XDefiant

Right after Warlords of New York, I moved straight on to XDefiant, a free to play multiplayer shooter developed by Ubisoft San Francisco, with Ubisoft Annecy as a partner studio. Players fight in teams drawn from Ubisoft universes such as The Division, Splinter Cell, Far Cry and Ghost Recon.

The game was in full production when I joined in 2020, and it still was when I left in 2021.

Victory dances and podiums

Our work focused on the moments around the action rather than on gameplay locomotion. The biggest part was the end of the match: victory animations, best player moments and podiums, for the factions that face off in multiplayer. For each one, we brainstormed a victory move that matched the character type and their weapon.

We also animated the robot dog, as we called it, at the heart of the Escort mode. Animating it in keyframe was a lot of fun, especially its victory and defeat dances.

On the gameplay side, we also had a few weapon animations, such as throwing a grenade.

My first game in first person

XDefiant was my first game in first person view, and it was fascinating, technically, to understand how its animation system worked. It added another string to my bow.

In first person, a movement has to stay readable without getting in the player’s way. And every animation had to work in both first and third person views, so that an arm never ends up going through a character’s head, for instance.

Working with San Francisco across such a time difference was hard at times, but we managed to organise ourselves and stay proactive. That is one of the strengths of the Annecy studio.

XDefiant taught me to look at animation through the player’s own eyes, quite literally.