A Big Butt and A Big Deal—Impressions of the Mortal Shell 2 Reveal Trailer
No grave is animated
You’re buried all alone
So let her work a wonder
And wake your flesh and bone
Powerwolf, “Resurrection By
Erection” (2009)
 |
One “promise” implicitly made
by the currently available Mortal Shell 2 pre-release material is that
this game will remedy the first’s enemy variety problem. Roughly man- sized or
shaped enemies like the ones pictured above are almost certainly easier to
implement, but the first Mortal Shell was unfortunately short on true
monsters. The new trailer in particular shows off a good many enemies of
different sizes and builds (and species?). |
The
2020 “Souls-like” action-adventure-with-light-RPG-elements Mortal
Shell was a video game I enjoyed a lot, despite its noticeable rough
edges—especially “The Virtuous Cycle” DLC expansion roguelite mode. I wrote a pretty big review of the original game and then an even bigger review of its DLC. Those are my credentials, in a sense. Poking around on Twitter and Bluesky
for reactions to the Mortal Shell 2 reveal trailer from yesterday’s
(as of this writing on June 7, 2025) Summer Game Fest, I did see some
incredulous, if not derogatory, comments about this specific game or about non-Dark-Souls
Soulses in general. I’d like to express my personal hype, though not
necessarily in response to those people, by offering some under-informed
thoughts on the trailer and what it suggests about Mortal Shell 2 based
on my experience with the first game and what I would personally want or not
want from a sequel. I’ve watched the trailer a few times now, and will watch it
plenty more over the next few-plus months, and this is one of my most
anticipated upcoming games at this point.
One
question I keep returning to is how Mortal Shell 2 the actual game will
compare with the trailer(s) this time. I revisited some of the old Mortal
Shell 1 trailers for comparison, and I do think the action looks a little
smoother in 2’s first trailer, but there’s obviously an attempt to build
hype by showing only quick snippets of actual gameplay, with a heavy focus on
what seem to be grabs/finishers performed against
and by enemies. These would presumably be tightly-choreographed
passive-once-initiated actions designed for maximum impact, and they likely do
not reflect the true character of the moment-to-moment gameplay. The first game
was rougher in practice, in multiple respects, than its trailers suggested, not
that this sort of obfuscation via montage-ery is a crime (it’s Standard). The roughness
was part of the original game’s… mystique as well. I said the following in the
intro to my first piece about it: “Mortal Shell is a sort of Double-A or
middle-shelf game. I think it caught a lot of people’s attention initially with
its visuals, which aren’t always Triple-A quality when you see it in motion and
up close but are still good enough to allow it [to] stand side by side with big
studio titles with much larger budgets and teams.” It wasn’t as polished as it
looked in what amounted to its sizzle reel(s), but there’s a charm in that, to
the right person (read: me). While its position in the Summer Game Fest line-up
doesn’t mean anything, Mortal Shell 2 being the first trailer shown further
adds to the sense that this one might be “better” in some way. There’s part of
me that hopes it “isn’t,” to keep “the rent” “low” (the fandom niche and thus
more personally fulfilling), but I would obviously like for it to perform well
for the sake of the developers. The hope for a follow-up to a rough-edged,
interesting game is always that it won’t have lost its identity in the process
of (theoretically) “improving,” so without going too long, prematurely,
here are two notable concerns in this vein…
First,
there’s no sign in the trailer, as near as I can tell, of the first game’s core
“hardening” mechanic—your block, which you could trigger almost whenever, even during
most other animations. It didn’t completely trivialize the difficulty since it
was on a cooldown, but queuing up an attack, hardening, and then letting an
opponent take their own swing first, which would repel their strike and then spring
your readied reprisal like a heavy metal mouse trap, was a pretty effective
strategy in most combat scenarios. And though it could be tedious, backing away
to let your cooldown finish before attempting another attack using the same
strategy was a viable way to win fights. I say all this not necessarily as an
explanation for the unaware but as evidence for why I could understand if the
devs removed the mechanic in the sequel. And yet, it was one of the things that
made Mortal Shell unique. In a (sub)genre with a foundational focus on
committing to animations and being punished for mistimed or spammed inputs,
this subversion of the established conventions was a notable one. It also
played along, synergistically, with other mechanical, thematic, and/or
narrative elements, like the whole concept of a “Shell” body that your
hermit-crab-ular protagonist ghoul hides inside. Being able to assume this
defensive posture just FIT well. Without the interesting block, that
would leave the other two Souls-deriveds’ defensive mainstays—dodging
and, of course, parrying. The first Mortal Shell had a parry, but the
sequel may follow the recent trend of leaning much harder on it. My support for
this claim/concern is late in the trailer when we see footage of a player
parrying multiple consecutive sweeping strikes from a distinctive, grotesque
sword-headed creature before the tell-tale red dot indicating an available
riposte appears on its body. In the first game, which was often on the slower
end of the Soulsian combat spectrum, it just took one parry to expose an
enemy to a special strike. Requiring multiple parries makes sense as an
escalation of the first game’s design, but I’m kind of tired of parrying as a
bedrock mechanic in a post-Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (2019) world. Lies
of P (2023) and Stellar Blade (2024) are both examples of recent
games in this style that are arguably victims of (read: made less interesting
by) particularly prescriptive parrying as a trendy concept, Stellar Blade especially,
which breastures boobily toward a more conventional hack-and-slash approach but
stymies speed and creativity by also expecting endless timed blocks. What works
as a more acceptable escalation and that might ultimately help still
distinguish Mortal Shell 2 from its contemporaries, if the old block is gone,
is a new, heavier focus on guns. The first game had a single ranged weapon—the
very cute “Ballistazooka”—that took a long time to fire and reload and that
required you to be completely stationary. In exchange, you could absolutely
obliterate most enemies and sometimes cause their models to Freak Out from the
impact. By contrast, Mortal Shell 2 apparently has more guns and offers more
mobility when using those guns. I think any comments complaining that it’s
“just” Remnant: From the Ashes (2019)—or its sequel, Remnant 2 (2023)—are
either deliberately disingenuous or just… silly. Illogical, even. Remnant,
based on what I’ve seen of it, is a guns-forward Soulsgame, prioritizing
shooting over melee, as the default in combat. I can’t personally say that
that’s not now the case for Mortal Shell given the length of the
gameplay clips we get in the trailer, but one might reasonably assume that
melee is still king, probably by virtue of being “free,” whereas gun ammo
probably needs to be purchased or found, in limited quantities, like in the
first game. It would be interesting if that isn’t the case (if we can now shoot
freely); however, it must needs be stressed that this would be a huge departure
from what’s been established as “normal” for Mortal Shell, and I can’t
see a video game of this scale taking such a risk. But I’m also open to it as a potential change, if only because I think trying
to balance the two tremendously divergent modes of gameplay would result in
some fun, janky awkwardness (à la 2015’s Devil’s Third or its 2023
successor, Wanted: Dead).
My
second notable concern is Mortal Shell’s RPG status (or lack thereof). I
used kind of a convoluted description for the genre of the game initially
because, as I discuss in detail in my previous two reviews, I don’t think it is
actually an RPG, even under the more flexible definition of today. Put simply,
each character/Shell had a few abilities that you could reasonably acquire
without trade-offs, and there was no system of EXP used to enhance core stats.
My hope is that the second game does not change that set-up, as this would be
another shift that would make it more derivative of Souls and less of
its own thing. For right now, the game’s Twitter profile bio describes
it simply as “A dark power fantasy.” The official website does not seem to have
much information currently, beyond more sizzle, but it uses action-y language:
“ambitious, adrenaline-fueled” and “Precision meets intensity in high-stakes
combat,” for example. Vague as the wording still is, this one other line holds
a lot of promise for a fan of the first game: “Possess unique new warriors and
unravel their stories.” It suggests that the game is still about
ghost-jockeying the corpses of the deceased and then learning about
them—hopefully through the established system of accessing snippets
of backstory with each ability unlock. We do see the “Foundling” (now
“Harbinger”?) get ejected from a body after a giant snail attack in the trailer,
but it’s not clearly shown whether you can scramble back into the Shell as
before. This was/is another unique twist that’s nicely synergistic and
hopefully still present. For one thing, it emphasizes the parasitism at play,
that you’re really this other weird Thing that’s taking advantage of someone
else. It’s hard to tell from the trailer exactly how many Shells might appear
in the new game (whether this will also be an escalation from the first), but a
promotional image that accompanies the announcement of registration for the PC
beta offers a better (read: easier to parse) look at what may or may not be the
complete playable cast.
The familiar
“Foundling” may be more shredded than before (its neck and head looked noticeably
thicker to me even before I went back to contrast with the appearance from the
first game), and there’s the very recognizable, crown-helmed, figure of Eredrím
the Venerable visible both here/above and in the trailer. (I see they’ve
continued the trend of giving him, the character with possibly the smallest
stamina pool in the game, a massive weapon in promotional visuals!) I can’t
lie, though—Confirming who is returning is a lot less interesting to me than
some of the new additions. I’m very fond of the burly hooded Shell since if I
have to play as a man, I want the largest, coolest, sexiest wall of
meat-concrete available. The women are still the bigger draw for me, as the
first game had no female Shells, and I really like the additional Body Fuckery
of having the masculine-looking protagonist inhabiting A Lady. There’s some
narrative intrigue that comes with this peek at the cast since one of the
Shells looks a lot like Sester Genessa—the level-up lady/Fire Keeper
equivalent—from Mortal Shell 1, which would indicate she died at some
point. The other (obvious) woman is the one I’ve seen get the biggest reactions
online thanks to her prominent(ly featured, in the trailer), metallic rear-end.
Credit where credit’s due, she seems kind of thick in general, with a muscular
overall look on top of the hyper-feminine, sexualized asspect. She’s the
classic video game stereotype of “boob plate” armor typified but with a hint of
modern Dommy-Mommy/expressing-arousal-by-way-of-violent-ideation (i.e., “I want
her to run me over with her car at top speed and then slowly back up over me
again just to make sure I’m really dead.”) influence. I’m most
interested in these three Shells. The Sester has been a favorite of mine since Mortal
Shell 1 in no small part because the design of the enemy versions in
particular is so “modern”/leans the hardest into a certain bondage-y aesthetic
(with a harness and spiky heels) that still further differentiates Mortal
Shell from similar titles, and that also more explicitly exemplifies the
grody, metal music-inspired aesthetics of the game.
“Antisocial”
is the descriptive word that has stuck in my head as I’ve tried to capture my
feelings about the reveal trailer, holistic like. The grotesque imagery in
general could do that, but there’s something about the way that it specifically
highlights the aforementioned grab-finishers (and how that’s the part of the
video that I find myself rewatching the most). It’s Classic God of War-core—uncomplicatedly
mean-spirited in a way that you don’t see as much these days, when even God
of War itself has become a somber, slow-walking meditation on the nature of
violence and how it's both memetically and genetically passed on from one
generation to the next. I’m shocked Summer Game Fest opened with this as
opposed to something more “fun” and bloodless in more than one sense of the
word. Something more monetizable and that doesn’t make video-game-players look
like the poorly socialized violent psychos that they’ve been stereotyped as, historically.
Equally surprising is that this game was followed (if we don’t count the
eleven-millionth Fortnite update as a real game) by Death Stranding 2,
a more artsy-fartsy sort of tease, in contrast, from one of the medium’s biggest,
most over-credited creators with film-making aspirations. I would have thought
they’d lead with this instead given gaming’s starfucker-ish-ness and obsession
with Hollywood-ly prestige. Maybe the contrast is meaningful: Here’s
gaming at its most bare-assed and block-headed, and here it is at its most
considered and… mature. Plus—and let’s be honest!—Death Stranding 2 is so
much more recognizable and primed to sell explosively than the sequel to a
charming but kind of middling non-FromSoftware-developed Souls-like with
a deliberately off-putting, po-faced vibe. (Mortal Shell 1 is more fun
than it looks: See the “Ballistazooka” again, or possibly the merchant Vlas and
his pet-able cat, or how you can unlock a joke ending where you just abandon
your quest for holy organs to hang out in a swamp and eat rats, drink moonshine,
and play the lute. There is a hint of this tonality in the sequel trailer in
the form of a lil craven-looking person holding an accordion.) Of course, in
music/metal terms, you might say that Mortal Shell 2 is opening for Death
Stranding 2 here, implying that it is the lesser of the two. If it’s opening
for literally every other trailer that follows, as well, then that diminishes
it further.
Or—If
we continue ignoring “coincidence,” and/or the explicit segue from host Geoff
Keighley’s opening bit and its focus on small developers to a game created by
an independent studio, in favor of conspiracy, perhaps the elevation of this
particular game is due to a rise in retro sensibilities. Here’s some good,
old-fashioned violence The Way We Used To Do It. The venerable, violent DOOM
has enjoyed a resurrection recently, and I even saw comments comparing Mortal
Shell 2 to those modern titles, thanks to the aforementioned finishers. Gaming,
like film, is in the midst of a regressive, conservative obsession with legacy
sequels and remakes, so nostalgia-heavy the branches of the thing are scraping
the ground. Perhaps Mortal Shell 2, despite being technically new, taps
into that sense of a rose-tinted antiquity. Or, in a time of regressive and
conservative politics, and during a show where, later, some off-putting
frat-bro-coded Guy used “fuckin’” on the Game Fest stage while wearing a “Make FPS Great Again”
hat, perhaps Mortal Shell 2’s violence and heavy metal influence pleases
and was thus promoted because it appeals to the reactionary elements of the gaming
community, whether intentionally or not. I’ve also been thinking of 2015’s similarly
chromatically-muted, long-haired and trench-coat-wearing, politically-noncorrect
shooter Hatred while watching the Mortal Shell 2 trailer and mulling
over the applicability of the word “antisocial.” You could easily see the
visual trappings, including the shapely ass armor, as designed to appeal to the
smelliest and most “Your body, my choice” sect of Gamers. (See also the
aggressively masculine look of the Foundling despite it/him ostensibly being
some kind of spirit. Or, in the words of one Bluesky user, which have
been stuck in my head for days: “lol mortal shell 2 looks like someone’s pitch
was Dark Souls: Finally For Straight Men.”) Some metal acts’ and sub-genres’
performance of hardcore sexualization and grotesquery and preference for
imagery that can be seen as reactionary or fascist is part of what makes it a
fraught artform. Here’s a specific example from the trailer: There are multiple
shots of a giant, very fat humanoid figure in a wheelchair that serves as an
enemy in the game. I saw a comment on YouTube describing this character
as “game journalist in a nutshell,” the hair-trigger blanket hatred of games
journalists being a longstanding dog whistle for reactionaries. Meanwhile,
“karen in mobility chair at wallmart looking for manager” is just regular old
misogyny and ableism. The character also bears a resemblance to the
AI-generated images of large Black women that I’ve seen conservatives share
online to “criticize” “DEI” or some nonsense (THIS is what THEY want to put
in YOUR media!). Is this Mortal Shell 2 imagery problematic even without
those extratextual associations, however tenuous? On the one hand, fatness as a
visual shorthand to create gross or villainous characters is old and tired
bigotry,
but the fact that this is a flame-spewing wheelchair is metal (and
Metal) as hell. It’s a great inclusion along with the additional guns because
it brings in more technology to pair with the fantasy elements, to better
capture the mixed-genre look that I associate with metal album imagery. It
serves the game’s aesthetic incredibly well, but is it willfully gross in a way
that’s not self-aware? Gauging where the performance ends is part of that
aforementioned fraughtness of the music that serves as Mortal Shell’s
muse. With a song like the one quoted at the beginning of this piece, you can
see the line pretty clearly: “Resurrection By Erection,” however it’s sung or
visualized, is clearly at least 55 to 67% joke. Intention shouldn’t necessarily
always matter when evaluating or engaging with art, but Mortal Shell 2’s
trailer walks an uncomfortable line between a glorious encapsulation of a
musical genre that complements gaming exceedingly well (and that I personally
like a lot) and problematic attitudes, politics, visuals, etc., spiritually. It
might feel marginally less worrying now that there are at least some women
represented in the playable cast, but I’ve already said and joked plenty about
how at least one of those characters comes across. (And technically you
don’t play as a woman—You just inhabit their corpses, which is a
gameplay and narrative conceit that can be interpreted… unfavorably.) And that
just brings us back to the question of how much the sexuality is in service to
loyalty to/an accurate portrayal of the game’s major artistic influence versus
how much it could be just pandering to the worst sort of people. This is not
unsimilar to letting the YouTube algorithm serve you new metal acts. If
you care, you have to ask yourself, How bad are these people when
they’re not wearing leather and pretending to be a Dracula or a Viking?
