Assassin's Creed Odyssey
Game Design

Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Role Product Designer
Client Ubisoft
Year 2018

Regional Quest Ownership — Messara, Crete

I led the design of several side quests in the vibrant Messara region, focusing on themes of civil unrest, cultural diversity, and trade. The narrative struck a balance between weighty political intrigue and light-hearted, humorous moments to capture the region's dynamic spirit.

City of Kydonia — Civil Unrest Quest

Key Contributions:

  • Challenge: Push the boundaries of the quest system to create engaging, dynamic gameplay.
  • Solution: Designed a quest with three objectives that could be tackled in any order, leading to varied outcomes and a final boss fight with different difficulty levels based on player choices.
  • Result: The quest provided players with meaningful choices and outcomes, enhancing their sense of agency.

City of Gortyn — Gortyn Out of Hand Quest

Key Contributions:

  • Challenge: Leverage systemic features like Nation Power while incorporating handcrafted content.
  • Solution: Created a quest that adjusted enemy presence based on the region's power dynamics, allowing players to strategise their approach.
  • Historical Tie: Highlighted Gortyn's legal history through references to the ancient Gortyn Code, blending real-world lore with gameplay.

Making Fetch Quests Fun and Rewarding

I reimagined traditional fetch quests by incorporating humour, emotional storytelling, and thoughtful objective placement to create engaging and memorable player experiences. Collaboration with Narrative Designers was key to making these quests feel rewarding and impactful.

Say That Again!

Key Contributions:

  • Objective: Inject humour to make fetch quests more enjoyable.
  • Approach: Collaborated with a Narrative Designer to craft witty dialogue and strategically placed collectible items, allowing players to feel clever by pre-collecting them.

Flowers for the Dead

Key Contributions:

  • Objective: Create a meaningful fetch quest with emotional impact.
  • Approach: Designed a journey through curated scenic vistas culminating in a Viewpoint discovery. The story led to a heartfelt twist, leaving a lasting impression on players.

Character Quest Ownership — Mikkos Questline, Hephaistos Islands

Working remotely with Level Designers from Chengdu, I contributed to designing quests in the Hephaistos Islands, balancing narrative and gameplay needs while minimising environmental changes. This experience strengthened my skills in collaborative problem-solving and adaptive quest design.

School of Hard Knocks

Key Contributions:

  • Explored non-lethal, arena-style fights with fun, player-driven dialogue choices that could lead to character growth and allyship.

Doctor's Pet

Key Contributions:

  • Navigated design challenges by working within an established region, collaborating with the Chengdu studio to creatively integrate quests while minimising changes.
  • This pre-pandemic remote collaboration experience honed my skills in cross-studio communication and problem-solving before there were established protocols and tools to aid in doing this more effectively.

Additional Contributions

  • Onboarded new team members, sharing best practices in quest and level design.
  • Wrote flavour text and contributed to brainstorming narrative beats for quests.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey is a 2018 action role-playing game developed and published by Ubisoft. Set in 431 BC, the plot tells a fictional history of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta.

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