We don't go to Ravenholm, so what the hell are we doing here?
Industria is a creepy, surreal FPS set in Cold War-era East Berlin that gave us "serious Half-Life vibes" when it was announced in 2020. At the Future Games Show yesterday, developer Bleakmill unveiled the sequel, Industria 2, and you know what? Yup, serious Half-Life vibes.
It's far from a direct lift of Valve's most famous shooter: There's a more overt horror aspect to Industria 2, at least in this trailer, although that's not too far removed from Half-Life 2's famous Ravenholm level. And rather than packing high-end Combine military hardware, the weapons here look more like something you'd be stuck dealing with in, say, Stalker.
But the look and the feel is definitely here, in the familiar structures burdened with alien technology and the body-horror enemies shuffling around in an oblivious but threatening state. The enemy in this one isn't an alien invader, though, but an out-of-control AI called Atlas. But just like the Combine, the complete inhumanity of a distant enemy—and the twisted humanity of its front-line soldiers—make for a genuinely skin-crawling vibe.
The game itself takes place years after the original Industria, and sees a woman named Nora attempting to escape the parallel dimension in which she's trapped. But just before she completes the years-long effort to return to East Berlin, she's pulled back into the heart of Atlas, where she'll be forced to face the responsibility she bears for its creation.
Industria 2 is "a narrative FPS to its core," says the Steam page, with "immersive, slow-paced gameplay" in which "you'll meet memorable characters and progress through a touching journey." Players will have access to five upgradeable weapons in a campaign that promises to be 4-6 hours long—short, but similar to the length of the original, and a reflection of Bleakmill's small team.
Bleakmill actually addressed the relative brevity of Industria just before it launched in 2021. "I often get messages about pre-ordering, 12 hour campaigns, multiplayer and comparisons to AAA games," co-founder David Jungnickel tweeted at the time. "We can't deliver that." In a separate tweet he described Industria as not AAA or AA, "but as indie as it gets."
Industria 2 looks set to follow in that same path, and that's fine by me: I'll take a game that kicks my ass and sets me free in four hours over one that starts to drag after 12 any day of the week. It's currently set to come out sometime in 2025.
