It’s been a couple of months now since the catastrophic launch and subsequent cancellation of Xaviant Games’s battle royale title The Culling 2, which was met with a hostile reaction from fans, especially players of the original Culling, who felt that the developers had abandoned the game and the players who brought them success in the first place. In a somewhat surprising turn of events, the team ultimately admitted its mistake and pulled The Culling 2 from sale, promising to return to The Culling.
This week, the studio made good on that promise, announcing the release of the free-to-play The Culling: Origins, which aims to bring the game back to its original “‘anything goes’ approach to battle royale that was eventually sanded down over the course of many updates” by “incorporating the spirit of Day 1 combat, perks, airdrops, and overall gameplay.”
Although the devs have taken efforts to restore the game to its launch-era glory, not all systems are identical to their launch-day counterparts, and Origins also includes a number of updates, such as “a stunning new art direction that modernizes the original feel of The Culling,” as well as “new features, including XP and leveling, leaderboards, Cull Crates, hundreds of new cosmetics, new weapons, skill-based matchmaking, and voice chat.” Although it remains to be seen if this will be enough to wipe away the studio’s sins in the eyes of the community, it certainly seems to be a promising start to The Culling’s new future. You can find all the details on The Culling: Origin’s launch over at the game’s Steam page.
