I consider the ability to evoke atmosphere, emotion and story through the simple act of a player exploring a game level, to be the ultimate achievement of any environment artist. Video games are truly unique in that a player has complete freedom to explore a game world at their leisure, discovering secrets the designers have intricately hidden throughout the environment. The way in which these secrets are discovered, can ultimately shape how the story is experienced by the player. You can convey a particular theme and illicit emotion through the way you make the person playing the game explore the environment. It's this aspect of video games that I really want to build on throughout the development of my major project.
The fact that video games are inherently non-linear, presents me as an environment artist, with a lot of opportunities to exploit this interesting facet of the medium. Essentially what I am interested in creating is a large environment filled with visual information that the player can choose to access at any point and in any order. By exploring the environment in this non-linear fashion the player will discover new areas of the level that provide visual clues as to what the story of the game may be. My intention is that the game environment will tell its own story, no text or voice overs to fill in what may have happened. Through this method of play, the person exploring the environment will use what they have discovered and the way in which they came across the information to tell the story.
P.T. (Silent Hills Playable Teaser) 2014
This is a short psychological horror video game developed by Kojima Productions and released in 2014. The game served as a playable teaser for the unfortunately cancelled "Silent Hills" being directed by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro, hence the name "P.T."
The player takes control of an unknown protagonist who awakens in a seemingly haunted suburban home. Throughout the game the player explores a continually looping corridor. Every time the player opens the door at the end of the corridor, they will find themselves back where they started. This is a perfect example of what I mentioned earlier, in that the way the player explores and experiences certain events throughout the game, they can form a narrative without actually being told directly.
The fact that the main character is stuck in a never ending corridor suggests they are experiencing some kind of purgatory and can never leave. As you continue to walk down this repetitive corridor you get a horrible feeling of claustrophobia, and I think this is a fantastic example of how games can be used to convey emotion and story through exploration of environments.
When taken on its own, the level is essentially a simple room to traverse with a single entry point and exit. However it’s how the designers have been able to make such a simple level feel genuinely terrifying through the way in which the player explores the environment, that makes this game so interesting to me.
GameZone (2014) Silent Hills P.T. Complete Walkthrough with Ending [Online Video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6NCC-nnvMU&t=226s [Accessed: 25th February 2018]
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