Mortain has been a labour of love for the Environment Art team for some time. The reception during the previous PTE and the feedback following it has had a profound and positive effect on the map’s development. I would like to extend sincere thanks from us all, for the community rallying behind us as a development team and putting your faith in us to deliver a map that players want to play.

As mentioned in a previous dev briefing, focusing on your feedback from the last PTE, we have made significant changes within the town adding numerous enterable buildings to aid players in urban combat. Alongside this, we have introduced new structures within destroyed buildings, to offer new verticality and sight lines across Mortain’s town.

We have continued to take steps in optimizing the map and with great support from Technical Art, various changes across meshes, textures and shaders have been made to increase framerates on both PC and console.

During the last PTE, grass, hedge, and wheat culling happened much too early on. We have increased the draw distance of all foliage significantly, which should help to aid players hiding in tall grass and foliage. Due to the sheer performance impact of rendering thousands of blades of grass 300+ metres away, there may still be areas where at long distances foliage does not render as expected, but we are approaching this issue as a high priority and you should notice a significant improvement over the last PTE.

You may notice when playing Mortain, that upon aiming down sights, there can at times be a sudden change between LODs and shadows close to your camera. This is a known issue that is unfortunately visible across every Hell Let Loose map, but due to Mortain’s lighting being particularly bright with strong shadows, it’s much more apparent. We are actively investigating ways to combat this, however this is a long standing issue in the game and is tied to how LODs are handled at different FOVs. Although this issue won’t be fixed for the PTE, we hope that this doesn’t impact your experience of Mortain negatively.

I would like to extend a personal thank you to the QA and Community teams who diligently helped filter through feedback and helped give the Environment Art team and Level Design team a much clearer picture of how we can polish Mortain for this PTE. Although this isn’t the official release of Mortain, we are confident through their efforts and ours, that this version of Mortain will be an experience you enjoy and we can’t wait to hear your feedback both positive and constructive.

Ryan Thomason-Jones, Senior Environment Artist - Expression Games

To celebrate this PTE and release of Mortain, we have updated the main menu environment for the game to include a scene from one of the main streets in the town. With this being the first new map since Black Matter departed, we wanted to do something special with the theming, so decided to make the world black and white reminiscent of films and pictures from the past.

The new environment is significantly lighter than the previous scene performance wise, so console players in particular should find that the scene runs much smoother, and assets load in quicker on full release.

Adding to the wartime footage aesthetic, post process effects such as static and scanlines were added, along side some fantastic work from the audio team, who adapted the Hell Let Loose music to sound as though it was playing through a gramophone.

Although our primary objective is to make engaging and beautiful in-game maps, we hope that the next time you boot up Hell Let Loose, you immediately feel immersed and it adds to your experience of the game.

Ryan Thomason-Jones, Senior Environment Artist - Expression Games

First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to every player who took part in the previous Mortain PTE and provided feedback on the map. The Level Design team has taken the time to read every comment provided.

What was a clear takeaway from this is that the town of Mortain lacks a sufficient amount of enterable buildings. Having assessed the layout of the town, and taking into account optimization factors as well as sight lines, we have added more than 40 new enterable buildings, not just in the town, but across the entire map:

• More enterable buildings in the town around the Hotel De La Poste capture point
• The building at Les Aubrils Farm has been opened up
• Several buildings around Le Ferme Du Deschamps have also been opened up
• Other main design changes since the last PTE:
• The capture point “Le Hermitage Farm'' has been renamed to “Les Aubrils Farm” - this is a more thematic name for the region that we have captured
• The capture point “Farm of Bonvoisin” has been renamed to “Le Ferme Du Deschamps” - this is a more thematic name for the region that we have captured
• The capture point Southern Approach has received a cover pass

In addition, the Level Design and Environment Art team have been working on adding upper floors to the ruined buildings in the town. This creates additional opportunities and strategies for players to utilize the buildings more efficiently.

Carl Rutter, Senior Level Designer - Expression Games

For the Control Skirmish mode of Mortain, we decided on making the La Petite Chapelle Saint-Michel the active capture point to fight over. Not only does this sit well within the centre of the map to provide a balanced experience for both forces, but we also feel that it is the strongest capture point in tone and theme.

Mortain has the same rules as the other Control Skirmish maps, with 2 transport trucks, a medium tank and 2 sets of pre-placed nodes per force that allow players to jump straight into the action.

Carl Rutter, Senior Level Designer - Expression Games

Thanks to the feedback provided by various community members, time was taken to adjust and iterate on the Southern Approach capture point. The focus of this was to address the lack of clarity on what was being fought over, along with a general lack of cover.

To tackle this, we increased the overall defences in the area to help sell the ‘defence in depth’ theme of the capture point, along with adjusting the location and size of the hard capture area itself. These defensive improvements consisted of an increase to the trenches in the area, a pillbox, a supporting barbed wire ring around the point and the narrative addition of a fight already taking place here between armour units.

Kienan Southern, Junior Level Designer - Expression Games

To coincide with the release of a Control Skirmish mode for Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, we looked into issues commonly brought up about the map as a whole across various community forums. Keeping in mind that the map is a fan favourite we chose to focus solely on the most impactful changes, those being to address the lack of enterable areas within the town and the inaccessible Brécourt Manor courtyard.

To this end, a lot of time was put into opening up new routes and buildings within the town centre. Opening these areas should allow for a more 360-degree approach to the capture point, reducing bottlenecks for players moving towards the church and providing more safe havens for outposts and defensive/aggressive garrisons.

The addition of new enterable buildings also allows for more close-quarter gunfights, as well as vantage points for machine gunners to aid their squad's approach through the streets.

Kienan Southern, Junior Level Designer - Expression Games

The set-up for this Control Skirmish mode is focused around the Cattlesheds capture point from Warfare and Offensive, allowing us to capture a nice balance of spaces that should make both infantry and vehicle combat intense.

The bocages surrounding the Cattlesheds provide cover and routes into the capture point and the space within it provides engineers ample opportunity to bolster your team’s defences.

For tanks, the nearby open fields afford the space to bombard the opposition from a distance, or to act as support for the infantry pushing the objective.

Kienan Southern, Junior Level Designer - Expression Games