Saturday, October 21, 2017

Assassin's Creed Origins: how Ubisoft painstakingly recreated ancient Egypt

2:52 AM    
According to game director, Ashraf Ismail,

the uncertainties of the ancient setting have given the development team more opportunity to be creative and to define elements themselves, “but always with a foundation of research and credible history”, he says. The backbone of all content in the game is based on research and working with experts in the field. “We spent years researching,” he says. “We had Egyptologists on the team, and we have historians embedded with us on the floor. Sometimes it’s researching online, finding the people who know the time period well and just contacting them, asking them to help join us or help feed us information. A lot of the time it’s actually securing deals with universities. We try to grab as much information as possible.”
Historians and experts are involved in the creative process from the very beginning. “We have guys like Maxime who are part of the team, who are involved in the early concept discussions,” says Ismail. “They’re there when we’re talking about the narrative, they are always there to be a bit critical on the credibility side – it’s a back and forth that for us creates a happy medium where we can still create a pure fiction, but one grounded in history.”
As well as in-house historians Ubisoft has also amassed an impressive roster of academic advisors including Jean-Claude Golvin, the renowned French archaeologist, Egyptologist and historical illustrator who created 19 paintings for the game.