Right Forearm In Progress

This week I have been working on the right arm of the character, this is the right forearm in progress.

Final Colour Concepts

These are our final colour concepts that I came up with and we have decided to use concept 2 as our final colour scheme.

Game Blog 4: The Banner Saga

Game Blog Week 4

Game: The Banner Saga

Question 3: How does morality influence the choices you make in the game?

The Banner Saga in a turn based SRPG (strategy role-playing game) set in a realm of Nordic fantasy where horned giants live alongside humans. Being that this is an SRPG the game has two main modes of interactivity: combat sections and dialogue sections, both of which contain many important decisions.

Upon starting this game I was under the impression that if your character died in a combat situation they remained dead for the rest of the game and so I tried my best to play conservatively to preserve my characters life. It wasn’t until later on that I realised that characters only encounter permadeath through specific dialogue trees. This drove a disconnect between the combat and the dialogue because it meant characters could die over and over in combat but if you went down the wrong dialogue path then they were gone for good which I found a bit jarring. It completely changed the way I played the combat sections  because I didn't have to worry about any of my troops dying, I sent my disposable weak troops to their deaths in the hope of doing some damage to the enemies to then give a greater number of turns to my tank characters to plough through the rest. Death was not 100% meaningless in combat, if you failed the combat section you would have to start it over again but from a moral stand point of view it didn’t hold nearly as much tension as in other SRPG’s such as XCOM where all player deaths are permanent.

For me this fact caused an imbalance in the combat/dialogue dynamic because I would be extremely diligent when making dialogue options trying very hard to keep characters alive but when in battle where forethought and strategy should take main stage I wasn't as invested because the stakes weren't as high. In games where permadeath is present morality plays a huge role in the way I play and the choices I make because I know there is a lot riding on what I say and do and unless you have a perfectly placed save you have to carry through with your choices which I believe only invests the player more unfortunately when playing ‘The Banner Saga’ I feel these intense moments where you know a party member could die if you go down the wrong dialogue path and piss off the wrong character are overshadowed by the forgiveness of the combat. I feel the game would have been stronger and far more morally engaging if the permadeath aspect was carried through into the combat.

In Summary: The morale compass I once at the start of the game had been tossed aside in the combat sections but carefully recovered for the dialogue sections.

Game Blog 3: The Wolf Among Us

Game Blog Week 3

Game: The Wolf Among Us

Question 4: Do choices you make in the game contribute to the sense of meaningful interactive moments?

(Contains Spoilers)

The Wolf Among Us is a heavily scripted, narrative based game from Telltale Studios. Much like its other releases the game focuses on a linear story with set events but leaving the player to choose how the main character reacts and in some cases even changing the order in which some of the more minor events take place. Whilst playing the game I am left with the sense that yes, my decisions are meaningful and I felt like I was impacting the story and characters directly depending on my actions. I believe the game tries to reinforce this as well, when you make certain decisions a little notification will appear on screen say “character x appreciates that” or “character x will remember that” it makes you think that your particular action had an effect on the character and there will be some consequence depending on what you said or did. Unfortunately when you break it down you realise that you really only have minor control over what is going on. A good example of this when Snow White asked if she should inform Ichabod Crane (her boss) about the murder of Faith. There were four dialogue options, tell him, don’t tell him, wait till you have more evidence to present and stay silent. I chose the dialogue option saying we should wait before we tell him until we have more evidence however it doesn’t matter which option you choose Crane reacts the same in every scenario which asks the question, why let us choose in the first place? By letting us choose what to say it keeps the events feeling organic, it feels like you caused that particular event to happen- whether or not this is the truth doesn’t matter, the point is that the game makes you feel as if your choices are directly contributing to the game narrative and dictating certain events of the story and so as a singular experience you felt as if the game you just played was your story. Its when you play through a second time that you begin to realise that your story isn't all that unique. Regardless of this, the fact that you think you are creating these meaningful interactive moments is what’s important as it will leave the player with a sense that they themselves achieved something and an overall positive experience.

Lighting Colour Tests & Sketches

These are some of the lighting colour tests I did for our main character and then some concept sketches I did for our secondary character.

Final Turnaround

I have finished the Final Turnaround for our main 3D character in preparation for modeling next week.

Final Concept

This is the final concept that I drew for our 3D character. (Colours not final).

Concepts

Throughout last week I worked alongside Jacob to develop concepts for our main 3D character. These are the designs I came up with and the images I used as inspiration.

Game Blog 2 - Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Game Blog Week 2

Game: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Question 2: Do the story nodes in your chosen game work well to support gameplay and gameplay objectives? Why or why not?

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a game brought to us by Ubisoft Montreal, released in 2003. This game was obviously intended to be a very cinematic experience with a mixture of long stroy oriented cutscenes and short action cutscenes littered throughout the game. These can be of benefit to the player giving vital story information and displaying environmental puzzles making these exciting and engaging because they have some importance and they directly relate to story and gameplay objectives. An example is at the start of the game where you try retrieve a dagger (a key plot point) through solving this puzzle (gameplay objective) both of which were given small cutscenes. On the flip side there are also a lot of unnecessary cutscenes such as when you reach a battle there will be a 3-4 second showing the enemies standing ready for battle after which they immediately know where you are and after every battle there is a very short 2 second scene only showing the prince sheathing his blades and that’s it. These scenes don’t add anything to the experience, if anything I would say that they even detract from it because they are related to combat and combat is supposed to be a tense situation and taking control away from the player only relieves this tension. I do agree that the cutscenes in this game support the gameplay in some areas but I feel they detract in others. For the type of game this is, a puzzle solving action adventure game -games that require a lot of precise input- I think the player should have more control.

Production Schedule

Production Schedule

For our finalized production schedule we all decided on our roles as a group and made sure everyone was able to do at least one thing that they wanted to do. Personally I really wanted to be part of the character and environment design so through that section most of my time is assigned to these tasks while others work on the storyboard. We also delegated tasks to those with the most expertise in the given area, for example Matthew has previous filming and editing experience and so we thought it would best fit to have him on these tasks of which he was happy to do. For the bigger tasks or the tasks no one was really looking forward to we divided them evenly through the team so everyone does a little bit and not one person is stuck with a big task they didn’t want to do. I feel that by organising our schedule this way we have been able to find a good middle ground where everyone is contributing evenly to the team and everyone is happy with their roles.