Immortals Fenyx Rising is one of the most peculiar games on Ubisoft's launch schedule. In many ways, it resembles Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Breath of the Wild, combining elements of both to create something distinct. Game Rant sat down with Immortals Fenyx Rising Game Director Scott Phillips to learn more about the game, its inspirations, and what it brings to the table.
Parts of this interview have been edited for clarity.
Where did the idea for Immortals come from?
While we were developing Assassin's Creed Odyssey, I think the first, time for me, that I had a hint of what Immortals Fenyx Rising could become, was actually a bug. As the player, you were on your ship and your ship crew was normally humans, but in this case, all the humans got turned into cyclopses, so you had a ship full of cyclopses. And it sort of, for me, kicked off this feeling of, 'Hey, that's pretty cool. We have this whole depth of knowledge that we built about Ancient Greek history, but we also have this little bit of mythology. Maybe we could go a lot deeper into this mythology.' So, after Assassin's Creed Odyssey, we got the opportunity to develop a much deeper game going into Ancient Greek mythology, and that's where Immortals Fenyx Rising comes from.
It's a much more light-hearted game than Assassin's Creed Odyssey. What prompted that shift?
I think it felt natural to try something different. We wanted to aim for a wider audience. We wanted to be a little bit more accepting, and welcoming, and attractive to a wider audience. And so the tone comes through in the narrative, obviously, but the tone also comes through in some of the animations, and some of the ways you upgrade things. The best terminology I've heard, or the best description of it, is Ancient Greek Guardians of the Galaxy, where we wanted this light-hearted interpersonal feeling, but then the stakes are epic and legendary, and the end of the universe could happen. So it's a mixture of those two.
Has having a fully customizable character adjusted how you have to approach that narrative?
No, I think from the experience we had on Assassin's Creed Odyssey of having the two protagonists, we had already built into this idea that we could build a strong narrative while still having a customizable character. This time we've taken it much further with choosing body type, and your voice, and your face, and your hair color, and your skin color, and all of these other, different options. For us, it was a relatively predictable trajectory.
How did the team use the extra time from the delay?
So yeah, at the end of 2019 we got the chance to, as the directors, as the entire team, we played the entire game, collected a ton of feedback and looked at 'What do we want to do narratively, what do we want to do gameplay-wise, and what do we want to do artistically?' And so, along each of those three axes, we sort of developed, 'What are we going to change, where are we going to go, how are we going to iterate this idea?' Since, as a game developer, and [in] any creative industry, you look at 'Okay, I can keep improving this and iterating this and making this perfect.' That's what we did, we changed elements of the story, and that's where changing the name of the game comes in as well, because we wanted Fenyx, and Fenyx's journey, along with these gods, these immortals, to be the centerpiece, we wanted to put a lot more weight and a lot more focus on them, and that's where the title change comes from.
What can you tell me about the world of Immortals? How have you approached building the varying regions between each god?
Well, a lot of it comes from when we did research for Assassin's Creed Odyssey. We built this base knowledge after three years of traveling to Greece, having a historian on staff, really delving into these aspects. So we were able to pull out what are the strongest gods that we want to have, how are they going to reinforce and contrast with each other, and then what are their regions of the world going to bring to the gameplay and the visual stylization of the game. That's where, I think the first two regions we focused on have been Aphrodite's, the goddess of love. It was very beautiful, verdant forest; a very colorful and attractive area. And then this time for the hands-on is Hephaestus' region. So it's a forge land where all of the trees have been pulled out, all of the minerals have been extracted to power this forge, so it's sort of a barren landscape, so those are two really good contrasts. Then we have multiple other regions in the world that reinforce the elements of the god at a broad level. But even at a micro level, each region has these myth challenges, these puzzles that tell stories, and tell mythological tales. Some are really big that everyone will know, and some are people will experience for the first time.
How structured is the world overall? Do you want people to run to that "something off in the distance" or do you want them to focus more on that structure and quest objectives?
Usually, it's going to be a mix of two. So we want people to have in the back of their head multiple goals at the same time. So one of those goals is always going to be 'What is my main quest? What am I trying to do? Which god am I trying to save?' You could have side quests that you're going on as well. At a longer-term you've got progression of your gear, or your health, or your stamina, or your abilities, weapon, moves in combat. Then you've got puzzles that feed into all of those, you've got Vaults of Tartarus that feed into them. But as the overall experience, what we wanted to focus on was having the player look at the world in front of them, and with this more fantastical, mythological world that we have and setting that we have, we're able to push those markers and those sort of twinkles that catch your eye, to a much higher level than we would've been able to in a more realistic game. So for us, that was a big advantage to put everything the big exploration experience right in front of the player and let them discover it with their eyes, with their ears. They'll figure out what's interesting to them at a micro level, then at a longer level as well, of, you know, 'Why am I going out into this world to save these gods?' or 'I'm going to pick these mushrooms because then I can craft a potion that will allow me to get to someplace that I wanted to get.' Usually, it's a mixture of all these short-term, and long-term, and medium-term goals that keep a world engaging.
Speaking of the gods, how much direct interaction does Fenyx have with these deities throughout the world?
You have pretty much constant interaction with them. From the beginning of the game, you meet Hermes, who gives you a prophecy and tells you that you're the one that's going to save all of the Greek gods and the Greek world from Typhon, this destroyer who's already beaten some of the Greek gods. So you're interacting with them regularly as Fenyx, you're having conversations with them within the meta-structure of this narrative being told by Prometheus to Zeus, which has a purpose, and we'll get there throughout the story of what Zeus learns and what Prometheus is trying to teach him while you, as Fenyx, are going throughout this adventure.
You mentioned the game being heavily inspired by Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Are there any other games, either Ubisoft or just in general, that have inspired your approach to Immortals?
I think in a lot of ways, what we wanted to do early on was to say, 'Okay, what have we done in the past and how could we do things differently?' It was about changing or styles, changing our expectations, and not necessarily following in the paths that we have tread before. So a lot of the ways we do things are different than we would have done in the past. For me personally, I play almost every open-world game that comes out. My personal favorites are things like Skyrim and Fallout. I really love the openness and the fantasy of those worlds, and I think that's something that we really try to bring to Immortals Fenyx Rising. These sort of vista shots, and this beautiful world that you want to spend time in and explore and find every little secret and hidden area, because there's something that's going to be interesting to you, either a small story, or a resource, or a quest.
You have this sense of familiarity with those inspirations, but it also feels like something completely new for Ubisoft. Has it been difficult to build around that?
Building this world was certainly a challenge. It was definitely an interesting challenge taking Greek mythology, which we had learned some of while developing Assassin's Creed Odyssey, but this time delving really, really deeply into it, and trying to tell those stories. You know, the gods are not always the easiest or nicest of people. There can be this glossing over or rose-colored glasses view of mythology. It's honestly a lot trickier than you would think. If you know the real stories of this mythology, there's some pretty dark things in there. So we wanted to try and tell that narrative depth but in a way that would be compelling to a 21st-century audience, and I think that's where that Ancient Greek Guardians of the Galaxy feeling comes in. We wanted to retell these stories that are perpetual and always meaningful in a way that feels meaningful for a 21st-century audience.
Have you been able to capture that authentically, or are you going to break from how these stories happened to tell them?
We're not trying to be strict and one-thousand percent accurate to everything that's in the mythology. We want to give it a twist. It's slightly more of a fantastical retelling of mythology and bringing it into our century, since these stories have been told and retold for thousands of years and always given a twist to make them relevant to the people of that time, but the core of what they are still exists, and still harkens back to what was told three thousand years ago.
With a bigger emphasis on mythology and a light-hearted tone, Immortals seems primed to do something drastically different from what Ubisoft has attempted before. With its heavy Assassin's Creed Odyssey influences, the game has big shoes to fill but the future looks promising.
Immortals Fenyx Rising releases December 3 for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.