactly it worked. I do think the tutorials could have explained it better, like how if you wanted to just pick something up without throwing it then just tap the button instead of holding it. But once I figured out how to PK throw humans in all different directions, I found slamming them into walls and each other to be gloriously sadistic stress relief.

That said, it would be nice to be able to slam them into things while holding them. I understand certain objectives require us to be able to PK things and carry them without damaging them, but mission-specific targets could be made impervious to damage while everything else is fair game.

The End of This Article as We Know It

I’m fairly certain I’ve exhausted the reservoir of creativity in my mind when it comes to ideas for what I want to see in a remake of Destroy All Humans! 2. Though I do have the nagging feeling that I’ve forgotten some things, typical. But I’ve been compiling this piece for several days and I think it’s high time I published it. Should any ideas I potentially missed come back to the cobweb-covered attic that is my memory, I’ll be sure to update the piece accordingly.

Keep an eye on the blog, my next piece will be things I’d want to see for an entirely brand new game in the series!

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