Hi everyone, my name is Ryota Nozo, the Lead VFX Artist for Forspoken.
In this new action role-playing game, you take charge of Frei Holland, a young woman who travels to the mysterious world of Atia! This land may be beautiful, but it's also dangerous: an event called "The Break" corrupted people and animals... and turned them into horrific monsters.
Luckily, Frey can summon a variety of spells to protect himself, from using items to controlling nature itself. You can take a closer look at the thrilling fight in our latest Deep Dive video:
As you can see, the magic is varied and visually stunning! Read on and I'll tell you a little bit about how we did it:
Description of the 'appearance' of unspoken magic
We've spent a lot of time thinking about how to think about unspoken spells.
First, we want to get away from things like fire or anything that's anywhere to be seen. While this would have been cool and wouldn't have caused any problems, it was expected and annoying, especially for a game that focuses on magic.
We decided that every spell has a common rule: it starts with magical power and turns into natural phenomena like the aforementioned fire and stone. If the spell is then cast, it will revert to its magical power before disappearing.
We want to avoid summoning auras or circles when using Frey spells, it's not original. Early on in development we decided that Forspoken's magical power would be represented by geometric patterns.
This informed the visual design of the overall magic of the game and ensured we had a consistent visual style throughout the game.
Each game is written by a team of visual artists, game designers, and programmers working together. To illustrate this, here are three spells that you can use in the game and bring it to life!
A gunfight
Explosive projectiles detonate explosive rock balls that deal area damage.
It's a ground-based blast spell that deals area damage, so we thought we'd simulate a large boulder and feel the spell spread rapidly in four directions.
This is the first spell Frey received and the first we made, so we made sure to keep it really simple!
Burst Shot was the first spell we completed, so it became the guide to all magic in Forspoken. When we do that, let's follow the simple rule of turning geometric patterns into stones and geometric patterns before we lose them.
While not the most visually impressive, it is unique in that it serves as a starting point for everyone in the game!
The waterfall
Cataract creates a vortex of water that sucks in enemies and damages them. Holding the key lets you send out pillars of water to attack your enemies, and if you hold it long enough you can send out more pillars of ice water to buff your enemies!
During development, we came up with the idea of water waves coming together and creating a giant ice explosion. We challenged ourselves to imagine water turning into ice. If we got out, the party would be over.
Of course, that was easier said than done! For example, this is a spell at a different level: at 2nd level it's just a water blast, and at 3rd level the water blast turns into ice. It was very difficult to get and cool this jet of water; Basically we had to develop it as two separate parties which was double the work!
Even if we could find a way to express the idea of water turning to ice, it's useless. We were also very meticulous in preparing the tones we used for these materials; I think one charm that makes eyes look good is cataracts.
genesis
Genesis summons spiked horns that shoot out in front of you, knocking down enemies in a wide area. Holding the button hits more and hitting a consistent area, and holding the button hits and poisons enemies!
The "emergence" of this letter came from what we tested early in development. First we decided that Frey should be able to control nature and I thought having a large tree sneeze out of the ground would be appropriate and visually stunning.
The original design had trees growing and attacking enemies, but over time we adjusted the design to better fit the game's systems.
We tested this spell in pre-production. It's a great idea: a tree grows out of the ground and blooms, and then a bigger tree falls all in sight!
It took a lot of trial and error to prove that the facility could be built on such a scale. It was particularly difficult to show plants growing out of the ground. We tried several methods and had to start over several times.
Then after we thought we had it all it turned into a layered spell so we had to figure out how to separate layers 1-3 which was quite a hassle!
However, I am satisfied with the result. I believe we have achieved something great!
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As you can see we put a lot of work into making Forspoken's fight look and feel great. We can't wait to see all the awesome spells we've created, but for that you'll have to wait until the game is over!
Untold will be released on PlayStation 5 on January 24th, 2023 and is available to pre-order now.