Turtle Rock’s Evolve was, for me, an almost-brilliant asymmetrical shooter straining to extract itself from the jaws of a live service kaiju maddened by a sludgy diet of unlocks and micro-transactions. It was a huge round of hide-and-seek featuring one, very large and fast, upgradeable alien monster and four hunters equipped with jet packs, trackers, forcefield nets and assorted demolition gear. I had a grand old time at launch as the Wraith, a godawful sneaklizard with warping capabilities, like a xenomorph moonlighting as Corvo Attano. But such thrills were sabotaged by the grindiness of the early game and by an infuriating deluge of paid DLC. Publishers 2K Games delisted it in 2018, after attempting to reboot Evolve as a free-to-play game. The beast clings onto a little life care of a community Discord for existing owners.
Even given the reaction to Evolve’s nickel-and-diming, it seems unlikely a sequel would have stripped out the live service progression elements and reverted to something like the menu-light horror movie sandbox approach of the developer’s previous Left 4 Dead. After all, Turtle Rock went onto make Back 4 Blood, a zombie blaster marinated in grindogubbins. Still, I’d have liked to see them try it. And look, they almost did.