A style in itself
“Syberia’s first ambition is to immerse the player into a mysterious and extraordinary universe in which he will be able to live an unbelievable entertaining experience,” explained Benoit Sokal.
With this in mind, the development team decided to merge some technical notions usually reserved to artistic expressions such as comic series and books writing, movie production and obviously, video games designing.
“The exceptional quality of the pre-rendered environments, the deep scenario, the complexity of the characters met by the player all along the quest gives to this title a style in its own,” added Sokal.
Situation
The game features a young New York lawyer, Kathe Walker, whose destiny gets tied up to Hans Voralberg, an automaton inventor and builder with a rather bizarre ingenuity.
Kate’s quest, structured around a tightly woven scenario and some rich characters, will be guided by the players’ decisions and common sense. His role will be to direct this unique hero through this no-return trip.
Development
Entirely developed in Montreal under the direction of Benoit Sokal and Olivier Fontenay, Vice-President, Development, Microids, Syberia represents the company’s biggest challenge ever.
“Microids is an emerging force in the gaming industry, across both North America and Europe,” stated Olivier Fontenay. “With Syberia, we’re building on the strengths we developed in the past few years to produce a AAA adventure title that should please every fan of this genre while also seducing people who never thought they could like this type of entertainment.”
Syberia’s production, spread over 18 months, will have necessitated a task force of over 30 designers, artists, programmers and coders. As an example, we could measure the magnitude of this project by calculating that a man alone would have needed 340 months to create this game from the start. Eighteen years!
About Microids Distribution and Microids Canada
Founded in 1985 in France, Microids develops, publishes and distributes video game software for PCs and game consoles throughout the world. With R&D studios in Paris and Montreal, and distribution entities in Canada, France, Italy and the United Kingdom, Microids currently employs over 200 people, 95 of which are based in Montréal. Microids principally develops adventure, strategy and sports games such as Far Gate, Road to India, Tennis Masters Series and Empire of the Ants. (www.microids.com)