Evolve’s electric, airborne Kraken, wasn’t always a flying Monster. Creative Director Phil Robb told IGN, “He didn’t fly for the longest time. For the majority of his life in the game, he didn’t fly. He’d glide.”

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“ If I’m gonna play as the Monster, I want to be able to connect to that Monster on some emotional level, or whatever.

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This meant, like Goliath, who also changed drastically during development, Kraken spent a good amount of time climbing to higher ledges. Goliath, unlike Kraken, covers ground by bounding great distances. Leaping as Goliath is the most rapid way to maneuver around any map in Evolve, so Goliath feels at home everywhere. Kraken felt vulnerable until he was airborne -- and by then it was probably too late.“That’s where Kraken’s flying ability came from,” Turtle Rock’s Chris Ashton explained. “We felt too dependent on the terrain to be effective in escaping Hunters and covering long distances…. Kraken, once in combat, was really stuck on the ground.”Today, Lightning Strike, the strongest skill in the entire game, lets Kraken smash a small area with a burst of electricity. It sends Hunters flying, deals massive damage, and can hit grouped-up squads in a big, bad way. Early in Kraken’s life, Lightning Strike wasn’t based on Kraken’s location, but clouds in the sky -- meaning Hunters could easily hunker down in caves, inside buildings, and underneath awnings to prevent the strike from crashing into the ground.“Players would get frustrated because it wouldn’t work,” Robb explained. Monster players felt cheated, and Hunters had an advantage that could feel unfair even for them. So the decision was to make it ground-based -- a pool of chemicals congeals on the ground, and erupts as Kraken itself unleashes lightning.Likewise, the Aftershock ability as it exists now wasn’t always effective. It shoots lighting into any wildlife and enemy in an area, bursting their health down. Before, it was a dissatisfying damage-over-time lightning chain.“Chain Lightning sounds really cool but in gameplay it comes off as weak,” Ashton explained. Because players couldn’t see Hunters health bars draining, it didn’t feel good to hit them with a chain -- one that could be easily broken if Hunters jetpacked away from one another.Because Kraken came after Goliath, Turtle Rock already had its art direction cemented, and it knew what the next Monster’s skin, textures, and general aesthetic would look like. Kraken only had two visual iterations. His first couple passes worked great as concept art, but inside Evolve’s worlds, his Lovecraftian, amorphous mass was too obtuse. “You weren’t able to see many recognizable features,” said Robb, who explained players had no connection to “an abstract mass of flesh and tentacles.”Cthulu had to go -- and Kraken had to become more like the sea creature he was inspired by. He swam, in the air, anyway, but it wasn’t working with the art. “I suppose if you were to really meet with Cthulu, it would be a mind-destroying experience,” Robb said, laughing, “but if I’m gonna play as the Monster, I want to be able to connect to that Monster on some emotional level, or whatever.”Turtle Rock started adding more recognizable visual elements to give Kraken a more recognizable look. “It’s no coincidence he has that Cthulu-esque appearance…so why not use that familiarity and comfort to make him more lovable?”Lovable is definitely one word someone could use to describe the violent, slithering sky squid, anyway.

Mitch Dyer is an Editor at IGN. He hosts IGN Arena , a podcast about MOBAs, and is trying to read more. Here's his reading list . Talk to Mitch about books, Dota 2, and other stuff on Twitter at @MitchyD and subscribe to MitchyD on Twitch