Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
I was a Quest Designer in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, a pivot from my previous role as a Level Designer. The reason for this was because I wanted to explore different design roles in the World Building process. While my job scope centered around Quest Design, my knowledge of Level Design helped me create more grounded quests and allowed me to iterate quickly as I was able to do a level design pass on them to convey my intentions or make alterations to suit the needs of the quest. This also meant that I had to collaborate with Narrative and Cinematic Designers, exposing me to another aspect of game development which I wouldn’t have had a chance to experience if I was a Level Designer.
Region Ownership • Quests • Other tasks
Region Ownership
I was the the owner of the side quests in the Messara region of Crete. The goal of side quests was to bring out the region’s unique flavor. We went with a theme of racial tensions and civil unrest, seeing how the region was at a major crossroads between Africa, Asia, and Europe. It also saw a lot of trade and with many bustling developing cities throughout history, people who seek to easily get rich and gain power. However, it is not all doom and gloom as we also had some happier moments with humorous quests and lighter themes.
The City of Kydonia
- Explored ways to push the quest system
- Level design of main city in Messara
While I had a hand in designing locations around Messara, I was highly involved in the design of Kydonia. This opportunity made me very familiar with its layout and gave me many ideas on how to best utilize it in quests.
The city had several quests in it but most notably, the Civil Unrest quest was one where I explored ways to push the quest system to see what it is capable of.
The final version of it involved giving 3 separate objectives that can be done in any order and resolved in different ways, each with different outcomes. It then culminated in a boss fight that had a different level of difficulty based on your earlier actions.
The City of Gortyn
- Leveraging on systemic features in handcrafted content
- Pushing for historical lore
A common feature in modern open-world games is the use of systemic features such as regions changing factions, randomly generated characters that fill a minor key character’s role, and procedurally generated enemy encounters.
For this quest, I wanted to leverage on the Nation Power feature by weaving handcrafted content between the systemic layers of the feature. The player would be well aware of how this feature works, but the handcrafted content will be an opportunity to explore different ways to tackle it.
This also leverages on the systemic content by adjusting the presence of guards based on the Nation’s Power, empowering the player with adjusting the difficulty.
I found this to be the perfect location for a quest about politicians usurping power as Gortyn is home to the Gortyn Code, an ancient wall that spelled out the legal code of the day. One aspect I enjoy exploring in the games I make is the incorporation of history and things from the real world as part of the lore.
Say That Again! quest
- Exploring ways to make Fetch quests interesting through humor
- Making Fetch quests less tedious and making the players feel smart
A problem many Quest Designers face in creating content for open world games is the dreaded ‘Fetch quest’. These are quests where the player is sent out to acquire an item or items as fillers in between the big budget and more complex quests. However, I believe that they can be more of a boon than a bane if they have the right set-up.
One way I tackled this is by injecting humor, making the entertainment value of the quest an intangible reward, thereby associating that quest with positive emotions. This was able to be done with the help of a good Narrative Designer who wrote the script for this encounter.
Another way I addressed this is by placing the items to collect in locations where the player are likely to have been to prior to starting this quest. Other than saving the player time from having to find the items, it makes the player feel smart as they can immediately turn in the items as they are likely to have collected them beforehand. While I was careful to not use this trick for every Fetch quest, using it sparingly gave me the chance to make the player feel like they gamed the system.
Flowers for the Dead quest
- Exploring ways to make Fetch quest more interesting through emotional encounters
- Rewarding players with nice vistas as they play the quest
Another avenue I explored to make Fetch quests more interesting is by appealing to the player’s sense of sympathy. I introduced an old man who needed the player’s help in fetching a flower which he is collecting in memory of his late wife.
The ‘Golden Path’ to the flower brings the player through a series of curated vistas exposing nice views of the region and teasing the player with places that they can explore. It culminates in a Viewpoint which they can interact with near the flower, revealing to them locations which they can explore later on, opening up more content to consume. The Narrative Designer and I also made the conscious decision to add lines that mentioned the neighboring region as a way to entice the player to explore it too.
The quest has a twist ending where the player finds out they’re too late. His daughter had caught up with him and was mourning over his corpse. While I was consciously making the choice to make this an emotional quest, I can’t tell for sure the impact of it until I saw comments online and from friends who felt the emotional impact of this quest.
The aim was to make the experience of doing this quest worthwhile beyond the obvious through intangible rewards like emotional impact and discovering nice vistas (for photo-ops) as well as something more tangible like being exposed to other content in the region.
Quests
While I didn’t work on the Level Design in the Mikkos questline, I was part of the team that worked on bringing this questline to life on an existing region. We collaborated with the Level Designers and Level Artists in Chengdu to help us in shaping the region to meet the quest needs. Here are some highlights of the quests that I worked on in the Mikkos questline.
School of Hard Knocks quest
- Exploring non-lethal arena-style asymmetrical fights
- Exploring with the Narrative Designer in having fun dialogue lines and choices
This was an interesting non-typical quest where the entire quest happens in a sham training school for aspiring Olympians. The player will fight an increasingly difficult group of students culminating in a fight with Euthymos, the school’s head, along with his best students.
While the quest reveals that Euthymos is a man with the strength and skills of an Olympian but not the backbone to match, the Narrative Designer and I brainstormed ideas on how to package it in a fun and interesting way through dialogue choices with him and his students as well as one liners that the player can hear as they play the quest. As a bonus, the dialogue choices the player makes can make Euthymos an ally in the climactic battle in this questline, giving him a satisfying character growth.
Doctor’s Pet quest
- Heavy collaboration with Chengdu
- Working on an established region
Seeing that we started working on these quests late in production, we had the challenge of having to plan around a well established region. This meant that changes should be kept minimal for reasons such as helping with the narrative or to improve framing.
This meant that we had to make decisions such as whether it would be cheaper and easier to adjust a location in the world or change a narrative beat in the quest. Usually it’s the latter and that meant that we have to get familiar with the region and find ways to creatively utilize it to best serve our needs.
Furthermore, seeing that the region owners are our partners in Chengdu, this meant that discussions had to be done remotely through email and Skype – this was way before working from home became the norm!
This experience was valuable in helping me experience communicating effectively with partner studios remotely and working on an established region, something which prove to be useful in the next game I work on.
Other tasks
- Assisted in onboarding of new joiners
- Wrote flavor text and being part of the team that brainstormed the narrative beats of the quests
Reach out!
You can contact me via email or LinkedIn.