Big Squid is aware of a factor or two about immaculate vibes. The studio focuses on crafting huge, soothing worlds which can be excellent areas for getting misplaced. Sword of the Sea is the most recent visually gorgeous indie journey from the studio behind ABZÛ and The Pathless. It was co-founded by Journey inventive director Matt Nava, who serves as artistic director, and the DNA of each Journey and Big Squid’s earlier titles could be discovered throughout Sword of the Sea’s huge landscapes and seascapes.
Talking over video chat, Nava gave Polygon a more in-depth have a look at the sport’s growth, the significance of getting the motion excellent, and its connections to each ABZÛ and The Pathless.
“Yeah, [Sword of the Sea] is totally is said [to ABZÛ],” Nava says. “Most importantly, by way of its visible design. It is an evolution of the concepts that I used to be exploring in [ABZÛ]. All of my video games are iterations on the identical sort of thought of visible design, in addition to recreation design.”
Home fashion
ABZÛ and Sword of the Sea do not simply look alike — they happen in the identical universe, as does Big Squid’s earlier title, The Pathless. Whereas ABZÛ sees gamers step into the function of a lone diver working to revive a decimated ocean, Sword of the Sea duties gamers with therapeutic the land and restoring water to arid desert environments and frozen tundras. Gamers by no means swim or dive in Sword of the Sea. As a substitute, they surf throughout sandy deserts, icy mountains, and dreamy our bodies of water full of sea creatures that may fly in addition to swim.
“We design a complete backstory and mythos and every thing, after which we wish to preserve it very ambiguous and let the gamers join the dots,” Nava says of the workforce’s writing course of. “If you happen to go for all of the [collectible] secrets and techniques, you discover a bit of breadcrumb that may assist you consider it in [terms of its] relationship to the opposite video games.”
Whereas The Pathless contains written lore and text-based dialogue, ABZÛ has no textual content or dialogue in anyway (apart from some early-game tutorials), as an alternative utilizing big wall murals to convey its story with out phrases. Sword of the Sea lies someplace within the center, and that’s fully intentional.
“After each recreation, we take into consideration what we preferred about making that recreation and what we want to do in a different way,” Nava explains. “After we accomplished ABZÛ, it was like, ‘Let’s make a much bigger recreation!’ And we made The Pathless, which is like, large, it is loopy. Then after The Pathless, we have been like, ‘Perhaps we’ll make one thing a bit of smaller, a bit of bit extra condensed.’ It was virtually a pendulum-swing. Now that we’ve carried out it a number of occasions, we perceive ourselves higher.”
The workforce at Big Squid went forwards and backwards on which strategy to take with Sword of the Sea. An early iteration had the characters truly talking, however the studio finally settled on a middle-ground strategy by which no dialogue textual content was used, solely the poems discovered on the hidden steles scattered across the recreation’s ranges.
“I actually like doing the massive elevate of the storytelling by way of the visuals, by way of the music, the colour,” Nava says.
Easy crusing
One of many largest similarities between Sword of the Sea and Big Squid’s earlier titles is its motion. ABZÛ has a clean, true-to-life swimming system with currents, faculties of fish, and uneven waters. The Pathless featured what can finest be described as “hardcore skate-sledding,” with gamers zooming throughout the sport’s forests and grassy plains, firing arrows alongside the way in which. Sword of the Sea incorporates a hoverboard-meets-surfing mechanic, and the sport’s environments are suffering from half-pipes and rails to grind. Perfecting that motion was no small process.
“This sort of motion stuff simply takes a very very long time, we have been engaged on it for nearly 5 years,” Nava says. “After I begin [making] video games, I’ve a sort of hazy notion of what this recreation must be in my head. On this recreation, the factor that was clearest to me in my head was how the motion would really feel. Motion is simply a kind of satisfying issues video games reward you, there’s these intrinsic rewards. It is actually satisfying.”
Utilizing that motion to facilitate different intrinsic rewards — exploring new areas and discovering little secrets and techniques — was Nava’s aim with Sword of the Sea. He says snowboarding and skateboarding video games have been a serious supply of inspiration, too.
“We are able to begin from that and take it someplace a bit of new,” he explains. “Like, ‘What if you happen to had a snowboard that would go quick uphill?’ Which is sort of a primary premise of this recreation that you just simply take as a right. You do not even give it some thought, although each snowboard recreation you have ever performed, you by no means go uphill, you solely go downhill.”
Nava’s ardour for swimming and scuba-diving led to ABZÛ’s underwater exploration, and equally his love for browsing knowledgeable the creation of Sword of the Sea’s distinctive hoverboard-surfboard-sword motion.
“Browsing is that this actually magical expertise,” he says. “You are on the market in nature, you’re on a transport object. It is not a car. It would not have a motor. You’re simply utilizing the power of the waves. You are not actually in management. It’s important to let go of your self a bit of bit. I feel that there is one thing actually magical about that, and my very own expertise browsing and snowboarding was an inspiration for what the message of the sport is and what we’re making an attempt to say with it.”
So what, precisely, is the message of the sport? Nava says seeing oneself as part of the atmosphere permits for a shifted, extra significant understanding of that atmosphere. You may’t management the waves of the ocean or the incline of a mountain, however you will get to know that ocean and that mountain by letting them act upon you.
“You are capable of be in all places without delay, principally,” Nava explains. “You are capable of sort of have this reference to nature that’s meditative, although it is excessive. I feel that there is this cause that folks do these excessive sports activities — it is not only for the adrenaline rush, there’s one thing extra to it. I am hoping that the sport is ready to create an area the place individuals may need an analogous expertise. I do not suppose we are able to pressure you to have, like, a non secular awakening or one thing. However I do suppose that we are able to emulate the sort of atmosphere and circumstances that gave me one thing like that [experience of awakening].”
The journey again to Journey
2012’s Journey had an analogous sort of emotional resonance with gamers, however Nava says that its overwhelming success made him reluctant to make use of comparable artwork kinds and shade palettes within the video games he made at Big Squid. He says Sword of the Sea is the primary time he is really felt comfy visually referencing the sandy dunes and rippling orange cloth of Journey once more.
“Journey grew to become this type of ‘Recreation of the Yr’ phenomenon factor, and it was identical to, ‘What do you do subsequent after that, you already know, sort of early in your profession?'” he explains. “So each [Giant Squid] recreation has sort of been exploring and pushing these concepts ahead, however being very cautious to not use the colour orange. [I thought] ‘I am not able to sort of be in comparison with this factor!’ However after we did Sword of the Sea, I used to be like, ‘You already know what? I am able to do my orange recreation.'”
Now that he is made his “orange recreation” (which, to be clear, has many biomes with many various shade palettes), Nava is trying to the longer term. The surfer, snowboarder, and game-maker is already excited to get to work on the studio’s subsequent mission.
“Regardless of all the problem and stuff, I really like making video video games, and I really like making this type of recreation, and I really like working with this workforce, which is a very particular group of individuals,” he says. “I need to preserve doing that, and simply making an attempt to determine a method to try this the place we are able to do it and be wholesome and have time for a break.”
“I am simply going to maintain making an attempt to make video video games,” Nava provides. “That is what we will do. That is all you are able to do.”
