Hunted: The Demon's Forge Interview
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[PS3A] How does this impact on your approach to level design? Does that mean we'll likely see much wider expanses than normally you'd see in a co-op game?
[MF] We tried to create arenas that have verticality, you know, lots of ways to get different elevations, and support each other with the range weapons. We have lots of branches, and lots of the content is off the vertical path. In the old-school days, you could come up with a really clever puzzle in the game or you could just make it a road block; clearly, that is a paradigm that doesn't work anymore , but we loved that idea of a really complicated puzzle. So we've taken those puzzles and just taken them off the critical path, and it's our job as game designers to train the player into thinking that doing some of that exploration is cool, and that solving these puzzles will open up these doors and they'll get really good rewards for it: finding enchanted weapons and more crystals (central to the magic and skills system).
We spent a lot of time, money and energy making these amazing environments, and then we just design games that make you run right through without looking at them; we're trying to reverse that a little bit, and the game encourages players to take some time and look around to find that secret passage, to climb that rock and find the crystal behind it.
