Abzû

The game's title stems from Sumerian mythology, particularly the myth of the ocean goddess Tiamat and the fresh water god Abzu uniting to form all life: a reason this was chosen was that myths surrounding land-based life and their supposed origins in a cosmic ocean were a recurring theme in multiple world mythologies.[11] The title is made up of the Sumerian words "ab" (water) and "zu" (to know), translated by the developers as "Ocean of Wisdom".[1] The word provided difficulties early on, as the Sumerian spelling "Abzu" differed from the Akkadian spelling "Apsû". As a compromise, the team merged the two spellings into the game's title. The circumflex over the letter "u" caused problems for the team as hardly anyone knew how to type it and the computer programs had trouble handling it as part of the coding. The use of the word played into the game's focus on the ocean due to its mythic connections. The Middle Eastern influences extended to the game's architecture, and incorporated Nava's wish for structures to have meaning beyond being simple scenery or tools for player progression.[11]

The aim from an early stage was not to simulate diving, but instead to capture the dream-like feeling of ocean exploration.[8] As part of his research, Nava experimented with other ocean simulation games and found they were not "fun".[21] By removing any time limit or air gauge, the team sought to promote a relaxing sense of exploration.[7] The meditation mechanic was added during later development from 2015 to 2016 as a means of allowing players a view of the surrounding marine life and environment.[21] When choosing their game engine, Matt Nava was still the only staff member and so they needed an easy-to-use platform with tools and technology to create the game. Unreal Engine 4 was still quite new at this time, but it was chosen after the team had vetted other developer software available at the time. The team were able to use both Unreal Engine 4's advanced developer tools and expand the engine's functionality to incorporate unique elements such as fish shoal behavior, vegetation animation, and underwater lighting.[10] Using Unreal Engine 4 allowed engineer Derek Cornish to construct unique systems for underwater lighting effects.[7]

The artistic style was meant to portray a vibrant underwater world, but the team also needed to prevent activity on-screen from overwhelming the player, so a stylized look was chosen to both maintain the game's artistic style and reduce the amount of "visual noise". Environmental editing was a big issue for the team, with much of their early development dedicated to creating editing tools that could do small-scale edits to environments after they had been locked down.[10] When creating the environments, Nava drew on his experience developing Flower for Thatgamecompany, creating sporadically scattered interaction points that triggered with player exploration and triggered new life or new elements within each environment.[11] Since there was no dedicated animator, the team needed to use multiple techniques for animating the diver, fish and flexible vegetation: the diver used a skeletal animation run through a complex state machine, vegetation such as seaweed used rope physics, while fish mainly used mathematical motion in combination with morph target posing to remove the need of individual skeletal structures.[10]

The types of fish seen in Abzû were based on real-life creatures from the oceans of Earth, and to fit them into the game each species was distilled down to its most distinctive traits.[10] The team had "tens of thousands" of fish within the game.[11] Their swimming styles were directly modeled on the behavior and physics of real fish movements.[8] The number of fish presented problems with running the game, but the programming staff developed a method of simplifying each fish's animation without compromising the game's visuals, which "multiplied the number of fish possible on screens by 10". Each fish species had its own unique artificial intelligence that had cascading levels of awareness and interaction with other species and objects in the environment. The team started with getting the fish to swim without clipping through walls, then built upon that with further expansion on fish behavior and interaction. Their most challenging task was creating realistic bait balling effects for shoals of small fish, which was only achieved and finalized near the end of development. The developers did take liberties by grouping together types of fish from different parts of the globe which would normally not be able to interact, though this fell in line with the game's overall theme and the myths it referenced. Despite this, the developers emulated the zones that each fish would be found in, whether it be a coral reef or the deep ocean where sunlight does not reach.[11] The amount of work and the team's dedication to creating a realistic and vibrant experience meant they were creating fish until development finished.[10]

The soundtrack for Abzû was composed, conducted, and produced by Austin Wintory, who had previously worked on Journey and The Banner Saga.[10] Wintory was first shown concept art for the project by Nava before Giant Squid Studios was founded and development began. When the studio was founded, Wintory was invited on board the project.[22] The music was written from the start to be interactive and dynamic rather than based on specific cues. To achieve this, Wintory had to play the game extensively and repeatedly to get a sense for what players would experience and what would best match the mood.[23] Similar to Wintory's work on Journey, the first track written was the main theme "To Know, Water" and further tracks were created over the game's three year development based on that theme.[22] The track titles from the second piece onwards were taken either from an English translation of the Enūma Eliš, or were named after marine creatures featured in levels where the tracks featured. The credits theme was purely choral, with the lyrics sung at normal speed.[24]

The score's instrumental element began with using a harp as its base, with a choir being used later.[23] The choir sections, performed by the London Voices Choir were used to represent the spiritual elements of the story. The lyrics were the first ten lines of the Enūma Eliš used for each track with drawn-out syllables to sound alien.[24] More instrumentation was needed, with a full orchestra eventually being incorporated. As with his work on Journey and Assassin's Creed Syndicate, he used a soloist alongside an ensemble orchestra: in this case, the solo instrument was an oboe.[23] The oboe solos were performed by Kristin Naigus, whom Wintory had heard performing a cover of a track from Journey on YouTube.[22][23] The music for early levels went through extensive redrafts with an estimated fifty minutes of music being discarded for five minutes left in-game, though pieces of later sections came together quickly and remained generally unchanged. The Diver's theme formed a recurring leitmotif throughout the score.[24] Wintory worked closely with Abzû's sound designer Steve Green and created a music-based story that flowed alongside and worked with the visual narrative of Abzû.[7]

The official soundtrack was released as a digital album through Bandcamp and iTunes on August 2, 2016.[22][16] A physical edition was released on October 22 through Varèse Sarabande.[25] The album included a long piece of music in the track "Balaenoptera Musculus" that was not used in-game, but was included by Wintory as he liked the piece.[24] Music reviewers were generally positive about the soundtrack album.[26][27] The soundtrack later won the 2017 Game Audio Network Guild's "Best Original Soundtrack Album" award.[28] The soundtrack was also nominated at the 2017 BAFTA Games Awards in the "Music" category, but lost to Virginia.[29] For his work on Abzû, Wintory won the 2016 International Film Music Critics Association award for "Best Original Score for a Video Game or Interactive Media", making his second win in a row.[30] The score was also nominated at the Hollywood Music in Media Awards in the "Original Score – Video Game" category.[31] Reviewers of the game also gave unanimous praise to the soundtrack, positively comparing it to that of Journey.[4][5][6][32][33]

Track list