During the early days of the PS3 era, world building and art direction started to come to life, as consoles were able to handle higher resolution textures and more objects on screen. As fair share of games that came out in this era were third person action combat, a lot of the focus in terms of production was leading to the gameplay aspects. A game that has stood out in the genre, in terms of environmental storytelling and world building, was Assassin’s Creed. This open world game still has properties of the third person combat but it took a slower approach to its gameplay and it allows for immersion into the games environment by having many of the missions based around stealth. Most of the stealth mechanics allow the player to hide in the world’s props and elements. Some include walking amongst a crowd of people, sitting on benches, hiding in wheelbarrows filled with hay whilst also using the rooftops of buildings to hide from pursuers. Navigating through this space, whilst knowing that you are able to interact with the environmental props expands the space around you especially when the game emphasises stealth over combat. Although the combat is very well rounded, being an assassin is the main selling point of how the player exists in the game. Usually when walking through corridors and narrow areas, the player is, usually has no safe areas and is quite claustrophobic, where Assassin’s creed flips this mentality by encouraging the player to go into these areas as the developers put more of these interactive props within these areas. In addition, these corridors have beams and boxes that lead up to them to allow the player to escape onto the rooftops.
The Assassin’s Creed series has a notable art style by having their game set in different periods in time by having to recreate buildings from this era and architectural style. Having a detailed world is very important when it comes to a slower pace game, as the player will have more time to absorb their surroundings and to observe the layout of the town. Some of the more important buildings in the game are out of scale to standout more for navigation. In this smaller scale version of these real cities, players are able to recognise certain buildings and remember basic structures surrounding them. The way the developers repurposed the areas surrounding allow for an interesting blend of modern game design and realistic architecture. |
World design theory (WDT)DevelopersThe goal of this blog is to relate current and past attempts at world design to further improve our understanding. Archives
October 2017
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