The Emotion Within: Ubisoft's Simon Chocquet-Bottani on Valiant Hearts: The Great War

It’s a gaming experience that is able to instil real emotion into the player and make them understand how World War One changed millions of people’s lives; in fact we recently credited Valiant Hearts as being more about kindness than killing. As we draw ever closer to the centenary of WW1, one of the deadliest wars in human history, we sat down with the game’s designer Simon Chocquet-Bottani to find out a little more about their motivations behind this stand out title.

In the past, developers have looked at WW1 from a macro point of view. You’ve chosen a very different approach – why is that?

Indeed, we tried to have a unique take on such important events. We were aware of how important the First World War was and we thought it was a good occasion to go further than games usually do. We tried to make the player live the war the same way millions of people did, make them understand what really happened and how these people were no different from us, how much of a tragedy war is and how shameful and useless it is. 

You used the UbiArt Framework that’s recently been employed by another fantastic looking game, Child of Light. What’s it been like to work with?

The UbiArt was created in Montpellier for both Rayman games and most of us already worked on this engine before. It is a wonderful tool for creativity (and) is truly designed to bring art to life in order to build games without having to decrease the quality due to engine limitation. That makes us able to bring the 2D animation and graphics to a whole new level while keeping the game perfectly fluent at 60fps and 1080p.

For many gamers the only historical war titles they’ve played will have been set in WW2 where there was a very clear enemy. However it appears that things aren’t quite so black and white in Valiant Hearts?

We wanted to talk about war, and how it impacted the life of our unsung heroes. The dog is friendly with everybody because he has his innocence, [and this] helps the characters and the player to understand that the “enemies” are just like them. War kills people, you will not. That was something very important for us.

In a recent developer diary you said that the characters in the game are fictional but inspired by real people. Can you elaborate on which individual people/events inspired you and how you came to find out about them from these letters/photos?

We did a lot of research in the beginning; we read letters, reports from officers, books, various articles, testimonies and pictures. We really tried to dig deep into the First World War and how people lived it. Freddie for instance, is inspired by the Harlem Hellfighters and his name is a tribute to Freddie Stowers who received the Medal of Honor seventy years after his death; Walt [on the other hand] is inspired by the mercy dogs in the trenches.

How did you go about designing the puzzles in Valiant Hearts?

We tried to find a good balance between narration and gameplay. Each character has their own ability that’s used in puzzle solving; even the dog, who moves from character to character, [is] complementary of the others. We tried to add variation in the gameplay to make each puzzle have a unique feeling, from the simple fetch quest type, to a sequence puzzle that could be compared to the Simon Says game.

What other elements did you introduce into Valiant Hearts?

We added some ‘exotic’ gameplay, like taxi driving, tanks and infantry charges to change the pace of the experience and focus on how stressful, for instance, the bombardments could be. We also have some timing-based gameplay that uses the same controls as the puzzle gameplay, but in which you have to avoid bullets and explosions.

Valiant Hearts was released on the eve of the centenary of WW1. Did you create the game to contribute to the commemoration and was it a conscious decision to release the game so close to the event?

As we started to work on the project three years ago, it was not [our intention] to make a game for the commemoration. We still wanted to participate in the remembrance for our families involved in the war, [as well as] all the other people and maybe manage to bring some information and historical facts to people. We also tried everything we could to stay true to real events and give a new dimension to our game.

When the game was first announced one of the things which struck us was how you’ve made an effort to share the experiences of those who aren’t always represented in war games, such as women and animals. Was this decided by the stories you were able to pick out from your research or was it more of a conscious effort on your team’s part?

We discovered the stories of everyday people, and that’s what we tried to share. This war was called “The Great War” because it was the first time so many resources were involved, may it be human, animal or money. This appeared a lot in our research and we tried to put as many of these things as possible in the game because they’re all part of what made “The Great War.”

Obviously the subject matter you're dealing with is incredibly sensitive due to the fact that around 10 million military personnel and about 7 million civilians died in the conflict. How did you approach sensitivity from a narrative point of view whilst still ensuring that the game is fun and engaging?

We approached that with sincerity. We really tried to stay true to what people endured, without insisting on violence or gore. We really tried to be as true to the subject as possible, following normal people in this war. Each character has their own story and sees their own side of the war, but all of their destinies are bound together and these four stories ultimately create only one.

Visually, the game as been described as a living comic book – has it been hard to contrast a typically a rich, colourful, art style against the horror of war?

The art direction is very similar to a comic book style. We’re covering a serious subject, but in a lighter and more accessible way. We use a wide-ranging colour palette – colourful, light and even comical in the beginning. At the time people were almost cheerful to go war, they didn’t know what it really was and thought it would be fast; then they got stuck in the mud of the trenches. But the more you progress in the war and in the game, the more things will get dark and emotionally heavy.

Players can become desensitised to loss of life in videogames – it can all become a little abstract. How does Valiant Hearts approach loss of life during WW1 and how it affected so many people?

Valiant Hearts treats loss of life in a very sensitive way. The player won’t shoot or kill people; the war does this. It was key for us that the characters kept their humanity and lived the war through their eyes. So even if the setting is “The Great War”, Valiant Hearts is not a war game, but a game about a war. We really wanted to make you feel like you were playing normal, humble people. Making them kill would have changed the link we wanted between the player and the characters.