00:03On previous Ninja Theory games, we've had around 20 artists and designers working in partnership
00:08to create the game world, but given that Hellblade has such a small budget, our game world building
00:13team consists of just one person. With such limited resources, but a steadfast commitment
00:18to quality, our approach to creating the world has to be radically different.
00:26Viking lore is vast and richly detailed, and everyone's heard of Thor and Valhalla, but
00:32we were attracted to a different part of the Viking underworld, a place called the Land
00:37of Mist and Fog, in which sits the Hall of the Dead, Helheim.
00:43The starting point for the game world on our previous titles has always been the script.
00:48Designers would plan the levels and the gameplay around the action and locations in the story.
00:53Artists would then model and texture the levels, before cutscenes, animations, lighting and
00:58effects would be added afterwards. The standard way of doing things isn't going
01:03to work on Hellblade, because our world building team consists of just Dan, our principal environment
01:07artist. Dan will create the world, and then the gameplay, design, story and art will have
01:13to fit around what he is able to create.
01:16I wanted Dan to be able to start building the world without having to wait for gameplay
01:20systems like combat to become ready. So I suggested to him that what we should aim to do is to
01:26build
01:26a world so rich, interesting and haunting that a player could lose themselves for hours just
01:31exploring the world without having to rely on those kinds of gameplay systems.
01:35We're not making a game where all you do is walk around for hours without any combat. But
01:40by saying that in theory it should be possible, Tamim has given the art team the power and
01:45the freedom to create a world without having to depend on gameplay designers.
01:51For story reasons, we wanted to take the Viking symbol that we used in our teaser and incorporate
01:56it into the landscape.
02:05We researched a lot of Nordic terrain, but also the Greek island called Santorini, which
02:10is an active volcanic caldera. So I began exploring various aerial maps which used land and water
02:17as positive and negative space.
02:19You could even have beaches and things on this side maybe.
02:22So we picked one that had a good mix of natural and man-made elements. After refining it a little
02:27further I passed it over to Dan and he quickly just stamped it into the unreal terrain so we could
02:32run around the area and get a feel for its size.
02:40So to get a sense of realism into the map, we started looking at parts of the Nordic fjords
02:46and from here when we found areas that we liked, we took the satellite data and then brought
02:53that into Unreal and then used it with the terrain tool to make what you can see here.
03:02The size and scale of the map was looking great and now it was time to think about locations
03:07within it. We needed to explore the details, work out what it was themed on and the style
03:12of each area. So we pulled together a lot of reference on Pinterest and ultimately created
03:16a lot of style sheets which explored it in a lot more detail.
03:20So the next thing to do was to scout around the locations. We knew that we wanted to have
03:27the central area to be the most prominent and viewable from everywhere. That way the player
03:33would be able to keep a sense of orientation. So we picked out some different areas, raised
03:41and lowered the mountains accordingly and ended up with something like this.
03:49The scale of the world is now comparable to our previous AAA games, but given that Dan
03:54is our only environment artist, we have to find a way for him to create lots of content.
03:58We explored using kit parts and procedural systems on earlier projects like Razer.
04:10Now we want to take this forward onto Hellblaze. So the ultimate goal is to have about 95%
04:17of our assets to be reusable. This Unreal demo is quite a good example of how you can get
04:23away with a very small amount of assets.
04:29I had an idea for the Centre Citadel, which was to theme it on a storm-battered Viking ship.
04:33I tried to find some rocks that had an indication of something that felt like the hull of a Viking
04:38ship.
04:39And so with a combination of the rock being carved into and getting a lot more pattern in there,
04:46it's going to feel very solid and grounded, but still give you the shape that we require.
04:59In reality, Vikings were mostly farmers and they didn't create the kind of big, huge structures
05:04and temples that we would want. But since the game is set in the mythical underworld of Hellhang,
05:09this gives us artistic license to create something that's hugely oppressive, massive in scale,
05:18and something that feels daunting to the player as you approach and explore it.
05:34We're at the very beginning of the prototype phase of the project.
05:38Development at this stage is highly experimental and focused on answering the questions
05:41that we don't yet know the answers to. Such as how do we build a world to this scale
05:46but keep it diverse and interesting? How does the player move around in this world
05:50and how open is the world? We'll be finding the answers to these questions over the next few weeks.
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