The Walking Dead Saints and Sinners Chapter 2: Retribution Preview: Brutal And Vertical Combat Comes Back In A Major Way

A few weeks ago, I was invited to a hands-off preview event for The Walking Dead Saint and Sinners Chapter 2: Retribution. A mouthful of a title for sure, but considering, personally, Saints and Sinners Chapter 1 is one of the first none seated, fully immersive VR games I recommend to anyone. It manages to nail the vibe of a zombie-based post-apocalypse setting, mixed with the visuals of the Walking Dead graphic novels/ the Telltale Walking Dead games. It’s this fantastic immersive experience with super brutal melee combat, so when I was given the invitation, I jumped at the chance.

What we got to see started with the Tourist (our player character) exploring this hub/ store area and receiving a quest to track down a priest. What followed was an introduction to one of the biggest changes to Saints and Sinners, the ” Night Mode.” Considering when night hit in the first game, it was basically a forced return to your bus. But here, it’s being touted as a harder time to go out, explore, and complete missions. With better loot, the payoff could be worth it. 

Along with the addition of night exploring comes a few other additions like flares and a UV functionality to our chest light that can lead us to stores of goods left by other survivors. Asking a few of the developers, they mentioned that the night time can be used to complete story missions as well but for those who are less inclined to play during the evening you can just keep playing during the day. 

The main crux of what we saw was the Tourist finding the Priest and helping him retrieve a lost item. It’s here where we got to see this new approach to mission design, the verticality of the maps is much greater this time around and one really badass new melee weapon, which I can’t wait to get my hands on. The chainsaw.

We come across this bar where the priest says this artifact is, and it is zombie-infested. The brutal melee combat of the original is still intact and once we come across an electronically locked door, find a break and flip a switch all this music starts blaring out of speakers around the building. We get to see Saint and Sinners‘ fast brutal combat in droves here until we are introduced to the chainsaw. Using it to mow down zombies left and right it looks to be an amazing addition to the series. We were told that you’ll be able to feel the chainsaw in our hands thanks to the haptics available in the controllers as well and feel it sliding through zombies as we slice our way through the hoard. 

Something else that was noted was the new way missions were handled. There seems to be a lot more freedom here because once these speakers are on zombies start literally coming through the roof. The Tourist can either shoot down all the speakers, and it was here that they made the push for 3D spacial audio. Because of headsets now we will be able to move around and pinpoint the exact location of not only the speakers but zombies as well. While you could just go the other way and try and turn the speakers off, they did not show us this but I think that’s more because action shows better in a hands-off preview than walling around trying to find the off switch.

After dealing with the noise, we find what the priest was looking for and go to leave, only to run into something new. A giant hulking man out for revenge named Garrik. While we know little about him, he seems to be the driving force behind the game. When asked about Garrik the developers told us we would have to wait and find out what his role is. I asked for an update on a release date and they are still aiming for 2022.

From what we were shown from Saints and Sinners Chapter 2, it looks like they really look to expand upon the ideas of Chapter 1. And I am looking forward to diving back into the Tourists world and taking part in the world’s brutal tactile combat. It looks so good! And I can’t wait to see what Skydance Interactive has in store for us when The Walking Dead Saints and Sinners Chapter 2: Retribution comes to VR headsets later this year.

For more Interviews, reviews and previews stay locked into DreadXP. Go check out Dread Delusion while you are at it!