Hugo Giard, Game Director on The Fate of Atlantis, walks us through what it's like to work on a DLC.
For this episode of Inside the Studio, we talk about creating mythological worlds and how working on the DLC gave the team their chance to add Cerberos, the three-headed dog, to Assassin's Creed® Odyssey.
You can read an excerpt of his answers below, or listen to the full audio interview!
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You can also find this episode on iTunes.
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background working on The Fate of Atlantis?
I've been with Ubisoft since about 2005, and I've worked on Assassin's Creed since 2010. I was Quest Director on Assassin's Creed Odyssey and now I'm the Game Director on The Fate of Atlantis.
How is it being the Game Director of The Fate of Atlantis?
Working on The Fate of Atlantis has been a tremendous amount of fun. We often work within realism and historical accuracy when it comes to Assassin's Creed, and in The Fate of Atlantis, we are talking about stories that have to do with gods, monsters, and myths. Exploring the non-traditional elements of Assassin's Creed has been a lot of fun for me and the team.
How was it different working on The Fate of Atlantis as opposed to working on Assassin's Creed Odyssey?
It's relatively the same process in terms of how you're going to build the game. But for The Fate of Atlantis, we were not limited to keeping both feet on the ground. We could create worlds that were fantastic and could never exist, and that was the huge difference with Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
The great thing about building a DLC is that your toolset is already done. Everything you need to build a game should be available, and all you have to do now is populate it with content. You build your world, your architecture, and then you build your stories, and your quests. A DLC allows us to focus specifically on the content.
How did you decide the direction you wanted to go for the DLC?
With The Fate of Atlantis, we knew we wanted to make sure each episode had its own world. We needed to get players somewhere new and exciting to explore. These new worlds came with a bunch of research that inspired us to tell new stories and create new gameplay challenges.
What kind of research went into creating a more mythological world?
It's strangely similar to when we're trying to be realistic in the sense that we start with a normal Google search. We then involve our historian, Stephanie, who's been studying ancient Greece and their stories for years. She had a huge part to play when we were trying to discover the locations inside of Atlantis. In Episode 2, Torment of Hades, Stephanie pointed out small locations that exist within the myths.
What was the most fun you had exploring these mythologies?
The most fun I had was building the stories for Episode 3, Judgment of Atlantis. These stories are a culmination of all the work we did on Assassin's Creed Odyssey and the second DLC in terms of how we built our stories and our quests, and what kinds of choices we put in front of our players. We managed to build Judgment of Atlantis to be a fitting conclusion to the design work we did for storytelling. I had an absolute blast working on that. Much of the team was enthused with building the fantastic worlds because we're so used to building realistic worlds. From a creative perspective, that was incredibly rewarding.
There was already mythology present in Assassin's Creed Odyssey. What was it like to explore these topics more in depth?
We knew that in this fantastic world, myths and mythical creatures were going to be an important part. We got really lucky because there was one creature we wanted to put in the main game and never had a chance to: Cerberos, the three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades. He was cut pretty early on, but the concept art was there, and the animators already had a plan of what they were going to do. When we knew we were going to Hades, we knew this would be our chance to make Cerberos happen. That's what only a DLC will allow us to do, and it's a lot of fun.
What are you most proud of having accomplished with The Fate of Atlantis?
The team has given a lot of content with these three episodes and post-launch. We worked hard to push everything forward, whether it was with systems, quest design, or narrative design. There's a little something for everybody in there.
We hope you enjoyed reading or listening to our interview with Hugo Giard about The Fate of Atlantis DLC. Check out our previous interview with Anthony Straub about Assassin's Creed Odyssey Story Creator Mode ! We'd love to hear your thoughts – whether it's about topics or guests you'd like for us to explore down the road. Join the discussion with our community on the official forums or reach us on Twitter with #ACInsidetheStudio.
