Rebellion tease new project, possible 2000AD connection

Rebellion have released a mysterious teaser for an upcoming project, due to be revealed next month. It shows a soldier running through the war-torn ruins of a city; a city that's bathed in green mist . For those who don't watch terrible horror movies, green mist is the evillest of all mists. So, what are the Sniper Elite devs up to? I may not know, but by golly I can speculate!

Here's the teaser:

And from the video's description:

"One man is utterly alone amidst the chaos of war. But there are worse things to fear than bombs and bullets here..." Tax inspectors? Godzilla? No, this sentence is no help. ONTO THE NEXT!

"Debuting 14th February 2013, PC fans will soon get the chance to discover for themselves just what is in store for those brave enough to venture into the 'Totraum'. Heil Gotterdammerung!"

A clue! In German! Thanks to my GCSE-level knowledge of the language, and more relevantly Google, I can conform that Totraum means "dead space". At a guess, it's not referring to either the EA game or the respiratory term . "Gotterdammerung" means Twilight of the Gods, and is the last opera in Wagner's The Ring series.

Deep analysis of these hints leads me to the conclusion that whatever Rebellion are up to has something to do with Germany.

Moving on, the teaser features the villest of marketing tools, the QR Code. Disappointingly, after decoding it in the name of rigorous investigation, it just lead to the same place as the link in the trailer's description: this mailing list . That page is titled NZA (Nazi Zombie Army?), but perhaps more interesting is the URL, which refers to 2000AD.

Now we're getting somewhere: 2000AD has been owned by Rebellion for years, but they haven't made many games based on the comic. Given the war-torn setting, Fiends of the Eastern Front would be the most likely guess. It's about vampires in World War 2. Although the 2000AD connection is far from definitive.

More telling is the logo on the NZA page. It's an occult corruption of the Sniper Elite V2 logo, and given what the trailer shows, an expansion/sequel set in an alternate history WW2 seems like a solid guess.

Best case scenario: A Sniper Elite/Fiends of the Eastern Front spin-off, in which you must upgrade your rifle to fire wooden stakes into unaware vampires milling about in a courtyard below.

That, or it'll be some sodding zombie DLC. The shadows at the 16 second mark of the teaser video had a definite shambling quality to them.

Thanks, RPS .

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.