Pak Mei has explosiveness that corresponds exactly
to what I wanted for this story of revenge.
Pak Mei is ferocious, fast, powerful and accurate.
And, yeah.
You have a lot of strikes, coming out like this.
The player will create the choreography.
It depends only on them to make a beautiful situation.
When I was 14, I went to China with my father.
I get back in France and started learning Chinese in school.
So I find some master in France,
but I didn't find the right master
and the right style for me in France.
So I went to China and I find Pak Mei
in Foshan
and I start learning with this clan.
The right Master is Lao Wei San.
I wanted to be better and start to be one of the best.
One day I became Master myself.
Most of Kung Fu we see, it is like what Jet Li is doing,
it's like Opera Kung Fu.
No one fights like this in real life.
It's amazing, but this is not authentic,
and I was searching for something real.
So the idea was to have the best of both worlds:
Credibility, the expertise of Benjamin
in terms of movement, in terms of real combat,
and on our side, our knowledge about combat design.
For me it was natural to integrate Benjamin's Pak Mei into our game,
to use his moves as an inspiration for our main character's and mission.
I bring some specifics in the mechanics of the gameplay,
the interaction with other NPCs.
I create the movement of three weapons
for the main character: the baseball bat, machete,
and the staff you will see is
Pak Mei from Foshan.
I really wanted to have something
very immersive, really cool on the screen,
but there is also sometimes game design things
that don't fit with this.
Should I do the thing that will be better for the game design,
or the thing that will be better
for the stuff on the screen, for the feeling in the game.
Basically, we take the data from the capture and we post-animate it.
So we shape it to respect the animation direction and the style.
For instance, we have to add real impacts,
with better synchronized action. We add camera movements,
we add camera shakes, we add viscerality.
The player must be amazed on each finishing move they perform.
Some moves we changed a little bit
because it was making sense when we were doing like this,
like a stab yesterday, we do a stabbing technique,
and I needed to finish the NPC with a stabbing technique,
and at the end I thought, oh no,
it will be good to just cut the throat.
And I just changed the technique like this because
in the action, it was feeling more like this.
I wanted to share with them,
not just the technique, but also the cultural side.
It's important for us to be respectful
of the Chinese culture and to also show to the player
little details that for Benjamin or also for me,
are important in the life of a Kung Fu Master or a Kung Fu student.
After we have this picture of what Kung Fu really is,
well, we just go deeper and deeper about this.
Jordan say, OK, what about this Wuguan?
Is its Feng Shui good?
I say, what?
You really want me to check this?
And he say, of course!
So I start checking the Wuguan design,
OK, this door cannot be here, this kind of stuff.
This is great that they go deeper like this.
In our game, we don't want to depict the main character as invincible.
We want the player to have pressure, to be surrounded by multiple enemies.
Any mistakes of the player can be deadly.
And I came with one idea, two ideas, three ideas, and say,
OK, this one, this one is the greatest one, this is what we want.
And we just move forward like this all the time.
Actually, there are, I don't know,
maybe 160 moves, only for the main character.
Each move was designed for a particular situation.
It needs to be effective,
it needs to be credible,
and it needs to be beautiful.
The player can, I dunno, just do rushing and evade,
but he can also kill all of them with style.
That idea is the heart of Sifu.