dzilla has enjoyed something of a revival thanks to the success of the recent Hollywood

blockbuster movie, but if you ask the Internet at large to nominate its favorite fictional
beast, Cthulhu, the horrible hybrid squid-dragon-god from H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of
Cthulhu, might receive the most nominations.
At Turtle Rock Studios, Cthulhu is also revered in a way, because it served as the basis
for Kraken, the latest monster character in Turtle Rock's upcoming squad-based
shooter, Evolve. It's the second monster to be revealed, following the Godzilla- and King
Kong-inspired Goliath. Compared to him, a strong and straightforward melee fighter,
Kraken is an intelligent and calculated warrior. It can move on the ground and attack
with its tentacles, but the most interesting aspect of Kraken's character is its ability to
take to the skies and cast elemental magic upon helpless hunters.
If you've ever wanted to lay waste as Cthulhu, you'll soon get your chance, sort of.
Concept artist Stephen Oakley explains how the two different creatures came to be.
"Originally when we started, we were pulling from superhero characters or villains, like
Whiplash. We were trying to think of ways to incorporate lightning into Kraken's design,
pulling originally from electric eels, but as soon as we started to push him into a darker
direction, Cthulhu just became a no-brainer. Just like how we pulled from King Kong
and Godzilla for Goliath's design, we figured we should look at other dark, wizard-like
monsters, definitely pulling the vibe of this intelligent thing, and there's not much more
intelligent down under the sea than squid and octopi."
Kraken fights from the sky with the grace...
Phil Robb, the co-founder of Turtle Rock Studios and the creative director on Evolve,
elaborates on the team's process: "One of the things we like to do with all of our
monsters is look for these archetypes that people are familiar with. In general, those
kinds of things, they allow the player to connect more easily to the character, or the
monster as the case may be. A lot of our characters early on were super f****** weird. It
wasn't anything you'd seen before, and you'd go, 'What is that? Where's its face?' And it
made it really hard to empathize with the character, which is something you want to do
no matter what, and that's why we started pulling back on that and giving them
recognizable human features or animal features. It makes it a lot easier to connect."
Connecting with Kraken, as Oakley points out, comes from subtle touches that breathe
life into the digital monster. "A lot of it comes down to sound and animation--like the
design helps give you a good base, but really, the animation helps bring him alive.
Every little twitch of his tentacles, every pained groan, and even though his eyes don't
have pupils, there's expression in them that really helps you feel for Kraken."
Creating the concept for Kraken is one thing, but then it was up to lead animator Dave
Gibson and his team of artists to put Kraken's wild design in motion, which was no small
task. "When we were animating Kraken, we were trying to have all of his motions be
intentional, and I guess you could say there's intelligence behind everything he's doing,
and he's a little more calculated and precise, whereas Goliath, sometimes he swings
wildly. He throws a giant rock, you know. He breathes fire without any kind of accuracy
to it. Goliath just runs in and wants to hit everything, no matter what."
Every little twitch of his tentacles, every pained groan...that really helps you feel for
Kraken.
Stephen Oakley, Concept Artist on Evolve
"We wanted Kraken to seem a lot more intelligent, so he can back off, sort of, assess
the whole situation, then choose the best thing for that specific moment. Not only can
he; he should. And a lot of the other things that we kept in mind were his long, slender
design. We always wanted him to feel kind of heavy, like he's a wizard in a heavy robe,
and you'll never see him open up too much. He doesn't lift his hands above his head, or
anything like that. It's just, as soon as we started doing that, he started to fall apart and
became too animalistic. Whereas Goliath does a lot of crazy things. He lifts his hands
over his head, and does 'Hulk smash' kinds of things. So we tried to keep Kraken a little
reserved in his motions and a little more precise."
...while Goliath charges on foot like a linebacker.
"We've been in tentacle hell for a while with Kraken. When we were coming up with
designs for him, I didn't want the technical challenges and problems to get in the way of
the design. For a while, he had long tentacle arms, and at one point, he had an arm that
was made up of four or five tentacles, all wrapped up to form the arm, and they could
unwrap. The guys would ask me, 'Can we do this?' and I'm looking at it like, 'That's a
pain in the ass.'"
"As far as the current design, there were two big challenges: one is that he's a
quadruped, and I actually really wanted to try and do that because a player-controlled
quadruped is really tough, and it requires a lot of transitions. He also posed another
problem, where he has these melee attacks; 'how does he attack, and can the player
still move?' At first we thought the player could hit with his arms, and that posed a lot of
problems with the player moving [because] he's a quadruped, and he has to stand up
and then put his hands back down on the ground, and then that's when the wings sort of
came about. 'Oh, we could use those to do the melee attacks so he can keep moving on
all fours and be able to hit everyone around him.' And then the wings were also used to
help him fly and sort of accentuate other abilities."
Even though Kraken is more calculated, his wild appendages required a lot of complex
and time-consuming work for Gibson's team. "Tentacles were really tricky because
there were so many. We had some internal tools that sort of helped us, but a lot of it
was brute force to get it to look good. None of it was scripted. We have some dynamic
rope physics [tools] in the engine, and it's applied very slightly on Kraken's rear
tentacles, and you can see that motion when he's running around, but for everything
else, he's got four tentacles around his mouth, and four on his head, and two on his
back. Unfortunately, that's all animated by hand. It's difficult, but more so, time
consuming."
Has Turtle Rock's hard work creating Kraken paid off? So far, the answer seems to be
"yes." It's a technically impressive character and complex as a combatant. It excels at
staying hidden, but when push comes to shove, Kraken transitions into a fearsome
squid-wizard that's pleasing to control, and from a hunter's perspective, difficult to
topple. As enjoyable as Kraken is to play, it doesn't replace Goliath; it offers an
alternative for players who want something more than brute-force combat.