Beowulf: Y! Exclusive Trailer

YANN LE TENSORER

Yann Le Tensorer

Job Function: Founder of Tiwak, currently Senior Producer on Beowulf

Yann is almost a living portrait of the video game geek: he started making games when he was a kid, and published 2 of them on Apple II at the age of 18! Right after his Computer Science studies he started as lead programmer at Ubisoft on Rayman, POD and Rayman 2. In 2000 he decided to found his own studio, Tiwak together with 6 co-founders, most of them from the Rayman 2 Team. Tiwak's first title was Tork, a first party platform game for Xbox (Microsoft Games Studios) At the end of 2003, Yann decided to sell the studio to Ubisoft and worked as producer on the award winner title Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter.

Yann is now Senior Producer on Beowulf and is overseeing all aspects of the game's production.

MICHEL FESQUET

Michel Fesquet

Job Function: Lead Animator

After 10 years in the gaming industry, Michel's achievements include GRAW, Red Steel, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, XIII and Act of War just to name a few. Michel explains that "animation is everything in the game that deals with motion and motion's stylization. Finding Beowulf's motion style has been quite hectic. We knew we didn't want either the over-the-top treatment of arcade-games or the purely realistic approach of a combat simulation." The core team wanted more amplitude and a certain inertia that would best illustrate the sheer might and the dimensions of an epic hero with the strength of 30 men! You may not notice it first, but pay close attention and you'll see what Michel means when he evokes a certain "choreographed realism" that's not far from some Frazetta's paintings. "From the start we haven't looked at Beowulf's movement as a traditional game animator would, but really as you do in 2d animation. One of my artists is from the Gobelins (famous French animation school that's seen as one of the premium pool of talents for studios such as Pixar and Disney), was hired solely for the purpose of translating the unique style in all of Beowulf's movements, first on paper then on 3D.

For Beowulf, Michel and his team of nearly 20 animators created around 2500 animations, 700 only for the main character and more than 400 for the Thanes. The choreographic aspect of the game comes to life even more strikingly when you watch your men on the battlefield engaged in ferocious fights with NPCs. Their actions and reactions, this choreography, designed by Beowulf's animators is really what puts you right in the heart of the battle.

ALEX CARLOTTI

Alex Carlotti

Job Function: Audio Producer and Lead Sound Designer.on Beowulf

Alexandre started at Ubisoft Montreal 7 years ago as Sound Programmer on the engine that ran the original Splinter Cell and Rainbow Six games developed by the Canadian Studio. From programming he jumped to design and, as Lead Sound designer he worked on GRAW.

For Beowulf, Alexandre chose a very ambitious approach: "All in-game audio has been designed to promote a true sense of authenticity and realism. For the Thanes' warcry for instance, no studio could re-create the specific echo you find in vast Scandinavian forests. So we recorded a whole rugby team in the north part of Canada for a full day. We pushed this sense of realism even further in our more fantasy parts of the game." The Troll's cry, he explains is mainly based on African lions' roars, which we recorded in Montpellier Natural Park. No pre-recorded sound can give you such results."

Sound design on this project is treated as a major emotional factor. The psychological aspect of the character is key, and all sounds including the music are designed to give the player constant feedback about Beowulf's mood and state. Play Carnal and you'll be surrounded with anarchistic and dissonant sounds we call drone. Play Heroic, and you'll be accompanied with an orchestral music with choirs.

GABRIELLE SHRAGER

Gabrielle Shrager

Job Function: Writer, Lead Narrative Design

Gabrielle has been writing and designing games since 1999: creating stories, scripts and interactive dialog systems, and building universes for video games. She began her career as a game and sound designer on Arthur's Knights 1 and 2 and was Editorial Director on MMORPG, The Saga of Ryzom, before joining Tiwak. For Beowulf, Gabrielle was responsible for the narrative game concept and wrote the game story and original dialogues adapted from the movie. She worked closely with Creative Director, Gilles Matouba, and Audio Producer, Alex Carlotti, in developing the dynamic dialogue system, whereby all of the main NPCs feed back to the player with respect to his Carnal or Heroic state: each according to his or her unique relationship with Beowulf-"and it's not always pretty... the characters don't mince words! When the player is being a selfish bastard, you better believe he's going to get an earful!"

In imagining an original storyline for the 30-year period not treated by the movie or epic and during which the core game design plays out, Gabrielle drew heavily on the original poem and research surrounding it, as well as Norse culture and mythology in addition to the fundamental game and movie visions. "Act 2, the Monster Within, is based on Joseph Campbell's path of the hero, naturally, and might be described as a kind of 'physical psychotherapy' for warrior types..." She also contributed to world-building via location, character and creature bibles. Gabrielle cast the voice talent and directed the voice-recording sessions for the game with A-list talents, Ray Winstone, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Brendan Gleeson, among others. "We could have hired "sound-alikes" and cut costs, but the fact that these actors knew their roles so profoundly, and their outrageous talent, truly adds an amazing dimension to the game in terms of its emotional impact on the player.

FREDERIC CONDOLO

Frederic Condolo

Job Function: Gameplay Programming Technical Director

Frederic's job consists of leading a programming team to transform game designers' ideas into innovative gameplay.

One of his main focuses has been to improve the AI of the Yeti engine, the platform that powers Beowulf. "We hope to deliver some important innovations in adaptative NPC behavior in Beowulf."

Enemies for instance will develop strategies according to your combat style. This forces the player to constantly adapt and improvise, to pick up a new weapon - or better steal it from your enemy - dodge a strike and then counter-attack. "It's much more tactical than you think."

The Thanes' AI too is a huge part of the game experience. They automatically react to your actions -carnal or heroic-and that'll change the output of battles. Fred and his team tried to introduce emotional elements into their code: your men will become more efficient in all the actions they accomplish (helping the player in critical situations, engaging enemies, opening new paths, etc.) if you boost their morale and stand by them. "The real challenge for us has been to develop a full AI cooperative system where collective AI i.e. - the sums of all individual AI - is more efficient than all individual AI. It's like a 2+2=5 equation."

As you progress in the game enemies will tend to have more efficient group strategies, they'll try to corner you and separate you from your thanes. If you try to run, trolls that are too slow will throw at you worshippers to get back at you.

Frederic was involved on numerous projects in the past including Far Cry Instincts and Far Cry Predator as Lead Programmer. Lucky Luke Western Fever (PSX - engine andf gameplay programmer), Nightmare Creatures 2 (PSX - engine and gameplay programmer), Rush Down (Animation tools programmer), Time Commando (- Sound programmer).

CEDRIC TOTON

Cedric Toton

Cedric is Graphic Technical Director on Beowulf. His team is responsible for designing the new graphical features of the latest version of the Yeti engine, baptized Yeti 3.0.

Few people are aware that Yeti is the engine that powered GRAW and GRAW2, for which Tiwak won a BAFTA Award in 2006. As Cedric explains "Yeti is an extremely powerful tool, one of the very few next gen-only engines available on the market place today." It was entirely created and developed in-house at Tiwak and for Cedric "it is a major strength to sit just next to the engineers and programmers that built it."

With an additional year of development since GRAW2, Yeti now supports new exclusive graphical innovations for Beowulf. Among them the most visually and technically impressive are the Animated Fur, Procedural Cloth and the Dynamic Post-FX tool box.

The Procedural Cloth feature as explain Cedric "enables all in-game soft bodies such as clothes, hair, and flags to dynamically interact with the environment and elements such as gravity, wind and water. Therefore, they will get heavier when wet, they'll be floating in water and hair will move accordingly to the character's motion and the wind's conditions. If Beowulf goes through a pool of blood, his trousers will be soaked and stained too." Similarly the team also designed and implemented realistic and dynamically animated fur in the engine. The fastidious task of fur shells creation is now automatic, and it's fully editable with more than 20 parameters. It adds a lot to the sense of realism and the overall immersion when you play the game.

Last but not least, the dynamic post FX, perhaps the most stunning visually, includes all kind of dynamic blurs (motion blur, zoom blur), editable depth of field and color remap. "Our artists have now full access and control to a vast range of cinematographic effects that really define the visual style of the game and make it a truly cinematographic experience."

Cedric Toton has been working in the game industry for 10 years now on award winning titles such as GRAW, Evil Twin and Tork.

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE ALESSANDRI

Jean-Christophe Alessandri

JC is Tiwak's Art Director where he leads a team of artists. He's also with Yann LT one of the co-founder of the studio. His previous projects include GRAW, Tork, BG&E and Rayman 1&2. About his main influences for the game and although it is based on a movie license, JC mentions the art of Frazetta and John Howe.

DENIS CAPDEFERRO

Denis Capdeferro

Job Function: Lead Character and Gameplay Elements Designer on Beowulf

With more than 12 years at Ubisoft as 3D Graphist, Character Designer and now Lead, Denis has contributed to more titles than we can actually print in this column. His hall-of-fame counts games such as Beyond Good & Evil, Rayman, GRAW and GRAW2.

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