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Watch On
Over in one corner of the extraction shooter genre you have Arc Raiders, Escape from Tarkov, and Marathon doing their own spins on what I call the “backpack” shooter, where the main motivation of a match is to fill up inventory slots. In the other corner you have Hunt: Showdown, an extraction shooter that has never shied away from being first and foremost about intense firefights.
There are no backpacks, no faction rep, and no way to become a millionaire selling fancy guns lifted from corpses. Instead, players clash in pursuit of bounty targets—elaborate boss threats who drop bounty tokens. Extract with one or more tokens, and you’ve effectively “won” that match.
Hunt was my first extraction shooter and, 650 hours later, still the one that gets my blood pumping the fastest. Not every update is a winner, but I admire the way Crytek is always looking to shake up the bounty format it established in 2018 in ways that may or may not stick around. It does this by introducing sweeping changes during events and then deciding based on feedback if they’re a keeper. Most recently, Hunt introduced tarot cards that let players cast magical spells on the fly, some of which can totally shift the outcome of the match (one card can shut down all extraction points temporarily). Folks dug the cards, so now they’re a staple.
Crytek’s next experiment isn’t as flashy, but it sounds just as fascinating. The Devil’s Trail event, beginning March 18, will test if Hunt could benefit from taking key information away from players at the beginning of the match:
- Hidden Information & Discovery: During Devil’s Trail, Supply and Extraction Points are hidden at Mission start. They may be revealed by finding them in person or discovering Scouting Maps in-world. Aside from using the Scouting Maps, Extraction Points are revealed after picking up a Bounty Token, banishing a Boss Target, or using “The Chariot” Tarot Card.
- Scout Towers: New points of interest. Two towers spawn per Mission, containing interactive Scouting Maps which reveal hidden locations as well as new Tarot Cards, Custom Ammo, and Traits.
In case it’s not clear, hidden extraction and supply points (which hold free ammo and throwables) are a huge deal. Longtime players already know roughly where extraction points can be on a map, but since only three or four are randomly activated at the start of the match, not knowing their location adds a splash of sauce to the last phase of a match. “Great, we got the bounty. Where do we go?”
You can go to the single extraction point revealed when you pick up a bounty, or preferably, you go to one of the new Scout Towers, where you’ll find maps that can reveal other extraction options. I’m very curious how that exchange of information goes down. Can you choose to reveal an extraction point specifically when you use a map, or is the tidbit random?
What I like about this idea is that it could make the extraction phase of Hunt less perfunctory, and I’ll quickly cover why: The way Hunt has always worked is that the squad who picks up a bounty token bolts for the nearest extraction point—a location that everybody can clearly see and track, as bounty tokens reveal your location. Since it sounds like only one extraction is revealed to bounty holders, their trajectory will be less predictable.
At least, that’s how I hope it plays out. There are some unknown rules to how it all works that could make it less interesting than it sounds—if banishing a boss reveals the same extraction to the entire server, for instance, that’d be more-or-less the status quo.
Devil’s Trail is also adding two new tarot cards and a trait that isolates enemy footsteps while in dark sight, but I’m more intrigued by Crytek’s final bullet point:
- The World Remembers: Passive tracking is expanded. More entities now leave permanent traces, creating a detailed trail of player presence which can be followed. Envelopes, Ammo Crates, and First Aid Kits now remain open after being used. Destroyed barrels leave behind remains. Killing animals leaves corpses. Doors remain ajar after being opened once. Used Trait Spurs leave scorch marks. More interactions now tell a story for keen-eyed Hunters.
Sounds like they’re trying to reinforce the “hunt” of Hunt: Showdown in 2026, and I’m all for it.
