We’ve released our first documentary: Deserted Tales: Mazagan, a complete 65-minute walk-through of the Fortress of Mazagan in El Jadida, Morocco — the location where Deserted Tales begins.
What It Is
A complete walk-through recording of the fortress — every wall, bastion, rampart and structure, filmed slowly and without commentary. There’s no music, no narration, and no fast cuts: the point is to record the place, not to make a film about it.
It was shot during the research phase of Deserted Tales. The fortress serves as a main point of interest in the game and the setting for its opening scenes, so the goal was to capture enough real-world detail — wall dimensions, textures, spatial relationships, architectural measurements — that the fortress can be recreated in 3D as close to life as possible, even for someone who has never been there.
What’s In It
- The Portuguese Cistern — the Manueline masterpiece with its five-metre pool doubling as a mirror for the cupola
- The Governor’s Bastion — the largest of the enceinte, its upper tier blown up in 1769 and never rebuilt
- The full rampart walk — the circuit of the walls, seaward and landward faces, and the seam where the 1514 citadel meets the 1541 star fortress
- The Church / Mosque — one building, two faiths, one long occupation
- The gates — sea gate and land gate, and the trace of the mined passage
- The star plan itself — the bastioned enceinte of Benedetto da Ravenna, seen from the ground
Where It Fits
Mazagan was built by the Portuguese beginning in 1514, redesigned as a star fortress in 1541, held for over 250 years as the last Portuguese stronghold in Morocco, and reclaimed by Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah in 1769. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it’s where our game opens.
You can read the full architectural write-up in our wiki: [[Wiki/Locations/Mazagan_Fortress]] — along with the sieges of 1562 and 1769.
The Section It Lives In
The documentary is now on its own page under our new Movies section, alongside everything else we film. A Series section is also live and waiting for its first entry.
Full entry: Deserted Tales: Mazagan
Filmed and edited by the Omniversify team. If you spot a detail we got wrong about the fortress, tell us on Discord — this footage is research, and research improves with eyes on it.