Dead by Daylight brought the iconic Xenomorph and female protagonist Ellen Ripley from the Alien franchise into its fog-filled Museum of Horror with its 29th DLC Chapter. It's exactly what many Dead by Daylight fans have long hoped for and also presents an enticing opening for fans of the beloved Alien franchise to join the game's long-standing history.
The Alien Chapter also gave studio Behaviour Interactive the opportunity to work with Disney on the exciting Dead By DaylightAlien crossover. Game ZXC recently spoke with Behaviour Interactive Creative Director Dave Richard, Dead by Daylight designer Janick Neveu, and Senior PR and Events Manager Aide Laliberté about what it was like working with Disney to bring the iconic Xenomorph and Ellen Ripley to life in the game Richard and Neveu also talked about the Xenomorph's and Survivor abilities, the new Nostromo Wreckage map, and more. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: What's it been like partnering up with Disney to bring the iconic Xenomorph alien and Ripley into the world of Dead by Daylight?
Richard: Well, it was awesome. It was, let's say, a dream come true for the team. The Xenomorph is for us a classic horror character, a legend, and we wanted to introduce the Alien for the longest time. Finally having these two characters is a real joy.
Neveu: Can I add a bit on the gameplay side?
Richard: Of course.
Neveu: Whenever you work with a client, there’s always a pre-emptive thought about how this is going to be. Like, is it something that we're going to have to fight with ideas? Is this something we're going to be presenting that they don’t like, and then we need to shift and stuff like that? But with Disney, they were super on board with our ideas - it went very well. I'm super happy that they accepted and were really collaborative. They didn't really stop any of the ideas. It was more like a real true collaboration, and they were just reinforcing our ideas, so it went very well.
Q: So why did you choose to bring the Xenomorph into Dead by Daylight, and how do you think its addition as a killer affects the gameplay experience?
Richard: Well, I'll let Janick fill in the gameplay reasoning behind the addition of the Xenomorph.When we look at the pantheon of legendary characters within horror, we definitely imagine the Xenomorph being part of that. And since you know Dead by Daylight is the Museum of Horror—it's the home of all of these different characters and licenses that come together—it was evident to us that the Xenomorph had its place.
Neveu: Yeah, many of us on the team are big fans of the license. Many of us have seen the movie countless times, read the book, comics, and have a huge collection. But at that same time, there was a lot of pressure, a lot of nervousness about how we were going to give justice to the license.
We definitely had a bit of exploration about what this thing is going to be in our game because whenever we introduce a new killer, there's always the importance of what sort of game mechanic and new element that it is going to bring to Dead by Daylight. It's something that is very important.
We definitely don't want to just copy and paste existing stuff or recycle it. So we looked at like what is this creature? What can it bring to Dead by Daylight and what sort of expectations do our players have? So the whole tunnel thing, the turret, the tail attack, it's something that we definitely wanted to flesh out as much as possible and make it so unique that whenever you get this chapter like feel it's a totally new toy.
Q: Yeah, absolutely. Could you talk more about the process of adapting the Xenomorph to become a Dead by Daylight killer?
Richard: Yeah, I'll start quickly by explaining the whole process as a big stroke of how we work on licensed material, but also on original material. So, once we know that we will tackle these characters and this universe, we go into a pre-production phase. We make sure that we identify the fantasy, and what makes the character unique. Obviously, we go into a prototype phase with the designers and our engineers to make sure that we can create our idea, that it's going to work, and that it's going to be fun.
Once that's settled, we can finally move on to production and create the content, the animation, and everything else. As Janick mentioned, we worked in close collaboration with Disney to make sure that it's on point, recognizable, and very fun for the fans. The whole process is dependent on the different chapters. It can be between six to nine months to create the full chapter. Janick, I don’t know if you want to add to this?
Neveu: Sure. Whenever we take a license in Dead by Daylight, we definitely want to make sure that players feel that they're connected to the license. It's important that players can relate to what they know about the license. And whenever they play, they can feel like “Oh, this is what I've seen or know about what I like so much.” It's so fun to be playing the thing that you love. Whenever we take a license, we look at what is this character. How is it in its own world? There was a bit of difficulty at first because most of the killers use tools, right? Most of them are normal killers with a chainsaw, a hatchet, an axe, or whatever, and we have to develop around this power.
In the case of the Xenomorph, it’s probably the most lethal weapon you can have. It was an interesting exploration of how we can make this creature be as strong and feel as true to its own world in Dead by Daylight. That's where we came up with the idea of the turret where, I think, we needed to have something that balanced out the power because, by default, it needs to be super strong.
But the way things are in Dead by Daylight, things need to be balanced on both sides. So, we needed to give something to the survivor to fight back. It makes sense because in the whole series of movies, the characters always come up with tools or they use weaponry. They always have something to help them out to fight the creatures, so definitely things became really connected to the license on their own.
Q: Could you explain more about the alien’s abilities and perks?
Neveu: So, the Xenomorph has several abilities. The main thing is the Crawler Mode. In Crawler Mode, you have the ability to use your tail, which is extremely deadly for survivors because it can reach further than normal attacks. It can reach over obstacles; it can cut the path to survivors unexpectedly. It's definitely a skill that it's easy to use, but hard to master – a trick shot attack. And I think that the players will have fun learning and getting better at using it.
At the same time on the survivor side, how they manage to get out of this tricky situation is to use the turret, which we talked about a bit. You have the tail attack and the big thing we added is the tunnel system where you get under the actual level of where the survivors walk around, and you can traverse large distances quickly. You can also detect their presence while you're inside, and then come out on the map and surprise them, following that with a tail attack. It all goes end to end.
Q: How would you compare the Xenomorph to Dead by Daylight’s previous killers? I think it's listed as a moderate killer, and you mentioned its ability to jump scare through the tunnel systems. How would you compare it to the previous killers in that sense from what we’ve seen so far?
Neveu: Whenever we choose the killers, the design team's objective is always to go for easy-to-play, hard-to-master. I think it's very important for new players to get in the game, get a new chapter, and those who’ve never played Dead by Daylight can manage to enjoy, play around, and not be stopped by a very steep learning curve.
That said, we also have players who have thousands upon thousands of hours. We know that this player will play for a very long time, so you also need to have some learning curve in the process of mastering a killer, because if you get it right after 10 hours and you become like the deadliest player out there, it doesn't really work with what we do. So this killer definitely has a lot of interesting basic stuff for new players, and also a lot of interesting and in-depth concepts that the players with higher skill will have fun discovering.
Richard: I think it'd be hard. I think it's to be expected. Usually, when we have more of a stealthy approach killer with a lot of components, it will usually potentially end up there. It takes a better knowledge of what the game is, and to quickly go back to what you were talking about jump scares as part of your question, I think this is where the Xenomorph hunting fantasy comes into play. It's very interesting. It's not all the killers that have this opportunity to create this very scary moment, so a stealthy killer was definitely a good fit for the Xenomorph.
Neveu: I think it’s not considered, in a lot of the killers that we have, a complete stealth killer.
Richard: As stealthily as other killers.
Neveu: Yeah, exactly. We have killers who use stealth as part of their base mechanic. The way that stealth works on this killer is more of a passive effect where we now have a killer that you can have less chance to see coming toward you because he can hide behind obstacles. Also, when you're in your special mode, you have a shorter terror radius, which gives you a bit more pre-emptive time to approach the survivor without them knowing. And obviously the traversal of the tunnels.
Q: Great, thank you for that. So moving on to the survivors and Ellen Ripley. Could you talk more about how this survivor and Ellen Ripley's capabilities against the Alien works? So, the remote flame turrets, that kind of thing?
Richard: Right, just before Janick explains the whole lot about the survivor gameplay of this chapter, I want to note that it's not just with Ripley. Every survivor that will face the Xenomorph will have access to this gameplay.
Awesome, yeah.
Neveu: For the turret, I think we also introduced a few neat new toys in the perk. I think we have the kind of frozen bomb on the pallet thing for time for both sides, I guess. But the new turret element is really the new shiny toy for Survivors. It's something that we have already in the concept of our game where we have special items that are connected to the killer, that you only can access when you face a killer.
But this time around, we really push the boundary with the gameplay with this item. Most of the time, it of similar to the previous item where you use it on yourself or you use it for some ways, and that was it. But this time around, it's an actual object that you carry around, you can position it on the ground, and you have an edge where this object is active.
Something we never did in Dead by Daylight before was allow a survivor to place something on the map. It's quite unique. The turret gives you a pre-emptive warning about the location of the Xenomorph, similar to the radar. It’s something the team really thought about integrating, but we weren't sure how it would work. We decided to integrate both into the same object, so you have the sonar element and the motion tracker. The turret element with the fire is a bit on the military side. It's kind of a mix of what we see in the first movie and also in the second with the Marines, so we kind of created this new object the survivors can use to limit how perceptive the killer is on their side.
The turret was never intended to stop or be a hard stop for the killer. It needed to be seen as a bit more of an annoyance and something that you can strategically approach on the killer's side. So that's why there's also a lot of limitation on Survivors when they carry it around. They're slower, they’re probably able to get hit by the killer because they have the turret, and the killer is coming towards them. There's definitely a risk to use them, but there's a great advantage to having them positioned the right way.
Richard: There's something important to grasp about the turret, even though it looks extremely lethal, it's a weapon, right? It doesn't change the rules of Dead by Daylight in which you can't harm the killer. This flamethrower looks lethal, but against the Xenomorph, it’s nothing. Like Janick said, it's more of an annoyance, something that’s just annoying. You're not fighting back, you're not harming the Xenomorph in any way. It’s still the same rules that we see in Dead by Daylight.
I think it's worth talking about the other new gameplay component that we've added to the Survivor with this chapter. It's more of an environmental feature, the steam pipes.
Neveu: In the ship, yeah. It's something that we explored early on when we knew the sort level and maps we were going to be presenting to the player about the Nostromo and everything. We thought about, what if we could introduce a new game mechanic in this environment? We looked at the system that we already have in place for Survivors, like the pallet system, and we thought, could we take this idea and morph it into something different? That's how the steam pipe came to be. It's like a trigger effect and something the survivor can use to think strategically about how and when to pass into it, and the killer can actually use it against a survivor if he passes inside and then the survivor cannot reach or follow.
It's something that we definitely looked a lot into, and it is very unique for the map. There's a bit of a mystery about how it works at first. There's a bit of exploration, and we hope that players like to explore and discover how the steam pipe system works.
Q: Yeah, thank you, I was going to ask if you might elaborate on how the steam pipe system works?
Neveu: If you want to be more precise about the mechanic, it's a zone that whenever a survivor or a character gets into it or leaves it, it's going to activate a steam effect. Whenever someone passes into this steam effect, they’re going to get slowed down for a short amount of time, and once it's been activated, survivors can go to a trigger or lever and reset the steam pipe. They are all connected to the same system, so you can reset them all by accessing one of the two levers, but you can also do it with multiple survivors at the same time to speed up the reset process.
Again, it's not something that is threatening or will damage the player, but it's just a bit of a slowdown that will probably be super helpful for Survivors in some scenarios. On the killer side, it can help in certain loops where if you want to get a survivor out of the loop location, you can activate the steam, and then they have the choice to go to the steam and be slowed—probably not a good idea—or leave to another loop. Then, you might have a chance to hit with your tail attack. That's the concept.
Laliberté: So gameplay-wise, this chapter I think packs in a lot. The steam pipes are exclusive when you play the Nostromo wreckage, and then, we also have elements that are exclusive when you're facing the Xenomorph. Whenever you're facing the Xenomorph on any map, you will have control stations, which kind of opens up the tunnel system that Janick can talk about.
Neveu: Yeah, the tunnel system is something different which is connected to the killer. We have a system already in place in the game, where whenever you face a certain killer, you have objects that spawn on the map. And this time, whenever you play as the Xenomorph, you're going to make these elements spawn on the map, and they'll be called Control Stations. They're used by both survivor and killer, and whenever a survivor goes to those Control Stations, that's where they pick up the turret object.
On the killer side, you can also use this location to get access to the tunnel system that we talked about. He can navigate underneath the level super fast and go to another control station to come out. That's where there's a bit of danger on the survivor side; if they want to pick up the turret, there might be a chance that the killer comes out in their face at that same time. There's a bit of danger at the same time here, and it's a good friction point for the game.
Q: Awesome, great,thank you. So with the Nostromo map, what Easter eggs or other surprises might players find in the new map? I've heard of a few.
Richard: Yeah, there are tons. This map is super rich with references, some Easter eggs, and special things you can do. But it's a surprise.
Q: So, do you have any plans to bring any other characters or monsters from the Alien or Predator franchise into the game? I understand you might not be able to answer that.
Richard: You are correct. We cannot answer that.
That’s not a problem.
Neveu: Oh, there's a cat now?
Richard: There is a cat, no absolutely. Jonesy from the movies is in there. It's pretty great. Thank you for mentioning it; it’s something that the team loves to integrate because in the long life of Dead by Daylight, we finally do something quite cute.
Q: So the introduction of Alien takes the Dead by Daylight DLC chapters to 29. Have you any special plans or celebrations planned to mark the 30th DLC?
Richard: Is it already 29th? Officially?
Laliberté: You've been here a long time, Dave, you've been working on this a long time.
Richard: We count them differently internally, I think. I think we're a bit further than that internally. But again, it's future stuff, so we can’t talk about it.
Q: That's no problem. Is there anything else that you'd like to add today?
Laliberté: This chapter has been a really wonderful, collaborative work as well within the teams. You have, like, the intra-team and then with Disney as well. It's been a really wonderful collaboration across all fronts on our side. We're very, very thrilled and excited that in an hour and a half [at time of interview], people will be able to finally purchase the chapter and experience it. A big shout-out to the guys who were very hands-on in the game, a very big shout out to Disney for being such wonderful collaborators on this.
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Dead by Daylight is currently available for Switch, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.