Wide as an Ocean, Deep as a Puddle

I think a lot of us remember being a kid and splashing around in puddles. Who didn’t love doing that? You probably also liked pools, or maybe the ocean, if you swam in either. Maybe you liked one more than the other, but both were fun. Video games are pretty similar, when you think about it. There are games that are shallow and games that are deep, and both are fun.

But what are the effects of increasing the scale of a game? What kind of experience do you find?

Sometime in the recent past, games focused on scale rather than responsiveness. By that, I mean that games have more places to go, but that you can see where things don’t quite connect. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a great example of this. Skyrim is gigantic in terms of land, dungeons, caves, and exploration. There are hundreds of NPCs to interact with, quests to take, and chests to open. You can spend hundreds of hours in the game without even touching the main quest.

The world  of Skyrim is huge,. You can travel everywhere you can see, but does it react to you? Does it care about what you do and how you play? 

After a while, however, you might notice that a lot of the caves seem to repeat themselves, and that most of the quests are little more than fetch quests. The ocean you thought you were swimming now looks more like a kiddie pool. You can head to the College of Winterhold, the magical center of the region, earn the Robes of the Archmage, and NPCs will still say to you, "You know, if you have the aptitude, you should join the mages' college in Winterhold." You’re literally a legendary and mythical hero but nobody in the game reacts to what you do. None of this is to say that Skyrim is not enjoyable or anything of the sort, but I think it’s clear to see how the world is less responsive when scale is increased. Of course, not every RPG runs focuses on scale.

Hope you like looking at these three kinds of dungeons, because that's what you'll be seeing for your exploration time in Skyrim.

Hope you like looking at these three kinds of dungeons, because that's what you'll be seeing for your exploration time in Skyrim.

Hope you like looking at these three kinds of dungeons, because that's what you'll be seeing for your exploration time in Skyrim.

Dragon Age II is a game that attracted a lot of flak when it came out. Many people thought it stripped too much from the first game in the series (Dragon Age: Origins) and reused too many locations.

A followup to the hit Dragon Age: Origins:, Dragon Age II had a much tighter focus in terms of explorable space and character interaction.

DA II shined when it came to responsiveness. You had a core group of characters that you saw grow and react to your choices and you got to see how your choices changed the world around you. As you became Champion of Kirkwall, the city where much of the game takes place, people reacted to you differently and the kind of quests you found changed. You went from just another refugee to the most important citizen of Kirkwall and advisor to the Viscount. The intense focus on characters also made you feel as if your choices had impact, because they affected how your companions viewed you and how their combat skills grew. DA II lacks scale, however. It may have been intentional, or it may have been due to a lack of time, but you don’t go many places in DA II. The places you do go you see again and again. Eventually you start to ask why pirates, apostate mages, and darkspawn all hang out in the same cave at different times. There is also a huge reuse of objects in the game, and it does start to wear on you. The intense focus on responsiveness makes you really realize how small the game world is.

You will see this warehouse over a dozen times, with different enemies, quests, and treasure inside.

At this point, you might think that responsiveness and scale can’t exist together. There really aren’t many games which managed to blend the two, but Fallout 2: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game manages to. Fallout 2 is a much beloved game and some people consider it to be the last true game in the Fallout series because of the large changes the Bethesda made in the later games.  

In Fallout 2, you took the place of a descendant of the main character of Fallout 1, and you ventured out into the wasteland to find the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (or G.E.C.K) to save your dying village. As you head through the game, you gained a reputation according to your choices. For instance, you can join a Mafia family and stores give you discounts, you can become a champion boxer and doors, usually open to only the most charismatic, will open, and you can defend the innocent and all the evil characters in the world will be suspicious when talking to you. The world and people around you reacted to you in a way that makes sense, even though the in-game world of Fallout 2 is huge and filled with characters, settlements, and quests comparable to Skyrim. The combination of responsiveness and scale help Fallout 2 stand out in a crowd populated by some of the best games ever made.

IT’s hard to make a large world that reacts to player choices, but it can be done. There aren’t many games that accomplish it, but it adds something very special to those that do. It’s easy to imagine how hard it would be to great something huge with great detail, but maybe it says something about what makes a truly talented developer, that they’re somebody who can get fire and ice to work together.

Pickling Games: Atmosphere

Imagine that you wake up on a train. There are only two other people in your car, both say that they didn’t see you get on. The train stops, and with a heaving sigh and a "Well, end of the line" from one of the other passengers, you enter a dirty train station. High above you, gigantic screens show a man, speaking to all of you. He mentions the" generosity of our benefactors” in allowing you to live in “one of humanity’s finest remaining settlements.”  Meanwhile, you can get a better look at the people inside the station. They are frightened, depressed, and extremely wary of one another. The police force abuses the populace with total for fun, taking some into “interrogation rooms” and beating others for nothing more than not picking up a can. You can see the desperation and anger in the citizens who wait for a single bag of food from an automatic dispenser. Walking out of the train station, you are blinded by the flash from a security drone taking pictures of all the populace. “Welcome to City 17”, the overseer says.

Though over a decade old, the opening of Half-Life 2 still stands as one of the best introductions to a world in games.

This is the opening to Half Life 2, considered one of the best video games ever made. A large part of this is because of the well-constructed and designed world and atmosphere of the game. Atmosphere is the salt of the video game world. It adds flavor to normal games and drastically increases the chance of preservation. Those few games that get it right are guaranteed at least a footnote in the history of Video Games.

So, how do you do atmosphere right?

The Shock games (System Shock/System Shock 2/Bioshock 1, 2, and Infinite) are loved by many players.  Every step you takes, every sound you hear, and every new room you see adds to the atmosphere of the game.

From the very opening of System Shock 2 you know that only a thin metal wall separates you from the gigantic cold void of space.  As you move through the station, enemies’ mumbled cries echo around the empty rooms and the slowly decaying station machinery blips and beeps. The game shows you clear evidence of the people living there: audio diaries, magazines left out on beds, and discarded drink cans in the mess hall. More importantly, the layout of station is designed for people, rather than just a level in a game. All of these little things make the space station of System Shock 2 a haunting and unforgettable environment despite uncomfortable combat, a confusing upgrade system, and wildly unbalanced weapons.

The villain of System Shock, SHODAN, adds a huge amount to the atmosphere  with her almost Max Headroom style messages.

If you are interested in western RPGs in the slightest, chances are you have seen a lot of discussion and comparison between The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. In Morrowind, the minute you step into the playable part of the game (in the hold of a ship), you hear all the sounds you actually might hear on real wooden boat; the creaking of the wood, the water splashing against the hull, and the footsteps of the people upstairs. These little environmental sounds immerse you in the area, to say nothing of the visual aspects of Morrowind.

The first town looks normal, but even that has tons of visual and audio cues that let you know that it’s as close an to a real place as video games can create. The town is built around a few buildings, like the Trade House and the Guard House. There’s a lighthouse near the water and several lower income houses near the less desirable, swampier parts of town. The outdoors themselves are really well put together as well, and give you clues about how this world works. Step a few feet outside any town and the you find mushroom trees, giant bugs that serve as a sort of public transport, and areas ranging from damp swamps to giant mountains hidden in swirling clouds of red ash. Your character reacts to all this like you actually might.  You have to wade through ash storms when you encounter them. They slow your forward movement and force your character to shield their eyes. When you walk under the mushroom trees, you can see various creatures scuttling  underneath and flying gas creatures moving gently from place to place.

The first area you see in a game helps set the tone for the rest of your time int the world, and a lot of games don't use the first area as well as they could.

Skyrim misses a lot of these little touches. The sounds of the world are generic and your character moves the same whether you are trudging through snow or running in a field. The dungeons of Skyrim are almost always designed in the same way. You follow a crescent shaped path only to find a switch at the end which allows you to move from the beginning to the end much quicker. The dungeons are oddly quiet and the exact same color palette and textures do start to wear on you. These details make you feel unconnected from the world and reduce atmospheric quality of the game.

However, there are parts of Skyrim that do further atmosphere, like the lighting and weather systems. In one of the first dungeons, a single fire on top of a pedestal illuminates a broken down chamber, and the enemy slowly crosses the room. The flickering flame and the quality of light make the room seem warm, somehow. You can almost feel the one room of heat in this cold tomb, and feel the trepidation when the enemy emerges from the shadow.

You find the best moments in Skyrim happen when you're exploring. When you trudge up a mountain, over rocks and through a blizzard, only to look up and see an ancient structure slowly appear out of the snow, you get a feeling like you're exploring something that's been untouched for years. You can almost feel the cold that chills your bones and the snow that weighs your feet down. The sense of adventure here is almost unparalleled; what's in that template, just waiting for me to find it?

Discovery is one of the best things in The Elder Scrolls series, and Skyrim definitely has that in spades, but other issues weigh it down when compared with earlier games.

Atmosphere does not always have to be beautiful or inviting; the dark and lonely world of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games tosses you into a dangerous and tense fight for survival. This series of games takes place in the area around the Chernobyl reactor, famous for its 1986 nuclear disaster. You assumes the role of a stalker, an adventurer who goes into the “Zone” to bring back mysterious artifacts created by disaster.

Most worlds draw you to go outside and adventure, but not the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series. Every time you go out into the Zone you risk getting mauled by psychic dogs, gasmask-wearing snorks, or white eyed blood sucking humanoids that can become invisible at will. The unfriendly humans can be even worse. When walking through “The Zone”, you can hear the haunting cries of the mutated animals and feel a chill run up your spine, you can see the far off light of gunfire and decide whether intervening is smart given your ammunition count and health. You can see the various radioactive anomalies light up as an unfortunate person or animal wanders into them and feel your steps become more cautious to avoid a similar fate. You can feel the cold of the rain and the anticipation for safety upon seeing a friendly group of stalkers around a fire. The world forces you to treat it with caution and respect, making it far more memorable than most video game locales.

If the mutants of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R don't creep you out, I don't want to know you.

Imagine dropping into the cockpit of a space fighter. Immediately, you see the metal bulkhead in front of you that reads “Trevithick Dock.” You select the “launch option”, and your ship is carted through the station until you are on the surface, the black void of space around you. In the distance, you can see millions of stars through the translucent glass of your cockpit. Inside the cockpit, you can see your ships controls, and watch as your avatar responds to your commands, readying to ship for launch. Around you, your audio feed picks up various ships docking and leaving as well as the Dock master’s stern warning not to cause any trouble. You launch your ship off of the landing pad and suddenly, the galaxy is open to you. All you have to do is chose where to start your adventure. This is what atmosphere does. It creates memories that stick with you for far longer than any game can last. 

Welcome to the galaxy, pilot. Where to first?