INTRODUCTION

The Bordeaux team mainly worked on building designs for the main game and on some major camps of the DLCs.
For the main game, I was the owner of the Hideout and Assembly Lines. I also helped for the design of some civilian buildings. As for the Deep State DLC, I mainly worked on the Strategist Stronghold, the DLC’s boss location.

My roles, among many things, were to :

– Make researches & look for references (thematic, architecture, biomes…)
– Create 2D layout
– Create LD workflow the the LD team
– Blockout locations (layout, puzzles, propsing, ingredients, collectibles, IA placement and patrols)
– Test, debug and polish
– Communicate between the different owners of the Hideout (mostly Narrative & Art owners and Directors)

THE HIDEOUT

The hideout is the social HUB of the game. This is where the player takes his missions, the most visited place. We surely gave extra love to this location !

My main focus was to create a credible space in which ghosts could reunite. It was also the first time I got the ownership of such an important location : as I was in the middle of the art, the cinematic, the narrative and even the economic teams, the number one concern here was to be crystal clear with my communication and my designs intentions, to keep everyone on the same page.

Early works

Final result

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Skell Security Assembly Line

For this location, with the level artist, we instantly wanted to create a vertical camp that could showcase the production of the flying drones. We quickly came with this “vertical hive” idea.

My role was to design a credible and fun to play vertical camp, with interesting line of sights and multiple navigation routes. Plus, I designed with the cinematic team the whole process of the drones production: we wanted the player to understand how those deadly machines were created, by showing the whole animated line of production.

Skell Omega Assembly Line

For the terrestrial drones assembly line, we also wanted to create the best setting to showcase the line of production. Creating Omega was a great team effort, in sync with the art and cinematics teams.

I made a lot of researches on the actual automobile industry and more generally on the use of robots in our existing assembly lines. With those references in mind, I presented to the art and cinematics team a 3-building complex, that could showcase clearly the major steps drones’ production, while proposing a challenging gameplay to the player.

STRATEGIST STRONGHOLD

With the level artist of the camp, we had the idea to create an impressive “James Bond like” lair for the DLC’s boss. The intention was also to highlight the infiltration, as the theme of the DLC was Splinter Cell. It was also the first “made in Bordeaux” camp: we almost had complete freedom of design !

To create the “James Bond Nemesis Lair”, the idea of a cliffside mega-structure quickly came to our mind. Even if each camp of the game has a 360 approach (and this one is no exception), I created mandatory bottlenecks in order to recreate the linear approach of the Splinter Cells games. The camp, located on both side of the a and connected by a central bridge, does (I hope so) honor to the infiltration playstyle !