The Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition remaster has an optional HUD with a Doom-style ouch face

Pained faces of the player-characters in Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition
(Image credit: Apogee Entertainment, New Blood Interactive)

In case you missed it, there's a 4K remaster of Rise of the Triad, the cult first-person shooter where you first-person shoot cultists, due out this year. It's a collaboration between Apogee Entertainment, Nightdive Studios, and New Blood Interactive, who recently shared some extra details on how they're updating this classic

Among those details is the addition of new HUD options in both minimalist and classic wide status-bar style. And where the original HUD could display a pixelated version of whichever character you chose from ROTT's selection of five badasses, the remaster will have an animated version of them that changes as they score power-ups (gaining glowing eyes for God Mode and transforming into a dog for Dog Mode), and becomes a proper Doom ouch face when they take damage.

Another option you'll be able to choose in Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition will let you select whether alternate enemies will appear. Because as well as restoring rejected maps and unused items and textures in the level editor, the remaster will bring back versions of NPCs that were cut during development and previously only appeared during the credits. These restored characters, including female versions of the guards, will replace regular ones at a rate determined by an "alternate actor chance" in the menu.

Other stuff bundled with the Ludicrous Edition includes a new episode called The Hunt Continues, an improved level editor that will ship with Steam Workshop support, map previews, and multiplayer that actually works. A demo with playable levels from The Hunt Begins, Dark War, Extreme ROTT, and The Hunt Continues will be available on Steam during the Steam Next Fest running from June 19 to June 26.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.