Hunted Co-op Q and A with Chris Keenan, Design Director

In Hunted: The Demon`s Forge the dark ages have become corrupted. Heinous creatures have emerged from underground. Townsfolk are disappearing.

Upon the promise of their fortune in gold, two mercenaries have taken on the daunting task of finding out where the innocents have been taken and to stop the madness. Their journey will take them on a dark and twisted path where they will encounter vicious creatures, death and sacrifice. This path will lead them deep within the world of Kala Moor...and to the secrets of The Demon’s Forge.

On the Bethesda blog, Chris Keenan, the Design Director, dropped in to talk about the co-op action in the game, here’s a clip:

When playing Hunted online, can you explain how they’ll connect with other players?

Our matchmaking system is really easy to use. We tried to simplify the matchmaking interface as much as possible. It is very easy to try to find someone who meets the same criteria that you want. When you send out a request (like a dating service), it will search for people who have the same request as you. These folks will have been sending out requests to play the same areas as you. Our matchmaking system attempts to find players who have similar play styles. If you tend to do more exploration, the game tracks that and will try to match you with another player that likes exploration.

If someone playing with you drops out of the game, will you be able to add someone on the fly?

When your co-op partner leaves you have a few options.  You can choose to continue playing single player at the spot where you left off. Your partner will immediately become and AI buddy and you continue forward.  You can also choose to use the seamless matching system to find a new partner.  As soon as that partner is found, it will return you to the previous checkpoint with that partner and you get to move on as before.

For players not playing Hunted online, what options do they have when playing the game?

Over the last year, we’ve been working behind the scenes to try to get split screen into the build. While reading the early previews of the game, we noticed many of the comments from fans were talking about how important split screen is to this type of game. We’re happy to share news that split screen is now in the game!

Hunted allows you to swap from playing as Caddoc to E’lara (and vice versa)… how often are you able to do this within a level?

You get a very different experience depending on which character you play.  For that reason, we made sure to place an abundance of swap stones throughout the adventure.  The average per chapter is probably around eight or so but each level varies. One rule was to have swap stones before difficult arenas.  If you play it once as Caddoc and notice you’d be better suited to try E’lara, there is a good chance we have a swap stone at that checkpoint.

Read the rest of the Q & A at the blog.