We wavered between a Resident Evil-style approach to guns, but with very limited ammo, and a no-combat-at-all, Amnesia-style approach. Out first debate was about the core gameplay.
What justifies the night vision and overall artistic direction?Īll these questions and many others needed answers, and since we had decided that the team would be no larger than 10 people, those answers had to be realistic for a team of that size. Immediately the design questions rolled in. We were excited and eager to meet the challenge. Starting from scratch with our own studio would allow us to use the expertise we had gained on past projects and execute according to our own priorities. The first project of our new studio would be a horror game. We immediately agreed it would be a very good starting point for a horror game. Hugo suggested we use Rubber Johnny as a reference for our game. We reasoned that since we were going to make Outlast with a small team and a small budget, we wouldn’t have to worry about making revenues like Assassin’s Creed in order to be profitable. In 2008, he and I had tried to convince Ubisoft Montreal to let us make a horror game, but we were told that they didn’t feel that there was a large enough market for it. In a short time though, making a horror game became the most attractive choice.ĭavid is a real fan, even a connoisseur of horror. We made a list of ideas, and of course most of them sucked, for that is the nature of idea lists. So, what are we going to make? The first thing we needed to agree on was the game genre. (Pictured left to right: Morin, Dallaire, Chateauneuf) The birth of Outlast
Then another two months to get a publishing deal. I figured it would take us a couple of months to work out a pitch and produce a trailer. There may be a fine line between courage and naivety, and while I think success requires both, I believe I had more of the latter.Ī good illustration of this, and an indication of things to come, would be in our estimation of the immediate work ahead. We eventually met and realized we shared the same ambitions to start our own company. I didn’t have much confidence in the success of that project and, with a new year ahead and perhaps too much frigid air in my brain, I decided to quit my job in January 2011. We were asked to join a team on another game already in production. We still believe it was a great project, but we were doing it in the wrong place and at the wrong time. EA was undergoing many changes at the time and after a year or so, the project was cancelled. We were all confident the project would kick ass, but EA’s management felt differently. David and I had worked together in 1998 on a Donald Duck game and later on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time as well as the first Assassin’s Creed. I was attracted by the opportunity to start something new with a small team, and Hugo’s concept was too cool to pass up.Ī few months later, David Chateauneuf joined the team. I joined EA Montreal to work on a new IP based on an original concept by Hugo Dallaire, formerly art director of Splinter Cell and Army of Two. I decided to leave Ubisoft again in 2009 and try something different. The two studios have very different design philosophies and production processes however, and it soon became obvious that I would need to revert to Ubisoft’s way, or go somewhere else. I had learned many things working at Naughty Dog and was eager to apply them at Ubisoft. Stubbornness is the mother of butt-kicking.Īfter shipping Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune in 2007, I returned to Ubisoft Montreal as a creative director. It’s been an intense and bumpy ride, but we have no regrets, and while we are always open to the possibility of time travel, we would not want to go back and change a thing about the experience. This is the origin story of Red Barrels and the road we took to create Outlast.
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