PREVIEW: El Paso, Elsewhere 2 is about growth, healing, and leaving trenchcoats in hell where they belong
When Strange Scaffold was developing 2023 VGG GOTY nominee El Paso, Elsewhere, they weren't sure what was ahead of them. The studio was facing newfound uncertainty, shifting from the agile multi-project work they'd thrived under for years to having only the resources and time left to make one last project: the neo-noir third person shooter that would eventually become El Paso, Elsewhere. They survived.
Fast forward three years and a film adaptation starring LaKeith Stanfield is in the works, the studio is back to developing several projects a year with the support of partners like Frosty Pop, and studio head Xalavier Nelson Jr. found love: just a few of the things that the developers say contributed to this dream sequel becoming a reality. We learned about it in a hands-off preview event showing off snippets of El Paso, Elsewhere 2's brand new demo, playable on Steam starting October 15.
Just the Facts |
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Developer: Strange Scaffold |
Publisher: Frosty Pop |
Release Date: 2027 |
Platform(s): PC and Xbox Series S|X |
A neo-noir supernatural shooter, El Paso, Elsewhere tells the story of James Savage (voiced by Nelson), a cultural researcher and folklore expert who finds himself fighting back against the end of all things spurred by his toxic ex-girlfriend, Draculae, Lord of the Vampires. Without revealing too much, Savage's journey ends with a healthy dose of self-reflection and a new suite of vampiric abilities.
Draculae's attempt to open a doorway to the other side may have been foiled, but even an incomplete ritual leads to unforeseen consequences. Savage, in the years since the first game, has traveled the world in an attempt to quell The Void's effects. He's made a friend, Beck: a man with his own supernatural abilities... and supernatural baggage.
"Beck owes some dark entities, some Eldritch entities, things that he eventually sells out James for," explained Nelson after screening the game's newest trailer. "Beck ends up burying him alive and sending him into The Void itself."
Having just endured a journey of healing in the first game, James must reckon with how he responds to Beck’s betrayal. The sequel necessarily asks how it is you can progress a neo-noir story once the character has actually done some growing. These stories thrive on damaged protagonists, heroes stuck in formation, so how do you maintain a noir atmosphere when your broken leading man isn't so broken by the end?
It's in that kind of personal growth that Nelson found the resolve to make this game a reality. He originally saw the project as something he had to sacrifice for the health of the studio. But in doing some of his own growing, including meeting the person who would become his wife and discovering some self-love, Nelson was able to revisit the idea; to consider what a version of this project could look like that matched the studio's healthier ambitions.
"It's taking bigger and smarter swings than I ever could have imagined," said Nelson.
Smart is the operative word, as Nelson explained that the El Paso sequel is evolving established foundations and assets rather than rip it apart and start fresh, to advance every aspect of the experience. The first game was built with the studio at its limits, a "team that was too small making a game that was too big," according to Nelson. And while the team is still incredibly proud of the work they did in the first game, it's clear that El Paso, Elsewhere 2 is on another level altogether.
After the preamble, Nelson hopped into the demo and talked through the design process as he dipped, dived, dodged, and devoured his way through the creepy crawlies that stalk The Void. James, freshly tossed into the chaos of this realm, starts the demo by exiting a castle and tramping out into a boggy, swampy forest. He doesn't recognize his surroundings and quickly puts together that The Void is whipping him around various realms, bringing his emotional baggage with him. Just so happens that this time out, that baggage results in a giant castle smashing into some other being's realm — and they can't be happy about that.
What's immediately apparent is El Paso, Elsewhere 2's open level design. Where the first game is set in a series of rooms in an ever-devolving hotel, the sequel greets players with a forest full of winding paths. Verticality is the word of the day as Nelson showcases one of Savage's vampiric abilities by having our hero jump off of a vampiric platform in mid-air, adding even more versatility to the Max Payne-like slo-mo acrobatics that made the first game so propulsive.
Another fun twist of Savage's vampirism? Healing has completely changed. Where before it was simply a matter of accumulating pill bottles and irresponsibly chugging them down when health got too low, James now has to feed. But he's got an easy solution (dubbed "Blood Capri-suns" by the team): James has crafted a new set of glass stakes to replace his wooden ones, allowing him his pick of the litter when he needs a top up, staking any enemy and sipping away for a quick heal.
It makes what was already a high-octane action game even more frenetic by requiring you to not only keep close to enemies, but consider keeping a few alive while you pick off trickier buggers in a firefight.
The expanded potential of all these changes is on full display in this demo. Nelson takes us through an abandoned village full of aggro gargoyles and silly witches who bombard you from afar by stirring their witch's brew. Another new enemy type, mafioso vampires decked out as pure homages to the Max Payne inspiration, address one of the major pieces of feedback from the first game. El Paso, Elsewhere's enemy variety was focused on melee. There were a few ranged enemies, but their attacks were mainly slow-moving orbs and explosive swords. These mafiosos are trying to gun James down, so you can dive out of the way of an onslaught of bullets like Sam Lake always intended.
By all appearances, the El Paso 2 experience lives up to the advertised ideal of evolution over blatant iteration. This is a Strange Scaffold that's more confident, with more experience (their entire level design pipeline is completely overhauled from the tile-based work of the first game).
The demo ends with Savage getting swarmed by enemies, the perfect time for Nelson to showcase the sequel's brand-new automatic shotgun. By all metrics, the weaponry on display in this short hands-off demo still packs a punch. But the one weapon I am desperate to see more of, the trailer-spotlighted vampire stake-loaded Tommy gun, is still missing in action.
Another aspect I'm desperate to hear more of are the contributions from duo composers RJ Lake, whose work on the first game's full length rap album is some of his best, and newcomer Kalibration, a Chicago-based producer who joined the team at Lake's recommendation.
After the demo, a Q&A session opened up that led to a few fun revelations.
While they haven't ditched many of the first game's concepts, there is one thing that was left behind: James Savage's iconic trenchcoat. In a demonstration that involved a napkin draped around Nelson's hand, he explained that the low poly aesthetic married to a reactive flowy trenchcoat led to so many visual and technical bugs that the change was essentially necessary. "Now he just wears a jacket," Nelson relented. "It's where he's at as a person and it's what I need him to be for this sequel... so the trenchcoat is gone. May it rest in hell where it belongs."
One of our favorite parts of the first El Paso, Elsewhere was the relationship between James Savage and the player, created through direct fourth wall breaks as Savage addresses the player directly. The demo opens with James acknowledging the player once again, and I was curious how that relationship may have shifted in the sequel. "That fourth wall relationship in the first game is kind of like a lifeline," said Nelson. "There's a desperation to how James talks to you that's very intimate, but also very weary and worn. [This time], you're not his lifeline. You're his friend. You are a companion in struggle, and that shift in dependency is very intentional and it provides a different tone to how you're going through a lot of the game."
There was an intentional decision to scale the game within the studio's means, while also delivering on more meaningful and expansive experiences. The first game was 50 levels of stretching every single resource to its limits, but this game looks to deliver roughly 20 levels developed with intentionality and a little less chaos. "We're putting more time, more detail, and an expanded level of not just visual but encounter density in each one of those levels," explained Nelson. "We get to do wilder things and make sure each level has, in some way, a new thing that it's bringing to you."
Let's stop pretending we're not all thinking it. Is Pill Cop back? Are we getting more of the Remedy-esque self-parodying radio show about a pill-addicted cop blasting criminals away with reckless abandon? "We are getting more Pill Cop," Nelson confirmed with a smirk. When it came to getting a more specific tease, Nelson talked about delivering on the trope of a rooftop standoff where the criminal taunts the hero by threatening to drop someone off a roof. He struggled with writing something that felt right. Where he ended up? "So there's a time traveling Victorian orphan who just wanted to see what an ice machine looks like, and he's being held at the end of a roof, and Pill Cop handles that confrontation in a very Pill Cop way and it's one of my absolute favorite things we recorded for the game."
By the end of our preview session, I felt that my oversized reaction to the unexpected reveal of the game this summer was more than earned. El Paso, Elsewhere 2 looks to be everything sequels should be, and we're excited to see what a studio like Strange Scaffold does with a happier, healthier, vampire-ier James Savage when it releases next year.
El Paso, Elsewhere 2 is set for release in 2027 on PC and Xbox with the game's first mission playable in a Steam Next Fest demo right now. Go check it out and discover what growth means for Strange Scaffold, for James Savage, and for ass-kicking slo-mo combat diving.
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