In Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, you can fight in large-scale beach battles, jump into the water from the highest cliff in the Peloponnese, or form a fierce battleship. Although some of these functions are brand new and some are content that has been found in past games, they are also products in this game in ancient Greek context. The Greece in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is completely different from the settings in the series' history. This team formed by game world director Ben Hall and artistic director Thierry Dansereau makes the game world full of entertainment.
First, the team carefully studied the mainstream of ancient Greece, focusing on movies and video games in the region. While there are many forms of media centered around Greece, no one has been able to reach the heights of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: at a historic critical moment (the Peloponnese War), establishing a profound and fulfilling world that keeps players engaged and gives players the right to choose so that they can explore every inch of land. To fully understand the world they are trying to create, developers need to see Greece firsthand.
When visiting Greece today and trying to rebuild it 2,500 years ago, there is a problem that almost all the traces of that era have been erased. The team quickly realized that if they wanted to set the right world, they needed the help of experts. Fortunately, they met Dr. Stéphanie-Anne Ruatta during their first exploration trip to Greece. Dr. Ruatta has a PhD in Classical Languages and Literature and can understand ancient Greek. She is the expert needed by the development team. In fact, she was very precious to the development team, and she soon became an historian within the team and was fully involved in the project. With Dr. Ruatta's knowledge and connections, the development team conducted three exploration trips to Greece, visiting as many places as possible to ensure that their gaming world is more realistic. In the end, the exploration journey also confirmed its importance. It not only told the team what Greece is like, but also what Greece should not be like.
Hall: "After reviewing all the videos we collected and a lot of cool movies, we found that Greece is usually cloudy. It loses saturation, becomes monotonous, droughty and flat. This is not what we experienced when we went to Greece." Instead, what Hall and Dansereau found was a colorful, vibrant country with a variety of natural landscapes. And in fact, their research shows that ancient Greece was more colorful than the countries at that time.
Dansereau said: "Until recently, most people thought (Ancient Greece) everything was white in architecture, statues and pottery. But according to archaeologists, almost everything was found to contain pigments. It is good for us to use this knowledge, and we need to add color to almost all artificial buildings.color. This gives us a unique opportunity to reconstruct ancient Greece more accurately because it existed 2500 years ago and the bright colors helped to provide details and depth to the sculpture. ”
Coloring man-made buildings and monuments gave Nguyen the opposite of its "much-needed" color, but it also helped reveal why the ancient Greeks liked to be the first to paint. When carved in white marble, it is difficult to see the artistic nature of the bas-relief; and when they are placed on the exterior walls of the temples for dozens of meters, it is almost impossible to see clearly from a distance. By coloring buildings and sculptures, the ancient Greeks added the necessary color contrast, which made their creation clearer, and the team at Assassin's Creed Odyssey was able to take advantage of this. While this knowledge provides an excellent opportunity for Dansereau’s team, Hall’s team, meanwhile, faces challenges from the unique terrain of Greece.
Hall said: "The first thing that creative director Jonathan Dumont said to me when he came back was, 'Ben, you have to look at the world, its terrain is so crazy, you'll be shocked.' And it's true. I remember sitting in Sparta and looking at the Tigertes Mountains thinking, how do we restore it in the game? At the same time, we can't get tired of the players. If the player wants to climb a mountain, of course. Players can go anywhere he sees, but the process can't take too long or boring, which is definitely one of the biggest challenges we face.
Once the team has completed all the trips, they will provide all the information they have collected about building the game world. So they did all the good game world designers, or what historians would do - they drew a map! Through layered information on the ancient Greek map, the team was able to determine the regional distribution of the seven different biomes of Assassin's Creed Odyssey on the map. However, for a game map as large as Assassin's Creed Odyssey, the seven biomes don't necessarily make each map distinct enough.
"We created subbiomes to ensure as much visual diversity as possible in the game. We created snow-capped mountains, swamps, farms and burnt forests." While subbiomes do increase the visual diversity of the game, and each area has its own characteristics, they are still created based on history and research.Hall said: "We want to use this information to try and know what is going to happen. For example, the Arcadia region of the Peloponnese Peninsula occupies most of the central region. It is known for its wheat fields and is known as the "Bread Basket of the Peloponnese". It is also true in reality, and it does play such a role in history. Then we can easily say that we use this theme for the Arcadia region. When you enter the city, you see vendor transactions and diverse movementsThings. Therefore, based on the different topics we have studied earlier, we have given different regions of the world their own style.
While each region has its own visual image, they need not only buildings, but realism. To this end, the team has created over 4,000 unique props in the world, including clay jars, fruit baskets, ropes, furniture, tents, boxes, and more – almost all the artificial objects in the world. Although there are so many props, it is almost impossible to create a dense city and market in ancient Greece, it is very possible to place them one by one by one by one. To address this time-consuming challenge, the team decided to build individual parts that were already full of props, such as tables with pottery and jewelry, or baskets with produce. These individual pieces can be mixed and matched, and can be combined to form a unique market stall without the need to place props separately. The team called this design system the "Lego suite" because its various components can be combined in a variety of ways.
These components are also suitable for statues, allowing the team to mix and match body parts and heads, which created over 1,000 individual statues, as well as 120 unique statues all over the game world. The team can even use this technology to build many of the underground caves in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and the final process is very intuitive, and even people without design experience can build a cave or statue through the component.
Creating ancient Greece through historical research, the team ensures the authenticity of the game world. However, their goal is never to rebuild ancient Greece, their goal is to make a fun game. This means the birth of a brand new game mechanic and the return of retro game mechanics. For example, there are many tall mountains and steep cliffs in the game, and the risk of falling may cause the journey to be slowed down. Therefore, the team decided to set the fall damage not to die, allowing players to jump from the towering peaks at will.
The mountains are not the only natural feature that brings the core game experience. Greece is composed of many islands, which means 60% of the game map is covered with water. If the team intends to create the seamless open world yarn they envisioned at the beginning, they have to realize that they need to allow players to fly from one end of the map to the other. Of course, this means the return of naval warfare, which is also completely in line with the general background of the wartime at that time.
When it comes to war, the time period set by Assassin's Creed Odyssey means that players will visit Greece during the Peloponnese War. Given the constant conflict between Athens and Sparta during this period, the team was inspired to create unprecedented wars, which also led to the birth of the war of conquest. Greece's vast scenery and beautiful beaches are a natural place for large-scale battles with hundreds of NPCs, and players can participate in the battle as secret weapons of the army they support. This feature provides a brand new gaming experience, as if it was in ancient Greece of that time.
《Assassin's Creed: Odyssey》The product of more than three years of hard work, and it eventually became a game featuring the rich and meticulous entertainment activities of ancient Greece. The development team is proud of the end result, and also understands the value of the development process and the epic of the game they created.
Dansereau said: "After all, this is not the end result we want, it's just a journey. We are the creators of the world, so no matter what the project is, we will create a world in some way. Our goal is to have fun while creating those worlds. I think the focus of the whole work is to enjoy your daily life. It doesn't mean it's coming to the end. In fact, it's even more proud to do it with friends.
