theHunter: Whiterime Ridge Impressions

I tend to await each of theHunter’s new reserves fairly eagerly. They’re always adding something new and interesting. The last few reserves took players to the Outback to hunt kangaroos and mountain climbing to hunt Ibex. There’s a wide variety of possibilities for new mechanics and environments. Lately, the team seems to be taking advantage of that in quite a good way.

When Whiterime Ridge was first announced I was excited. Sure, we had already had Hemmeldal but it is nothing quite like the deep freeze that is Whiterime Ridge, with snow up to your knees and the howl of the subarctic wind in your ears. For the first time we would be getting a large game that wasn’t a different kind of bear. There were a number of reasons to be looking forward to it.

Upon first entering Whiterime Ridge from Danforth’s Refuge, you can almost feel the cold air briskly brushing past your face. The sound design is astounding and it only gets better with a headset that supports proper surround sound. The sound of the wind howling matches the environment perfectly and you can almost imagine yourself slowly trudging through the lonely, cold environment.

The visuals pair quite well. For almost as far as you can see the entire reserve is blanketed in snow, turning everything a blinding white save for the mountains and seas. The lighting reflects off of the snow so perfectly that looking at it the wrong way feels as if it could actually blind you. The improved shadows and normal maps line the snow with various gray tints that only barely give you an idea of the shape of the land you’re traversing.

The environment on the side of the reserve that Danforth’s Refuge is distinctly cold and lonely. Despite the radiance of the snow caused by sunlight there’s an overall darker feel to it. An abandoned oil facility and wrecked ships exacerbate these feelings. Throughout the entire time that I explored that side of the map, despite not hunting solo, I felt cold and alone. In scouring its entire coast I found only two tiny hares.

Entering from Afterland Lodge provided a distinctly different experience. I was greeted by the beautiful, near-blinding sight of a frozen wooded area where even the trees are blanketed in snow. There is so much snow, in fact, that it can be difficult to make out the terrain’s various details with the naked eye. Further exploration on this side revealed it to have bison, moose, and sitka deer—all spotted within the first fifteen minutes on that side of the map. It provided a much brighter experience overall and that brightness led to an almost warm feeling.

Do not get me wrong, though, being a frozen wasteland does not mean that it is empty. You will find various brush and trees lining a large portion of the map. While they are not nearly as prevalent as in other reserves, you will often find a tree or bush blocking your shot. Perhaps the animal ducked behind a rock or pile of snow. The obstacles still exist, even if in a different form.

Similarly, even if you are an experienced hunter that is familiar with every other animal in the game, bison will provide a challenge. They are much hardier than I expected and imperfect shooting could lead to requiring four or five shots to take one down. The bison I was hunting even laid down at one point and went to sleep after I had shot it the first time. Shooting it with precision while it was laying down resulted in it running away and requiring another shot to kill.

At this point, Whiterime Ridge may sound like the perfect change of pace. Perhaps it sounds like the perfect contrast to the blazing heat that is Bushrangers Run. Unfortunately, a number of issues are present.

I encountered a vast amount of inconsistency in the detection of collision with buildings. Some buildings were solid, allowing you to walk right up their rooftops from a snowy embankment. Others allowed you to pass right through their walls, including their base.

Floating set pieces make a return en masse. While we are all probably used to floating grass by now, various larger objects—such as buildings and rocks—were also found to be floating. Entire building foundations were revealed in some cases, scarring the otherwise perfectly serene environment.

The set pieces themselves are also much more obviously repeated in Whiterime Ridge. While I am sure that every reserve has tree and brush models reused extensively, the variety in Whiterime Ridge is smaller than ever before. You will see entire zones lined with the same snow-covered trees. You will see the same buildings reused multiple times within the same area. The illusion isn’t quite as powerful here and it detracts from the experience quite a bit.

I’m a bit less than thrilled with the trails that are left by hunters and animals when they walk. Rather than leaving a deep imprint, or even a shoe print at all, hunters leave behind trails of pebble-shaped snow chunks that slowly, linearly sink into the ground after a second or two of sitting on the surface. It makes it look as if, somehow, you are kicking up snow without leaving any sort of imprint. Furthermore, the trail disappears way too fast, considering that it never actually snowed during the time that I was playing, and the sinking effect itself simply looks cheaply done, as if it were meant to be a placeholder.

Animals in Whiterime Ridge have started disappearing after reaching a certain distance from the player. They won’t fade out or fall into the terrain, but instead vanish into thin air. Moving closer to them will reveal them again, leading me to believe it is a new line-of-sight issue, but it is aggravating nonetheless. I recall making shots on other reserves from upwards of 250m or 300m away. But even making a shot at a distance of 200m seems unlikely in the Whiterime Ridge reserve due to this issue. Perhaps it had been a feature before, previously obscured by thick brush in most cases. But if that were the case they have most certainly altered the effective range considerably and the comparative emptiness of Whiterime Ridge makes the occurrence blatantly obvious.

That isn’t to say that the animals don’t also fall into the terrain in Whiterime Ridge though. On the contrary, the way in which the terrain’s visible surface is not where animals and hunters alike actually tread seems to have introduced clipping issues. Animals will often fall into the ground when running, with only their head showing, and will sometimes disappear completely into the snow when they ragdoll after death. This wouldn’t be too much of an issue but the lighting effects caused by the snow make it nearly impossible to see your track markers. I generally play using a bright teal color and it faded into the snow completely. Almost insultingly, once you do find the tiny amount of its body that is visible and collect it, the body will readjust itself to be above ground. While I have faced ragdolls readjusting themselves when being collected on other reserves, it has never been an issue of this magnitude before.

I also can’t help but feel a bit disappointed in the animal selection. While I was fairly excited for bison, I feel that, overall, the set of animals chosen doesn’t feel particularly iconic to the subarctic region. When I think of bison I think of grasslands not the subarctic. Sitka deer are a little too close in appearance to other deer in-game to feel as if they provide anything new. The hares on the map are simply white hares that come with all of the issues that hares have in the past, including freezing in place occasionally. Arctic foxes are a nice touch but, ultimately, that is only a single species that feels as if it provides a unique, iconic touch to the region.

The highly-anticipated cold weather mechanics are similarly disappointing. So long as you wear the proper clothing—currently being given out for free—the cold alone won't affect you. Should you decide that you want to take a swim in the subarctic waters, you will "succumb to hypothermia." While I didn't test it, it seems as if wearing lighter clothing will have the same results. This is the extent of the implementation of cold weather and, while it makes sense, it feels all too simple.

Whiterime Ridge feels like it could have been so much more. Expansive Worlds had a chance to create something distinctly unique within the world of theHunter, but the end result came out subpar. While I wasn’t too thrilled about Bushrangers Run before it, it wasn’t because of any particular issues with the reserve or the animal selection. Rather, I wasn’t a fan of the Outback hunting experience. With Whiterime Ridge, it feels like something that I could have—and likely should have—enjoyed immensely. The reserve provides the astounding atmospheric experience that you have come to expect from theHunter, but it falls short of greatness with almost every other aspect.