Published on PlayStation.Blog on Tuesday, June 24, Valiant Hearts: The Great War developer Ubisoft Montpellier’s game and level designer Simon Chocquet-Bottani took a moment to reflect on the game’s development and how the studio went about building the homage to the Great War itself.
“ When we started making Valiant Hearts, ” Chocquet-Bottani began in his opening paragraph, “ we immediately knew what sort of feelings we wanted the game to evoke. That has been our guiding principle throughout the game development process. We tried to make a game that will captivate you and take you on an emotional journey. We also wanted to make sure we stayed true to history, so we built the basis of our story around real events and real places. ”
Later into the development process, Ubisoft soon recognised that there were many aspects of World War I that it wanted to talk about, and so the decision was made to create four main characters–each of which had their own experiences and interpretations of the war.
The game’s chosen aesthetic was decided on wanting to bring players through an emotional adventure, and so Ubisoft didn’t want to present the game in the classic black-and-white imagery you would expect from that time period. Ubisoft also didn’t want to point fingers showing who were strictly the bad guys and who were the good guys.
“ We didn’t want to portray the war like you’d usually find it, but rather tell the individual stories of a farmer, a student, a son, a daughter, and all of these families torn apart during The Great War, ” Chocquet-Bottani explained . “ From the beginning, we knew that Valiant Hearts was not going to be the typical action-shooter war game; we really wanted to move away from this idea of a war game to making a game about what happens to people during war. ”
“ In the end we are really happy with Valiant Hearts. The balance between gameplay, narration, and history was an interesting challenge for all of us, but thanks to our experience from a wide range of different game types, such as Rayman Origins , Rayman Legends , Beyond Good and Evil , King Kong , From Dust , Raving Rabbids , and others, we were able to create something unique and different, ” Chocquet-Bottani later concluded.
“ This balance allowed us not only to create a game with compelling gameplay, but also to give people a touching story, and even a World War One history lesson! We’re really looking forward to see how people will experience the game for themselves–it was made with a lot of passion and love! ” he added.
You can read Simon Chocquet-Bottani’s full recounting of the game’s development via the source link below. Valiant Hearts: The Great War is now available in the US for PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The game will release in Europe on Wednesday, June 25.
[ PlayStation.Blog ]