Greetings!
Today we will talk about the heroes and tactic mission in They Are Billions.
The Campaign will finally have 48 missions, 23 of which are about building colonies, 15 about attacking swarms of infected and 10 will be tactical missions. As it happened to us with Lords of Xulima, the duration of the final game is much longer than we had anticipated as, according to our testers, it can take between 60 to 80 hours to complete it !?!
To finish the campaign it will only be necessary to build the 23 colonies. The rest of the missions are all optional, but surely you will need to play them to advance in the technology tree, and destroy the swarms that block the routes to new territories.
It is a long campaign but also very diverse, the tactical missions will specially bring a very different touch to the game. Testers’ recurring comment is that we could have created a completely new game just with them. We hope they’ll enrich the gameplay experience and will also help bring lore to the story behind They Are Billions. Something that testers also appreciate is that in these missions you can finally enjoy the graphics and animations of the zombies up close, compared to the zoomed out way you normally play in the colony mode.
The Heroes
At the beginning of the campaign you will have to choose between one of the two heroes. This is an important decision because the chosen hero will be accompanying you throughout the whole campaign and you won’t be able to change it. Although they have different game styles they are both very well balanced, so just choose the one you like the most. You can always play the campaign again with the other hero to enjoy a different game experience.
Heroes only play in tactical missions. If the hero dies the mission will fail.
At the end of a mission the heroes can go up one level and you can improve them by acquiring new perks. Each hero has a different perk tree. At the beginning you can choose between one of the 4 perks of the central part, from there you only acquire the perks adjacent to an already unlocked one. In the end, the hero will become a very powerful unit and you will clearly be able to feel his progression as you advance in the tactical missions.
The Tactical Missions: The Ancient Fortresses
The objective of the tactical missions is to recover some important technological artifacts that can be found inside the old human fortresses. These are the ten locations you can explore:
- The Last Bunker
- Alpha Communications Center
- The Weapons Factory
- The Foundry
- Hydra Power Plant
- The Prison
- Gamma Medical Center
- The Steel Fortress
- Omicron Laboratory
- Phoenix Project
While exploring the fort you will find valuable objects that will grant you research points (scientific material...) to progress in the technology improvements tree, and empire points (books, old paintings, statues...) that will please the New Empire and provide you with greater influence over the Imperial Army.
Valuable items appear in random places in each game, you can locate them using the mouse cursor. Any valuable object will light up and you can send your unit to pick it up. This objective is optional and it’s not necessary to find them all to complete the mission. You will also find useful objects such as hand-grenades and medical kits, and many interactive elements.
We recommend that you explore the fortresses, little by little, carefully checking everything out, and using the elements of the scenario to your advantage.
News from the past
When a tactical mission is completed, you will also receive an old newspaper clip with a fragment of the history of the infection that ravaged the world. When completing all of them, you will finally find out where the "Billions" in "They Are Billions" came from.
(If you want to know what it says you'll have to explore the ancient fortresses)
And that's all for now. In the next update, we will publish the trailer of the campaign and announce the final release date.
See you soon!