This is because, in part, UbiArt allows the artist that creates the assets to directly influence the gameplay – where other development processes see an artist sketch out concept art, pass it through to level designers, character designers, 3D artists and whole other departments, the small teams that work on UbiArt games put their vision directly into the engine. It communicates through its art, and it does it very well. The contrast between the sharp colours and caricatured characters to the thematic content of the game is striking – the result being a non-verbal comic that highlights the horrors of war without patronising or saying a word. With Valiant Hearts, we wanted to make an interactive comic book – that was very much the idea from the start of development – and the UbiArt Framework has allowed us to do that, in a way that was very respectful to our inspirations.” Valiant Hearts: The Great War has a visual style that takes the cartoony minimalism of early comics and applies it to a brutal and ugly context: the First World War.

“The Rayman games were very cartoony,” explains Guillaume Cerda – associate producer of newest UbiArt game, Valiant Hearts, “and Child Of Light had this very watercolour-y inspiration. Ubisoft’s UbiArt Framework aims to combat these issues – the engine has seen a lot of use in recent years, with Rayman Origins acting as a proof of concept for the Framework, followed up with Rayman Legends, and then more recently we’ve had the dark horse Child Of Light proving that the Framework is more than a one-trick pony. Unfortunately, it’s never that simple – there tends to be a trade-off between art direction and gameplay in a lot of titles, consequential of discrepancies between developmental departments, end vision or simply time constraints. For a lot of gamers, it doesn’t matter how a game looks – to get them playing through to the end of a release, the developer will have to make it play, too.

Diversification is becoming more and more important to Ubisoft particularly, and the publisher’s UbiArt Framework is spear-heading the expedition into innovative, interesting territory. Games™ sits down with Valiant Hearts associate producer Guillaume Cerda to talk about how the UbiArt Framework allows smaller teams to make the most of their time and creativity As we witness the console market embrace new digital distribution methods and support the indie development scene, it’s becoming more and more important for the industry’s publishing behemoths to venture outside of the reliable old triple-A game and take risks, gamble with new IP.

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