But then came the knife in the neck, and then came the trailer with voiceover that sounded like a terrorist manifesto. Even as I watched the attack unfold in the Shadow Fall stage demo, I hoped that the uncloaked Helghast walking towards the player would reach out his hand and help the player up, revealing that you are playing as a Helghast this time around. Given that Killzone 3 began as a preemptive ISA strike against the Helghan homeworld, I shared your hope that the next Killzone game would take a more sympathetic view of the Helghast as an oppressed people.
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"Here's hoping this powderkeg setting injects new life into the series by fueling new narrative entanglements." At the very least, I hope Guerrilla makes it about more than just military squad chatter among grunting meatheads.
The story has occasionally referred to the Helghast's plight in the face of ISA aggression, but it has never quite "gone there." If Killzone: Shadow Fall finally acknowledges the ISA's moral shortcomings and the social tensions that drove the Helghast to the breaking point, the series' narrative might finally soar. Furthermore, their second home has been ravaged and their people almost annihilated. The Helghast are hardly blameless, yet their Vektan forebears were all but forced to flee the planet to avoid persecution by the occupying ISA. After all, they wear creepy gas masks and have menacing red eyes their visual symbols bear a passing resemblance to the Third Reich's and their grandiose leaders chew up scenery in an effort to seem as unhinged as possible. The trailer's narrator is a Helghast-and he poignantly refers to his race's victimhood, in spite of Killzone's continuing portrayal of the Helghast as the bad guys. Shadow Fall's announcement trailer came later, and it calls to mind the series' greatest weakness: story. If a next-gen platform means delivering grander, lived-in vistas in a modern shooter, then bring on the PS4. Civilians! They're almost unheard of in this series, yet here we see them, milling about in a city that looks teeming with life. That change of locale is a good start for differentiating this sequel from Killzones 2 and 3, which took place on the unfriendly red soil of Helghan. Killzone: Shadow Fall's location is abundantly clear in the first few seconds of the demonstration we saw at the PlayStation 4 announcement meeting. So it seems the fight is coming back to Vekta. By clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's