“Some of them are very compact, others are very vertical,” notes Desourteaux of the levels. The studio’s art team have been influenced by Escher - the 20th century artist best known for his endless staircases.
The engine upgrade also grants Cyanide more freedom when it comes to enabling comprehensive shadows at long distances - essential when players come to plot a path through the sequel’s large and layered environments.
Enemies react dynamically depending on what level of lighting he’s in. Cyanide have designed a system of gradient colours to replace Styx: Master of Shadows’ binary lighting, so that their goblin protagonist is never simply ‘visible’ or ‘invisible’. The way a game is lit isn’t just an aesthetic choice - and that’s more true in the stealth genre than any other. “There are a lot of Focus developers that are in Paris using Unreal Engine as well, so we we can share our experiences.” Bringing light to the (high fantasy) world Sometimes they take our solutions as well, to implement it in their engine, so it's an exchange. “They visit us sometimes during the production so we can address our problems. “We have a lot of conversations with them,” he says. It was harder on Cyanide’s programmers - but the studio have been in regular contact with Epic for help. The change was relatively easy for Styx’s level designers, who found themselves working with familiar-but-improved tools. So it's great to tell a story and to showcase a lot of different environments.” “We changed the engine, that allows us to have better graphics and better cinematics as well. “It’s all about improvement,” Desourteaux explains. The most significant shift in Cyanide’s working process for Styx’s second outing has been an upgrade from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal 4. The climb Cyanide took to get there has seen them reach new technical heights. Two and a half years later, Styx: Shards of Darkness sits proudly on Steam with a prized ‘Very Positive’ user rating. “We had some good feedback from the press, and most of all from the players,” remembers lead level designer Julien Desourteaux. So it seems fitting that, when developers Cyanide realised they had a rough diamond, they decided to keep hold of it - prototyping new ideas for a sequel almost immediately after release. 2014’s Styx: Master of Shadows was a game about a goblin with a magpie’s eye for shiny things.
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