Ubisoft’s surprisingly ambitious King Kong sport faced a sudden swap because Peter Jackson’s son didn’t adore the ape’s face: “I had to significantly change Kong’s head, by myself in the studio”
By Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Unrelenting Adventure of the Film may not achieve the status of a timeless classic, yet it was an exceptionally ambitious and well-crafted endeavor for a mid-2000s cinematic adaptation from the renowned studio Ubisoft Montpellier. The team began development on the game primarily because Peter Jackson was an avid admirer of Beyond Good & Evil and wished to collaborate with director Michel Ancel. However, Jackson wasn’t hesitant to share insights on what needed to be altered—even if those suggestions stemmed from his youth experiences.
Jackson and his son played an initial version of the game together during the approval process, as art director Florent Sacré reveals in Retro Gamer issue 270. The young gamer noticed something off about Kong’s face. “I had to modify Kong’s head, all alone in the studio,” Sacré states, “because there were certain details to adjust, like a too-large muzzle and an unappealing eyebrow.”
Clearly, Jackson had a greater influence on the game than merely providing last-minute approvals on Kong’s appearance, and some of these insights are quite surprising. “All the textures and materials used to craft the jungle floor, trees, and leaves were derived from photographs he took in the Cévennes, a mountain range in south-central France,” Sacré elaborates.
The King Kong game became the subject of various jokes upon its release in 2005, partly due to its flamboyant title and the six-hour quest for 1,000 easy achievement points available at the Xbox 360’s launch. Nonetheless, its HUD-free display and engaging blend of survival-based gameplay as a human character coupled with the visceral combat as Kong feels captivating, and you can likely overlook its shortcomings given its incredibly swift development timeline.
“We had less than two years to create the video game, since we needed to align the game’s launch with the film’s,” lead level designer Elisabeth Pellen explains. “Achieving the desired quality within such a tight timeframe was the primary challenge for the team.” This timing also meant that the game was entering production well before the movie’s development materials were finalized, so Ubisoft M