How Grand Theft Auto, Zelda, and a Southwest Pacific nation inspired Tchia

You could look at Tchia and recall Link’s glider The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. You may also be reminded of the open water from which you sail The Wind Waker. But developer Awaceb co-founder Phil Crifo thinks there’s a better comparison: Grand Theft Auto.

“Even though it is very different in tone and theme, I think the way [GTA developer Rockstar] being able to build fictional worlds based on real places, and taking those real places and giving them the essence of a place built into a video game world has been a real inspiration for the way we do our rendition of New Caledonia,” Crifo told Polygon.

Tchia, the new open-world game about a kid exploring the wilderness, is set in a fictionalized version of New Caledonia, a small island nation in the Southwest Pacific Ocean. This is where Crifo and several other members of the development team grew up; all voice actors are also local to the island. Rockstar has long created fictional stand-ins for real places, such as Liberty City (New York), San Andreas (California), Vice City (Miami), or Los Santos (Los Angeles). For the developers of Awaceb, creating an open world playground meant drawing inspiration from Rockstar’s ability to transform real geography into fun.

“When you grew up playing GTA with your friends, everyone had that moment where you thought, ‘Can you imagine GTA happening in our hometown?'” said Crifo. “We did a little bit of that Tchia.”

But instead of drug dealers and guns Tchia is about the titular child and her ability to transform into anything in her environment – rocks, a camera, a bird or a piece of flaming coal. Something like if Grand Theft Auto 5‘s Trevor Philips could turn into a baseball bat or a stained T-shirt.

Crifo said that creating New Caledonia in Tchia was less about capturing the geography, and more about evoking the spirit of the archipelago. “What’s the vibe? What’s it like to live there? How are people? What are the details that give it a smell, a taste. It’s very tricky to do,” Crifo said. Tchia is filtered through the lens of an imaginative childhood in New Caledonia, dripping with the island’s culture and influences. It’s adventure and exploration and nostalgia wrapped in a unique culture.

Image: Awaceb/Kepler Interactive

So it’s that sense of childhood wonder that evokes the Legend of Zelda equation. Even though Crifo said he’s not a Legend of Zelda superfan, Breath of the Wild brought ideas Tchias development, such as his choreographed landmarks or his glider, which allows Tchia to soar over huge stretches of land. Awaceb is a team of 12, so reaching the scale or greatness of Breath of the Wild was not an option. But it still manages to evoke a strong sense of place.

TchiaIts defining feature is its tactile nature, Crifo said. You can make Tchia touch, pick up, throw things. But you can also become them and feel the weight of an object’s movement. This shape change complements the music and instruments Tchia, which use real chords in rhythm minigames. Awaceb wanted players to feel the essence of the place; Crifo pointed to climbing coconut palms. There is a weight to Tchia as the branches sway and fall as she rises. You can feel the snap and swing as she uses the tree as a slingshot to travel the world. (Coconut tree climbing, Crifo said, is a big thing in New Caledonia; everyone has their own technique.)

“Miyamoto always said that Zelda stems from his childhood, exploring caves and roaming the wilderness,” said Crifo. “Tchia was built with the same inspiration behind it. We have similar roots in that sense, which grew into very similar plants.”