The story framework for Evolve draws lightly from Seven Samurai: The four human players, Hunters, protect various planets' populations from roaming beasts. From there, it gets a little more outlandish. Another human player, playing the role of a fire-breathing beast called Goliath, feeds on that wildlife to grow in size and strength. As it feeds, it functionally levels up, graduating from one form to the next, up to the third and final, 30-foot-high titan.
Box art,
via Game Informer.
Developer Turtle Rock professes to prioritizing gameplay over story, so the light narrative is really a means to facilitate Evolve's Hunt mode.
In Hunt mode, the four Hunters are out to seek and destroy Goliath. Goliath itself has a similar goal to Left 4 Dead's special zombies in Versus mode -- KO or kill all human players -- but also has a real objective. Destroying a shield generator to slaughter civilians, for instance, is one task Goliath can receive after evolving into its final form. The monster achieves its assignments by punching, smashing, leaping, charging, climbing, grabbing, and throwing.
Basically, Goliath sounds like a big, angry kid (that happens to spew fire from its face and stand 30 feet tall).
Click for hi-res image.
Like Left 4 Dead, human Hunters can only revive each other three times before a character dies, at which point they're out of play for two minutes, reducing the Hunters' damage output and increasing the odds of Goliath growing quickly. Hunters can also kill and loot wildlife for health or damage bonuses, as well as equip perks (Turtle Rock is vague about their functions).
What's most notably new here is the classes. Hunters each have a jetpack and their own set of unique skills -- health boosts, cloaking, shields, and traps to detain Goliath -- but there are multiple unique characters within each Medic, Support, Assault, and Trapper unit. One Medic wields a Team Fortress 2-style health-replenishing gun. Another character brings motion detection, and another packs proximity mines. Someone else fires a harpoon gun.
