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#Post#: 26--------------------------------------------------
Details in the Distance
DIR By: Pam
Date: May 21, 2021, 6:56 am
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The primary purpose of background art in adventure games is to
be part of the gameplay. It's where the locked doors, the mazes,
the inventory items appear; it's where the characters have to
walk around, jump across, and swim through. Beyond the realm of
playability, however, are the distant areas – those non-playable
parts of the scenery that allows the writers and artists to
convey their world and story. These elements often rely purely
on visual impact, rather than factoring into the actual
narrative beyond being pure setting, but their effect on the
feeling of a game is no less potent.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com//?ACT=49&d=33195&fid=43&f=01.png
When working with Dave Gilbert on The Blackwell Epiphany, one of
his goals was to open the usual 'offices and apartments' setting
of the series up a little, and give me a chance to create more
evocative, scenic locations. The first area in the game was a
fun example of this: we had an old apartment building, ruined to
the point of being utterly condemned, and this allowed us to
break big holes open in the walls and show the cityscape beyond.
The scene here is fairly typical of earlier Blackwell games – a
character to talk to, a doorway to exit out of, and an object on
the ground – but the massive hole in the wall let us to make
this something else, something more memorable.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com//?ACT=49&d=33195&fid=43&f=02.jpg
When working on Technobabylon, it was important to both James
Dearden and I to once again show the city. The cyberpunk genre
relies quite heavily on setting as a storytelling element – it's
the sort of genre that feels 'right' when set in the dirty
alleys and neon glow of a big city. We used gaps in streets and
elevated locations with large windows to let the city be an
omnipresent element, even in fairly simple backgrounds. It was
satisfying to create a range of corporate logos and billboards
to help establish the idea that this is a city in which one
could buy almost anything.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com//?ACT=49&d=33195&fid=43&f=03.png
When working on Shardlight, I had a very different setting to
convey. This was no longer a thriving, powerful city, but a
remnant of one, more in ruins than not. Here the backdrop was a
chance to tell the story of what happened to this world, and
show the ruin directly. The half-toppled statue in the backdrop
here, for instance, suggests the destruction of a once mighty
power, with the cables and ropes connected to it suggesting the
desperate attempts to save it – clearly not entirely successful,
but nevertheless hanging on as best as they can manage. In this
way, distant details can exist as a sort of metaphor for the
setting's backstory, and exist as the scars or trophies that
serve as evidence of a history.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com//?ACT=49&d=33195&fid=43&f=04.png
Sometimes it's useful to show distant details in order to convey
a very specific piece of information. In this scene from
Unavowed, players find themselves on an icy walkway far above
the city. Here the backdrop helps convey that sense of height,
and while it would've been possible to paint the same scene
mostly just showing the sky, having so much of the city in the
shot helps to sell the idea that we're high above it. In this
case, our eye measures the distance by comparing the height of
these details, and informs us how far such details are. It's a
fundamentally useful element for specialist cases such as this.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com//?ACT=49&d=33195&fid=43&f=05.png
There's some great instances of distant details in classic
adventure games. This shot from Indiana Jones and the Fate of
Atlantis is an excellent example. In the scene, we can really do
very little in terms of gameplay; it's largely just
conversational. The use of different levels of buildings helps
to sell the idea of a city on a hillside, and though we only
talk here, the scene is nonetheless interesting and visually
striking. It would've been easy for this exact scene to be shown
as a single wall and doorway, with a car nearby, showing how
much opportunity such a simple scene in terms of interactive
elements affords the artist.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com//?ACT=49&d=33195&fid=43&f=06.png
Beneath a Steel Sky is a prime case of a game that loves to use
distant details, and has helped inspire some of the situations
in which I've used raised walkways and large windows to let the
city into a scene. Here a simple industrial setting is taken to
another level of visual impact by showing both the subtle
details of the level below us, and of the city beyond the
structure we're in. Because we only have to move around in a
very small section of the environment, and because the camera
angle is quite high, we're shown a lot of the city in many
otherwise quite basic scenes.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com//?ACT=49&d=33195&fid=43&f=07.png
A favourite technique of artists is to use scenes such as this
backdrop from King's Quest V to act as a sort of playable
establishing shot. Because of the size of characters in
adventure games, it's not really possible to fully convey the
sense of scale of a large castle while putting the character
next to it, so showing it in the distance, with a path leading
up to it, helps to give us both a sense of scale and a warning,
letting us know that we're approaching something foreboding,
something dangerous.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com//?ACT=49&d=33195&fid=43&f=08.png
Because of the lesser detail in distant features such as these,
bold shapes work well. Whether it's the sinister appearance of
the castle in the previous shot, or the obviously alien peaks in
the distance of this scene from The Dig, the effect works
especially well when the information is conveyed very simply.
There's no way to mistake the angular, patterned forms of the
details in the distance here for naturally occurring Earth
mountains, or structures made by humans. They help reinforce the
story told by the unusual craft evident in the foreground –
we're in a strange place, surrounded by unusual things.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com//?ACT=49&d=33195&fid=43&f=09.gif
Other than bold shapes, the other thing that works well to help
give a sense of scale is juxtaposition. The distant dam in
Inherit the Earth is made larger and more impressive by being
surrounded with small trees. These are given their own sense of
scale by being placed behind larger trees in the foreground. Our
eyes are good at measuring comparisons like this, and it helps
us to judge how big something is. This particular shot also
showcases a juxtaposition of eras: a leftover relic of
contemporary man-made structures in a futuristic world that had
been, until this point, more reminiscent of a medieval fantasy
populated by anthropomorphic animals.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com//?ACT=49&d=33195&fid=43&f=10.gif
Having a distant element emphasized like this is quite striking.
The fort looming above the beach in this scene from The Curse of
Monkey Island makes for an imposing structure that stands out
clearly among the trees and sand of the foreground. Much like
the castle shown earlier, showing it at a distance like this
helps conveys the size clearly – and even though here it's just
a faraway element, rather than our destination, the visual
effect is still powerful.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com//?ACT=49&d=33195&fid=43&f=11.jpg
While juxtaposition is one effective way to do distant details,
repetition shouldn't be discounted either. This scene from
Machinarium uses repeated elements to create a different sense
of scale – not the scale of a single element, such as a castle
or fort, but instead the scale of an entire area, stretching
back as far as the eye can see. The cluttered, detailed texture
of these piles of scrap prevents any one element from standing
out or being distracting; instead they make for a consistent,
recurring idea that helps us establish a place within our minds.
This consistency is the key here, rather than the sense of
detail.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com//?ACT=49&d=33195&fid=43&f=12.jpg
A great example of consistency in distant details being more
important than clarity is seen in this shot from The Dark Eye:
Chains of Satinav, in which we can clearly perceive rows of
trees ascending the mountain, despite the fact that they're
rendered in much less detail than the trees close to us. The
fact that the trees are consistent in shape and colour with both
the other trees in the scene, as well as what our experience
causes us to expect from trees, means that we can quite easily
parse the details suggested in the distance here, and fill in
the gaps ourselves. It's more important that this scene shows
the uniqueness of the foreground details than the background
ones, simply because we already know what those background
details are supposed to represent.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com//?ACT=49&d=33195&fid=43&f=13.png
In The Inner World, however, things are slightly different.
Rather than being something we've seen before, here we're
presented with a world on the inside of a sphere, rather than
the outside, and so the background artists have to make use of
the distance here to try to convey this unorthodox idea. It's
not the sort of thing that's easily expressed in two dimensions
up close, and therefore each 'skyline' presents an essential
opportunity to reinforce what this bizarre setting looks and
feels like to us.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com//?ACT=49&d=33195&fid=43&f=14.jpg
Distant details, then, are a useful element for the adventure
game artist. They're largely secondary to the more essential
aspects of an adventure game background – the doors we unlock,
the paths we tread, and the miscellany we collect – but in terms
of establishing the feeling of atmosphere, they are just as
powerful. They can tell us of a setting, help us to understand
the size of something, or simply make a fairly plain scene much
more interesting. Greatest of all, perhaps, as in this scene
from Quest for Infamy, is their ability to showcase a land and
its features, and beckon us forth to explore it. This is, after
all, an adventure.
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