Interview: Evolve, Monsters And Terrible Wordplay With Denby Grace

Even just playing with the same team of Hunters and the same Monster on the same map over and again, it’s clear to see that Evolve will be a bright new franchise and multiplayer experience, when it comes to PS4, XBO and PC later this year.

You can check out our preview here, but we also sat down with Denby Grace, Executive Producer at 2K, who is also working closely with the team at Turtle Rock Studios, to talk at length about the game. No really, this is a long interview and it’s got plenty bad puns in there too.

TSA: First off, how do you feel people are going to deal with the learning curve in the game? Going through the hands on session, and with the monster in particular, it was quite daunting to get the hang of.

Denby Grace: Yeah, it is a bit overwhelming, but we’re going to have the game coach you a little – there’s no tutorial in there right now – and also, one of the things we’re careful to be doing is introducing more accessible characters and more easily recognisable too. The Medic is very easily recognisable, if you’ve played Team Fortress before. The key to people having fun is that they’re not match-made to a rank 25 monster when they’re rank 1.

It generally take 2 or 3 games before you stop being overwhelmed by the world and the controls, and you’re doing your role and starting to look and think about the next level of strategy. Then the cool thing is that when you start doing new maps and playing new monsters and hunters, that’s actually exciting. You’re like, “I’m playing against a new monster now. What is it that’s out there?”

Without doubt, I don’t think the learning curve is a concern, but there are several things we need to do to ensure that people have fun out of the gate, and there’s a lot of stuff we can do before the game launches, even.

TSA: Do you think it’s going to be like, for example, Titanfall – a game concept where a lot of people seem to be finding difficult to grasp what the game’s about? Is that something you might struggle with for Evolve?

Denby: I don’t know. I’ve not played Titanfall, but to look at it – and I don’t want to talk too much about their game! – it seems like there’s a part of that game I don’t know how it would play, but there’s certainly a big part where I’ve played Call of Duty, so I know how to move around, but I’ll have a jetpack now and I think I can imagine how that works.

But I’m excited to learn about the new parts, and I think that for Evolve there’s a certain similarity with the Hunters to Left 4 Dead. You pick up to play and feel like you’re playing Left 4 Dead but – and I don’t want to drop this gag, but I’m going to – evolved. [laughs]

TSA: [laughs] I think we need to stop there. That’s either the best or worst place to stop!

Denby: [laughs] It was too obvious, but I just couldn’t not go there!

So, with the Monster certainly, it’s a very different experience, where it’s a third person melee shooter. So there’s going to be a certain learning curve, but at the same time you’re an overpowered monster with the upper hand in that respect, and without the complexity of having to work as a team to be successful.

Once you get through that first hour, and the same’s true for any game that you’re not playing a sequel of, you’ll be comfortable with the button layout and the strategy. That’s where having good matchmaking comes into play.

TSA: Going back to your mention of Left 4 Dead, you’ve been playing that card quite heavily so far. Is that something that’s key to this game’s success, that people know of Turtle Rock’s previous work and where this game is coming from?

Denby: No, I don’t think so. I think there’s a lot of Left 4 Dead fans out there and a huge community, and we firmly believe that anyone who liked Left 4 Dead is going to like Evolve, but I’d argue that Evolve has a broader appeal than Left 4 Dead.

Now with the addition of a solo player role, you open up to those guys that don’t want to play as a party and don’t want to communicate with other members of a team. They want to go and just eat Hunters, and that’s something we’ve seen within the studio and within our play-tests.

Certainly we’re going to leverage the community of Left 4 Dead, why wouldn’t we? I think we’ve got that immediacy, where I think anyone who’s a fan of Left 4 Dead is going to be a fan of this, but I think there’s more as well.

One of the best things in Evolve is that I think it does something genuinely different to a lot of other multiplayer shooters out there. It’s not 10 versus 10 multiplayer, it’s not these really big 40 minute battles, but a more intimate experience.

TSA: You have that interesting imbalance with the player numbers. Was that the original idea from the start, or was it something that came through experimenting?

Denby: The boss battle thing was where we started. Coming out of Left 4 Dead, one of the things the guys hooked into was the human controlled Tank battles. Playing as a 4-player co-op team and working together to take down this way more powerful monster, there was something there.

That boss battle which doesn’t have scripted routines. Yes, he has these set abilities, but how he uses them, how he moves around the map, where he chooses to engage and when he chooses to run away. That’s one of the biggest things that will throw you, when your killing him but your guys are getting destroyed as well, and he decides to stay and fight.

That’s the most intriguing factor, the human element to these boss battles. It’s always been envisaged as that kind of game.

TSA: Do you find that adding those classes forces people to play more as a team?

Denby: Absolutely, 100%. It’s pushed forward from the previous title, where the character was really unique but everyone’s role was as a damage dealer of some kind and then the team-play was that you could be a dick or be a good team member, share the ammo or whatever.

With Evolve we’ve pushed that forward so everyone has these set roles which you can’t change. What it does bring is, when you succeed as a team, that feeling of everyone doing their job really well and that kind of camaraderie. It’s just a really, really great feeling when you succeed as a team.

I think it’s really just pushed it on from where the previous game was. So yeah, I think it’s the natural – [sigh] – the natural change.

You know what I was going to say, but I stopped myself. [laughs]

TSA: No, I have no idea! [laughs]

TSA: With the different classes, you have characters as opposed to Call of Duty-style unlocks. What was the reasoning behind that?

Denby: Yeah, so we’ve been both ways over the course of development, and one of the things we really liked when we settled on what we’ve got now, is that we can really personalise who this character is.

You look at Griffin and you see this big game hunter. He’s got this big moustache, his hat, carries this giant harpoon gun, and it really adds a lot of character and personality to that one individual.

Also, to a certain level, it plays into how we balance the game. If people could start making a massive number of combinations, it gets even harder and harder to balance the game. So we have a set staff and we can make sure everyone’s got certain things to do at certain points in the game, whether they’re hunting or engaged in battle, or if they’re versus one specific monster or another.

It’s all really thought through in creating a nice and rounded experience, and as we’ve seen internally that people gravitate to their favourite character, even within a certain role.

TSA: How are you going to differentiate those different characters within each class? Will they have specific specialisations?

Denby: One of the things to say is that, yes, there are certain specialisations, and the same is true of the monsters, but as you unlock them it’s actually that they’re more complex and less conventional.

What we’ve shown today is probably the most conventional set of hunters and the monster. It’s kind of straight forward and you understand straight out of the gate how they’re controlled. The Trapper is probably the most unique, and is kind of unique to our game, but the other hunters and how they work in combination are more complex.

The monsters are also certainly more complex. The Goliath’s a big physically hulking beast that grows from 10 foot to 30 foot, and he’s very strong, can take a lot of damage, but other monsters are not like that. They move around the map very differently, don’t leave the same sort of track or don’t leave any tracks, maybe.

In terms of being able to just pick up and play, the Goliath will make you go, like, “Wow!” But we’re also very keen that 100 hours in, you’re still learning new stuff. Much like Starcraft where, week to week, the strategy that’s being employed by people changes the way other people play against them, which then changes and… I could so use the word again, but I’m not going to!

TSA: The ‘E’-word?

Denby: Yes! It works so well, but it wasn’t really conscious when we called the game Evolve that we’d use it that much. It was literally the monster and that was it!

TSA: Who was it that first cracked some terrible Evolve wordplay?

Denby: I want to say it wasn’t me, but it probably was me! [laughs]

TSA: Where are you going with the game in terms of environments? This first map you’re showing is very dark, jungle-like, so will we be visiting other biomes on this planet?

Denby: Yes, we’re not talking about specifics, but yes. So you’ve played the dense jungle, dark map, but we’ll have maps during the day, in different environments.

The big thing is that it will bring different gameplay. Each map will have different wildlife sets, though some of it is shared, with different routines and AI, and different attacks. So, when you come to a new map, there’s a lot to take on board about how you can use it and the wildlife to your advantage.

As you’re making a run for it, one thing you can do as the monster is lead the humans through the dangerous areas of a map. What we do is set up the maps so that some wildlife will live really specifically in this cave, while some of the other wildlife will roam. So you can go through that dark cave, and that will slow the humans down and they have to deal with that threat.

Then things like the weather start to come into play, where if the monster is getting mullered and it starts to rain, it’s a good opportunity to run, because the visibility is lowered and the rain washes away the footprints. The monster then can’t smell for as great a distance…

So yeah, you can use all these dynamic moments to your advantage. All of that is driven by what used to be the Game Director in Left 4 Dead, but is called the Zoo Keeper system now.

TSA: Finally, what you’ve shown so far is just the multiplayer gameplay, but will there be single player modes or AI supporting the gameplay?

Denby: Yes, you can play the game with any combination of players. So it could be you want to play as just one person, and the AI will come and fill in the gaps.

In terms of if we have a single player experience, of course we do, we’re just not talking about it now. We have lots of stuff, but we’re just talking about the core experience of 4v1 and hunt mode, which is one specific game mode.

Thanks to Denby for taking the time to talk to us. You can check out the much shorter preview here.