Phoenix Point's Blood And Titanium DLC asks if you'd swap heads with a robot
Wir sind die roboter
Sometimes, when I'm bored, I panic over the fact we're all basically meat tubes waiting to expire. Whether through harm or decay, our organic bodies will all fail eventually. Phoenix Point's new villains must've gotten the fear over all that because, gosh dang it, they've replaced their bodies with iron parts and are violently insisting everyone join them in a new cyborg future. Launching earlier this week, Phoenix Point's Blood And Titanium DLC asks you to take on these tech zealots by giving them a taste of their own steely medicine.
Blood And Titanium pits you against The Pure, a New Jericho sub-faction that would truly love it if everyone stopped complaining about having their fleshy meat-bodies replaced with steel and circuitry.
To fight robots, you d better become a robot. An in-depth video demonstration from the devs shows off the new Augmentations menu (replacing previous Mutations), offering two flavours of body-modding - classic flesh Mutations or new metal Bionics.
Instead of mutagens, Bionics require tech and materials to craft. They also don't heal like mutations, instead requiring you to spend more resources to make repairs to your damaged cyber-arms. Soldiers can have a maximum of two augmentations and can mix-and-match mutations with bionics to create a hybrid killing machine that's part man, part monster, part machine.
Each piece of scrap you jam into your squad's bodies comes with the Bionic Augmentation trait, making them immune to Bleed and extra resistant to paralysis, poison and viral damage. Keep in mind, however, that this also means all Bionics are particularly vulnerable to acid attacks. Beyond that, though, and you're looking at wildly different options depending on what you decide to plug into your flesh.
Want to become a master of stealth? Decapitating yourself and popping on an Echo Head will give you night vision, and completely silence any weapon you take to the field. Sick of doors? Replace your flimsy meat-body for a Juggernaut torso, and create a cyborg-shaped hole in any wall you fancy. There are 9 bionics to pick from, split three ways across head, torso and legs.
Don't fancy hitting the field with a kitted-out Kraftwerk squad? This week's DLC is joined by a free Leviathan update, adding a gooey new Forsaken faction and a number of difficulty and damage tweaks. In opposition to The Pure, The Forsaken are all mutant all the way, offering a much slimier foe to take on. You'll need to start a new game if you want to access both Leviathan and Blood And Titanium content in your campaigns, of course.
Blood And Titanium is out now on the Epic Games Store for £4/$5.