The survival game based on Terminator enters early access in October 2024

29.02.2024 - 19:25 / rockpapershotgun.com

Almost two years after announcing a survival game based on the Terminator movies, Nacon today revealed the game is named Terminator: Survivors and will enter early access in October. It's set in 2009 after the end of the world, and will see us scavenging to get by as a fledging resistance begins to form. Expect cooperative multiplayer, solo play, base management, and a trailer which doesn't show much of anything.

Creative director Marco Ponte explained during the prerecorded Nacon Connect presentation that Terminator: Survivors will see you explore an open world, scavenging for resources for yourself and to manage and improve your base. As a first-person shooter, you'll fight machines, other human beings, and Terminators. It's all a bit vague so it's impossible to get a read on the game so far, especially without seeing it in action, but that's as specific as Nacon are getting right now.

I have only one request: give Terminators a chance to spawn with the appearance of someone in your co-op party, then try to follow you and quietly fit in before switching to murdermode. A powerful opportunity for doppelganger confusion and terror.

Something Ponte does talk plenty about is the plot. Terminator: Survivors is set in the year 2009, between Judgment Day and John Connor's resistance. We'll play plain old post-apocalyptic survivors who are initially unaware of Skynet and Terminators before getting ensnared in the roots of the resistance. Ponte said it has "a complex storyline that expands on the original story" and features both new characters and "famous" ones, which does feel like a faint threat. Terminator spin-offs desperately need to distance themselves from known stories because it's become such a convoluted bore.

Still, Ponte says the game is based on the first two movies, so our character probably won't turn out to be a clone of John Connor who gave his heart to a T-800 so it could travel back in time to become his own father who was actually a clone piloted by an AI who was a cyborg who was Shirley Manson who was actually Skynet who was actually John Connor but secretly not John Connor at all but actually a robot pretending to be John Connor pretending to be a nanotech cyborg that was secretly a T-100 not from the future but actually from the past possessed by the spirit of a child named Skye Nett who was actually Michael Biehn spraypainted silver.

Terminator: Survivors is due to enter early access on Steam on the 24th of October, two days before the first film's 40th birthday. A console release will follow later. It's made by Nacon Studio Milan, who so far have only released two motorbike games.