.png.f2ef893445674bbb37440938e93c45c3.png)
.thumb.png.ea12d62fcb43a79b1d7a7a4664107cbc.png)
© Youtube/Ubisoft
(Interview was conducted before we started playing the review copy of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla)
1. I want to start off with something more personal. You know, we've spoken how Valhalla is introducing new experiences in the game with the new settlements mechanic, a raiding system, and some of the experiences we may not know. Which is your favourite thing to do in the game as I haven't started it yet?
Well, that's a good question. I've played the game a lot, obviously, in the past and in the past years. I've seen it evolve. And it's a super difficult question to answer because, for me, I'll tell you two things. I really love the way the settlement system came together. I think it's really cool. I'm, you know, I'm really into player progression and you know, clear expression and kind of customise my experience. I really love this is the sort of the art flavour of RPG will bring to the table. I think that the settlement system is that but applied to a village. And it's just really cool to meet those new NPCs, those new buildings see your village, your clan progress through your adventure. So that's, that's really cool. But maybe it’s something that person won't notice. But I'd be surprised if players say okay, I really like this part of it. But we've put a lot of effort into exploration. So when you play the game, either using your Raven with the beams of light and the way we've crafted the world, we really want to trigger the curiosity of players. And for me that that works really well. Because when I play the game, I have those moments where even if it's a game I worked on, you know, for every single day of the past three years, there were some moments where I could just explore the world, have fun, and discover new things. And you know, obviously for me, it was seeing the world progress. But for players that will be like, okay, there's this house over there and I'm curious, I'm going to go explore it while I see there's treasure underneath. So how do I get there? And you get in this sort of dialogue with the game, which is really cool. It creates moments where you can live your adventure at your own pace and discover things at your own pace, almost contemplative at some point. I think the game creates a very good balance with a very intense moment of fighting and that sort of stuff. So for me, that's something that I really like about the game as well.
© Ubisoft
2. In a recent interview, it was mentioned that there were over 14 Studios involved in the development of the project. And of course, COVID-19 has affected the flow of production of almost everything. And that includes games as well. How hard was it to get the game ready for launch? Especially when everyone is working from home? And this is a two-part question, were any of the Indian studios involved with the production process of the game as well?
So I think we can honestly say that, this is not 2020 we were expecting for sure, I was not expecting to be you know, to be talking about the game on discord. And events, you know, we're used to having those physical events. So obviously, that kind of changed the whole world & the whole way we're working but quite honestly, this format works really well as well. I don't know about you, but like, I'm at the office now, you know, I do my interviews, after I'm done with that, I can go back to my desk and continue doing stuff. So you lose a bit of intensity at that moment, but it's very efficient. We were fortunate enough to be in the last moments of our production when COVID hit in Montreal and, and the rest of the world. And we also have a studio in Singapore, who were actually hit before us. So we learned a lot from them. And we could see the impact and so on. So we kind of adapted to that. Since we are working with technology where you know, you're as efficient from home as we would from the office because we're working with software. So it's just an adaptation in terms of communication and so on. But because we are collaborating with so many studios, in a way, we were already working in a distributed context, you know, a lot of our processes had to be able to scale based on remote sites, so now we just multiply the amounts of sites that we have. Instead of being countries, it's streets and addresses, but they are still remote sites, you know, so we relied on the stuff that we put in place before COVID started. To answer the second part of your question about the involvement of Indian studios. So, we are working with the Pune Studio, in India. We basically have a lot of testing and our two main studios for testing are in Bucharest and Pune. So we have a lot of testers in Pune actually who are playing the game every day, sending feedback, finding bugs, and just helping us achieve overall quality on the game by just making sure that the game is solid. We have actually pretty solid testing practices that will go throughout the years. It's just cool to see that that skill set is being developed in Pune, working in collaboration with us.
3. I mentioned earlier in our conversation before, right after the COVID lockdown, in Odyssey I was able to learn a lot about Greek culture. And there was a feature called ‘Discovery Tour’ for people who don't necessarily own the game, but they could still learn about the setting, and learn history as well. Can we expect something similar for Valhalla, as well, where players can go explore the world and kind of have a virtual tour, especially in this COVID era where we can’t travel? Would it be relevant for you to add that feature?
So, when we designed this game, obviously we did our research, we talked with experts, we took our history very seriously. And what's great I think about the Viking era is that there is a lot to be told that is kind of difficult to find in terms of historical documentation, we really had to rely on experts. But there's a lot of research, but because of the oral tradition, the research was actually more complicated. So obviously, we did all our research. But there's something about the immersiveness to be said on almost a personal level, you know. What were the motivations behind the Vikings? So there's a lot of cool elements that we have yet to talk about. As for the discovery tour, stay tuned on that front. We'll update on that topic later on. But as of today, we don't have anything to announce on the Discovery tour so far.
© Ubisoft
4. I'm going to ask the same question I asked Thierry (Stay tuned for our second interview) about the Norse people. The Norse in popular media have mostly been depicted as barbaric and violent in TV Shows and other forms of media. We know that's not entirely true, because there's a human side to that culture as well. Could we expect to see a different side of that culture apart from the stereotypical depictions in popular media? How has the development team translated Viking subtleties into the gameplay, story and the world of Valhalla?
Actually, it's a great question. It's a great question because it's exactly what we're trying to achieve with this game. Vikings, in popular culture, are depicted as mindless barbarians just out for blood basically. And it's because historically, their story has been mostly written by Saxons, who were actually the ones being invaded. So obviously they didn't have nice things to say about Vikings. I'm not saying that you know, the Vikings were the good guys and the Saxons were bad or vice versa. What I'm saying is that there is always motivation behind someone's actions. I think when you're saying that we're trying to kind of show the human side behind this culture and understand their motivations, why they were raiding in England and what led them to this? Well, first of all, it's because, you know, you have to go back to Norway to understand, and you know, Norway is not a friendly place to live in, you know, there's not that much room, you can’t really grow crops easily. And on top of it there was political pressure from a king in Norway trying to unify things in his own way, to say, you know, it's either my way or you're out, so a lot of Vikings would have had to leave their homes to find new places to prosper. They were the masters at sea in terms of navigation, and the shores of England were reachable by them as it took three to five days to reach by boat. For them, it was completely achievable. And when they got to England, the contrast with Norway was just so strong, you know, they could grow crops endlessly, and they could have all that space in the world that they wanted. So, obviously, they wanted to be there and take control of this land. Since they had harsh land in Scandinavia, they just forged a really militaristic culture, they just invaded England and just started to take land and so on. So that's the sort of story that we want to tell in order to kind of show both from the Saxon and Viking side. We wanted to show what were the realities, and you find that it's not really either completely black or completely white, you know, there are many shades of colours in there. And that's what we've tried to depict in this game.
5. It was mentioned that Vikings would expand their territories and would explore a lot of the areas in England. And from what I've seen so far, even the game, has a huge focus on exploration. What are some new things that players can expect when they're exploring the world? Anything that could surprise them? I also read that you don't entirely tell the player everything, even when they are exploring with their raven. So can people expect something different from, let's say, Odyssey and Origin?
So let's start with movement, for example. So you now have a longboat, which you can customise the way you want. Your crew is also on that boat and it is one of your main means of transportation in this game. So exploring the world from the perspective of the rivers will give a very, fresh take on playing an Assassin's Creed game, that's for sure. Because your Longboat gives you an element of strategy since you can use your longboat to attach locations along the shores of rivers. You can also use your longboat for support, let’s say you need support if you are attacked by bandits on the shores, your crew will either disembark or shoot arrows to help you out in the fight. So this definitely brings a fresh take on exploration. And then there's this thing that we're trying to convey, which is that the Vikings were also master explorers. So obviously, we want you to feel a bit like an explorer yourself. The Raven that you mentioned is a very good example of it. It's basically your best friend for exploration, as you survey the land, you will see beams of light. We wanted to achieve a delicate balance where players can generally understand what sort of reward they will get if they venture into those beams of light. However, the game will not tell you what exactly it is. So this is where the beam of light kind of teases the player and caters to their inner curiosity. For us, this was a tool to give variety as well because we wanted players to discover something that feels fresh. It could either have a small puzzle level design that we've put together or maybe a special fight or maybe a special location that we've built, we wanted it to always come as a surprise. After 50,60, or 70 hours of game time, we wanted players to still feel like explorers by discovering new surprises in this game that would kind of trigger that inner curiosity a player has.
View the full article
- Read more...
- 0 comments
- 231 views