Attack of Titans

It’s time to test your memories, Minecrafters! Perhaps the keen-eyed and big-brained among you will remember a beautiful timelapse we covered a while back called Novigrad, made by a team called Elysium Fire. Well, they’re back at it again, this time with another timelapse called The Titans Attack!

If you’re up on your Greek Mythology, you’ll know that the Titans were a bunch of very large gods and goddesses, the children of the Earth Goddess and the Sky God, who are most often depicted as gigantic beings who love to fight and smash things up. Eventually, they had children, and those children grew up to be the Greek Gods you might have heard of, like Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon. The Greek Gods, known as the Olympians, wanted power for themselves, and so they fought the Titans for power. This war took ten years, but finally, the Olympians won, and they imprisoned the Titans deep in the Underworld. Phew!

But what if… the Titans escaped?

That’s exactly what Elysium Fire imagined for this build, which envisions the Titans waking up, escaping and celebrating the end of their long nap by going on a massive rampage. They can be seen in this build approaching a town, presumably to smash it into teeny tiny pieces and eat all the people inside, like delicious candy inside a pinata.

The townspeople might not have seen this coming. In fact, they probably didn’t even know that they were trespassing on Titan ground. “They lived in peace for hundreds of years,” says Elysium Fire’s Remi Serrano, “until the titans woke up from eternal sleep and wanted to claim back their lands.” The only way to claim back the lands, of course, is to smash all the stuff on top of it, much like when your bed is covered with clothes so you have to throw them all on the floor at night when you need to sleep.

The architecture itself – soon to be ex-architecture, when it’s nothing but bricks – is based on German castles, so the team used photos to inspire their designs, but went with a brighter colour scheme. The castle, which is built out of light-coloured sandstone, blends in nicely with the snowy surroundings, and the use of dark wood blocks like oak and spruce give the buildings a Scandinavian feel – which is pretty appropriate for a game made in Sweden!

There are three Titans in this build, who Remi describes as the “guardians of these lands”. Closest to the castle is a huge white, blue and purple dragon with fiery eyes, who will probably be taking care of all the wooden parts of the castle. Behind the dragon is a gigantic worm with sharp teeth, who can presumably devour all the citizens of the town in one big gulp. Last, but not least, is the towering, horned giant, who could squish anything leftover just by sitting down. Safe to say that these three will have their lands back by the end of the day, I think! Maybe if I write really nice things about them in this article they’ll spare me? :D

The project took one week to build, with five people working together to create the map. When Elysium Fire build Novigrad, the way they did the timelapse was to create the whole map first, and then record themselves taking it apart piece by piece, which they would then play in reverse to create the time-lapse effect. The Titans Attack time-lapse is incredibly cinematic, sweeping through the thick forest of pines as each element comes into being – it’s definitely worth a watch, even if it’s just to see the big hollow tube that later becomes the worm titan being built!

The detail in the build becomes much clearer in the time-lapse video. You can see the ships waiting in the harbour, the statue of a man on horseback in the square, and the ripples of ice that the giant horned Titan is sending towards the town. You can even see the perspective of the worm Titan as it rears its head out from the sea, and check out the gross green slime dripping from its toothy mouth. Delightfully disgusting!

The one thing that sets this build apart more than any other is the way the video is filmed almost like a trailer for a movie, except the movie doesn’t move. More like a… still-y? Using your non-Minecraft talents to showcase your build is a great way to make yourself stand out from the crowd.

Anyway, my plan to suck-up to the titans didn’t work so I’d better finish writing now and start running for my life. Bye!

Renders by Iskillia and Omegafoxx