Assassin's Creed Origins: Making mountains out of monuments

Martin Deschambault is a senior concept artist at Ubisoft Montreal. That means he's one of the people responsible for people gushing about how gorgeous Assassin's Creed Origins is [Gaming Nexus score 8 out of 10]. I'm one of them. Sure, I had to play a much as humanly possible for review purposes, but—shhhh, don't tell anybody—I probably spent half of that time in photo mode.

Daschambault has a knack for conveying enormity in the architecture. Where temples are made of mountains, and war elephants lumber along like stalking hills. Where Greek and Egyptian empires build ageless monuments among shifting sands. Where water feels like it's the blood flowing through a city's veins, and the reason Egyptians built monuments so large was to somehow rise to the enormity of their gods.

Bayek, the main character, is cool, don't get me wrong. But Assassin's Creed Origin's Classical Egypt is center stage, and Bayek is, sometimes, more of a bit player. Check out a lot more of Deschambault's work over at ArtStation. And definitely give a look-see to a (personal?) set of sketches he's working on called Project 77. It's something like Star Wars through a diesel punk lens. It's good, too.