For this episode of Inside the Studio, we wanted to learn more about Assassin's Creed® Odyssey: Story Creator Mode! We turned to Anthony Straub, the associate producer on Story Creator Mode, to discover how the team came up with this idea and what went into creating this tool.
You can read an excerpt of his answers below, or listen to our full audio interview!
You can also find this episode on iTunes.
Could you tell us about Assassin's Creed Odyssey: Story Creator Mode?
Assassin's Creed Odyssey: Story Creator Mode is a free update that allows you to create your own stories. When we say stories, we mean a series of quests that each have their own objectives and dialogue. With this tool, which is based on the web, you can write dialogue with many of the characters from the game to tell your own story.
How did you come up with the idea of Story Creator Mode?
During development, we were looking to interact with our community in a different way than we did before. Since we changed how we tell stories with Assassin's Creed Odyssey, we thought that this new way to interact with our community could be about the stories themselves. That's why we explored the idea of letting you create your own story. We did some tests, and came up with this cool idea about a new feature where you can make a quest with branching dialogues and multiple endings.
Was this an idea that you guys had from the very beginning of the game, or one that developed later on? When did this conversation take place?
This idea came during development. Once we found a new way of telling stories within Assassin's Creed Odyssey and developed our own tools, the conversation became about making story creation accessible to the community. At first, we weren't sure it would be feasible technically. As we did some tests and worked on it, we quickly found that this could be a reality and it was something cool we could release.
It must have been really challenging to work on something like that. How did you tackle that?
We had two main challenges. The first was to make Story Creator Mode possible, because what we give to players is very similar to what we use internally to create our games. We can't offer our in-game engine to the public, so we had to find a way to create content that can run in the game externally from the game engine. The technical challenge was to make it possible without it being too restricting. We really wanted you to be able to tell the story you want to tell.
The second challenge was to make Story Creator Mode accessible. We wanted something that could reach the whole community – from someone who's interested in Assassin's Creed to someone who is curious about how games are made. We did a lot of work on user experience to find the perfect recipe and a result that we are proud of.
What are you most proud of about this feature?
I'm really proud of what we came up with. We offer the right set of tools and characters. You can select up to six objectives, and you can choose from almost all the characters you've seen in Assassin's Creed Odyssey. To be able to have something that deep and yet accessible is something I'm proud of, because it was a challenge that we weren't sure would be possible at times.
What are you most excited to see the community invent with this?
I'm excited to see the variety of stories that people will create. We did an early access and the stories they came up with were pretty different from one another. There were those who created very heavy narrative stories with a lot of dialogue, some that had dramatic stories not related to Assassin's Creed, some that had stories related to the series' lore, and some that were just funny stories. It was really cool to see how people interact with Story Content Creator. The possibilities are virtually endless and I'm very excited to see what the community will offer to us and all the other players.
Photo Mode, fan fiction, fan art... many people are very inspired by Assassin's Creed, and giving them one new way to express themselves and surprise us is very exciting.
This tool will also be interesting for someone curious about working in the game industry or learning how to build a game.
Absolutely. We based Story Creator Mode on our internal tools, so what you see is almost what we have internally, except more accessible and easier to use. If you learn how to use Story Creator Mode, you will learn how games are made and how they work. You will set up behaviors for NPCs, which our quest designers do, you will write dialogue, which our writers do, and you will place your quest in Greece, which is what our world designers do. This is a complete tool to learn and discover how video games are made nowadays.
We hope you enjoyed reading or listening to our interview with Anthony Straub about Assassin's Creed Odyssey: Story Creator Mode. Check out our previous interview with World Director Benjamin Hall! 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.
