Painting Shangri-La

Not another brown shooter

It's not just Shangri-La: Cook takes pride in the series' colors.

Inside Ubisoft, there's a phrase they like to use: "Far Cry owns the colors." The overall look is a "pillar of the art direction and of the franchise." As compared to what? Other shooters.

"We don't want to make another game that's another brown/gray shooter," Cook said. "We want to embrace the color."

The pride doesn't arrive without backup, and Far Cry 4 is a demonstration of that philosophy in action. Any screenshot from any random corner of Kyrat is filled with blues, yellows, reds, the muted colors of fall — all set against the backdrop of the imposing white and gray Himalayas that surround the fictional state.

NOT EXACTLY FAR CRY

Far Cry 4 is what you think of when you think of Far Cry: big, open-world, tons to do, many to meet in a world that looks and behaves much like our own. Shangri-La is not.

At its inception, Shangri-La was to be "a miniature open world set in the main character's mind," Cook said, "a strange dreamscape that would be broken up and interspersed with different visions and stories." And since Ubisoft was dealing with fantasy, its designers weren't constrained by reality. It needed to feel different, and the art team latched onto the idea of color schemes that would separate these visions of dreams, nightmares and memories from each other.

In those early days, concept artists in Montreal and Toronto took inspiration from a Nepalese festival of color, which inspired their palette, for both the locations and characters.

A CHANGE OF SCENERY

Shangri-La's development began apace. Ubisoft was creating the world almost as quickly as it could produce concept art for it. This, in retrospect, was a mistake.

Working "just barely ahead of production," Cook said, became a problem as Shangri-La's final form took shape. Again and again, the look changed, in part because "everybody's idea of a dream world is different." So the developers created "a lot of extra work" for themselves because of Far Cry 4's tight schedule and its insistence that work begin immediately.

Then, at a certain point, what players now know as Shangri-La took shape: A single legend, as opposed to many, based on a single story, in a linear land, not an open world.

A WARM, GLOWING FIREPLACE

If Shangri-La had a flag, it would blow red and gold in the wind.

Those strong, settled visual cues were among the earliest within Ubisoft's refocus. Next, they needed rules "that could easily be communicated and we could all agree upon to guide us forward to the end of production."

"We decided to simplify what Shangri-La was to a paradise world hidden in deep in the Himalayan mountains. We focused on the concept of what paradise would be to the people living in Kyrat: a contemplative world, simple and inviting, like a warm, glowing fireplace."

THE BIBLE

After excitement, hustle and turmoil, Ubisoft established the rules. Then its game makers wrote them down.

"To help achieve a sense of balance and simplicity, we reduced from the more modern, multicolored world of Kyrat, to a more ancient, natural world, with a simple dual-toned color scheme, made up primarily of red and gold," Cook said.

A team once on edge was now able to create a game.

"With the focus clarified, our studios agreed on a concise set of rules for color usage," Cook said, "that were then incorporated into a new design bible that was created to define the look and game experience of our world."

Those weren't suggestions. They weren't best practices. They were "much more rigid than a style guide," and Cook said they made decisions easier and "streamlined production."

GOLD

Shangri-La was born again and baptized in gold.

"Gold was our foundation," Cook said. "We chose it to bring a sense of warmth and richness and [an] overall dreamlike quality to the world. We decided to use it for the sky, the terrain and rocks, all architecture, statues and lighting."

Those decisions, in turn, forced others. In Shangri-La, it is always golden hour, the brief daily period where the world transitions between daytime and sunset. That cohesion made the job of lighting artists and designers easier than Shangri-La's original, multifaceted incarnation.

RED

Red became "the other half of the overall dual-tone look," Cook said.

"The red is what brings the distinct look to and makes the world feel very strange and surreal. It also helps create a complementary experiences to the main campaign."

Cook said that Ubisoft knew people would ask the obvious question: Why red? And the answer for that lies in narrative. Shangri-La is the land of the goddess Kyra, who, long ago, pricked her finger and spilled her blood over the land. It transformed the world, creating red vegetation, maroon seas and the blood of the slaughtered.

Again, the decision produced practical benefits alongside its aesthetic counterparts. Creating vegetation in a dual-tone world was easier than the variety Ubisoft originally planned.

ORANGE

Orange solved a problem.

"Orange is our color of interaction," Cook said. "We chose it because it offers just enough pop in the environment to stand out without being too obvious or breaking the overall look."

It's the color of fire, of explosions, of the charge meter on a player's bow. Perhaps most significantly, orange adorns the handles on the prayer wheels in every level. During playtesting, Ubisoft found that players were confused about how to interact with the gigantic bell-shaped objects. The artists painted the handles with an orange tint, and the confusion evaporated.

WHITE

White is the color of the good.

"White is great for creating a sense of purity and sacredness," Cook said. "So it was a natural choice to use it to define our sacred elements. The white acts as an accent throughout the world to highlight the sacred elements and create visual interest."

Visitors will find white in candles, prayer flags and animals. The original plan called for enemy animals, but as the story shifted to cast players in a protective role, so too, did the role of the animals. They became innocent, pure, passive and white. As before, simplification based on story made Shangri-La easier to create.

Nowhere in Far Cry 4's Shangri-La is white more evident than in the player's brilliant feline companion, a white tiger.

THE BLUES

Red and gold may be Shangri-La's primary colors, but they are not its most deadly. In the secret world, that honor belongs to blue.

"For our enemies, we wanted to maintain the same look and associations from Kyrat by maintaining the blue color scheme," Cook said, and explained that the color choice was inspired by Nepalese police force uniforms.

If you see blue in Shangri-La, in other words, get ready for a fight. It's an alert. It stands out as a harbinger of danger.