Evolve’s Evacuation, Explained

There’s a lot more to the hunt in Evolve. In fact, up until right now, all you’ve seen is just one mode that’s part of a bigger picture – Evacuation. Altogether it’s a combination of modes, maps, and campaign affects that provide over 800,000 possible paths, giving you a ridiculous amount of variety for a different experience almost every time you play Evacuation.

How does Evacuation work?

While it isn’t a campaign in the classic sense, there is a story to tell: The planet Shear is getting overrun by Monsters. Within five days, the battle for Shear will be won or lost depending on the actions of four Hunters…and, of course, one mutating Monster. Those five days are broken up into five rounds as you fight your way across the planet. The first round is always Hunt, on a randomly chosen map.

Hunt

It’s a race for the Monster to eat enough within the environment to evolve to stage 3, and find the power relay on the map to destroy the objective. All along, the Hunters and Monster play cat-and-mouse, hoping to kill for a quick victory.

After that first victory, players continue the fight to one of two adjoining territories, voting on location and mode. In addition to Hunt, the modes that can be up for selection are:

Nest

This mode was revealed on IGN last week. Nest mode has the Monster player protecting its brood, randomly scattered all over the map, while the Hunters are out to scramble some alien eggs. If the Monster is able to get to the eggs, it has the option to hatch one of them into a minion – a stage 1 Goliath that runs around, aggro-ing Hunters. Hunters win by destroying all the eggs and the minion, or killing the Monster.

Rescue

Injured colonists trying to escape the Monsters are placed randomly on the map. Hunters need to locate, revive and protect them as they make their escape. Monsters need to munch on as many of these colonists as possible and keep them from getting away. Whoever saves – or kills – the majority of the colonists, wins.

After carving through four matches, comes the final showdown: Defend.

Defend

This is it – the last stand. Winner takes all. If you’re playing from the Hunter perspective, you’re desperately defending the Evacuation point while the ship is fueling up to escape. As a Monster, you’re leading hordes of Goliath minions as you attack the Evacuation point in waves. Will the Monsters break through and destroy everything? Or will the colonists get away in time?

But here’s the twist

Remember that “800,000 variables” number we were throwing around up top? Every time that you win a match, there is a campaign affect applied to the next map you choose. So, as one example, the Dam is saved and the Hunters win for that day.As a result, the workers are able to power up Perimeter Fences, which cut neighboring maps into half sized portions, creating an interesting advantage for the Hunters. That’s just one possible game-changing outcome from one map.

If you want to go with a picture being worth a thousand words, we put together a quick map of Shear and an example of how just one round of Evacuation could go.

Dying to try out Evacuation for yourself? You won’t have to wait very long! We’re happy to announce that Evacuation will be playable exclusively in the Xbox One open beta in January. Stay tuned for complete details about Evolve’s beta in the coming weeks.

SOURCE: evolvegame.com