Angry Birds 2 has landed on iOS and Android today, and it’s hatched a brand new cast member.

Silver is a Falcon and the third female bird to be written into the Angry Birds world after Matilda and Stella, but the first to gain the spotlight as a main cast member with a complex backstory.

The bird is the word

“We really wanted to get a strong female bird into the cast, and we’re really happy with how she turned out,” the general manager of Rovio Stockholm, Oskar Burman, told PocketGamer.biz.

“We’d done Stella before, but in Stockholm we really wanted a strong female character for the main cast. She was actually raised by the pigs, and she’s a bit split as to whether to attack the pigs.”

She joins the old faces of Red, Chuck, Bomb and King Pig alongside an arsenal of new spells including blizzards, magic ducks and hot chilli peppers.

The increased focus on characterisation is part of Rovio’s efforts to build upon the original game and provide depth to the world of Angry Birds.

With the release date for the Angry Birds movie looming on next year’s horizon, this is a smart move.

Getting players to care about the characters in this sequel will be key to turning gamers into theatre-goers in 2016.

While Burman didn’t comment on whether Angry Birds 2 will specifically lay the foundations for the new film, he confirmed that “the movie next year is going to be huge for us so that’s the next big milestone for us in terms of big beats.

That’s going to be super exciting and Angry Birds is definitely building up to the movie.”

The original Angry Birds has been downloaded more than 2.5 billion times since its launch in 2009.

Six years on, it’s still number eight for top companies in terms of worldwide games downloads on iOS and Google Play combined.

Time will tell whether Angry Birds 2 will live up to those hefty figures.