How do you live through hell and live to tell about? For that matter, how do you tell the war that changed a world forever? Valiant Hearts asks these questions and then some to profound degree, some tragic, some perplexing, and others simply bittersweet. Few know it like Ubisoft’s Yoan Fanise, Content and Audio Director for Valiant Hearts. Fanise was gracious enough share with us just how much went into recreating a virtual “war to end all wars.”
****Spoilers Follow****
Q. What brought you onto a project like Valiant Hearts?
A. 12 years ago, I worked with Paul Tumelaire on Beyond Good & Evil, and I found his artwork so powerful and evocative that when he started drawing characters and landscapes about WW1, I joined him in imagining a story around it. We knew that we wanted to create something different, to talk about war in a different way. My great-grandfather enlisted and was injured during this war, and his brother died near Verdun in 1916. We had this direct connection to this period, and the letters we discovered were all about feelings and how this was such a major human tragedy. So that was the starting point of the scenario: dealing with human beings instead of guns.
Q. Like many games to come out of the UbiArt Framework, Valiant Hearts boasts its own unique art-style, much in the vein of a graphic novel or comic book, some say. Were they an influence?
A. UbiArt Framework is a really powerful engine in term of graphics: it was made by graphic artists, allowing them to put their artwork directly into the game. This simplicity removes certain limits in terms of creativity, and is one of its major attractions. In Valiant Hearts, Paul wanted to maintain a minimalist style, to make complex feelings accessible to a wide audience. He has this power of making seemingly simple drawings really emotionally powerful. And I kept that mindset in term of musical choices, favoring simple melodies with one or two instruments.
Q. What were some of the most challenging or interesting sound effects to record?
A. Some of the ambient sounds from northern France were really interesting to record, especially the ones in the trenches: it was really quiet with just the sound of dripping water and the noise of your wet shoes in mud. Also, the metallic sounds for recreating the artillery and mechanisms were hard to record, and in fact my wife’s cousin had to help me move around all the heavy metal objects and vehicles on his farm. That was really amazing source material.
Q. Valiant Hearts takes much of its story from real wartime letters from the period. How did the studio come across them in its research?
A. We read a lot of books about World War 1, and all of them mentioned letters from their relatives, which was the main method of communication. My grandmother also gave me all the letters from her father during the war, which was an amazing source of inspiration for the whole team. Karl, Emile, Anna, and Freddie all seem to represent something different to the spirit of the war.
Q. Were there any historical anecdotes of interest that shaped their personalities and roles in the story?
A. Each character is a composite of different influences and themes we wanted to talk about. Freddie, for example, represents black Americans who moved to Europe because interracial marriage was not allowed in the US at that time.
Q. Tone was a point of contention for Valiant Hearts among players, particularly involving the “cartoonish” character of Baron Von Dorf. What can you say was the intent behind the inclusion of his fight sequences?
A. (SPOIL) In the game, we used some winks and nods to stereotypes and clichés, embodied in some of our characters. Von Dorf is also a nod to the artistic references used to create this game. He is the epitome of a caricature in the comic-book art style, and he is also a reference to very old movies that often had this kind of villain. As we wanted to keep caricatures with a balance on both side, Baron Von Dorf has his doppelganger, a French officer that you encounter near the end of the game.
Valiant Hearts has a tragi-comic tone that you can find in its gameplay, with a succession of puzzles, exploration and action sequences. Action sequences, like the fight sequence against Baron Von Dorf, allow the player to breathe after difficult puzzle sequences, to give the player the best experience in terms of gameplay.
Q. The game concludes with America’s arrival into the world and before the war’s end. Where do you imagine each of Valiant Hearts’ heroes to have ended up?
A. (SPOIL) As was told in the game’s announcement trailer, some unsung heroes survived the horror of the War, while others did not. As for their stories, we’re letting the players project a little and speculate about the survivors’ fate at the end.
Q. Is the UbiArt Engine a medium you see yourself returning to anytime soon?
A. UbiArt Framework is a wonderful engine that makes creating this kind of very artistic, 2D game pretty easy. I hope we’ll be able to use it in the future for new projects…
Valiant Hearts is available for Playstation 4, Xbox One, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Windows for PC, and iOS devices.