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HAVE YOU EVER played a video game and not
really understood what the hell is going on in
the world? Ever felt like you’re mowing down
armies of goons without really knowing why?
Or not feeling the plight of an entire alien
civilisation as their planet implodes?
Building a universe is not easy, in any kind
of storytelling. For stories with humans,
developers often try to quickly to set up the
timeline, the state of the politics and who is in
power, the characters you should care about
and their place in world. Throw in aliens,
zombies, mutant cockroaches, time travel
and alternate Nazi timelines and things get
much more complicated.
So what is it that makes some game worlds
feel more alive and well rounded, and others
completely forgettable and fake?
Much of it comes down to drip feeding
details, instead of throwing information
at the player in an opening cutscene. It’s very
common for games set with modern day,
politically driven storylines to hurl a massive
explanatory cutscene at you before you’ve
even pressed start.THEY OFTEN GO LIKE THIS:
The year is 2029. Various political factions
have taken over other factions, and the
factions are fighting it out. You side with this
faction, who is blue, and not the red faction
— who are bad because they beat a child inDISCOVERTHE COMPLEX ART OF BUILDING WORLDSthe opening cutscene or shot your friend.
Now it’s up to you to unite the factions or kill
the red faction. Here’s 20 guns and a beard.
Kill the red guys.
Our brains are not good enough to retain
that kind of information. I’m really enjoying
Ghost Recon: Wildlands, for example, but I
have no idea what’s going on. Wartime worlds
are the hardest to get right. When there’s
massive political agendas bouncing around,
and you’re part of a squad of dudebros sent
in on various intel driven missions, it’s hard
to care. How could we? We don’t have a stake
in the politics.
Believing the agendas and motivations
of the characters you’re hanging around with
are key to hooking you into any world.
If someone or a particular event doesn’t make
sense, it pulls you out of the game. And the
same goes for detail in the world itself.Open-world games are hard to make,
because when you open up a massive zone
for the player to explore, there has to be stuff
to do. Empty space doesn’t work. Give me
a car but then don’t let me drive it? I don’t
think so, Final Fantasy XV! You can’t buy
into an open world with strange restrictions.
Same goes if there are no consequences to
your actions with the populations of the
world. Pull out a gun or a sword in a town
and no one reacts? Thumbs down, doesn’t
feel real. These are the ‘sells’ that make you
believe you’re in a full, living breathing
world. When you’re free to roam, it’s all
about the detail.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
is a world you believe. There are so many
wonderful emergent systems at play, it’s truly
champagne game design. Steal weapons
from a sleeping group of sleeping Bokoblins,STEVEN ‘BAJO’
O’DONNELL
is a video game critic
and co-host of ABC
show Good Game
Spawn Point. His
love of games is only
surpassed by his
love of cats.[ THE WORLD WASN’T BUILT IN A DAY ]The complex art of building worlds
WHETHER IT’S A SHOOTER, A VAST FANTASY RPG OR A NEAT LITTLE PLATFORMER, WORLD BUILDING
IS A BIG AND DAUNTING TASK — BUT ONE THAT REALLY PAYS OFF WHEN IT’S DONE RIGHT.
[ STEVEN ‘BAJO’ O’DONNELL ]Ghost Recon: Wildlands is a
big world to explore, with a lot
of dudes to shoot in the face.LET ME DRIVE THE CAR. COME ON. Just nudging it left and
right does not count, Final Fantasy XV!Homefront: The Revolution tried to pull us into a world of
faction and political turmoil, with throwbacks to the
oppression themes of Half-Life 2. Something just didn’t
click, so we needed up just going through the motions.