Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
I pivoted back to Level Design after working on two games as a Quest Designer. Taking my experience in both Level and Quest Design, I was given the opportunity to work on content that leveraged on these two skills. I mostly worked in the Eurvicscire region in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. These are highlights of some features that I worked on.
Assault Gameplay • Sub-region Ownership • Locations • Other tasks
Assault Gameplay
I was the owner for the Assault gameplay in Eurvicscire, which is a unique feature in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. It required learning new tech created for it and working closely with stakeholders within the studio (Quest Designers, Level Artists, Programmers, etc) and in Sofia & Montreal.
Honor’s Hubris quest, Eurvicscire, England
- Owner for Assault gameplay segment of quest
- Level Design for Magnis Fortress and the areas around it
The Honor’s Hubris quest mainly takes place in and around Magnis Fortress. Being an Assault location, it added an additional layer of complexity as we had to ensure that Magnis Fortress adheres to Assault guidelines on top of the regular Military Location guidelines.
I explored non-conventional objectives and gameplay sequences such as lowering down ladders to grant the party access to the fortress and a twist where the player has to defend the newly acquired fortress.
During the defend phase, the player has to stop a seemingly endless wave of enemies from breaching the gates before they discover that a Pict Champion had been hiding from within the fortress with a small band of Picts, forcing the player to decide between taking on the Pict Champion or continue defending the gates.
Sub-region Ownership
I had the opportunity to be the co-owner of the Eurvicscire region and owner of the Hadrian’s Wall sub-region. Region and sub-region ownership entailed defining the area’s overall layout and how the different elements make up the area’s ecosystem. Duties include defining wildlife distribution, making sense of the location of settlements, and overseeing fellow designers working on the locations within it. While a region is made up of several sub-regions, the collaborative nature of how we work meant that the main difference between the two is the magnitude of the game world that we were assigned.
Hadrian’s Wall sub-region, Eurvicscire, England
- Owner of Hadrian’s Wall sub-region
- Owner of ‘Is There Anybody Out There?’ Achievement
My responsibilities include aligning direction with the Level Designers working in the sub-region, planning the region’s ecosystem, and collaborating with local and international stakeholders to realize the goals.
A unique feature we had for this sub-region is that it has a mini-game where the player can get an Achievement by lighting up a series of braziers along Hadrian’s Wall with the sub-region’s narrative being driven through environmental storytelling and letters you can read along the way.
As a whole, the main challenge for this sub-region was to keep the player’s experience fresh and enjoyable as they explore the length of Hadrian’s Wall.
Fun Fact: The Achievement is a reference to a song in Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ album.
Locations
Working on locations is the bread and butter of a Level Designer. I had the opportunity to work on a variety of locations from complex Military Locations that could support Assault gameplay and multiple state changes, to simple exploratory ones with nothing more than a few chests to loot. The direction we had was to offer an environmental puzzle for every location before the player could access the most valuable loot in the location. That was a fun exercise in creatively finding ways to create fresh experiences with the ingredients we had.
Stenwege Camp, Eurvicscire, England
- Support quest needs, with it changing states over the entire Eurvicscire questline
- Support Galan Boss Fight arena in core of location during Honor Has Two Edges quest
- Create a Military Location that depicts a strong Pict flavor unique to the region
Stenwege Camp is the largest location with a predominantly Pict flavor in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. The process of creating the location from ideation to the final product led us to doing extensive research on the Picts, their culture, architecture, and finding ways to incorporate them into the game.
The environmental puzzle for this location featured a multi-layered fortification before the player can collect the location’s best loot or face the boss. However, we also intentionally created some not-so-obvious gaps in the security, allowing observant players to bypass it.
Other than the location related tasks, I was involved in the asset creation process with the ObjectBank team. I helped drive some of the architectural assets for the faction, most notably the crannogs (round wooden houses on stilts) and brochs (round stone towers), which were also used in several other locations in the northern regions of England.
Petuaria Ruins, Eurvicscire, England
- Create a suitable puzzle challenge for the Poisonous Powder Trap Book of Knowledge
- Set-up location to accommodate for quest needs in the Road to Hamartia quest
The vision we had with this location is a semi-sunken ruins of a Roman bathhouse with 4 layers of gameplay from above ground, ground, underground, and underwater.
This is weaved in with the Road to Hamartia quest where the player has to do an investigation here with Halfdan, a key NPC in Eurvicscire. The location is also used to help drive a key narrative point in the questline through environmental storytelling.
Temple of Brigantia, Eurvicscire, England
- Create a unique puzzle challenge for a sunken temple by a river
- Set-up location to accommodate for quest needs in the Road to Hamartia quest
Like Petuaria Ruins, Temple of Brigantia was also a location that the player visits during the Road to Hamartia quest, although used to a much lesser degree. The direction I took with this location is to have the Roman temple being partially sunken as I imagined the river near it expanding and eventually engulfing part of it over time.
To me, the puzzle challenge for this location seems pretty obvious that it has to have a water element to it. What I did was to place the most valuable loot at a spot where the player has to be fast, ignore their fear of drowning, and swim through dark tunnels in the underbelly of the temple. I balanced it so that the player is able to complete it at a point where they’re very close to drowning, but still able to do so without losing health.
My intention was to play on the player’s fear in a similar way they might feel when they’re starting to lose a fight, but without giving them the means to escape other than to continue swimming forward.
Cnuic Fhada Ruins, Eurvicscire, England
- Create a unique puzzle challenge for a small Point of Interest
In contrast to the big budget, highly collaborative locations that I mentioned above, Cnuic Fhada is one location where I was able to play around and create a small location with less cross-department dependencies.
I wanted to use the environment to tell a tragic story of a family fleeing a nearby farm during a Pict raid. I imagined them hiding in the Cnuic Fhada ruins where they had used it as a safehouse to stash their wealth.
Unfortunately, they were attacked by a pack of wolves and the player only learns of all this through a note they left for their son and discovering the loot hidden in the location. Of course, the loot is behind a puzzle challenge.
Other tasks
- Conducted weekly reviews with the Level Design team
- Assisted in onboarding and mentoring of new joiners
Reach out!
You can contact me via email or LinkedIn.