Ubisoft announced Steep, an action sports game set in the open world of the Alps, for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, during its E3 2016 press conference. It is due out in December.
Here’s an overview, via Ubisoft:
With development led by Ubisoft Annecy, Steep drops players onto the peaks of mountains, with exhilarating experiences that include skiing, wingsuiting, snowboarding, and paragliding. These sports establish an incredible level of freedom to explore the game’s open world, allowing players to choose the way they travel and play. Steep’s vast playground offers a wide range of activities that give players the opportunity to discover, compete, pull off crazy stunts, and more. Players can meet with friends from all over the world to create unique and memorable moments.
In Steep, players can use the innovative trail feature to relive their most inspiring rides and trailblazing achievements, and share them on social networks with friends. Along with sharing ride replays, players can also use this feature to challenge friends to outrace them on a shared path, create epic stunts or set out to discover the massive mountain playground.
Get the E3 2016 trailer, gameplay walkthrough, and Q&A below. View the first screenshots at the gallery.
Trailer
Gameplay Demo
E3 Q&A
1. What is Steep?
Steep is a new action sports game, taking players to the open world of the Alps and Alaska. The game offers a variety of sports, including skiing, wingsuiting, snowboarding and paragliding. The wild and massive mountain environment offers a wide range of activities and opportunities, allowing players to freely ride, compete, and pull off crazy stunts. In Steep, players can meet up with riders from all over the world and share their experiences with their friends and the world!
2. What were the inspirations behind the game?
For us, it is a dream come true to work on Steep because it combines two of our passions: sports and the outdoors. The Annecy Studio is only a few miles away from Mont Blanc, the highest peak in Europe. We definitely are mountain lovers, and very much enjoy all the exciting things you can do up there. We also love and were inspired by the people who go out there, pull off insane lines, share their experiences on social media, and become inspiring figures. We are also convinced that we can bring something strong and unique to the sports game segment by making use of our past experiences at the studio. We’ve had the chance to work on numerous major titles over the past twenty years, including Tom Clancy’s The Division and the Assassin’s Creed series. Needless to say, we’ve already had some great opportunities to put our multiplayer experience to the test!
Our team, made up of passionate veterans of the industry, is a combination of mountain and outdoor sports enthusiasts and online/multiplayer game experts. In a nutshell, it’s a perfect recipe for creating Steep!
3. Can you introduce the different sports that are playable in Steep?
Players can enjoy four different adrenaline-fueled sports: skiing, wingsuiting, snowboarding and paragliding. Each of these sports offers a great variety of experiences. Multiple activities allow players the freedom to explore Steep’s open world in whichever way they choose. All four sports are balanced, and players can choose whether they want to use one sport or mix all four while exploring the environment by easily switching from one sport to another.
4. What is the creative vision behind Steep’s open world?
With Steep, we wanted players to embrace the thrill of the mountain with a fresh action-sports experience across mountainous open world. Steep’s perfect playground contains a variety of environments, including forests, stony cliffs, glaciers, and lakes. For instance, you can fly over the icefields of Mont Blanc with your paraglide, ride the Matterhorn’s steepest face, pull off insane tricks in snowparks, or fly through the Aiguilles canyons in your wingsuit.
Steep’s world will also offer a dynamic environment. Changes in the time of day and weather conditions are carefully designed in order to create memorable settings and to give players the opportunity to experience the scenery in a variety of different ways. We want to focus on turning your moments in Steep into the rides of your life!
5. Can you tell us more about the sharing features, especially about this specific trail feature that you showcased during the E3 2016 demo?
Sharing is central to the Steep experience, the game was built around players being able to share their best moments. We want players to share their most memorable and thrilling rides, stunts and tricks. The Trail feature makes the most of all the broadcasting tools available in consoles and PCs and allows players to share their clips with friends and the community.
The Trail feature saves players’ paths and actions as they ride through the open-world mountain environment. Players are able to watch a replay of their rides and edit the footage in different ways, including switching viewpoints and zooming in and out. Using this feature, players can also challenge their friends to do better on the same path using different metrics like performance and time.
6. Is Steep a multiplayer experience only?
While we believe Steep is best enjoyed with other players, our game has a wide range of activities available for solo players, and sharing your experience with other players enhances the game’s openworld premise.
As shown during the Ubisoft E3 conference, you can enjoy Steep’s multiplayer gameplay in many different ways. You can try to come up with amazing tricks, like a wingsuit going through a paraglide while a skier is jumping over both of them – that’s just one example! We strongly believe in Steep’s potential to become a factory for creating crazy lines and jaw-dropping stunts. We’re convinced players will think of incredible combinations that we haven’t even imagined yet!
7. Can you explain how online connectivity and matchmaking work?
In Steep, you share the mountain playground with everyone on a single, worldwide server, so there are numerous players playing in the same area and at the same time. To ensure the best gameplay experience, the most relevant players chosen by factors like location and language will be displayed and suggested to you. You can then choose to match up and play together.
8. What kinds of competition and challenges will be available in the game?
In Steep’s vast open world, players will always find a great variety of challenges to keep them entertained and to test their skills. Specific challenges are available for each sport and players can compete against one another through, for example, leaderboards for races, tricks scoring, and cliff jumps.
The Trail feature also allows players to easily create their own challenges they can share with their friends and compete for the best performance. We still have many exciting details to share in the future about the in-game activities offered in Steep!
9. You’ve shown some impressive tricks in the E3 2016 demo. How does the trick system work?
Steep’s tricks are designed to be accessible to players of all skill levels. While anyone can easily perform tricks, players can get creative and take more risks to pull off even crazier tricks. Tricks utilize the Left and Right stick axis. Combining both sticks’ axis during a jump will control the rotations you will perform. Players can make their tricks even more spectacular by experimenting with the different combinations and add style with grabs and tweaks to their poses.
10. The sound design of the game feels very special and immersive, with sounds of heartbeats, breathing… Can you tell us more about this creative choice?
We want the game to be fully immersive and appeal to all the senses. In action sports, risk taking and adrenaline frequently translate into an emphasis on breathing and heart beats. The music will also intensify as the rider continues to carry through with a successful performance. Finally, big mountain purity and beauty is a call to minimalist and contemplative sound design.
Moreover, we put a lot of focus in trying to offer the best feeling of sliding or gliding as possible. We think sliding is really the interaction between your board and the ground, or between your wings and the air. We decided to dedicate a large spectrum of our sound design to that interaction in order to really immerse the player in the experience.
11. Does the game focus on a specific experience such as freestyle, freeride, exploration?
There is no emphasis on a specific play style – the choice is yours! Whether you are more of an Explorer and want to discover more of the world, a Freerider in search of the perfect line, a Freestyler pulling off crazy tricks, or a Bone Collector pushing the limits, Steep has what you’re looking for.
12. To what extent can riders be customized?
Players will be able to choose their avatar from among a range of pre-defined characters, both male and female and of various ethnicities. They will then be able to customize their riders’ outfits and equipment. Outfits (including crazy and fun costumes), as well as equipment, can be changed to enable the player to be creative and make his/her avatar look unique and fun without impacting the gameplay or their performance. Additional touches, like visual gadgets, flares, flashlights, backpacks and more will be available.
13. Were other studios involved in the development of the game?
Ubisoft Montpellier and Ubisoft Kiev are studios we collaborate with on the development on Steep. Ubisoft Montpellier contributes to Steep’s technical and artistic features, while Ubisoft Kiev is focused on delivering optimal performance for PC players.
14. When will the game be available?
The game will be available this winter season on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
