The Is It Love? series is all about letting players chart their own journey through a romantic visual novel. For the latest entry, Fallen Road, Ubisoft's 1492 studio isn't telling a traditional love story, instead placing more focus on a heroine fighting against the destruction of Earth by a horde of demons. And while romance might not play as pivotal a role in Fallen Road as it has in past Is It Love? games, Creator of Is It Love? and Co-founder of 1492 studio, Thibaud Zamora thinks it will appeal to more players.
"For us, Fallen Road is an excellent opportunity to tempt new players to the franchise by providing a visual novel, with some romance, and with an art direction and strong screenplay that breaks the mold of our more classic universes," says Zamora. "Love remains in our DNA, but Fallen Road allows us to tell its story in a different way."
This time around, that art direction will play a more pivotal role than ever before as the artwork for Fallen Road was created by visual development studio, Wardenlight designers Jessica Rossier and Bastien Grivet, who most notably worked on Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse.
"The care given to the art direction is fundamental," says Creative Director at 1492, Claire Zamora. "For this universe, we chose new contributors who had very personal artistic styles. We went for more realistic character designs, and scenery that closely resembles paintings. We are so proud of the creative work from Bastien and Jessica. The realism lends a more adult tone, and adds some intensity to the stressful scenes."
We spoke with Rossier and Grivet to learn more about their experience working on Fallen Road, and how they carried their experience from Into The Spider-Verse into the production of the new game.
How familiar were you with the Is It Love? games before working on Fallen Road? What about this game appeals to you as an artist?
Bastien Grivet: When we first saw the game, we thought it was extraordinary. At the time, Claire and Thibaud [Zamora] invited us to a restaurant, and he told me, "We are working on a new game, I think it will be a hit." We looked at it, and thought it was amazing!
The characters impressed us from the very beginning. The design is such a change from what already existed! Because there was a completely new style that we were not used to in this genre, we didn't know this universe. Seeing the characters' designs from the first Is It Love?, we fell in love directly with the universe.
Would you say that this is what made you want to invest in the project as an artist?
Jessica Rossier: Seeing how much Claire and Thibaud cared about their graphics really touched us. On the one hand, we were aware that they knew how to make games, but the fact that they had such sensitivity in choosing their artists in order to get the high quality they were looking for in the games, that really seduced us.
Fallen Road is a fantastical love story. How do you take that and translate it into your artwork?
BG: So, as in many of our productions, we asked ourselves, "What do we like? What are the similar universes in this genre that we already know, such as Supernatural or Buffy the Vampire Slayer? What do we like from those? What makes them credible for the audience? For example, when there were some horror scenes to create, we really went for it. We were very sincere with the theme, and we didn't try to sweeten anything. We did everything to respect the atmosphere of the story.
What sort of guidance or feedback were you given when designing the backgrounds? Were you told exactly what was needed, or given some freedom to choose?
BG: We had total freedom during the romantic moments as well as the frightening ones. We already had in mind what was interesting to us, in terms of romance. We had the freedom to do what moved us, and thanks to the feedback we got from Thibaud, the team from 1492, and the people around us, it showed we were moving in the right direction.
JR: We had only one constraint from Claire and Thibaud: we had to have a day/night cycle. But we were totally free to create the environments we deemed necessary for the game.
How does working on Fallen Road differ from working on a film like Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse?
BG: It's amazing, because we learned a lot of new techniques and we changed things thanks to Spider-Verse. When we started the art direction on Fallen Road, we said to ourselves that we would lean on things we were doing before Spider-Verse. But then we saw how excited people were about Spider-Verse, and we said, "why not go for something as strong and impactful here, in terms of scenery?"
JR: When we saw the reaction [to Spider-Verse] from fans of Spider-Man, and even the audience who didn't know much about the superhero before, we thought that was really something!
BG: We had to optimize the techniques that we had already learned. Before, making one image took us two weeks, and now it only takes us two days.
JR: So, we had to find optimal solutions to keep the high quality and to get faster on the production of images. We then did a mix between old techniques we had used before Spider-Man and those we learned during production. We are very proud of the resulting scenery. We managed to produce something truly original.
Did you learn anything while working on Spider-Verse that helped you on Fallen Road?
JR: On Spider-Verse, we used a technique to paint scenery from the bottom, as if it was some traditional painting, but in Photoshop. We weren't allowed to use computer graphics or pictures. So just pure, digital painting.
BG: Then we realized that if we were using 3D environments, we wouldn't have to worry about perspective, as lighting would already be computed, and we would only have to "paint" on top of the environments already created in 3D, giving them a living, illustrated, and creative feeling. It worked miraculously. Within a day, the 3D was complete, and we were doing the painting the following day.
Fallen Road takes place in Heaven, Hell, and on Earth. How does your process change when designing more realistic environments on Earth, versus the fantasy backgrounds of Hell and Heaven?
BG: We drew inspiration from reality. We used tons of references to the American suburbs and countryside. For Heaven, we chose gothic architecture, which is already well-established. We re-used things that people could connect with for each design. Heaven is a vast cathedral. It's a "cathedral-city." We didn't want to leave the framework in the design of the scenery, contrary to designing the creatures and undergrounds, where we used a bit more freedom. We used familiar parts, but we also added our own touch. As an example, for the final fight, we drew inspiration from The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
JR: On the other hand, we made a dream we had for more than 12 years come true: to create our own Supernatural. We could finally design everything that wasn't on the show. We are big fans of Supernatural, so it was great to make our own work inspired by it.
Is It Love? Fallen Road is available now on the App Store and Google Play store.
