Games
How Ubisoft are achieving a new level of realism on their pixel perfect pistes.
Remember when snowboarding games were massive? Back in 2000, the launch game that showed off what PS2 could do wasn't a Call of Duty or Battlefield game, but SSX.
It's been a whole console generation since snowboarding fans enjoyed a new SSX, but this December, Ubisoft are finally filling the void with Steep, a game that enables winter sports fans to try out snowboarding, skiing, paragliding, and even wingsuiting on a massive mountain.
As we discovered when we visited Ubisoft's studio in Annency, 'the pearl of the French Alps', Steep offers a lot more than SSX's brand of arcade thrills. Here are eight incredible things that will make Steep one of the most captivating and immersive winter sports games ever.
1. Steep captures the spirit of Mont Blanc
After trying to recreate some of the world's most famous mountains for Steep, the team at Ubisoft Annency decided that they wanted to take the pistes they already knew and loved and share them with the world. They didn't have to travel very far to research them – they can see Mont Blanc, one of the world's greatest peaks, from their desks.
While snowboarding or skiing down these slopes feels realistic, the terrain has been adapted to make it a more enjoyable experience. “We wanted to reproduce the mountains around us, but it's not an exact copy," explains Steep's World Director Renaud Person.
“Initially we were looking at them and thinking: ‘let’s keep that piste, because it’s a really famous one', but we made the choice to adapt them, while keeping the soul of the place, the soul of the summit. What was really important to us was not to make the mountain geologically accurate, but to make it feel fun.”
2. You can go off-piste
As well as painstakingly recreating and reimagining their local pistes, the team wanted to provide players with a real sense of adventure. So instead of just racing and tricking, Steep enables you to freely roam the mountain, creating your own paths across the pistes.
According to Renaud Person, it’s that sense of off-piste adventure that makes Steep unique. “We’re really capturing the freedom of extreme sports," he told us. "I think what people are looking for in a mountain is the perfect spot to start from, that perfect line, and you’ll find that in Steep if you take the time to explore the world.”
3. It’s been playtested and approved by athletes
Who better to ensure that Steep offers an authentic winter sports experience than pro athletes? With the studio’s town of Annecy playing host to the big air event High Five, Ubisoft Annency had the opportunity to ask freestyle skiier Kevin Rolland and Red Bull paraglider Horacio Llorens for advice.
“They came down to the studio, played the game and gave us advice to really help get the highest quality snowsport experience that we can,” said Game Director Arnaud Ragot.
“Kevin Rolland visited us a few times because it’s important to us that the game feels authentic. He gave us feedback on some things that were wrong, and some twists that he thought we should add.
"For example, he thought the dynamic in big air didn’t quite feel right, because we slowed the speed of the rider far too much. So thanks to him, we tweaked it and got it right.”
4. Steep has an in-depth, SKATE-inspired trick system
While pulling off ridiculous combos in the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series used to be fun, the more realistic SKATE is the king of virtual skateboarding. It's this level of attention to detail and hard-to-master tricking that’s been sorely missing from winter sports games – until now.
Creative Director Igor Manaceau told us how Steep has been influenced by EA's game. “If you just jump, send your input intention and release, you will land correctly and you’re done – you’ll do something spectacular, something that's cool to watch.
"However, if you want to take it further, we’ve got a system that’s more like SKATE. You can add twists, change the direction of your grabs in mid-air and so on. There’s something cool there for a newbie and also something a bit more in-depth for those who really like a challenge.”
5. It embraces GoPro culture with a first-person mode and shareable replays
Steep has been inspired by the rise of sharing video content and the GoPro revolution. So you'll be able to watch your friend's replays, check the path that they took down the mountain, and zoom in and rewind.
“We really enjoy watching GoPro footage from athletes and your average person having fun in the world," said Arnaud Ragot. "We wanted to celebrate that in the game, and with this generation of consoles embracing that sense of sharing, it all came together pretty perfectly.”
6. It boasts authentic audio and animation
Not content with just getting advice from pro athletes, the team at Ubisoft Annecy decided that the only way to get the game to look and feel right was to motion capture them in action, too.
They captured their movement on the slopes and recorded them doing mid-air tricks on a trampoline to ensure that Steep looks and feels better than any snowboarding game before it.
Arnaud Ragot is clearly proud of his studio's achievements, beaming when he tells us that “everything is real. It’s the real sound of the snow we’ve recorded from the mountain, it’s the real movement from the athletes we’ve captured."
However, as Ragot readily admits, the authenticity was compromised at times to make the game more enjoyable to play. "We use all those tiny details to make it credible but we push some limits in the physics to make sure that the player will have fun whether they’re skiing, snowboarding or trying the other sports. You can definitely do a few things that aren’t possible in real life, but in Steep we make them feel possible.”
7. Every mountain in the distance can be reached
Ubisoft wanted to make sure that everything you see in the game world is within your reach, and it was important to deliver that without any interruption.
“There is no disruption to the process in Steep, no loading,” said Ragot. “We worked a lot on making sure that wherever the player is, they really feel that sense of scale; they can see a mountain or peak in the distance and think: 'wow that looks amazing, I need to go there'.”
8. You can play however you want
Perhaps the most exciting thing about Steep is the sense of freedom that it offers players. Standing on top of that mountain, you’re free to make your way across it with either a pair of skis, a snowboard, paraglider or even a wingsuit.
Want to do a ton of trick events? Just do it! Prefer free roaming and carving your own path across the peaks? You can do that, too.
“We wanted players to be able to create their own agenda in the world,” explains World Director Renaud Person. “We really wanted to be able to give them freedom so if players change their mind and want to go somewhere else, to travel somewhere else – they can.”
Steep will be released on PS4, Xbox One and PC on December 2.
