Interview: Turtle Rock’s Josh Olin on Evolve

We recently had the chance to sit down with Josh Olin, Community Manager at Turtle Rock to discuss the upcoming co-op shooter Evolve.

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Leo Stevenson, Stevivor: Tell me about Evolve. Where did it come from? Where did it “evolve” from? What was the core idea and where did it start?

Josh Olin: One of our co-founders, Chris Ashton, had the idea for Evolve way back, years ago. Even pre-dating Left 4 Dead. He wanted to make this before Left 4 Dead and he had a clear vision in his mind of what the game was to be and at the time he looked at the industry, the platforms and engines and just didn’t see anything that could build the massive, lush, open and beautiful worlds that you’ve just seen in Evolve. So, it got put on the shelf and on the backburner because they didn’t want to make something that was half-assed. They wanted to make sure that if they went with it, it was the vision. Make sure it was the game they wanted to make. So they made Left 4 Dead and learned a lot in the process about co-operative play and how to do it right and in some ways how to do it wrong. Then they applied those learning to Evolve. Then after they saw Far Cry and the CryEngine and lush worlds that it was capable of everything just clicked. They decided then that this is the time. People are ready for this. It also came from a passion to want to play it. Chris (Ashton) was asking himself, “Why has nobody done this before?” and he decided that we might as well just make it then we can play it and have fun.

Stevivor: How does the team go from Counter Strike: Source, then Left 4 Dead and how do those two games inform and influence Evolve?

Olin: Chris and Phil (Phil Robb, Turtle Rock co-founder); they talk about remembering playing Counter Strike every single day at the office and how you have your brothers in arms, the people you work with, and you’re all down each others throats after each match because it’s such a competitive shooter. It’s like “Argh I can’t believe you headshotted me with the DEagle from across the map, again!” The hate was all in fun, but they were like “Imagine if we had the same sort of banter after a match, but in a co-operative environment and nobodies actually mad at each other and nobodies frustrated deep down inside or annoyed cause they got beaten. That desire to play that co-operative experience that friends could play is what shifted them down the Left 4 Dead route. Then Left 4 Dead taught them a lot of awesome lessons and they wanted to take a lot of those lessons and apply them to Evolve. In Left 4 Dead anybody can pick up any weapon and it wasn’t a class based game at all and so that’s why in Evolve they thought what’s the next evolution of that co-op play. It’s to define these classes and these roles.

Stevivor: It kind of feels like the Versus mode from Left 4 Dead and the brief moments when you get to play as the Tank. Evolve feels like a natural progression of that. Was that a conscious decision?

Olin: Yeah it is and as cliche as it sounds, it was the natural evolution (laughs) of everything Turtle Rock’s been working on.

Stevivor: There was a game that was released a few years ago: Brink. I’m not sure if you’ve played it, but Evolve feels a little like that with the squad based play with a little Left 4 Dead thrown in. How important was getting the squad based play in the game?

Olin: I didn’t play it much, just at trade shows and E3, but the squad was pretty important. Across the board. It did a lot for a lot of things. At the most direct level it makes balancing the game a hell of a lot easier. It also makes it an easier game to learn and pick up because you have these very well defined roles and rules that you’re teaching  the player. There will be more characters in the game when it ships, but the classes stay the same. So, it doesn’t matter which character you pick you’ll know the role you’re playing. You may have different tools with which to perform that function, but you’ve been taught the rules. Even though it’s a co-operative game, the classes add to the competitive nature of it too. As a monster playing against these classes you need to modify your play style and your tactics based on who the opposing team are choosing and who they’re sending into battle and then the tactics they’re using. Across the board it’s such a profound piece of what makes Evolve, Evolve.

Stevivor: When I was playing the first hunter I used was the Medic and I found that the monster was just on me and obviously I died a lot because the Medic is the most base support character.

Olin: And then if Support’s doing a perfect job he’s shielding the Medic while the Medic is healing the other players. But in the chaos anything can happen. That’s the unpredictability of the player controlled boss.

Stevivor: With the four classes, Assault, Support, Medic and Trapper, were there ever any different or extra classes?

Olin: There were. A core tenet to Turtle Rock in game development is rapid prototyping, rapid iteration and then play testing. Every single day, everyone on the team is play testing for at least an hour. We’ll spin up features really quckly and then very very quickly after one or two playthroughs we’ll really get an idea for whether it’s better or worse. Is this more fun, is this not more fun? What are the pros and cons of doing it this way versus the way it was. When we’re talking about classes and loadouts, they used to be very different things. Trapper used to be called the Tracker and he was the only one who could see the monster’s footprints. That was the way that class used to be. Then through this rapid iteration process we very quickly realised that it’s just better for everyone to be able to see the tracks. It made it really weird too, because then the Medic wasn’t necessarily the monster’s focus, it was the Tracker. Then once he was down, what then? All sorts of other problems came up and then through this process of iteration  we boiled it down and realised “Oh, it’s this simple. All we have to do is make the tracks visible for everybody and everything’s fixed.” Trivial way to look at it, but it’s true.

Stevivor: I can imagine there’s a lot of little moments like that when something just clicks and you realise you need to do something a certain way in turn making the whole game better.

Olin: Absolutely. And more than all the places I’ve worked before it’s Turtle Rock’s thing that makes them tick. It’s the Turtle Rock x-factor.

Stevivor: Based on the few games I’ve played today it seems like it’s always anybody’s game. The monster is never too powerful and the hunters are never too numerous. How long did balancing the game take to get right?

Olin: Years! Three years now that we’ve been working on the game. It’s great, these are astute observations you’re doing cause you’re basically doing my job (laughs). You’re completely right though, it’s balanced at any given stage. I don’t think we’ve had a stage 1 monster win today. I almost had a stage 1 win.

Stevivor: That sounds really hard.

Olin: Oh it is hard. It’s really hard to do. Me playing against a bunch of new people meant I almost did it. It is challenging, but it happens. It’s happened before at our studio where there’s just a bunch of experts at the game. In Evolve, it’s the moments right? If you set up the right trap, pick off the right guy. If the hunters make one wrong move, one mistake, it can swing profoundly. Same thing with stage 3 monsters. We had a stage 3 loss today, a monster that I was coaching. It’s the strongest monster, but the other team was just playing perfectly and we couldn’t finish.

Stevivor: That’s the kind of thing that is really interesting about Evolve is that there’s so much emergent gameplay, but it’s not based on any AI driving that. It’s just the players driving it. It’s 4v1 and every time something is going to happen differently.

Olin: It’s interesting in Evolve, the AI director became the Zoo Keeper and what it does is direct the wildlife in the map. The wildlife sort of is procedurally generated in where they’re spawning and how many of them there are and how they move and where they’re going. There is a substantial AI component to the game, but it’s not the core experience of 4v1. Those are all player controlled.

Stevivor: Was there ever a time when there was less or no aggressive AI creatures in the game or were they always included?

Olin: They’ve always been in there. There needed to be a living, breathing world of wildlife. The idea is that neither the hunters nor the monster belong on Shear. It’s a frontier planet on the edge of the galaxy. It’s almost Avatar-esque. You’re just showing up and there’s all this indigenous life that sees you as foreign and alien and hostile in some cases. That’s always been a component.

Stevivor: Is there a story and a narrative to Evolve or are you simply four people with an insatiable monster-blood lust?

Olin: There is a narrative. There’s a lot of backstory behind each of the characters. Who they are and why they’re there. What the monster’s are and things like that, but we’re just not revealing it yet. We don’t want to spoil it. There is going to be a single player component, but we’re just not talking about it at this stage.

Stevivor: The design of the world and the monster kind of looks kind of really 90’s cartoon style, big, bad, armour plated. Maybe even early 2000’s a la Cloverfield. Was there a specific look you guys went after with the monster and the world or did it just organically come together that way?

Olin: Probably a little of both. Obviously Phil as our art director has a pretty good vision for a lot of things and a tremendous amount of influence into the way the game and the monsters look, but the whole team pulls inspiration for all sorts of points of reference. Whether it’s film, other games, comic books what have you. Literally anything that inspires us and makes us go “wow that’s cool, but how could it be better?” That’s all part of that creative process.

Stevivor: Is there going to be a strong Esports push for Evolve? Do you want to get it into that space?

Olin: I would hope so. I love Esports and am a huge proponent of Esports. We’re not really ready to talk about our specific Esports plans, but I think that if there’s anything you could take away from what you experienced today it’s that while it’s a co-operative/competitive experience from the creators of Left 4 Dead — voted the best co-op game of all time — is that boy is it a competitive game.

Stevivor: It’s the moment to moment occurrences every time and every game I played. I remember you were playing as the monster and we were trying to take you down and at one point I jetpacked over the top of you as the Assault as you went under me with a charge attack while I flew above and used the lightning gun.

Olin: I remember that exact moment too and I was like “Wow! That was a good dodge.”

Stevivor: There are so many cool yet simple moments like that you experience while playing. Essentially I feel like Evolve is, on the surface at least, quite a simple game to play. You shoot, dodge and have four different weapons and abilities. It’s in how you use them where the complexity lies.

Olin: That’s actually the the whole philosophy behind Evolve. The entire thing is not a scripted or linear game. Even the Zoo Keeper is this director. The point is you’re creating this playground in a massive arena. This world that things can happen in. It’s built in a way that means there’s this whole different way of thinking about level design, about character design and about programming and AI that I don’t think anybody else in the industry has ever had before. That’s happening at Turtle Rock everyday and ultimately leads to the moments you just described. It’s what makes them possible because you couldn’t script that kind of stuff at all.

Stevivor: From your perspective, based on everything you’ve seen and done with Evolve, is there something that you think is particularly special or something you think players will be the most excited about?

Olin: Yeah, the answer is something I can’t talk about! But what I can talk about is the exact thing we just talked about. It’s the moments that exist every single time. Every week there’s a new moment that I’ve never seen before and that one you mentioned from earlier is one of those and it stuck in my mind. Another one was the perfect orbital barrage with me harpooning the monster and holding him in place and his face just melting. He was like “Where’d my armour go!?” And you feel so good every time those moments happen. You think to yourself “I’m a badass!” no matter which side you’re on.

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Thanks very much to Josh Olin for his time.

Evolve will be available for PC, PS4 and Xbox One in Spring. For more on the game check out our preview.