Killer Instinct Season 2 Brings Back Riptor

Iron Galaxy has confirmed another character for Season 2 of Killer Instinct. Season 2 will mark the return of Riptor, a character from the first game in the series.

In the first Killer Instinct, Riptor was a cross between a velociraptor and a man. It looked like any other raptor except for its extended arms and thicker chest. These modifications made Riptor well-suited to hand-to-hand combat.

The Xbox One incarnation of Riptor has an altered origin story. Riptor is still a crazy experiment by Ultratech but this time he's got robo-parts.

"A competing combat contract project with the Fulgore line and the Cinder initiative, brilliant Ultratech genetic engineer Dr. Erin Gupte saw a better path to follow," reads the official story description. "She thought that Fulgore’s maintenance and lack of ability to adapt to radically different hostile environments would create a nightmare for upkeep and result in a prohibitively expensive machine. At the same time, she saw the Cinder initiative as pure R&D with years before any interesting developments could be realized."

"She believed that a creature built on a ruthless adaptable predator and augmented and constrained by modern technology would result in the ideal combat platform. It could rely on its own victims for sustainment, and could maneuver and infiltrate in areas that the Fulgore line would never be able to function; Riptor couldn’t be jammed or hacked, stopped by weather, or be disabled by a grain of sand in an intake. Nor would it take a decade of research to decode the alien technologies the Cinder initiative toyed with."

Riptor uses his razor-sharp claws and cybernetic tail to strike his opponent with blinding speed. Ultratech apparently gave him fiery breath as well.

This character will be released to Killer Instinct Season 2 Ultra Edition owners on December 17th. Owners of the Combo Breaker Edition will get it on December 23rd.

The video also teases another playable character at the end. This mystery character refers to themselves as the herald of Gargos, the demon lord from Killer Instinct 2.

Killer Instinct is currently an Xbox One exclusive. However, Microsoft seems to be considering a PC version of the fighting game.