Exploring Hidden Stories in the World of XCOM 2

[Music] welcome to exploring hidden stories and the world of X come to GDC is almost done guys so it should be good just a couple more talks my name is Justin Rodriguez I'm a senior environment artist after access games I've been in for access for nine years and throughout that time I've worked on all the XCOM titles of tracks as a shift from XCOM enemy Unknown which I'll hear me today talking about as ex commie you all the way till X come to were the chosen before we get started how many of you have played X come very cool how about war the chosen awesome before we get started I'm going to show a video so we can get in into the mood of X calm [Applause] [Music]

[Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] so XCOM 2 is a tactical turn-based cover based strategy game it's safe to say that working on environments for this game is complex what you're seeing right now is basically just our passing visualization and that's just not everything that we can look at it could

be even more complex looking if we start adding collision to this and not only was the game complex just from a markup side but it also had multiple camera angles mm-hmm what you see right now is the default camera angle and the glam cam shot when you're picking your shot and shooting at the aliens and most of our buildings and environments were destructible and all the levels are procedural this this is one of the small town levels that you guys might have seen in the game and this is the exact same level with a supermarket and this snowy church level with the playground to the left is also the same level all of these factors led to extensive markup in all the levels for both environment artists and the level designers so how do you weave narrative storytelling into a procedural environment during exhales food production I was responsible for creating props textures and world building and decorating roughly seventy six out of 174 core levels if we were to

count all the smaller levels in the game there was five hundred and eight level components in XCOM - I had the help of with prop crea I had the help of two junior artist interns and one lighting artist now before we go any further I'm gonna do a quick explanation of just how these levels worked so what you see here is the same small-town level and this is how the levels were actually put together the whole entire level was called plot and we had holes so the actual levels could sock it into this and those we called parcels most of these levels could also be rotated 360 degrees and many levels had to work in different biomes and weather conditions like these what we saw before a lot of time was spent marking up textures and adding weather assets for biome swapping what you see right here is one of the the two small town homes and there's icicles and the

snow version of this level all of those were hand placed and hand filtered in different layers in game with doing all this we knew that larger narrative elements would not work in procedural environments at least for ours we could limit map rotation and limit the randomness of levels but it made the maps feel look and play too similar uncertain how we would solve this issue we began art passes and world building on the levels during this time we made an effort to update levels with level design what you see here is actually a couple tests to see how we could add a pop of color within the interior spaces because at the time we didn't know whether or not we want it really colorful exteriors of the buildings because what if a very red building came in and procedurally plopped right next to a very blue building it would start to look rainbow and we didn't want that so working on each one of these levels we wanted to make sure that they still felt distinct but worked in any random combination after a few levels we became

confident we could look make the procedural levels work and look good but we thought we could do more than just a quick set dressing pass we wanted every level in XCOM to feel fun and interesting like the first game we should XCOM be you also it's a tactical turn-based strategy game so that means that in between turns we know that the players are going to be looking at the environments so with limited concept support and hundreds of levels to work on a few of us were constantly brainstorming to find an identity for each level it was at this point that someone had proposed that we looked at old XCOM EU maps for inspiration we created new brands for stores and restaurants in the game for XCOM too but we thought it would be cool to give an old nod to the XCOM EU businesses this is when I loaded up one of my favorite levels from the old game office paper the shop paper company was a funny detail that came from the in the path of XCOM two's micro stories Jeremy was a leap graphics programmer on

the project for XCOM EU and we thought it'd be cool to putting putting his name in the game with a couple of ours so when I saw this I was inspired enough to follow this story of the shop Paper Company into X come to I wanted to explore what happened to it in the world of alien occupation I figured shop the company CEO with his quick initiative would have diversified his company knowing the alien occupation would have bring a swift end to the paper industry on earth so shelf paper company became shop material industries in XCOM - after doing this finishing levels became easier and had better assaults when embracing the impression of smaller details the team loves seed stories created from the inclusion of one or two extra story props on a level as you can see here this is one of our small town levels we made it made it to make sure it fit into our our feel of the small town kind of run-down but at one point when working with one of the other artists he said you know what would just really make this I said what he's like

just a little detail so I found a frisbee and just put it on the roof I said this is great so I was now thinking of stories first - before decorating and this is a great way to stay actively engaged in world building premise 80 levels it helped do away with generic deco passes the narrative details are small and delicate placed around each level and all of these details are small enough to work in any level layout or rotation I also began to add various ranges of micro stories to the levels what you see here on the screen there's a blanket and a pillow on the ground I used to call those the sleepers when we were working on this and basically I had this idea that within the alien occupied earth effects come - people were kind of misplaced he didn't have homes so you would just see somewhere where they shacked up for the night or basically try to sleep somewhere and you know they would leave the next day or maybe that was the last place that they spent now also with that that's that's a detail that I put all over the place I also had specific ones that were just in one

level like the pizza party cowabunga so throughout a production of XCOM - and expensive world chosen i actively work to refine my process and establish a few techniques that became helpful in creating the small-town narratives decorated throughout the game to share some of these with you right now so first be resourceful not much time to create you don't have much time to create stories with unique assets especially an ex-con getting in the mindset of creating unique from generic is something really good that you can kind of hear - and create characters and follow them I created an anima scare icterus for all the props that I used to decorate with in XCOM - and you'll see then in a few minutes here and gather small deco to make landmarks there's no need for giant statues and set pieces unique props take time and you don't have much reuse so try to make a story or try to with just some few few small

assets establish breadcrumbs and motifs basically whenever you use something as small as a flowerpot and you know if you're going to use it somewhere else make sure that you you you know you think about why these assets are being placed in multiple locations or multiple levels and flow with level design when you do deco your maps and your levels make sure that the player will either will see them or they enhance a story by or enhance the player's exploration I worked very hard with the level designers to make sure everything that I did place in the game was near cover points or specific locations that we knew that the player would travel I knew it didn't have much time or space for large a narrative set pieces so small assets that came my go-to props and creating stories and leaving their defense these are just some of my favorite props to use and if you play back some - you'll see them and good in

a lot of places so now I'm gonna take you through a few examples of my micro stories flowerpot man slums levels and buildings were some of the last levels would be designed by level design they were two story buildings that had business on the bottom an apartment top so before I started decorating in the levels I went through each level and assigned a business to the first floor and a character who lived above this apartment belongs to the flowerpot man flowerpot man is a single male and he's extremely passionate about growing plants and living in a better environment he can basically see here that on the rooftop I reuse some of the small-town assets and had a little water collection for him and just flower pots this guy was just growing as much plants as he possibly could hopefully to you know bring back the ozone of this alien occupied earth so whenever I place the flowerpots in slums I always thought about flowerpot mound and how they got there my hope was to

use these flower pots all over this house to landmark the level for the player this asset was made in primary losing small town like I said and I hope the cross-pollination would help seat slums in the same world or universe effects come to also since these flower pots were so small it also helped me keep these slums levels filling utilitarian the decision to follow flowerpot man also helped me make the rooftops of slums feel unique as well so when you're on top as you know if you played X column you do get bonuses for shooting on rooftops so I thought that would be a kind of a cool place to put most of my deco so here's another story that I worked on it's called the family in the shrine when I when some of the concept paintings started being finished for the paintings that you find in the game there was one that one of our concept artists men made that was of a family and I almost went back to the concept artist and said listen this is

too unique I want to have something that's generic enough that I can place in a lot of levels and before I went ever I said you know what I'm gonna try to make a story out of this and I'm gonna make sure that I'm only gonna put in one or two levels in the game so I decided to use leverage this unique painting to make a story so as you can see as a family 3 my whole idea was that the father and mother split because of the alien and vision and I've left breadcrumbs trying to show that the aliens were tempting kind of coerce the humans to move through the alien-made city centers or our futuristic cities and XCOM - as you can see here this is kind of a culmination of not only the painting and slums that you would see in the small town building or the house but there's also just other little details here so I figured that the mother would live in this slums apartment and there's a little you know pillow and a blanket here where she would basically think about her family or you know while

looking at this kind of shrine that she made you can also see that I was hard to see but I actually have an ex-con symbol over the father's head so she must have been cursed by the aliens but the act that father actually was trying to support XCOM actually let me just come back here you can also see right to the right there's a propaganda Center cross I was one of the symbol that was one of the alien symbols that the advent had in their propaganda centers I had it here kind of trying to create a breadcrumb to this small-town level where we had a church and the propaganda symbol is also on the back of the church wall so here's another here's one of my last stories I'll share with you guys the eye doctor really quick we'll get we'll get through this one we only had so many futuristic assets for slums and there was a one asset that wasn't being used just a set

of 3d printers that we used to recover and I decided the kind of places in a bottom of the business now like I said there was a the second story was always the apartment the first story was a restaurant or some sort of business but we didn't have any doctors and they or doctors offices or anything so I decided to make an optometrist so I thought it would be cool that you would walk into his optometrist it's futuristic one and immediately get your eyes scanned and they would 3d print your grass glasses right there and when I was trying to figure out he would live above I thought that would be really cool that the the doctor that worked there was actually living in the apartment above at around the same time I got a set of children's toys to help deck of the levels I thought it would be cool that if that the doctor would after his you know after a workday would use the 3d printers to print out toy cars for the children in the slums neighborhood so you can see here there's actually a little toy car there and in his apartment on the deck he's priming some of these toy cars or

painting them and then you would start the I would start this trying to decorate any other house and I knew that I had children living in the apartment with some of these to a cars so you can't see him here but if you look in the satellite dish they were actually kind of pushing them around and racing them around there so real quick let's just summarize the techniques and tips that I used try your best with props you have available to you you know you won't always have this ability to have unique assets but you know you can make something out of nothing assigned characters and creates assigned characters to specific props you use to decorate and don't rely on large set pieces and unique assets to create landmarks for the player as you can see here I just had a couple folding chairs this is in our sewers level and X come where the chosen and I just kind of used these right next to the wall and I propagated some of them near covered pieces where the soldiers can take cover and my whole idea with this is that

maybe there's a couple old men from New York City that we're still trying to play chess even though they had to live in the sewers and established bread crumbs and motifs like I said if I used the chess set I have used a chess set and the sewers I would always think there was a kind of the same guys that were finding these chess sets and playing chess before the advent came in and broke it up one other tip for you guys keep your deco characters anonymous it just makes it easier to kind of move through these levels faster and you don't have to worry about doing a little too much with these stories if you don't have time the deck of characters in the space don't need to be identified to be effective however if it's receive if one of your characters has received well by the team or fans maybe they can be identified this is the this you can see it but there's this is a last resting place of our poor graphics programmer jeremy shop it says

on the wall i was the paper king so he definitely regrets moving to material industries and trust yourself for inspiration flower pot man silly I know but having these characters the stories help me deco all these levels and give them the bespoke details is reserved small details and little stories you create will be enough to fill these spaces and it's okay to be weird in fact try to be we only use mannequins and one of the abandoned city levels and were the chosen I thought it was a missed opportunity and I wanted to use more of them but I was working on the sewers so I decided to make a sewer fashion show and try to up the ante you know when I did this and it have received you know some interest from some of the other artists I wonder what I'm gonna do next you know what without making it too unique mmm-hmm now all these stories and details are helpful because it reinforces emergent gameplay and Escom thrives off that you know from playing XCOM you really start to have a

connection with your soldiers especially if they're still living and it adds depth of player experience it helps fill in and reinforce XCOM two's main story all of these stories that I was working on I always considered the fact of alien occupation and that all these people were either coerced and moved into the the futuristic alien cities or trying to make their way in the smaller towns and most importantly inspires a player to make their own and seeing these player stories I can be inspired to create new stories this process has been rewarding to learn during development of exon2 and where the chosen and I hope they're refining in future products I hope to refine my cooperation with a level design team I hope earlier on in our next projects we can work on the mood and pacing of levels with some of these deco pieces it'll be making me it will make it easier for me to hide these stories or put these stories in the levels and the deco assets I hope that we can work to get the scale and color complement the

gameplay interactable z' like the cover assets and I would love that heat maps in our future games I could decorate these levels using these heat pads and inversely use them to hide cool thousand permanent explorations somewhere the player wouldn't go I think is important to note as well not every player will find and appreciate this work but the ones that do will enjoy more depth of the game that they love and it isn't wasted work it allows you to have a direction when decorating the space and we'll make sure the levels you create are full of life in fact at the end of our slums production we had a little bit of extra time and they said is there any other assets that we can make for you Justin and I said you know it'd be really cool to get some cool graffiti set pieces that kind of reference what's happening in the story so one of our artists Andrew who made these awesome graffiti pieces and I hid them in the kind of the alleyways of the slums and they really helped kind of landmark some of these other levels and don't be

afraid to get time or try to hat and try to make time to do this having rough estimates of how long this deco past takes allows you to plan for it accurately with production balancing cost and time to decorate can be explored even by blocking out your deco assets in a proxy gray box phase this also helps you establish a sense of scale in your level as you can see here I'm actually working walking you through the process of making the sewers so what you're seeing is gray box but even earlier on when I got some base textures in here you can see that I'm already placing small deco down in the level I wanted to make sure that everything that I'm I wanted to outline in this level was there so we could plan for it accordingly you can even see gray box pictures on the walls so I knew that I had time to make these assets and I knew how they would fit into this space and let your sensor wonder Drive you when you decorate these environments in the game it makes more makes a task more rewarding inspire those around you oh

let's go okay so guys thank you so much for coming to the talk I'm always excited to talk about environment art environmental storytelling and feel free to contact me by email or Twitter I also started the environment art podcast with the towns at Ryan bento from Sameach and let me know what you think we just shipped episode two of the podcast earlier this week and if you haven't played XCOM which most of you have or were the chosen pick it up it's a blast thank you guys