Illfonic Talks Predator: Hunting Grounds at PAX South!

Last weekend Illfonic’s Jared Gerritzen (Chief Creative Officer), Jordan Matherson (Lead Designer) and Tramell Ray Isaac (Art Director) took to the stage at PAX South to talk about the journey taken in bringing Predator: Hunting Grounds from just an alcohol fueled idea into a blood filled reality! Below are some of the highlights of the panel!

• Illfonic is a small team of about 30 staff which made the building of 2 games within one quite challenging. Had a quite short development cycle, only about 18 months but some work began on the game before the ink had been signed and wasn’t technically a guarantee. It was also a difficult deal to make given the Fox/Disney buyout.
• Early play-testing without the foliage was incredibly hard as it played such an important role in how the Predator was able to move around unseen.
• Originally the game only featured the Hunter class, before they expanded and added the Berserker and Scout, which came as a result of early discussions about customisation.
• The design for the female Predator took considerable time as Fox was very heavily involved in process. It involved a great deal of back and forth changing elements, but Illfonic is very proud of what they’ve achieved with her.
• Sound recording took place at and around Pinewood in the UK (where 4 out of 6 Alien films were filmed). The locals had been quite freaked out by the minigun and 50 cal. blank firing nearby!
• TJ Storm was brought on to perform mo-cap for the game. TJ Storm previously did mo-cap for the Upgrade Predator in The Predator. Mo-cap was performed at the same Santa Monica Sony studio that God of War and Death Stranding was done at.
• Human player customisation includes different ethnicities and both genders.
• Voice effects for Predator recorded by Jan Johns and Jared Gerritzen spoke very highly of her performance. Also recorded a Fireteam member. Other voice actors include Bruce Green, James and Elyse Willems, Scott Matthew Robison (Mr Sark), Adam Kovic and TJ Storm. Sark plays the Operator who gives the Fireteam their mission objectives.
• Tramell Issac talked about how important it was to not only love the series, but to respect the series.
• Jared talks a little about the game being multiplayer only and despite that he wished Illfonic had the time and staff to do a single player component, he felt that the multiplayer truly represented the feeling of Predator – of hunting actual humans, rather than AI controlled characters.
• Jared confirmed that there will be post-release support and content.

Also shown throughout the panel were nearly 50 brand new images relating to Hunting Grounds! We got a look at early iterations of the games, concept designs for maps (including what appears to be a river-side town that we haven’t seen yet), concepts for the various Predator designs including the female, behind-the-scenes images taken during motion capture and plenty more!

Hopefully Illfonic will release some of the above in a higher quality than our screencaps! If you’d like to watch the entire panel yourself, you can check it out on the PAX South Twitch channel below!

Watch PAX SOUTH 2020 – DAY 2: PART B – FALCON THEATRE from PAX2 on www.twitch.tv

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