Fenyx Rising has gamers explore the mythological world of Tartaros as Fenyx, a Greek soldier tasked with saving the world and the gods from a terrible titan named Typhon. While that may sound serious, there’s actually a lot of levity in Fenyx Rising, which wasn’t the original intention of the game.
“At first the project had been envisioned much more seriously,” Jeffrey Yohalem, Narrative Director of Immortals Fenyx Rising told Newsweek. “There was some early animations in place and there’s this moment where Fenyx lands in Tartaros and falls flat on her face and spins around and blows the camera a kiss, which was a sort of reference to Bayonetta in its own cooky, zany way. When I experienced that moment I was like, ‘oh what if the whole game was like this?’”
Yohalem, who worked on Assassin’s Creed in the past, feels video games have become “incredibly serious and dark,” but Fenyx Rising could be something different.
“What I loved growing up was The Princess Bride or Naked Gun that commented on the world, but was also incredibly funny,” Yohalem added. “At the same time, the Marvel movies have rebirthed the comedy by having extreme stakes, but also being funny. What if we did this in a video game?”
With that thought in mind. Yohalem and the rest of the team took a shot at creating a narrative set in ancient Greece that had stakes, but didn’t take itself too seriously. With a game the length of Fenyx Rising, Yohalem knows that not every joke will land, but he hopes many do like the witty banter between Zeus and Prometheus.
Both characters will narrate your journey through Tartaros, which gives the writers more opportunities to stretch their comedic muscles that don’t occur when a story doesn’t have narrators.
“In a video game when the main character encounters things like blocked doors and other situations the character talks to themselves,” Yohalem explained. “This is an opportunity for the narrators to react to anything that the player does and add a joke to it so everything they do is funny in some way because of the narrators and there’s added story dimensions.”
Yohalem says if you look at heist movies or comedies that have narrators, the narrator becomes a part of the story and Fenyx Rising was a chance to have this “multi-layered narrative” that has multiple main characters in multiple time periods, which adds to the fun of the game and gamers will get that sense of fun between Zeus and Prometheus.
The narrative director describes Zeus in Fenyx Rising as an amalgam of Mel Brooks, Larry David and a “little bit” of Scrooge from a Christmas Carol. However, unlike a lot of other media depictions of the most recognizable name of the Greek pantheon, Fenyx Rising’s Zeus will be closer to his mythological origins, meaning he’s a giant jerk.
“I feel like a lot of people who tend to adapt the material seem to sweep under the rug the humor and also the old-fashion elements because our society has evolved so much since that time period that may offend us today,” Yohalem said. “So rather than sweep it under the rug, let’s have a modern commentary of those things and put it all out there so people can explore it and people can figure out how they feel about it and make fun of it, update it and make it modern in that way.”
Prometheus, who acts as the main narrator of the story, is there to balance Zeus’ colorful language and naive nature.
“For any crazy, comedic character you need a serious foil and Prometheus is perfect for that because he’s pretty much the original nerd,” Yohalem explained. “He fought with Zeus against the Titans. [Prometheus] was the main Titan to fight his brothers and help Zeus, but Prometheus fell in love with humanity and decided to help them in any way possible.”
Prometheus would help humanity by introducing them to fire and Zeus punished him for it by chaining him to a rock for all eternity and having eagles eat his liver every day. The two immortals are great friends and cousins, but when the game starts they are frenemies, which adds to their odd couple dynamic.
“Prometheus is defending humanity and Zeus is so anti-everything so there’s a challenge between the two of them. Are humans worth it? Are they worth saving or are they doomed? That theme plays very well with being a story about Fenyx, a human, trying to save the gods,” Yohalem added.
Yohalem studied Greek mythology in college so he’s very familiar with the stories and history of the gods. He hopes that Fenyx Rising teaches gamers about the characters and stories that dominated ancient times. From the heroics of Achilles to the not-so kid-friendly story of Aphrodite’s birth.
“I worked on Assassin’s Creed before and we had this big idea that everything is historically accurate and if you Google anything the first or second hit should lead you to a ton of info about it,” Yohalem explained. “I took that same principle here. There’s a lot of that in this game and we are encouraging players to go explore.”
With so many characters in Greek mythology to choose from, Yohalem explains that the ones in Immortals Fenyx Rising are those he definitely wanted to use in the story. However, there will be more showing up in the future in the form of DLC.
But however the DLC for Fenyx Rising looks like, there will definitely be more comedy to enjoy.
“I feel like mythology has a lot of humor in it. We take religion very seriously nowadays and it’s about morality and how you should behave, but the Greeks saw their religion much more as entertainment,” Yohalem said. “They were analogs of themselves and were more of a soap opera or a reality tv show when you’re on the edge of your seat to see what fallible things Zeus is going to do next, what the humans are going to do next. I think you do a drama with the gods, it increases that comedy angle.”
Immortals Fenyx Rising is available now for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Google Stadia and PC.
