Diegetic interactions

Assassin’s Creed Nexus

The Brief

Gameplay in VR is handled primarily through the player moving their controllers in physical space and interacting with the world. It is a key differentiator of VR versus flatscreen games. In Nexus it is used to perform combat, climb a building, or solve a puzzle. Grabbing your sword with a grip button and then swinging your arm to strike an enemy, or pulling yourself up a ladder by grabbing it.

There are some mechanics in Nexus that are tied to a more traditional button press. When giving the game to new players, they often struggled to find the face buttons of these controllers, let alone remembering which button corresponded to which action. Whereas intuitive actions like picking up a cup with the grip trigger, are acquired very quickly, even for those new to VR.

The goal with this redesign is to provide a new way of activating two of the mechanics currently tied to button input: Animus Pulse and Animus Scout.

The Problem

Virtual Reality systems have coalesced around a similar controller design to that of traditional game consoles. However they are split into two, one for each hand, so that it can provide positional tracking to the game. When in VR or even with their eyes closed, players have a sense of where their hands are in physical space at all times. Any interactions that use the controller tracking are therefore a lot more natural to players.

  • In playtesting, players would often lift the headset to check for the position of controller buttons.

  • The controller layout does not match traditional game controllers, the face buttons are split across two hands instead of all on one.

  • Grabbing objects is a common and easily attained interaction in VR games.

  • Nexus already features UI elements that use a grab and pull interaction, which work well. However the combination of physical actions and button presses makes the overall control scheme inconsistent.

The Animus

The Assassin’s Creed franchise introduced the concept of the Animus from the very first game. This narrative device placed the characters inside a virtual reality system that could let them relive their ancestors memories, providing the context for the historical setting. The Animus was also used to explain various video game style UI elements, with the button prompts on the HUD being an in-universe extension of the Animus. We can leverage this in a VR version of Assassin’s Creed to show any sort of UI we want.

Animus Pulse

Animus Pulse is the name given to a feature in Nexus that lets players tag entities in the world around them. Collectibles, Ammo and Enemies are all tagged by this system. Adding small icons that are pinned in 3D space to the entities. They can repeat it often, to refresh the tags so they need a quick way to activate it. It is shown to the player in the form of a quickly expanding ring that fires out from their centre, highlighting objects as it touches them.

Animus Pulse is currently triggered by pressing the Y button on the left controller.

The current tutorial prompt for Animus Pulse.

Animus SCOUT

Animus Scout lets the player get a birds eye view of the world around them. In Nexus it does this by shrinking the world down so that it resembles a model village. It then also adds icons to the objects in the same way as Pulse. Unlike Animus Pulse, Scout can be toggled by the player, provided they are in an open space. There is also a sync point in a fixed position in each level, that lets the user perform a physical interaction to enter Animus Scout.

Animus Scout is currently toggled by holding the Y button on the left controller.

An example of some existing Animus UI that can be grabbed and pulled to trigger Synchronisation Points.

‘Grab and pull’

Animus PUlse

The player begins with their empty hand in any orientation. They hold it still.

They turn their palm to face the sky. After a very short moment a piece of Animus UI appears. Inside the centre is the Grab Indicator Dot that appears on anything that can be grabbed in Nexus. Signalling the player to grab the orb.

The orb fits into the players hand as if they were holding a tennis ball. The player avatar fingers wrap around it like a physical object. When they grab, a ‘ghost’ version of the orb is left where it was spawned, keeping a tether to the now held orb.

As the player pulls their hand away in any direction, this reveals a tether orb in 3D space where the orb originated. A thin line connects the two. The tethered orb shrinks as the player pulls their hand away to provid feedback. At a defined limit, the held orb will snap out of their hand and speed back to the tether point, growing in size as it gets closer.

Once the orb returns to its tether, it explodes in size and triggers the pulse.

Here you can see the blue outline of the pulse passing over the ground. Guard icons, the alarm bell, and objective icon, all appear.

Animus Scout

The Animus Scout action will build on the one handed ‘grab & pull’ created for the Pulse, using both hands.

Players begin the action performing the same upward facing palm gesture. This will enable the first step of the pulse UI. Now if they bring their second hand up in the same position, two orbs, will combine in the centre to create a larger tether orb. The player can grab with each hand, beginning the pull interaction. Now each orb is tethered to the central orb, the player must pull both of their hands apart. If they release an orb early, it will return to its starting position and the player will have to re-grab it. Letting go of both orbs early will cancel the interaction.

The player pulls the orbs away from the central tether until the limit is reached. As before, the orbs will then be released from their hand and snap back to the centre. Like in the pulse interaction this causes the tether orb to explode, however this time it fills the screen. Masking a transition as the player enters Animus Scout, as the player is moved into the air.

When in Animus Scout the player will be able to perform the same gesture to leave. This will then trigger the central orb explosion, again allowing us to mask the transition back to regular gameplay.

Conclusion

  • With these two new interactions players won’t need to learn hidden button mappings. Instead they get a familiar and inviting set of actions to perform.

  • The UI appears with a recognisable grab action they will have already learned from core gameplay.

  • The feedback on the interaction rewards experimentation and will guide them to completion.

  • It’s consistent with existing features in Nexus such as sync points, that use a grab and pull interaction.