More and more, the upcoming free-to-play Killer Instinct is looking like the arcade original, with particular regard to the game's roster. Announced to feature so far as playable characters are Jago, Glacius, Sabrewulf, Fulgore, Spinal, and Cinder. We'd only need four more characters to recreate the first game's entire roster, one of whom was recently revealed at this year's EVO: Chief Thunder.
Native Americans were big in fighters in the mid-90's for whatever reason: Street Fighter had T.Hawk, Mortal Kombat had Nightwolf, and Killer Instinct had Chief Thunder, who fought with dual tomahawks and glowing mohawk headbutts.
While showing off some of the game's fast paced combos and gameplay in a fight between Glacius and Sabrewulf, (a lot quicker than I remember fighting on the SNES port), the shot cuts to a single tree stump while the sound of a storm brewing can be heard. A tomahawk suddenly flies in from off screen, sticking to the stump. It was more of a tease than an actual confirmation, but it seems like Thunder is finally set to return after a very long hiatus (19 years). You can see the video in question below, courtesy of IGN.
For whatever reason, Thunder, Riptor and Cinder were the only characters from the first game that didn't reprise their roles in the second, replaced by three new characters from Killer Instinct 2's ancient setting, Tusk, Maya, and Kim Wu. If Double Helix was to recreate the roster of the first game, which looks like the objective, the only characters left to include would be T.J. Combo, Riptor, and Black Orchid.
When Double Helix's Killer Instinct hits Xbox One, it will launch with only one playable character (Jago). Gamers will have to pay if they want more options. Producer Torin Rettig tried to justify this decision saying, "Most fighting games that come out are disc based games where you get a huge cast of awesome characters, but it is a massive cast. Some games have anywhere between 30, 40, even 50 characters...You just only have so much time to get good at so many characters. So we wanted to take that into consideration and release the game in a way that took that into consideration and allowed players to get in and play the game at the level that they want to play it."
You can check out our hands on with Killer Instinct from E3 here, and the Chief Thunder teaser below.
