Bigger than Ben Hur: How scriptwriters tackle a truly epic game

THE writers on the latest Assassin’s Creed game had a herculean task: writing a game with more dialogue than one of the great classics. Here’s how they did it.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey game will launch on October 5.

WE AS gaming enthusiasts often talk about the latest ‘epic’ game — usually huge in scope, but occasionally also epic in the classical sense of the word, involving mythology, battles and maybe even actual Gods involved somewhere along the line.

This year has already been kind to us on that front, with the superb God Of War for PlayStation 4 released earlier this year, but now Ubisoft is set to scale Olympian heights with its latest game.

Now Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, is set to launch on October 5 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

The latest entry certainly subscribes to the company’s acclaimed approach to allow players to “do parkour and stab people throughout history”.

Aerial view of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey surroundings

The Assassin’s Creed series is being billed as marking the transition from a linear adventure to a fully fledged RPG, with a group of games journalists invited to try out a prerelease version of the game in Sydney last week to see for themselves.

The series is known for its attention to historical detail and huge scale, but the latest entry goes into new territory with three principal story arcs, conversation choices, a massive world map, and a much more open approach to tackling the game.

Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey launches on October 5.

The series is known for its attention to historical detail.

My impressions from the preview were positive, with rewarding combat, accessible controls and plenty to explore and discover — not to mention good writing.

Ubisoft Quebec scriptwriter Dan Bingham said the game had more than 30 hours of dialogue in it, making it longer than its original namesake.

“We literally have more lines of dialogue in the game than there are in The Odyssey,” he said.

So, how do you go about writing the script for a game with more dialogue than one of the most famous epics of all time?

“Basically, I like to compare it to how a TV series would be written over a whole season,” Mr Bingham said, with “showrunners” charting the major plot points and the writers handling the details.

“We broke it into episodes — certain writers became attached to certain characters and quests,” he said.

Fight like the Greeks did in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey.

While the game is graphically bright, the plot has some very dark elements, but there is plenty of humour and light-spiritedness in the game, including from the main character (Alexios or Kassandra, depending on the player’s choice).

“We modelled the story after a Greek tragedy, but the Greeks were also famous for their comedy,” Mr Bingham said. “We wanted to capture that too.”

Being a game for mature audiences, there’s a lot of swearing in it — although obviously the Greeks had very different expletives to us, so the developers had to walk a line between creating an immersive historical setting while still ensuring players got the full impact of the dialogue too.

“We had a lot of Greek curse words in the game but had to scale it back and use more modern ones,” Mr Bingham said.

He also said the dialogue for both Alexios (male) and Kassandra (female) playable characters is identical, with only differences in inflection and delivery — so players aren’t missing out on any content by choosing one over the other.

In a first for the series, players also have choices to make during conversations.

For instance, in one early mission, I was collecting a debt from a merchant, and was given the option of breaking some of his stuff as a “motivator” to get him to pay up, or letting the debt slide … this time. I decided to let the debt slide and was rewarded with a sword from the merchant as a way to square things up.

Had I taken the, “Nice pottery; it’d be a shame if someone was to accidentally and repeatedly knock it all over with a large shield” approach, it would have turned out differently.

This sort of thing features throughout the game, with players having different ways to deal with issues they encounter — and not knowing if a decision they make now might have repercussions much later down the track.

“There are no right or wrong choices — but they all have consequences,” Mr Bingham said.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is being released for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on October 5; a full review will be forthcoming.

Royce Wilson attended the Sydney press event as a guest of Ubisoft.