After 15 years at Ubisoft working on Far Cry, Splinter Cell and Rainbow Six, veteran developer Patrik Méthé fancied doing something different — and three years later, at Sony’s recent State of Play, viewers were treated to exactly that: a trailer for a blockbuster open-world action RPG starring a hulking bird warrior.
This is Project Windless, a game set in the world of the popular Korean novel series The Bird That Drinks Tears — albeit a franchise that many in the West won’t have heard of. Reaction to the game’s big reveal trailer was positive, Méthé tells IGN, though tinged with some jokes about its main character that is, essentially, a large humanoid chicken.
But after that initial moment of surprise, well, the game and its world look intriguing. And it’s protagonist is certainly unique — a quality Méthé said had been key to centering the game on this particular hero, and why he was interested in the project overall.
“What you’re playing is the rise of a mythical character that you will hear about in the [The Bird That Drinks Tears] novels, but obviously he’s not there anymore because it’s more than 1000 years before,” Méthé said, making clear that the game has been created as an entry point for the fantasy franchise.
“You’re really playing the foundation of this universe,” he continued. “Whether you read the novels or not won’t change your immersion, your understanding of the game itself.”
Project Windless is set to be the first project from Méthé’s Krafton Montreal, a studio forged around the idea of making this game that now houses 90 people. A further 40, meanwhile, are assisting development in a studio near Seoul.
“I was receiving a bunch of contacts on LinkedIn and stuff, and I received one from a company called Krafton,” Méthé recalls of how his involvement began, shortly after leaving Ubisoft. “I had no clue what [Krafton] was so I almost closed it, but then it was written: ‘the creator of PUBG. I’m like, ‘oh, okay, might be worth [taking a look]’.”
After a bit of research, Méthé found an old article suggesting that Krafton had been “looking to do the Korean Witcher” — and while this description wasn’t in the official pitch for the project he eventually heard, it still piqued his interest.
“What Krafton asked us was simple, it was: ‘We have this incredible IP, beloved in South Korea, you have the experience doing great AAA single-player games. What would you do with that in order to introduce it to the Western market?’ Not that we don’t want to sell to [Korean fans too], but what would you do?'”
“My answer was: ‘if anyone answers you [on the spot] to that kind of question, you should stop the call immediately. Because to answer that alone, without thinking about it for more than a few minutes, it’s a joke. This kind of project requires the expertise of many people, so if you want a serious answer and not just buzzwords — the used sales car pitch — give me the time to sync with experts and we’ll get back to you with a real answer.”
And that’s what Krafton allowed Méthé to do. After some initial discussion around directly adapting The Bird That Drinks Tears’ first novel, Méthé realized that setting the action generations before allowed for more flexibility in crafting a more unique story suited to a video game, rather than adapting the books’ stories to a different medium while trying to hit all the same beats.
“For me it’s more that we have the novels, which is great for us as developers because it answers a lot of questions that often take up a lot of resource and time,” Méthé says. “We have those answers already in place, and we can then easily add layers of depth into the stories and the motivation of each race.”
It hasn’t all been plain sailing — Méthé says he underestimated how much of a “hectic and a bumpy adventure” it was going to be, figuring out what Project Windless would be while also “building a studio, finding a place, recruiting people, trying to understand the ecosystem of the company.” He continued: “We knew it would be a good challenge and it is a good challenge. So it’s never boring. Let’s say it like that.”
That said, it sounds like a welcome change for Méthé after more than 15 years working on Ubisoft shooters, including Splinter Cell Conviction, Far Cry 3, Far Cry 4, Far Cry 5, Far Cry New Dawn, and Rainbow Six Extraction — all of which he served as game director for.
“It’s very refreshing,” he says. “We’re not a shooter at all. Sometimes as developers, because we’re repeating stuff because we’re say we’re doing follow-ups, you find a certain pattern that works, whereas this time it’s quite the opposite. We don’t have a clear benchmark to follow, and we need to come up with our own vision of what we want.”
Still, plenty about the game remains under wraps. Apart from that trailer, there’s still much to learn about the game, and more work to be done to convince players that this is a franchise that can stand alongside other open-world action RPG staples. Méthé, however, believes his team is off to a good start.
“What I really loved, of all the comments I’ve seen and all the content creator reactions I’ve seen, most of the time it went like this: You see the start of the trailer and they’re like, ‘okay, interesting, interesting. Then they’re like, ‘what the…’, and then they’re like, ‘I’m in,’ without any hesitation. And that’s gold. That’s what we wanted. But it’s our first communication. It’s the first time people are hearing about this. There will be a bunch more down the road to clarify what the game is, how unique it is. For the time being we’re just taking the time to celebrate this moment. And when the time comes, we’ll be able to explain a bit more in detail.”
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
feedzy_import_tag feedzy_import_tag
About the Author
