We managed to talk with Silven Trottier, a technical producer Assassin’s Creed: Origins. We asked him about the regime of an interactive tour, remembered how the series changed, and touched on the details about the new project. So, this is what we learned ..
Kinematographic video with Gamescom 2017.
To school with a gamepad
– The other day showed a new “educational” mode of Discovery Tour. Tell us how you came to him?
Silven Trottier: When creating each part of Assassin’s Creed, we learn as much as possible about the world that we will plunge into, communicate with historians. The results of our research were usually stored in the Animus database – there you could read about historical events, places and key personalities. We always liked the idea, so we thought: why not this time turn the game world into a huge interactive encyclopedia?
In the new mode, you are studying the same location, but there are no conflicts in it: for guards and wild animals, byes becomes invisible, and they cannot attack it. However, you will not have to get bored: a regular quest will replace a new story that is more like a tour and holds a hero in the most interesting places. To start a trip, you need to approach the starting point where the intra -game navigator will pave the optimal route.
This regime should appeal to parents and children – they will be able to find out about the past in the game format.
In the new mode, nothing threatens the players. Now you can enjoy the landscapes that Ubisoft It turns out beautiful.
– The game will probably like teachers.
Silven Trottier: This is true! They inspired us. We received a lot of thanks from teachers who recorded their passage, then cut out moments with violence and showed the resulting material in the lessons. Who does not dream of teaching a story on a video game! Teachers also liked this – it is easier to captivate students with such an instrument. Yes, and we learned a lot of new things: take at least the technology of mummification.
– And how to enable the "educational" mode? It will be available from the very beginning, or it will need to be unlocked as you pass?
Silven Trottier: This is a separate regime. We will add this option with a free update, which will be released at the beginning of next year. The usual mechanics will not go anywhere: the regime is not related to the main story and is launched from the main menu.
All the cruelty from the "educational" regime was removed to look into the world of ancient Egypt.
To Diablo
– In your games, you deviate more and more from the plot and open more opportunities for studying the world. And now we have also processed the system of inventory, assigning the equipment of the characteristics in the spirit of Diablo, like a rarity and level. Do not think that this will prevent fans from surviving the same game experience? What are the advantages of the new system?
Silven Trottier: I don't think this will somehow affect. In order for players to experience the joy of the discoverer, we gave the players the maximum freedom of choice and added a classic quest regime, abandoning the concept of memory sequences.
We did the same with the combat system: now the player himself chooses the type of weapon that he likes. There are short bows and long, accurate at large distances, nimble knives and massive axes. From time to time, weapons will have to be changed, each quest requires unique preparation. So the example of Diablo is exactly what we strove for: the player will want to find an epic weapon, deeply hidden in the labyrinths of the pyramids, earn new points of abilities, and indeed longer linger in the game universe.
– By the way, you can build a pyramid? Or at least clean one of them?
Silven Trottier: Unfortunately, it will not work to participate in construction – two thousand years have passed since the construction of the last pyramid. But wander along narrow corridors, finding legendary weapons or entering a secret room – this is easily.
– Sounds like puzzles in the spirit of Tomb Raider.
Silven Trottier: We spied on something from them, but our game reminds of the adventures of Indiana Jones: there are a lot of snakes and other “pleasant” surprises here.
Who knows who we will meet in endless corridors of abandoned tombs?
From falcon to alligator
– __At, about animals. Bayek has a real talent for training: he can tame even a crocodile! This ability is open from the very beginning? We will compose the company more fierce and dangerous four -legged companions?
Silven Trottier: You open this ability in the skill tree. But how many steps are there, I do not know, this is a question for gamemeracies.
– How long animals accompany the player?
Silven Trottier: From what I saw, it seems that they are doomed to go after the assassin until their death. For example, if Bayek attacks the guard, the crocodile will immediately rush to protect the owner and may die. At the same time, each animal has a certain habitat – the same crocodiles will not accompany you through the entire desert. This world is very systemic, too many changes can lead to chaos.
– Or maybe our pet to bring from the pyramids the very legendary weapon that you talked about?
Silven Trottier: No, this is a prerogative Far Cry (laughs).
It would be possible to tame a poisonous scorpion!
About painful
– Tell us about the three largest problems that you have encountered during the development of Assassin’s Creed: Origins.
Silven Trottier: First of all, this is light. In Origins, we use completely new lighting technologies, and if we built them as before, they would occupy three Blu-ray discs … This is not counting the rest of the game. So we had to work hard and invent many ways to squeeze this information to the usual size without loss of data.
The second difficulty during the development concerned the seamless world. Egypt in our game is https://space-win-casino.co.uk/ huge, there are no additional downloads in it, as in the previous parts of Assassin’s Creed, and a lot of effort has gone to force all this huge system to work without problems.
Well, the third is the addition of procedural generation. This is also a new experience for the series, and we needed to find a balance: when to keep objects in a single closed system, and when we already need to run the simulation of life. Take the usual chair. There are hundreds and thousands in Origins. At the initial stage of development, everything is simple-you change something in one model, and all its copies receive the same changes. But at some point we pull a conditional switch, each item begins to live its own life, and then all the changes have to be made manually. If you do it too early, hundreds and thousands of human arms will go to the same corrections. On the other hand, one unnoticed bug can destroy the entire system if it spreads to all copies of this object. So here we had to sweat thoroughly.
The developers were tested more serious than Bayek's adventures.
– __ last question. Is there any fact about the game that you would like to talk about for a long time … But no one asked you about this?
Silven Trottier: Until recently, it was the announcement of Discovery Tour. But since we have already introduced it … We came up with something special only for the owners of the PC. I can’t say that exactly, but many fans have been waiting for this chip for a long time!
– __Zaitric! Well, now we are even more waiting for the release of Origins. Thank you for an interesting conversation and hope in the future to see you in Russia more than once again!