When Turtle Rock was building out its cast of Monsters for Evolve , something wasn’t quite right with Goliath.

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The Monster could burrow into the ground, “and that’s actually, it’s really cool at particular moments,” said Chris Ashton, design director and co-founder at Turtle Rock. That skill has since been taken away from Goliath, who breathes fire, tosses rocks, and generally throws a tantrum to take down the human Hunters.“But Burrow was strictly defensive,” Ashton explained. “You could use it to ambush, but once we’re in combat and we have line-of-sight on you, you can never burrow again. Because if you burrow right in front of us, then you’re not going to trick us.”Because Goliath is a brawler, and “because he’s the balls-to-the-wall tank who’s always in your face, it didn’t work to have [that] ability. It was the last thing anybody picked. It didn’t work in combat.” Now, all of Goliath’s attacks -- which unlock each time the Monster levels up, or evolves -- are combat-centric.“The Charge attack can close distance, and it’s very utility, you can use it to get away,” Ashton said. “It covers a lot of ground, you can use it to get away from Hunters. We find that those abilities that have a certain amount of strategic depth wound up being more successful than things that were more one-dimensional.”So, does Burrow as a skill fit with another Monster’s archetype?“Yeah,” Ashton replied, “and you can modify Burrow to where it can work in combat. You could make [it] work if you could tunnel, if I could change position after I burrow, now we don’t have that problem.”That Monster variety will come to light soon enough, when Turtle Rock and 2K are willing to unveil additional Monster characters in Evolve. What can you expect? Ashton made passing mentions of a flying Monster, and hinted that familiar analogs exist -- he laughed when IGN editors threw Predator, Godzilla, and the Cloverfield monster at him.“You hit all the easy ones.”Ashton hopes players feel like playing a different Monster is an entirely unique experience from one character to the next.“Even if you're the Hunters, you’re even track Monsters in different ways, and fight them in different ways, and look for different signs,” he said. “The goal was that, when a different Monster was in the game, it was a huge shift, it was like playing a different type of game.”

Mitch Dyer is an associate editor at IGN. He's trying to read 50 books in 2014. These are the 50 . Talk to Mitch about books and other stuff on Twitter at @MitchyD