Welcome to my part 1 research post on
environmental story telling.
So starting of this week’s bout of
research. The first piece I found was a very comprehensive slide show on the
GDC done by Harvey Smith who worked on dues ex in the early 2000s and
Matthias Worch who worked on dead space 2 and mafia 3. As this slide show
is quite large (around 80 slides) and contains many areas that are applicable
to my project. For this post I’ll just be focusing on what is relevant
to environmental storytelling and will continue it in later parts. Here
are a few key aspects summarized:
Familiar visual references – This is
the idea of using familiar or well know objects to give cues to the player
either in terms off story or mechanics. For instance an example of this, medic
packs.
Fig 1
Medic packs are used so often in
videos games that they have almost become a trope, but this is not without good
reason. Most people can identify what a first aid kit looks like or at least a
red/green cross, so most people would associate these objects in the game
world with health and vitality. Another example of this would be a Super
Durper Mart like the one in fallout 3.
Fig 3
Again thanks to the
buildings gigantic sign, the large car park, vending machines and trolleys
strewn around the player can easily infer that this is a super market and may
contain valuable resources. It also uses the bodies being hung around this
location to imply that this area may not be safe and that their could be
further dangers inside. So just by looking at this scene the player has a lot
of information to go on, being presented with a kind of risk and reward
scenario.
Reinforcing the player Identity –
This is about using the environment to reinforce the players identify in game.
In the slide show they use portal as an example with the player having to
perform puzzles and being made to feel like a lab rat. Another example of this
can bee shown in games like halo.
Fig 4
Through out halos game play your
constantly pitted against waves of hostile aliens, the few allies you have are
nowhere near as powerful as you are and your often fighting in exotic sci-fi
environments. This all helps to reinforce the players image of themselves as
this unstoppable super soldier in the future and the last hope for humanity.
Continued in part 2
Bibliography
Smith, Harvey and Matthias Worch. “What Happened Here? Environmental
Storytelling”. Gdcvault.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.
Availble
at: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1012647/What-Happened-Here-Environmental
Image References
Fig 1
Fig 2
Fig 3
Fig 4
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