World Design Exercise: Game #5 (Fallout 4)

Interplay Entertainment’s Fallout (Interplay Entertainment, 1997) helped pioneer and pave way for the popular Fallout franchise, notably popular for its depiction of an anachronistic setting that is historically divergent of our own, reminiscent of the Atomic Age and the Googie architectural movement, frozen in the 1950's thanks to the Great War that both started and ended in 2077.

Fallout 4 (Bethesda Game Studios, 2015) is set a couple of centuries after the Great War in the Commonwealth of Massachussets, in that sense and true to tradition set by previous Fallout titles, there is certainly a sense of grounded realism due to the depiction of twisted versions real-life settings such as the aforementioned state (mainly in the capital of Boston), as well as the Mojave Desert and the state of Washington, D.C (renamed and reshaped as the Mojave Wasteland and the Capital Wasteland, respectively). Fallout 4, like its predecessors, certainly uphold the harsh dichotomy between the cheery and endearing optimism of the 50’s and the violent reality of Cold War induced nuclear paranoia.

The introductory portion of Fallout 4 is memorable in the sense that it embodies these two juxtaposed aspects of the 50’s, as the player begins by meandering about in their overtly art-deco inspired household within an assuming blue-collared neighbourhood. The player is then able to engage in playful banter with the beloved spouse in the character creation, spend some time with their newborn son, read the morning paper and other sorts of displays of a Sunday morning domesticity. 

Fig 1. The player's house in the beginning of the game, note the furnishings and its colours which are all heavily inspired by architectural movements such as art deco and the Space Age.

Fig 2. Straight off the bat, the player's nanny bot, Codsworth, is a walking talking example of Fallout's amalgamation between the retro and the futuristic technology of science fiction.

That is until a Vault-Tec representative comes knocking on your front door and the player and their family are then forced to run for their lives as the first nuke of the Great War (the entire catalyst of the Fallout series) drops just a stone’s throw away.

One of the big questions asked in regards to the aesthetic and setting of Fallout is “Why the 50’s?” as The Inquisitr’s Tony Smejek once pointed out that despite the understandable contrast between the whimsical optimism and nuclear horror of the 50’s found within the opening sequence of Fallout 4, “There is no real justification for the game’s cultural environment of the mid-20th century era to even be frozen in this time slot.”

One could argue however that the mid-20^th century is the prime period, considering the resurgence of science fiction and the aesthetics of its futuristic technology reflected in architectural movements such as Googie, Populuxe and the Space Age in a melting pot of retrofuturistic design. More importantly however is the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, a period in time where nuclear threats were imminent and a primary source of tangible tension and unease for both nations at the time.

Fig 3 & 4. Comparison between a Fallout Shelter Handbook by Chuck West and a marketing poster for Vault-Tec's many Vaults in the Fallout series.

In Fallout 4 the player can modify and repair their Power Armour in their Googie inspired Red Rocket Truck Stop garage while Nat King Cole’s Orange Coloured Sky blares from a nearby radio in all of its lo-fi glory, or go toe-to-toe with mutant bears armed with a Space Age alien blaster pistol in a post-apocalyptic world where a nuclear holocaust signalled both the beginning and the end of a bygone era. 

It is this conscious aesthetic decision, the combination of the retro and futuristic science fiction, creating a visual bridge that had helped captivated generations of players, allowing them to immerse and feel a wave of 1950’s induced nostalgia despite realistically not growing up in such an era.


REFERENCES:

New Super Best Friends Play Fallout 4. (2015). Player's Living Room. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhhHcQliT4E.

New Super Best Friends Play Fallout 4. (2015). Codsworth. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhhHcQliT4E.

Source Unknown. (Date Unknown). Fallout Shelter Handbook by Chuck West. Retrieved from http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/infogram-particles-700/davida1366311193.jpg.

Interplay Entertainment. (1997). Vault-Tec advert and in-game town map of Vault 13. Retrieved from http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/0/05/Votf.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110116001328.

World Design Exercise: Game #4 (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time)

As a reboot and re-imagining of Jordan Mechner's original Prince of Persia series, The Sands of Time had received critical claim due to its numerous platforming innovations, pioneering many mechanics for later platforming titles to date and even producing a film of the same name despite initial fairly lacklustre sales.

Right from the beginning the game had always contextualized the architectural style of ancient Persia even with the original Prince of Persia title (Brøderbund, 1989), as its cinematics depict the more opulent aspect of Iranian architecture, as opposed to the more muted representations of Achaemenid architecture perpetuated by recent popular media in the West.

In the Sands of Time demo, very early on in the game we can see that there are clear inspirations from Achaemenid style (Persepolis) architecture, and while it does contrast from the aforementioned more opulent aesthetics that inspired the original Prince of Persia, players can still make out the Persian inspired architecture due to other universal imagery such as the game’s use of the Iranian date palms and Islamic domes on the buildings established at the very beginning of the game.

Fig 1 & 2. A comparison between the very opulent architecture found in the original Prince of Persia game and a Persian hallway.

Fig 3. The establishing shot of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

Another thing to note however is that almost straight away players will also note inspiration from other middle-eastern cultures such as Indian (due to the murals and paintings found inside the Maharajah’s Treasure Vaults). For the nitpicky this is perhaps a warning flag considering that Indo-Persian influence happened much later in history (Sands of Time was said to take place during 9^th century AD whereas cross-cultural Indo-Persian interaction did not come to a head until the peak of the Delhi Sultanate during the 13^th century).

Shortly after the courtroom ambush sequence (which in itself is lavishly decorated with Persian rugs of sorts, a Persian aesthetic staple), the player will encounter a courtyard which is seemingly inspired by the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. At this point, you can argue that the hodge podge of different architectural styles is primarily strong evidence that Ubisoft had swayed towards gameplay over accurate cultural representation by creating a cultural Frankenstein monster of sorts.

 

Fig 4 & 5. The courtyard level that is most probably inspired by the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Nonetheless, it does go to show that designing these worlds within the game as such are all conscious aesthetic decisions as it allows both the gameplay and world design work from one another in a back and forth manner, where gameplay mechanics are contextualized by the theme and architecture of the game world. Even if The Sands of Time’s Persian-inspired world is more or less an amalgamation of numerous middle-eastern cultures (ranging from Turkish, Indian to Mesopotamian), the sort of iconography used within the game does allow the player to make cultural connections between the game and its intended thematic game world.

SCREENSHOT REFERENCES:

(all Sands of Time screenshots in this blog post were taken by the author of the post)

Author Unknown. (Date Unknown). In Game. Retrieved from http://gamesdbase.com/Media/SYSTEM/Atari_ST/Snap/big/Prince_of_Persia_-_1990_-_Br%C3%B8derbund_Software.jpg

anavia. (2012). Persian Architecture. Retrieved from http://pre11.deviantart.net/87a5/th/pre/i/2012/036/6/3/persian_architecture_by_anavian-d4osn2d.jpg

World Design Exercise: Game #3 (Kairo)

Richard Perrin’s Kairo is a strong example of emotive environmental narrative, wherein the story of the game unfolds as the player explores a world devoid of representative imagery and dialogue, but primarily represented through brutalist inspired architecture. 

Right from the beginning the player appears to awaken from and within a white void, before a floating throne room of sorts. It becomes clear that the player is forced to move onward towards the only visible structure in the distance, and as they near the structure, audio cue chimes in, signalling to the player that they are on the right track and prompting them to proceed.

Fig. 1. The starting zone, straight away the player will notice a vague structure in the far distant that they can approach and explore.

When inside, the player will encounter a glowing rune (resembling a tree) engraved into a stone wall, and yet another throne with the same rune etched into it. Grooves in the ground will provide clue for the player to interact with the throne, pushing the two runes together. The fact that these runes are the only illustrated visual iconography the player will encounter in Kairo emphasizes the central role these symbols or runes have in aiding the player in solving the game's puzzles.

Fig. 2. Grooves on the floor is an intuitive visual cue for the player in this particular puzzle.

As the player walks, arches (reminiscent of Japanese Shinto gates, known as toriis) will appear, perhaps insinuating that as the player moves onward, they are transitioning into an area that is considered sacred, or even profane. These sort of imagery, while not blatant and explicit, helps add flavour to the game and allows for the player to connect and ground themselves within an already very alien space.

Which consequently, after a simple bridge puzzle, the player will encounter an area which seems to be a crude representation of what appears to be a park. Is this perhaps a breather for the player in the form of an abstracted oasis? This is probably befitting considering that the next area is a hub of some sort, with a central fixture surrounded by portals.

Fig. 3 & 4. The 'park' level as well as the centralized hub area that soon follows.

Every single portal leads to individually themed areas with corresponding puzzles, and what is interesting to note that despite the consistently brutalist (almost minimalist) architectural aesthetic, all of these separate rooms are still distinctively unique and different from one another, not only because of the fact that the rooms are clearly colour coded for the player’s convenience, but that structures come in forms and shapes that players can universally associate. Such as a generator, structures resembling a network of treehouses, and even a hallway resembling a mausoleum.

 

 
 

Fig. 5, 6, 7 & 8. The many different 'themed' rooms that the player will encounter, notice that despite the simplistic aesthetic of the architecture, they are all represented in ways where the player can recognize universal form and imagery.

Throughout the demo as well, the aforementioned rune appears in places, landmarks and crucial components of room puzzles as visual guide to assist the player in progressing. Completion of these puzzles will take the player back to the hub area, completing a full circle back to where the player started while simultaneously ultimately ending the demo.

Kairo's aesthetic choice is clearly communicated as a means for the player to focus on the gameplay and puzzles rather than having literal depictions of objects and contextualization to detract the player from the isolated and puzzle-heavy element of the game.

REFERENCES:

(all screenshots were provided by the author of the post)