Scenic World

The very idea of something being made just for us is more than enough to send the ego sprawled so deep within its leather-bound chair that it would take the force of a thousand suns to do as much as extract a single one of its narcissistic tentacles. It’s simple, people really like themselves, so why not make games like this? Well, they do and have been for a really long time, but with considerably less conscious devotion toward mindlessly pleasing the ego, and more toward making a polished, marketable experience. In this instance I’m talking about levels, worlds and universes because we couldn’t live without them.

Old me would have started this off with a venn diagram, but then I realised that old me couldn’t grasp such a principle of the eternities, so an appropriate place to start feels as though it should be a wending tale of the soul. I held my sword against the gaze of the sun, astride my horse in the warm hours of the afternoon. The countryside evaporated behind me; an amalgam of dizzying cliffs, sheer drops and the soft crunch of the dry grass beneath my sandals. I was searching for something hiding in plain sight, and was completely and utterly lost.

I was somewhat enamoured by this world that was created not for the player, but for the love of the universe. I am not the developer or Shadow of the Colossus, nor am I the physical manifestation of his subconscious torment, but if there is one thing that I have observed, it is that there has been a tremendous amount of care and attention poured into its world for the sake of the world itself, and for what reason? Most of the world is empty, save for the 16 boss battles that are scattered across the land, but what is noticeable is that it feels alive.

By creating a world that simply lived for itself, the game imparted a profound impact upon myself; something that is yet to be matched by even the epic, sprawling vistas of recent games, and something completely different. It would appear that no matter how beautifully crafted a game world is, it is always limited by its need to fulfil the game. Shadow of the Colossus had the distinct advantage of segmenting its map into regions that could be shaped around the combat-oriented gameplay, yet it chose to do it in such a way that felt as if these “arenas” were seamless part of the world. To draw an overused, but nonetheless relevant comparison, I find it topical to discuss Fallout 3.

Fallout 3 is a game about a world, about a game. Every part of it strains and struggles to capture the novelty of the 50’s and 60’s and drop several kilotons of nuclear explosives atop its lurid figure. But in the process of trying to capture this historical microcosm-gone-wrong, the game has condensed a considerable amount of environment into an improbable scale for the sake of maintaining the player’s focus as they blaze their way through mutants and bandits. On occasion I would discover a stretch of land that I found particularly interesting as I took to wandering the wastes of foot, prior to my completion of the game, but these areas all had something in common. They demonstrated the natural progression of Fallout universe.

Small farm settlements in the middle of nowhere, filled with abrasive sons-o-bitches who are just trying to live; the toppling remains of a town in which Deathclaws had nested. Although Fallout 3 is generally built for the player, it occasionally demonstrates that it has its own affairs, and that the player is simply trampling all over life that had always existed.

Where Fallout 3 faced the immediate challenge of accommodating a huge, sprawling, atmospheric game-world into a relatively small area, Mass Effect and its sequel had the liberty of crafting individual worlds around quests as much as its own worldly character.

Perhaps it’s linearity that gives the impression of a well-implemented world. Although Mass Effect constructed vibrant, living and breathing environments, it often funnelled players off to the side when the need for a gameplay driven element arose. But if there is one thing it always ensured, it was to take the elements of the world that made it feel believable with the player; immersing them in the same atmosphere as they work their way through largely linear set-pieces.

I don’t believe that there should be a governing law that determines the way in which a world should be constructed in a game as ultimately, the game has to function as a game. Conversely, the world could be taken to the logical extreme in which the gameplay itself felt as though it had been painfully contrived and suffering for it. I think that a world, should be above all, a world that’s faithful to its own narrative. It should represent the elements that give it its style, and use these to shape and characterise the game experience rather than being simply subservient to the wants and needs of the gameplay.