I'm not sure that this deserves its own thread so I'll just post it in here even though it's not technically about the Gamescom coverage, though if anyone wants to spin it off into one that's cool.
Anyways, Hunting Grounds was at the Tokyo Game Show this week and a few articles have gone up with some new information, albeit in Japanese (though thankfully nothing auto-translate can't handle), one on the Japanese Playstation blog and two from Famitsu:
https://www.jp.playstation.com/blog/detail/8932/20190912-predator-2.html?emcid=so-st-213464&utm_medium=&utm_campaign=20190912_sieja_social&utm_source=&utm_term=so-st-213464&utm_content=https://www.famitsu.com/news/201909/13183235.htmlhttps://www.famitsu.com/news/201909/12183079.htmlThere's some good info and some bad info revealed between them. For those who just want a quick summary:
The good (or just informative)!-The fire team chooses their infiltration area on the map, rather than it being just one fixed spawn every time, which should help with keeping each round fresh and making the Predator have to guess where they might be and hunt them down. In the Famitsu demo there were four locations to choose from, and the one the reporter picked was called "waterfall".
-The Predator has an ability called "second wind" which allows him to escape if he's downed, but at the cost of not being able to attack while he uses it. It's purely a retreat/second chance mechanic.
-He can use his medicomp to heal himself a maximum of twice per match.
-The mud the human players can use to cover themselves falls off/wears off over time, or if you fire your weapons, so it sounds like it's better to try and be as stealthy as possible when you're in that state if you want it to last.
-The points you earn in-game will be used to unlock weapons, skins and items. Taking trophies from the human players you kill will net you more points, so you'll want to try and claim as many of them as possible not just for a temporary points bonus in that one match, but to help unlock more stuff faster (and as we already heard about before, making trophies of men also prevents them from being revived, and means they're out of the match for longer until a teammate makes it to a reinforcement point).
-The human players will be able to customise their weapons and it's implied their appearances too.
-They're currently aiming for there to be around 20-30 npc's in a match.
The bad:-No Predator 2-style urban maps. Every map is going to be in the jungle, with different variations, which sadly I figured would be the case based on everything we'd seen and heard before, and Illfonic's previous track record with Friday the 13th (which launched with just 3 maps, all of which were the same theme, before eventually increasing to five). One of the devs apparently even said of urban maps that "there is no difference in elevation" and so it wouldn't really work, which seems.....wrong. Either way it's an unfortunate shoe to have drop, but also sadly a very much expected one.
-Not entirely surprising given that we saw it in some of those gameplay videos, but matches are on a timer. If time runs out points are tallied up based on number of kills, objectives completed etc., and the winner is decided that way. Kinda sucky given that we've (rightly) heard a lot about how the correct approach to playing the Predator is to take your time and wait for the right moment to strike. Hopefully the time limit will be generous enough that most matches don't end that way though, rather than forcing all players to just rush to do everything purely so they don't run out of time.
The lost in translation:-It sounds as though we might actually be able to choose whether or not we want to play as the Predator (unlike choosing to play as Jason in Friday the 13th), but the translation is unclear. It could also be a "choose your preference" kind of thing again like in that game, so still no concrete confirmation there one way or the other.
-The answer to the question of whether or not the Predator will have more weapons than just the ones we've seen so far was unclear, but given that one of those B-roll videos from Gamescom showed 7 slots in the Predator's weapon/gadget select it seems like the answer is likely "yes".
