Textual Stream: 5/8/15 – ARIA Concept, Mechanics and More!

Today Adam Isgreen posted the final character reveal for Killer Instinct Season 2! The reveal includes ARIA concept and gameplay style as well as much more. You can check it out directly on the ultra-combo forums or below!

Hello everyone,

Today’s stream is focused predominantly on ARIA, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to touch on some other topics in the community. Let’s get those out of the way first –

$100k Community Event Fund / Shadow Jago goal hit in

Wow. Just… WOW. We’ve been completely blown away by the community support for KI tournaments and the demand for Shadow Jago and his boss moveset being realized.

For tournaments, we’ve already said that EVO is going to have a $50k prize pool, and that’s a done deal. As for other events, we’re going to be supporting both offline and online tournaments with the remainder of the funds! A full list of supported events will be coming shortly!

For Shadow Jago, he’ll get his full moveset later this year, after S2 is officially at an end. Once we get closer to reviewing his design and moves, we’ll update you on how we see his moveset evolving to in order to realize all his cool stuff and perhaps give him a bit more distance from Jago as-is.

Visual changes on Thunder’s stage and others

As some have noticed, we’ve fixed a shader / texture problem that happened on Thunder’s stage, resulting in some less-than-ideal textures. Thanks to the community for really highlighting these and making them easy to track down. This is one of two visual issues we’re aware of that have resulted in visual differences from the S1 version of KI to now. The other issue is the result of an SDK update, and that’s not as simple of an issue to address as the shader one. For now, know that it’s on our radar, and we’re figuring out the best way to tackle it (it involves touching all the stages) in a future update.

Balance changes in 2.7

We’re very happy with the current balance across the entire character roster. Aside from a few bug fixes for Cinder, there’s only a few changes coming with 2.7 and ARIA. Here’s a sample of them:

• Kan-Ra’s swarm ender now has a lifespan of 3/4/5/6 seconds, tied to the ender level.
• As the season has progressed, the design team was seeing more and more that Recapture moves should be a pretty obvious break attempt point in a combo. Most characters can only recapture with one strength or in one way, but TJ and Kan-Ra are exceptions. TJ’s Tremor lines make his recaptures a more obvious break point, giving it a bit more risk to keep it in line with the rest of the recapture moves. Kan-Ra’s Whirl is the other. Kan-Ra’s whirl recapture will be less ambiguous on what strength was used in the next update, much like TJ’s tremor lines.
• Cinder is generally all bug fixes and input cleanup, with a few corrections on some exploits, and more tuning / feedback on Burnout to make it more obvious to both players.

Game balance is looking very solid and stable at this time, so get practicing for EVO!

ARIA

The final character of S2, the enigmatic CEO of Utlratech, ARIA finally makes her appearance!

Story snippet:

ARIA began life as a simulation of… life. Utilizing radically new processing technologies and other technological insight gleaned from a government incident in 1947, the Ultrafine Atomic Technologies Company (founded in 1948) performed research into the simulation of life and human frailty within a computational matrix. The core program ARIA was born of the desire to uplift the human race; to end disease, famine, poverty and push humanity out of what was seen as the primordial muck and mire it wallowed in. This work took on greater and greater meaning for its founder, industrialist Ryat Adams, as his wife was dying of a degenerative disease and he desperately sought a cure for her condition.

Over time, Ryat and the UATC continued to refine and enhance its ARIA humanity simulation program, assigning it more and more complex simulations of the human condition as its capabilities continued to grow and more tech from the government source was understood and exploited. Years passed, and when Ryat finally died, his will included instructions to continually allow ARIA to run her programming as she searched for the solutions to human frailties.

…what happened from here? Story mode for the S2 cast arrives in June!

Here’s her original concept which, like all our designs, has evolved a bit since it was created:

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Hmm… she seems different than the silhouette in the tease… where’s the wings? And those other things… what are those?

When fighting ARIA you are not fighting one character – you’re fighting three.

Being an AI, ARIA isn’t corporeal, but she can take form in order to interact with the world around her. She does that through some of Ultratech’s most powerful tech, assembling herself from nanite cores. The three combat drones you see above have nanite cores (see the embedded hex lens in each?), meaning ARIA uploads her personality into a drone, and the drone physically assembles a body for ARIA from its core.

All three drones don’t assemble ARIA in exactly the same way. While she retains a similar (and excellent) normal attack set and two kick-based special attacks across all of them, her punch specials and many unique properties are directly tied into the drone she’s currently been assembled from.

Here’s a taste of the powers she gains when assembled from the different drones:

• Booster Drone builds a body capable of incredible air maneuverability and has an air / ground rush attack move. You can see Booster Body in the teaser, as this Drone looks like wings and uses prototype sonic technology to help ARIA hover.
• Blade Drone builds a body with a sword arm that uses prototype sonic vibration tech. It is capable of rushing slashes, an invulnerable uppercut, a grounded overhead, chip damage normals, and increased poke range.
• Bass Drone builds a body with a prototype sonic cannon in the chest and can deliver high, low, and anti-air multi-hit projectiles that travel at sonic speeds.

The other two “free” drones float directly behind the one ARIA is uploaded into, one drone in a high position, one low.

ARIA can upload herself into a different drone with 3P (high position switch) and 3K (low position switch) when in idle on the ground or via special Upload Enders (her combo trait). She can even Upload to a different drone before the fight starts or between downs if you want.

The free drones can also be called in for assists – B+HP for the high position drone, B+HK for the low position drone – each with a unique behavior based on what that Drone’s Body-form can do. They can be called in almost simultaneously, too, allowing you to have two assists at the same time, but be careful to cover them as they can be hit and take permanent damage just like the Body form can!

• Booster Drone assist does a long range rushing attack to knock opponents away. You can punish Booster anytime, if you can catch it!
• Blade Drone assist delivers a strike-invulnerable rising slash at close range, with a long, punishable recovery.
• Bass Drone assist fires the sonic cannon. Bass is easy to punish on startup or recovery, but because he fires a projectile, ARIA is less likely to call Bass from up close.

But wait, it’s not all gravy:

• ARIA’s total health is divided equally amongst the three drones, meaning each drone has less health than a normal player’s health bar (actually about a third shorter than normal on-screen).
• It takes a lot of energy for the Drone’s nanite core to form an ARIA body, and as such, the drone she is assembled from cannot recover any of its potential damage (PD). The only way to heal PD on a drone is to upload to a different drone and let the old one recover.
• As noted above, when a drone is called to assist, it’s vulnerable to attack, and can take permanent damage or even be destroyed by opponent attacks. ARIA players will have to call these wisely and protect them.
• When a drone is destroyed, it’s destroyed for the remainder of that match. This means your combat options diminish as you lose drones!
• To be clear: Beating any other character in the game requires you to “down” them twice, as KI doesn’t really have rounds. To beat ARIA, you must down all three Drones, whether she is currently uploaded into them or not!
• To be even more clear; No, you don’t have a “round 2” after destroying all three drones, and then have to do it again. Destroy them all once and ARIA’s game is over.

That’s plenty to speculate on for her already, so we’ll end it here. Essentially, you have a tag-team of similar-but-different characters, all in one. Let the theorycrafting begin!

PS – She doesn’t have a recapture, and yes, she can be thrown.

Have a great week!