This article was taken from the December 2011 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Games gurus and architects have much in common: both design the movement of people through space. *Assassin's Creed:
Revelations*, set in 16th-century Constantinople, writes that similarity large.
To furnish the video-game's levels with verisimilitude, art director Raphael Lacoste and mission design director Falko Poiker turned draftsmen. They made a research trip to the city (today's Istanbul) to collect images that could be turned into computer graphics. The pair documented landmarks such as the 14th-century Galata Tower (see the gallery) and sixth-century Hagia Sophia (right). Lacoste, 37, also wanted the nitty-gritty details. "We took lots of photos of building materials and textures," he says. "We also shot props, weap- ons and vegetation, and lighting."
But to discover the Constantinople that the series' protagonist Ezio would have experienced in 1511, the team had to hit the books. "I wanted to break the flatness of the walls we usually have in Assassin's," says Lacoste. "So we got dimen- sions from old books for overhanging structures on roofs and frontages."
A number of the team went to architectural college so, Poiker says, "they recreated 16th-century buildings by breaking them down into their architectural elements. They could look at a 1 x 1cm sketch of a building tucked in the corner of a larger drawing and infer what the full-sized version would be like."
As Revelations' title suggests, the game will give fans closure to the stories of Ezio and Altair, the series' characters. But it could also take you closer to ancient Constantinople than ever before.
Assassin's Creed: Revelations is out on 15 November.
Check out the gallery to see how Lacoste and Poiker's team rendered the Galat Tower.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
