In almost all of these design decisions, what keeps me coming back to Hunt year after year is the way it arranges these threats, resources, and systems in the environment and steps back, giving players the agency to decide what to do with them. The seasonal-event wildfire that was running in Hunt over the last two months wasn't just a sky-high firestorm that players had to move around, the blaze swallowed up sound with its deafening crackle, a sort of sound hazard that you could exploit. It's the ambient noises that sell it all though, the buzz of insects or the cries of monsters hidden from sight provide an unnerving din. A recent patch tweaked gunfire in underground locations, muffling it to make it easier to distinguish from open-air fire. A rustle of a bush, the wail of a horse, a single footstep, anything can be the thing that gives away a foe and saves your life. I agree-this is one of the rare games you can win with your ears. “I absolutely believe Hunt's audio is world class,” Fifield tells me. That atmosphere isn't carried by the aesthetics alone. Otherworldly beasts turn barns and mines into their dens. But here in the bayou, you have to step over dead horses. Fortnite is a cartoon melting pot, Apex Legends stages a bright sci-fi frontier for its heroes.

A lot of ongoing multiplayer games want to (understandably) build colourful, welcoming spaces.

The shambling figures add to the sense of decay that pervades every inch of Hunt's maps. Half a decade later, its emphasis on atmosphere, audio-visual fidelity, and gritty gunplay set it apart from other shooters.Īnother key piece of Hunt's character are its supernatural AI enemies, an army of the dead and cursed that rarely kill you, but play a crucial role as resource-eaters, noise-emitters, and chaos-causers. Listening is a rich skill within Hunt, with even a snapping twig in the woods being a helpful source of information. In its three maps, plentiful overgrowth-maybe the most in the genre-obscures sight lines and makes it possible to stage authentic ambushes. That core experience has remained intact. When it launched into early access five years ago, it made a strong impression by putting you in a hostile setting with disturbing AI monsters and other players, giving you cowboy-era technology to deal with them. “The atmosphere is moody and forlorn, the landscape is corrupted and threatening, the tension builds with every step that you take, every noise that you hear… and that just keeps building and building, far longer than a typical shooter lets that build up before it just breaks into a gunfight.”Īnyone who's stepped into Hunt knows exactly what Fifield is talking about. Fifield joined Crytek in July 2022 after working on huge games like Halo and Call of Duty but fell in love with Hunt, determined to work on this weird, swampy multiplayer FPS.

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