Hunt: Showdown is about to receive its most significant update since its launch five years ago. The jewel in the crown is Mammon's Ravinea sprawling map based in Colorado and a showcase of some of the technology in its incoming engine. The update is so significant that Crytek took the game offline for 48 hours to deploy it correctly, and when it is back online, it will have a new name.
Hunt: Showdown is dead, long live Hunt: Showdown 1896.
The 1896 update isn't a sequel (something Hunt game director Scott Lussier has made clear), but it does represent a “new era of what we're willing to explore in Hunt: Showdown,” he told PC Gamer in an interview last week. Crytek wants its Wild West extraction shooter to be future-proof, because it's not going away.
“I want Hunt to last another decade, if not longer,” Lussier said. “That's my role: to make sure this game lives another 10 years, right?”
A key aspect of that future is the upgrade of Hunt to a new version of CryEngine, a monumental undertaking that has been in the works for several years. According to Crytek's CTO Clive Gratton, the upgrade puts Hunt at the “cutting edge” of CryEngine.
“Hunt has been in need of an engine technology upgrade for a long time,” Gratton told PC Gamer. “And this means we're going to have a much closer collaboration between the CryEngine team and the Hunt team. Hunt will benefit from CryEngine's continued development.”
Technical figures at game studios don't always make the best interview subjects, but Gratton is a clear exception. One representative described him to me as Crytek's “engine czar,” and he talked about Hunt's technical details with the calm confidence of a programmer who's been tinkering with game engines for longer than I've been alive. In Gratton's case, that's certainly true: before arriving at Crytek in early 2024, he spent 30 years as a programmer and technical director at Creative Assembly. At one point, he paused in the middle of answering a question to feed a vaporizer he’d been holding the entire time — a level of calm that’s off the charts. So when he says Hunt’s jump to CryEngine 5.11 is a huge accomplishment, I’m with him.
In a new light
Crytek has talked about a few specific improvements that players will notice immediately starting with update 5.11. Improved global illumination will transform the look of Hunt's interior spaces with light sources spreading more believably across rooms. I was curious if the realistic lighting might erode a bit in the stark, total darkness you get in the poorly lit spaces of the current Hunt, but Gratton says that maintaining the game's visual identity has gone hand-in-hand with the improvements.
“We want more realism, but not at the cost of our game losing its inherent look and feel. There's definitely a balance between the realism of the model and how we want our game to look and play in dark spaces,” he said. “It's creepy, but it's a little bit creepier.” As for ray tracing, Gratton describes it as “something we're considering for the future.”
One feature that's likely to improve the average Hunt player's experience overnight is the long-awaited support for DLSS/FSR upscaling. The game's minimum specs will actually increase with the 1896 update, but with upscaling, Crytek says you'll get the same or better frame rates in Hunt than before.
It's creepy, but it's a slightly better looking creepy.
Clive Gratton, CTO of Crytek
As shown in our Mammon's Gulch Interview5.11 also introduces a new water shader (a particularly weak element of Hunt's previous maps) with a new “flow model,” as Gratton describes it, and adds support for Dolby Atmos 3D audio. More generally, the new engine has lower input latency and better driver support.
Some of the biggest improvements for Crytek are coming behind the scenes. With the new engine, the setting team can afford a much larger technical budget for the maps. That's why Mammon's Gulch is noticeably more detailed than Hunt's previous three regions, and why Crytek plans to polish its old maps after the 1896 releases and then slowly reintroduce them into the game.
“Suddenly, the limitations change completely,” Gratton said. “And (the team) has a whole new bag of toys to play with.”
Road trip
As for changes to the three existing Hunt maps, Lussier says to expect higher-resolution textures, more assets in places that make sense to tell a story with level design, and “tactical changes” to compound layouts similar to previous tweaks. In other words, don't expect wholesale remakes of Stillwater Bayou, Lawson Delta, and DeSalle, but it will be a bit more than just making the worn-out area of these maps more HD.
Between finishing Mammon's Gulch and touching up old locations, Crytek has a lot of work to do at the moment, but Lussier has been thinking a lot about where he'd like to see Hunt go next.
“I have a lot of locations,” Lussier said with the shy smile of a developer wondering if he’s about to give too much away. “I would say a cold location seems like the right next step, but I don’t know. Cold sounds like fun.”
I would say a cold place seems like the right next step.
Scott Lussier, Game Director
Before we got hands-on with the snow angels, Lussier clarified that Hunt's next map isn't decided yet, but that a snowy locale is high on his “personal list.” There are no guarantees, but as the game's director, we can assume it'll have a decent influence. Snow (which is plentiful in Colorado) seems like a natural fit for Hunt, right? I see hunters leaving footprints in the snow, a new breed of ice immolators emerging from the tundra, dynamic blizzards forcing players to build fires for warmth… Crytek, you know what to do.
Wherever Hunt's journey across the United States ends up next, we may not have to wait that long to get there. It took three years to get from DeSalle to Mammon's Gulch, but Lussier believes his team can beat that time.
“I like to go fast, so in three years… I think we can do better than that.”
Streamlined map creation is another advantage of 5.11, as Gratton describes: “There's a specific technology that will help[with maps]. Well, there are a few different things, but there's one specific thing we can do that will help the art team and remove an optimization step from the process.”
As I write this, I can’t play Hunt. It’s still offline, presumably undergoing extensive virtual surgery. I guess cramming the entire state of Colorado into a 54GB package isn’t an overnight job. The past two days have been a good time for reflection: I’ve logged 500 hours in Hunt over the past three years (a modest amount, compared to its most devoted players). I started playing just before the last map came out. Since then, it’s remarkable how faithfully Crytek has supported and backed Hunt despite the fact that it never blew up on Twitch or became the “game of the moment” like its competitors.
Crytek hasn't had to go out of its way to create that virality, either. While other studios are constantly looking at each other's homework to see what new limited-time mode or brand crossover will drive the numbers up, Hunt is focused on the feeling of moving through a specific, eerie, inhabited terrain, and populating it with equally dangerous (but somehow toned-down) hazards.forest fires, rain stormsexplosive beetle drones, named alligators, triple-barreled rifles, a damn spear. The way Lussier tells it, he wouldn't have wanted it any other way.
“When we look in the mirror, we are happy with what we see.”
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