Turtle Rock turned up to one of Reddit's infamous AMA interview sessions over the weekend to field questions on their next game, Evolve. As it was only the art team that was present, there may not be as many details as you were hoping for, but they did dish on hunter and monster designs, the game's box art, map details, and more before the AMA was unfortunately cut short, as responses kept being deleted.
Still, there was enough time to learn some interesting things, and here are the highlights:
Q: Are the maps designed around a certain monster or are the monsters separate from the maps?
A: Nope. Each Monster and Hunter should work equally well in any map.
Q: Will there be an art book showing the concepts for each monster and hunter released alongside the game?
A: That would be fucking awesome! We have LOADS of concept art we'd love to be able to share with you all. Nothing confirmed yet, but we're definitely looking into it!
Q: Are there backstories for the 4 hunters? Do the maps have a "chronolgical order" to them like they did in L4D?
A: Yep. Every hunter has a back story. You'll get to know the characters just by playing the game and listening to what they say.
Q: How big are the maps in general? How long is average match length?
A: Hi there! The maps vary in size, but are generally about .5 kilometers across. Average match lasts about 10-15 minutes.
Q: What will be put in to keep the replay-ability high? I know L4D had you play with friends and the variability of online play, will evolve have class progression or is it going similar like L4D?
A: Much like L4D, we have a lot of procedural systems that make it so that every match isn't the same. Combine the procedural systems with multiple maps, multiple hunters, multiple monsters, multiple wildlife species...you end up with a game with a crap load of diversity. Years later people are still playing a lot of L4D, and straight out of the box Evolve will have A LOT more content than L4D shipped with...pile on some great post launch support and content...we feel like we're making something people will be playing for a long time to come. We do have a progression system. Stay tuned, we'll have more info on that in the months to come.
- On maps' hiding spots...
There are a lot of good hiding spots designed into the maps. Big clusters of vegetation, rock formations, caves...part of being a good monster is knowing when to be sneaky and when to go balls out and kick some ass.
- On lighting...
We are lighting levels in the game using the latest from cryEngine - 3.6. We will have global light probes for the general lighting and then create local clusters of cubemaps for local high fidelity on top of lighting from other sources. We also will be using color grading and other post-effects too. The cover was created using an older build of 3.5 and rendered 4k x 4k.
Evolve is expected to hit PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox one this fall.