NPCs can no longer “burst out” into a Thing creature as part of the story, but some will be more susceptible to infection.

Nightdive Studios’ The Thing: Remastered will receive new details at the PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted next week. However, in an interview with Syfy Wire, Mark Atkinson, the original game’s director, revealed a massive quality of life change: No more scripted infections for NPCs.

In The Thing, NPCs could be infected, leading to them “bursting out” and becoming monstrous creatures. However, even if you protected them during battles, they would still burst out in infection as part of scripted sequences.

“Scripted burst-outs of previously uninfected NPCs were one of the biggest complaints in the original games. In The Thing: Remastered, we removed them entirely and instead make some NPCs more prone to infection, and if they still survive, they are so traumatized they cower and ‘crack up’.” “Crack up” in this context refers to the victims entering an unstable state, which could lead to suicide, heart attacks, or attacking other NPCs.

Nightdive’s software engineer Josh Dowell added, “The infection system was implemented and available in the original game, but there were a few places where squadmates would become infected and burst out for no reason, which players really disliked. We removed those, so squad mates may only become infected by direct contact with a Thing beast.”

This is good news for the remaster and could significantly alter the course of the story. There’s still no release date outside of “this year”, but we could get a shadow drop on December 5th. Stay tuned until then.

The Thing: Remastered is coming to Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.