#spvg

(I was only 23 years late)

In 2013 two days before I turned 21 Risk of Rain came out, I remember being at home with a few of friends all sitting on the couch computer hooked to the TV playing the sidescrolling shooter, for those of you who don’t know risk of rain is a game for up to four players where you chose a character and are sent into a crazy world to fight monsters, as time passes the game gets harder, and you progress from level to level it also gets harder, the more you survive the more rewards you get, and in the end it turn into a crazy fest of particles flying everywhere numbers popping out of the screen and you running around trying to stay alive and begging your friends not to stray too far because you’re almost out of the screen and you can’t see where you’re going and there are 23 enemies surrounding you and the difficulty is already on insane and in the midst of all of this it is fun, really engaging and fun.

Last year the two man team (maybe more people now) announced they were releasing a sequel in glorious 3D! My mind instantly thought “how are they going to pull that of? The first one was already insane, dealing with that without seeing the 360º around you is going to be crazy” and yet it wasn’t, the game is still in early access but a friend got me a copy so we played a bunch of matches so far, and it is just like the first one, but may I add, better? I don’t know if better is the right word but the feeling is the same, you still feel overwhelmed with enemies, you still collect loot to unlock new items to help you, you use your cool skills to move around the world, and fight, and better yet, now the camera follows you around so you never stop being part of the action (until you die and wait for your friends to hopefully make it so you can respawn) I’m seeing myself playing this more now that when it was mostly a couch co-op game (which I still enjoy). Looking into this experience I think I finally understand a bit better what happened when Mario 64 came out and what a shock that must have been. So I’m grateful for this new experience, and I feel a little closer to an important moment in digital games history, the historical switch to a 3D environment

In the 2017 game PREY by Arkane studios (not to be confused with 2006 Prey by human head studios, these are not related in any way) players are thrown into a world where an organism known as mimic has escaped containment and is wreaking havoc in a space station, it is very much a sci-fi suspense type of game, not unlike Alien Isolation or system shock, bioshock, you know the type. But PREY does something I’ve never seen in a game. So in the game there are mimics there are black octopus like beings that, as the name suggests, have the ability to pretend to be any object in the world, this ranges from mugs and chairs, to medkits and other useful items, there is no way in game of understanding weather something is just an asset or a mimic besides a sound that they constantly make, a sort of underwater hissing sound, and of course if you see one actually transforming, now I ask you to imagine.

You are on a deserted space station, you walk into a room, nothing moves, desks and chairs are thrown around, papers, mugs and other items litter the floor, a film projector muffles any sound you can hear besides the rolling of the film, a medpack stands on top of one of the not fallen desks, it’s mostly dark, the projector screen backlights the entrance you came from, what do you do?

You know for sure there are enemies here, or do you? It doesn’t really matter if there are not because they look like every other thing so you might as well behave like there are. I crouch, move slowly through the middle of the room, suddenly I hear a noise, something moved, but with the light against my eyes I can’t understand what, and in the second afterwards it looks like another object, is it that mug? Was that chair there before? I’m just going to hit it with my wrench anyway! I get up and walk towards the chair that I believe is my enemy and I smack it, nothing happens, I’m relieved for a second until the medkit sprouts black tendrils and walks towards me before I can regain my stamina, I move back in panic and trigger another mimic! Hit one run from the other and two more show up I don’t even realise they are there, I hit some of them they turn into objects somewhere I can’t tell in the middle of the messy room, I flail at everything and fail to take my medpack in time, I die.

This process is repeated with different outcomes in different rooms throughout the game, sometimes I see them transforming and use a gun that shoots rapid hardening foam to stop the mimics in their tracks and hit them while they’re stuck, others I make a lot of noise and run back near a turret that only attacks alien dna, sometimes I just cross as silently as I can, ever watchful of the tables and chairs, and screens, and everyday items I’m used to overlook in games.

So last year, between august 30th and September 1st Yokohama, Japan, held the Computer Entertainment Developers Conference or CEDEC.

The information gathered here has been talked about before but I wanted to analyze it, and thanks to Matt Walker, a Production manager at Capcom who translated a lot of the exposition done at the conference, through articles in 4games, Esuteru and IGN Japan, I can talk about the development of an amazing game, even one of the best games I’ve ever played, Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild!

The beginning of the presentation was about fun in the game, one could argue that is something obvious in a game, but there are a lot of details needed to have in mind when thinking about how players will find fun in your game, and in BOTW that is no exception, changes were made constantly during the game’s development, and the big question was always, “How to make this game more enjoyable to players” In the picture below are two maps, where you can see marked the diference in paths players would make, when playing first time through. In the left map, we can see players were making fairly the same journey, as shown by the dark blue lines, everyone was having a similar experience while ignoring smaller trails, and landmarks that strafed from the main roads. After the changes though we have a much more disperse map traversal, with a significant change, not only in the amount of people that go near the edges of the map, but how people travel along the center of it as well, there’s a  significant increase in the overall exploration of the terrain,

These changes, made after testing the design of the first map incite players into exploring and traverse the map in different ways depending on what sparks their curiosity, and leads to a better distribution, not only of the exploration players have, but the experience they have while playing. The problem with the first map was that initially the team though they could place Sheikah towers scattered around the map and place events and game interactions in between the paths that connected them, this wasn’t the case though because players weren’t compelled by that way of exploration, test players said that they felt guided through the game or it felt too linear, (now you see why most players were having a narrow route on a map that spans quite wide) Weirdly enough this was diving players into two very different experiences, either they would follow the intended path and found a lot of what the team wanted but in a very short time, or they would miss most things because they strafed away from the Sheikah towers and connecting roads trying to explore the world map, their travels were just empty. This lead to the team creating a solution based on the concept of Gravity, that’s right, placing structures with different visibility and importance in different places, they could attract player’s attention to various areas of the world, and appeal to their curiosity, leading players away from the main path and into their own adventure. This was the spark that lead to the notion of “infinity gameplay” an idea that focuses on having the player travel between various landmarks depending on their curiosity at any given moment, plus the map will change its look depending on the time of day, as light creates changing shadows, and visibility changes from night to day, places like the Sheikah Shrines like you can see in the image below will have pretty low visibility during the day, because they’re small, usually hidden, and you can see much better big natural landmarks, roads on the ground and the Sheikah towers.  

During the night however structures that emit light will pop much more in the darkness, the glowing blue and orange veins of the Sheikah shrines become the most noticeable thing on the map, along with stables and enemy camps, because of it’s fires and torches. This interchanging noticeability between structures means that not only will the player be excited to travel to new places but they may even run back and forth between things they might have missed during the day and only realized were there at night, this actually happened a lot to me while playing (and still does sometimes) where I want to climb a mountain and when I reach the top it’s getting dark already, from there I look on the world only to realize there are a bunch of shiny spots on the map for me to explore! and who doesn’t like shiny things?!

This obviously might change depending on how players tend to play a game, but it only means that more people will experience the same game different ways and it will be better tailored to their way of being and interacting, it makes the game more of a personal experience. players not interested in fighting monsters will gladly avoid their campfires at night and might instead look for stables, and vice versa, this means the way people will interact with the world is tied to the way they perceive the surrounding environment.

Now for the thing I see as the greatest design idea of BOTW, to lead players into that amazing sense of mystery and adventure. this is a technic of environmental design the developers call “Triangle rule” it is part of the whole gravity idea and it is pretty much what it sounds like, a rule based on using triangles to hide, show and guide players, all at the same time,  we can see how the rule is implemented all across the map in the image below 

What does this effectively do? The utilization of the triangle offers different options to the player, on how to face the obstacle ahead, you could climb up to it and get a better view of your surroundings, you could go around it keep ing a low level, and both these interactions will produce a different  outcome on how you see what’s ahead of you, the triangle can also be used to partially or completely hide an item behind it

These were divided in three different scales, each one with its own purpose when it comes to player’s interaction, and gameplay, if you’ve played the game you certainly can remember which ones they are and how they are used. Out of many I think the most notorious are the small hills or rocks used to hide chests or enemies, (among others), big triangles to hide larger landmarks such as big bridges or ruins, as well as orient player’s movement, and finally Gigantic triangles in the form of mountains, to serve as not only points of interest but reference when traveling around, these are locations you can see almost from everywhere on the map, and are great guiding aids.

The rectangle is also an important shape, even if not as noticeable, mainly used to completely hide other elements on the map or important map locations (but you can also see it as trees hiding enemies in the woods or gathering items for instance). This kind of layout gives the world a dynamic and fluid feel, that is very organic and real, but thought to give players a greater feeling of discovery and adventure that the legend of Zelda games tend to strive for. we can see this working in a sequence of pictures used at CEDEC 2017  

This environmental construction creates a chain of interest, in this particular case it works like this: Hill -> Bridge Entrance -> Sheikah Tower, So we have a triangle hiding a rectangular structure of interest that is hiding another structure behind it. And if you pay close attention left of the Sheikah tower behind the right hill you can partially see an enemy camp, all the rules of this particular design are in play here! Now that’s all for game design (for now), but what about the tech that got the team there? As far as tech goes the team as also implemented some new ideas, most noticeably, integration of editing control tools into the game itself, this way no two people would ever see something in the debug log and work on it at the same time, for lack of communication. So a job could be created inside the game and a signal would pop up in the world, clicking the sign would reveal all the technical details as well as a way to contact the dev who put up the task. A “Field task view” was created, as a window of observation so the team could see and manage tasks of greater importance.

According to the team, this was a great way for devs to share ideas with each other about different tasks. In an interview with IGN japan it was said, about the debugging process, that a member of the team realized how hard it would be to wait until the end of production to begin the working on the debugging, so they tried to implement an action of constant debugging side by side with the regular development. This way the team could block specific errors and tag programmers specifically to make sure these were fixed. Along with this a tool was created that allowed any member of the team to report an error, practically fusing the tools to find and fix bugs creating an in game system called “#ZELDA_ERROR” Finally I want to tall about the way the game looks, how the UI looks more specifically, the thing most players will have in front of them for the longest time. The user interface or UI, is the first thing a player sees when they boot up the game, and in this game there was a very important message to give straight away, this is a new Legend of Zelda, this is a new generation of games. So the look of the UI had to be new, reformed, the team had to rethink how a new look would be born, maintaining a very crucial integration between four categories, Graphics, Font, Design, and Animation. following one simple concept, only the necessary should be visible, nothing should stand out in a negative way, and all the information should be concise so players wouldn’t have to look around, and would find everything relevant to them in the same space. Having this in mind we can see it working from the very first screen. Pay attention to how the space is used as soon as you turn the game on.

See how all the information is stored on the right side of the screen and you have this huge open landscape with Link in front of it (triangles again see) what’s beyond link? what is he seeing? just hit play already! these are the things this first screen wants you to feel. ( Side note: the devs even created the color “ZELDA white” which is basically a slightly yellow tinted white, to make sure the UI was clean but not to tiresome to look at. Sweet devs are aware of your eyes.)

Now, there are things that will be different if you have the Original Japanese version or a translated version of the game, in Japan the letter font goes much more in line with the less is more philosophy of the game’s UI, in japan the fonts already existed, they’re “Logo G Black” for Katakana, and “Raguran Punch” for Kanji (Katakana and Kanji are two different ways of writing in Japanese). Now even if the western versions of the game don’t exactly break the rules, they do shy away from them a little and there was a specific font made at least for the Latin alphabet.

(If you’ve played the game you might have also seen the Pro HUD, this is an even cleaner version of the UI Presumably made as a request from Nintendo America or Europe, in an attempt to clean and help with the immersion in the game) Even the Sheikah Slate was designed along with the artists, specifically so it would have a more decorated design that would separate Sheikah objects as artifacts from an older age than when the game takes place. This is particularly more interesting when you realize that the team only had two UI designers, and they were so overwhelmed with work that they had to work together with programmers to implement small tricks, expanding the exclusive nintendo system “Layout Editor” which is a system to edit the visual composition of the game, this way designers could animate sections of the game and give programmers control over them, the big change BOTW brought to this system was the ability to see various interface images and their animations running at the same time over the main game.

Next, to make the work over the great map easier this was divided into 120 different sections, distinguishing between outdoors and indoors (done through colors) these could be loaded as needed with 4 zoom levels so the map would be easy o analyze with precision, because of this technic 2,344 different areas were created that would be impossible to fully make manually, so the map was procedurally generated (as a Minecraft map would be for instance) and every night textures were generated to each section of the map, so environmental artists would work with them later, this was done using a screen capture technology which allowed artists to add filters and make color adjustments to later harmonize with the UI, after this they’d copy the environment and hide anything that needed hiding using masks, any handmade redesign in the environment was also done here to create a real and dynamic world.

Now making a game of course is no easy task, much less a game with the scale BOTW has, and I find it very impressive to play a game that is so consistently good is so many different aspects, even if you’re accustomed by now to that sweet nintendo polish, but in my opinion, it is always great for us consumers, when we get the opportunity to dive a little into the amazing work and dedication put into the games we play, and learn a bit more about them.

Have different ideas? something that I clearly missed, suggestions? Write them to me, and we’ll be Speaking of Video Games!

To write this post I went around to these cool places on the web: 4gamer - http://www.4gamer.net/games/341/G034168/20170901120/ ESUTERU - http://blog.esuteru.com/archives/20018343.html

IGN JAPAN - http://jp.ign.com/cedec-2017/16963/news/botw

Dark souls isn’t hard. This might seem like a statement trying to get to your nerves, or just dismissing the hardships you face while playing, but it isn’t, or at least I’m not trying to make it sound so. It IS Scary, Daunting, it makes you feel like you’re weak, like you don’t have a chance, but it is not hard per sei, And saying dark souls I could mean any of the games “from software” has made.  Now if the game isn’t hard, why does it seem hard?

First The ambient, the way dark souls looks, sounds and feels is made to put you in a tense mood, from the majestic gothic buildings Anor Londo  (from The first Game) to the broken down shacks of The undead settlement (in Dark Souls 3), the dark humid and slimy corners, the dimly lit cathedrals, the choirs of despair, they’re all built in a way to make you feel that sense of scale, loneliness, of being smaller and intrinsically less powerful than the world around you. Try playing dark souls with different background music, turn all the lights in the room on, or with the windows open on a summer day, with or without headphones.  You’ll understand how setting the mood of the game is half of what makes it feel scary.

Then you have the precise combat See, for instance the diference between facing an enemy you’ve fought one hundred times, versus the first time you meet them. I played Dark souls II twice, the first time I had never played a dark souls game, I knew nothing except “it was hard” and not only I played 100hours and never finished it because I got stuck, I was super careful facing every enemy, everything was a threat, everyone was a force to be reckoned with, I was terrified, that’s how dark souls want’s you to feel.

The second time though? I was blasting through it, I knew the enemies, their patterns, I wasn’t feeling like a weak undead, but more like a capable knight instead, because I had all that previous experience, the game itself was a completely different experience. I knew what to expect and I had learned how to face it. Dark souls is a game about patience and learning (at least as far as mechanics go).

And it actually lends you a lot of help on the way, if you play online there are plenty helpful messages left by your fellow players, phantoms (either player or AI controlled) can be summoned to help, sure playing online can leave you open to invasions by other players, but that is all to maintain a big part of the game’s core fairness. Because it is a fair game, the carefully constructed combat is all about observation, enemy movement tells you all you need to know about how to win, every animation has a wind up, and release fail to see it, rush in, attack blindly and you’ll get punished, analyze, take your time, see the openings, and you’ll be rewarded.

Yes dark souls isn’t a walk in the park, it is challenging, but as something people seem to forget, it is also fair, even tipping the odds in your favor sometimes. (see the famous invincibility frames when rolling for instance).

The level layout can be confusing on purpose to make you feel lost at times, but it’s design is carefully constructed so as with combat, careful observation of your surroundings  will more often than not give you an advantage in the fights ahead, areas are also built in such a way that you’ll find plenty of shortcuts that make it easier to transverse the world, and more often than not there are ways for you to ”cheese” hard enemies if you feel like you really want to hold on to those souls no matter what, specially if you have a primarily ranged class, although you’ll probably pick up plenty throwing items along the way, with witch to cheese, or lure opponents out one at a time if you don’t.

Dark souls isn’t hard, but it assumes that you’ll be mindful of the experience you’re having, and it will challenge you, make you work for the victory, unlike a lot of games out there that will hold your hand every step of the way. Now of course this will brush off players that just want a power trip, or are looking for a more relaxing time but it will and has held a fan base that doesn’t get that many challenging games.

The game will actively try it’s best to trick you, to stress you and yes kill you, but as any player who’s tried it more than once will know, it is not as hard as most sensationalist video/ review/ critics make it out to be,

The phrase dark souls of insert game genre here(which I think we really should stop using) if used, should be more about calculated combat, masterful ambience, and environmental storytelling, than blandly about “I had a hard time killing things” so it is hard.

It’s important to look critically at games beyond first impressions, I feel that with the current need of reviews out in the very day of release, and races to see who gives information first, it is important for us to take our time to experience a game, and give thoughtful opportunities to learning mechanics and themes beyond the appearance.

On a side note I also believe the marketing of the game, mainly in the 1st special edition, “Dark souls Prepare to die edition” does not make justice to the game and feels more like a shot at sales through some kind of gamer credit for beating a difficult game. (I mean yes you should be prepared to die but you should always be prepared for the awesome feeling of winning, and they didn’t call it “Dark souls it will feel great when you win edition”! although I must admit prepare to die fits more with the gloomy ambience of the game)

That said I’m not a great dark souls player, but I’ve had incredibly easy times with some bosses that felt unbelievably hard at first, it is all a question of careful approach, learning and timing, that combined, I guess, would be considered skill at the game.

If you’re doubtful just watch streamers or speed runners of the game, and you’ll see how they know the enemies, their move sets, their phases, (some even do runs with no armor or with bare fists) of course they are the epitome of skill at the game, but even without long extensive play time and attempts at defeating enemies you’ll understand pretty well how the enemies in combat work like the anticipation attacks have warning you when they’re coming, and the way you deal with them it’s just a matter of  using your character’s moves to bypass their’s.

Now if you read this far first thank you for listening to me, and I’d like to add a little something that might not be directly connected to the game being hard or not, but I wanted to give a shout out to the way from software does story, and I’m not talking exclusively about the environmental story telling, (which IS a banner of these games) I’m talking about the purposeful hiding of the full story, or what I like to call “missing piece story telling”.

Not giving the players the full story right away, hiding information or just never even put it in the game in the first place creates this broken, missing, storyline that not only mimics the state of the in game world, (old, faded and forgotten) it also serves to incite players curiosity, to make dark souls a game you take beyond your play session, that keeps dedicated players thinking long after they’ve beaten a boss or they found gear from an NPC.

What the connection between those and the larger events in the world might have been, has led to countless theories and views of the Dark souls lore circling in the web. This is a gift for the very passionate and dedicated fan base they have, for the players who are invested and have spent their time with the game, as an experience and not something just to pass the time.

finally I’ll leave you with a quote from the writer at Ask a game dev that I think represents very well how dark souls fits in our gaming world

“Dark Souls is kind of like the dark chocolate of video games. It’s a little bitter and has a lot of flavor depth, but it isn’t as sweet or easy to eat as the stuff most people are used to. Not everybody likes it, but those who do like it a lot.”

            In 2014 Ubisoft launched a game called Watchdogs, in this game the player is a hacker in a city entirely controlled by an operative system called CtOS. mechanically this means that throughout the game the player uses an array of tools and skills to take advantage of the system, to complete missions in an open world environment, a certain degree of liberty is given so players can tackle missions however they see fit, with the tools at their disposal.

Want to go guns blazing, making cars explode destroying everything in your wake? Go for it. Want to turn off a generator to distract a guard, move a vehicle remotely to pass undetected while everyone is focused on the confusion? you can!

To me being a sneak freak (not in terms of sneakers but sneaking mechanics) and enjoying the whole tech hacker trope a good deal, this seemed fun. I got the game and played it for some time but it remains to this day the only game I played that I haven’t finished.

Why is that? The game is boring. Mechanically it has some really neat tricks and smart ideas going on, you can tackle most missions in a variety of ways, it’s not as open as the latest Hitman titles, (which I recommend if you’re looking for a great stealth game with a lot of choices) but players have enough variations on how to deal with the problems given that it is  always interesting to figure out what best works for your gameplay style.

Aesthetically to put it bluntly the game lacks any substance, the plot of the game tries to be a gritty revenge story by developing a character with some serious issues, every move the main character makes takes him one step closer to irresponsible lunatic and further from the dark knight with good intentions the game tries to sell you on. His character above all others feels so out of place it is painful to watch, the city of chicago feels like a prison everything is dull dark, it becomes tiresome to cruise around, even if mechanically it is fun.

Fast forward to a few months ago, I downloaded the Watchdogs 2 demo. I had heard some good things but the disappointment of the first one kept me away since it’s release in 2016.

I had a class on Affect theory and it reminded me of how these two games are basically a love letter to affect theory, there is no need to go further than these to see how we need more than just a formal approach to games, we need to tackle them in multiple fronts to see the full picture. Under the hood Watchdogs and Watchdogs 2 are the same game, they rely on the same mechanics, pretty much all of the original tricks made it to the sequel.

But on the surface, these games are miles apart, Watchdogs 2 has a cast of diverse fun colourful characters, even the villains in the second game are a departure from the underworld criminals of the first one, they are vibrant celebrities, tech industry giants, pharmaceutical assholes. While the first game was all about the main character’s struggle, watchdogs 2 puts society at the core of it’s tale, in world versions of google, facebook, spotify, Uber all the major apps on peoples phones not only make an appearance but are integral to the story, people use everything and companies are taking advantage of the lack of information users have to commit serious privacy crimes (sounds familiar?).

I’ve played few Vr titles until now, and one of those titles was Resident Evil 6: Biohazard, I was hoping for an experience that would quite literally transport me (or my conscious self at least) into the game environment, but instead I felt more tethered to reality than when I played the same game on console, the VR headset only replaced my camera control, and even that I was still able to control with the controller. Playing it on VR was a bit of a disappointment. Fast Forward a few years and VR keeps growing slowly but steady, and a week ago during a playstation presentation I saw that No Man’s Sky is scheduled to introduce an update this summer which brings VR integration. Now No Man’s Sky is a game with a lot of history and controversy, but it’s an amazing game and has had incredible support from the developers ever since it came out, I’ve loved the game since the beginning and I adore it so much more now, and one thing I said since it was released its 2016 release was, this game would be amazing in VR.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing, I have never been one of those people who complains and argues about remakes and remasters of movies games, etc, because what now are old things will always have power for those people who experienced them when they first came out. Great game make an impact, two great games I remember playing when I was young are Diablo II and the age of empires, the age of empires might be one of the games I remember better besides some gameboy games I had, for some reason to this day the main theme of age of empires gives me shivers, the menu was always somewhat scary for me the lonely road of a castle town, in silence until the music kicked in, the sound of hammer hitting metal or swords clashing as I selected different icons, to this day it has some power over me.

That’s why as soon as I got a windows computer after many years away from pc gaming, I got Age of empires II, it’s amazing the feelings I have for this game even though when I was a kid I never played anything other than the map editor where I would spend hours making a map populating it with all the cool archers and horse riders and buildings and war machines, just to watch a clash of empires happen without any input on my part, and still, I can spend hours playing it now, finding things I never knew even 20 years after the game is out.

This is the same reason why I can play diablo II with one of my friends like we did when we were ten or twelve years old, and still be scared when I go into the pyramids, or why I still always pick necromancer because I rather walk around with a party of summoned skeletons than on my own.