Killing Floor, Now With Women.

[JohnDoe641]

Killing Floor players have been asking for female player models for a very long time and now a third party company Iceberg Interactive, has foot the bill by writing the code, making the player model and doing the voice recording for TWI. All TWI had to do was implement the work and on June 1st we will have female player models in Killing Floor.

The only caveat is that Ash Harding (the new character) will, at least for now, be an exclusive bonus to anyone who buys the gold edition of the game which is only available in boxed form, unfortunately no steam version has been announced and probably won't be. While that might seem like devastating news to many people who don't want to buy the game again or don't want a physical copy of the game, the fact that the code will already be in the game means that future DLC packs with different female characters are more than just a possibility but a probability.

The Gold edition will retail for 29.99 and it is already available for pre-order over at TWI's shop. If you buy the Gold edition and you already own the original, you will be able to gift or trade your extra copies of the game or DLC's through Steam.

Update:
I wasn't going to post this until the info was finalized but here it is, directly from TWI's VP; Wilsonam:

Update on all this for you... we've been discussing this with Iceberg, who have been discussing with the retailers and so on... we definitely underestimated the demand from the existing player base. Another lesson learned.

We can't square all the details away with retailers over a weekend, obviously, but Iceberg are talking to them about "exclusivity" and we'll try and bottom it out on Monday. Iceberg's view, like ours, was that this was aimed at attracting some new players through retail. But now looks like we'll set it up so existing players CAN get Ash in a couple of months - the retailers will take it out big time on Iceberg if they don't get something exclusive out of it. But Iceberg are good guys - they are willing to let us turn this into future DLC.

In the meantime, the Gold Edition IS still good value for anyone buying the full set, or for anyone who can trade/gift away the spare parts. It will also be the only way to get the first female character and voicepack for a couple of months.

Yoshi or I will update as we dot all the "i"s and cross all the "t"s next week. Just that this, directly or otherwise involves Iceberg, us, printers, distributors AND retailers - all of whom have their expectations. Not to mention Steam.

It's not set in stone but things are looking promising for people who already have KF and don't want to re-buy the game just for a single character.

[xMurphyx]

You will, however, kind of look like an ass, gifting away copies without the new character.

Strange thing, this. We've been told, for years, that it's impossible to get another character type (with new voice acting, possibly new animations) into the game, not because it was too expensive to get some student-turned-voice-actress to record the no doubt hilarious lines but because of memory constraints on the minimum requirement PCs.
How could someone "foot the bill" on a technical impossibility? Looks more like they just went ahead and did it anyway and TWI played ball.
I hear they have some system now where it allows two voice sets on low-end computers and more on high end ones. Maybe they reduced the quantity and frequency of lines per voice pack and kept some optional for the high-end users. I don't know.

I don't have a PC on the low end of KF's requirements so it doesn't affect me anyway, but this exclusivity of the character to that "Gold" version (which again, has characters in it that are locked if you missed certain promotional periods. E.g. if you didn't buy The Ball back then you won't be able to play with the The Ball character - even if you bought The Ball in the mean-time) is kind of annoying.

I'm genuinely looking forward to spending 2€ on another character DLC pack with a couple of grumpy, grungy women characters though and I'm looking forward to hearing the, hopefully heavily accented lines of the new voice-set.

(EDIT: Just to avoid confusion: That boxed copy will still register on steam.)

Another Edit:
http://forums.tripwireinteractive.co...2&postcount=95

Update on all this for you... we've been discussing this with Iceberg, who have been discussing with the retailers and so on... we definitely underestimated the demand from the existing player base. Another lesson learned.

We can't square all the details away with retailers over a weekend, obviously, but Iceberg are talking to them about "exclusivity" and we'll try and bottom it out on Monday. Iceberg's view, like ours, was that this was aimed at attracting some new players through retail. But now looks like we'll set it up so existing players CAN get Ash in a couple of months - the retailers will take it out big time on Iceberg if they don't get something exclusive out of it. But Iceberg are good guys - they are willing to let us turn this into future DLC.

In the meantime, the Gold Edition IS still good value for anyone buying the full set, or for anyone who can trade/gift away the spare parts. It will also be the only way to get the first female character and voicepack for a couple of months.

Yoshi or I will update as we dot all the "i"s and cross all the "t"s next week. Just that this, directly or otherwise involves Iceberg, us, printers, distributors AND retailers - all of whom have their expectations. Not to mention Steam.

(highlight by me)

Pretty cool.

[JohnDoe641]

Yeah, I avoided adding that just because the info isn't finalized. I will add an update once everything is 100% worked out.

[KDR_11k]

Iceberg is a publisher for getting games like that out to retail, no wonder they make their extra content retail-exclusive. If you look through their catalog there are quite a few indie games that were initially released only for download.

[akstylish]

The female voice better be so bad it's hilarious, just like the two males.