Gods & Monsters is an open-world RPG with stamina and resource management

Ubisoft's E3 2019 reveal trailer for Gods & Monsters was exciting and beautiful, but it didn't tell us much about the game. A month later, Ubisoft Quebec is ready to talk about it, and it kinda sounds like Assassin's Creed through the lens of Zelda.

In a recent interview with Ubi's official blog, creative director Jonathan Dumont and senior producer Marc-Alexis Côté spoke on Gods & Monsters in detail. It's an open-world action game, like Assassin's Creed, but much more "lighthearted."

"The narrator, Homer, is telling his grandchildren this story, but his grandkids are interrupting and asking questions along the way. Mythology has a good sense of humor, oftentimes, so there are certain instances where we like to poke fun at things," said Dumont.

Dumont says he and the team loved building Odyssey's world, but felt limited by Assassin's Creed's historical setting. "During production, we started thinking, 'what if we made something that's 100% mythology? We could make a dramatically different game than we did before.'"

The protagonist, Fenyx, is fully customizable. You can change their appearance, armor, and stats. Combat is ability-based, but abilities are also used in platforming. To give an idea of the combat, Durmont said, "...if you're fighting a cyclops, you may have to double jump to reach his head and hit him in the eye to blind him, so then you can fight him on the ground."

Gods & Monster's double jump suggests a greater focus on platforming that sounds radically different from Assassin's Creed's traditional parkour system. More interestingly, the game will have "resource and stamina management"—two things that have never been a worry in AC.

What's not totally clear, by my reading, is what scale Gods & Monsters is working at. Will it be a full price game or a smaller scale project? Its February 25 release date suggests a relatively fast turnaround, but we don't know when it entered development in earnest. Some proper gameplay could clear things up in the future.

Check out the full interview here.

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Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn't pay him. He's very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he'll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don't, though.