Studio Project Introduction..Sort Of
Whilst I have pretty much already introduced you to my
studio idea; I want to build a 3D environment that would be found in a horror
game. So yeah, you already know the idea behind my studio portion of BA7, but I
thought I would clarify a few lose ends up so that reading BA7 | Concept & Pre-Production posts
for both studio AND research report doesn’t become confusing.
My studio and research report projects are BOTH on the subject of horror, the research I do will OVERLAP and therefore I don’t deem it necessary to split my blog between the two separate projects.
Any research I do for my research report will also benefit my studio work and vice versa.
I will be cherry picking research that I do, the most helpful and beneficial research, to put into my research document, my blog will, however, contain every piece of research I do.
My studio and research report projects are BOTH on the subject of horror, the research I do will OVERLAP and therefore I don’t deem it necessary to split my blog between the two separate projects.
Any research I do for my research report will also benefit my studio work and vice versa.
I will be cherry picking research that I do, the most helpful and beneficial research, to put into my research document, my blog will, however, contain every piece of research I do.
Core Studio Related Research
Okay, so I have established that my BA7 blog is a
mixture of research that relates to both my research report AND studio project.
There are, however, pieces of research I want to do that will certainly be more
beneficial to my studio than my research report. Research such as the following
(which I plan to continue onto doing now so that I can present it next week):
- Practical studio related responses to research.
- Practical responses to work such as artists, 3D examples, literature, films, pre existing games etc.
- A series of game environment and asset creation studies.
- Environment design and creation.
- Lighting and rendering, especially in horror.
- Tips and tricks in Maya to aid me in making a horror environment from creation, build, texturing, lighting, special effects to rendering.
Jess Plays Outlast!
Horror Environment Study - WARNING POSSIBLE SPOILERS
Horror Environment Study - WARNING POSSIBLE SPOILERS
Okay so here it is, my first horror game environment
study and also my first post associated more with the studio portion of BA7.
Like I said though, my studio and research projects blend together and any
research done for one part will still benefit the other so I am lucky :D Lets
get this started then, horror game environment study number one is from
Outlast, a game I had been eagerly watching and anticipating for a while and
boy I wasn’t disappointed.
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Outlast is horror game that plays strongly on the
players psychological strings. It was developed and published by Red Barrels Games who aimed to create a game based
strongly on common perceptions of survival horror. It was released on Steam not
long ago, September 4th 2013 to
be exact, and is scheduled to be released on PS4 early next year.
VIDEO SOURCE
IMAGE SOURCE (LEFT) IMAGE SOURCE (RIGHT)
Horror Gameplay?
Outlast is a first person perspective survival horror
game whereby the main character, Miles Upshur, is seemingly trapped in an
asylum. As a journalist, Miles is sent to the remote mountains of Colorado to
write and document events that took place in the abandoned asylum Mount
Massive.
One of the key features which places Outlast securely in the survival horror camp is that Miles is un armed and incapable of combat. Any threats caused by enemies encountered can be deadly if not treated by running away and hiding. This is seen in other horror games being released, as the genre seems to be making a comeback, such as Amnesia and Slender: The Arrival.
One of the key features which places Outlast securely in the survival horror camp is that Miles is un armed and incapable of combat. Any threats caused by enemies encountered can be deadly if not treated by running away and hiding. This is seen in other horror games being released, as the genre seems to be making a comeback, such as Amnesia and Slender: The Arrival.
How and why is this a concrete example and evidence of
survival horror gameplay? Well, the technique has been used in previous
survival horror games, games which were perceived to birth the genre into the
medium. Common attributes would be as
follows:
- Little/no ammunition
- Melee weaponry only, if given a gun, ammo is scarce, player made to feel like every bullet counts.
- Character/player is unable to physically fight every enemy encountered, running away is a totally valid and needed option.
- Health is often easy to lose, heightening sense of fear and panic, if health is given to the player it is often little and far between.
- Puzzle solving to progress.
- Bigger emphasis on narrative and story telling than action.
I found a really good video which documents examples of
survivor horror games, their origins and influences. The presenter gives a
fully rounded list of techniques directly associated with original survivor
horror games and talks about why they are considered the defining mechanics of
the genre. This will better help explain my notes on survival horror and help
introduce Outlast so that any notes I post on my screen shots make sense when
referring to the game as a survival horror.
Outlast - Survival Horror Gameplay
Keeping in mind the video I have just posted, Outlast
most certainly falls into the survival horror camp. The games intention is to
explore and survive. Not blast your way through with an Amory's worth of ammo
and guns, destroying anything that dares to challenge you.
In Outlast, the only item at the players disposal to aid
them is a video camera that has a night vision ability. Players can only use
this if they have enough batteries in their inventory to power the camera and
finding batteries can often prove difficult; perhaps a throw back to old save
mechanics in Resident Evil whereby the player could only save their game
progress if they had an “ink ribbon” in their inventory.
All screen shots are ones I have taken during gameplay
unless stated otherwise.
As you can see here I was completely at the games mercy,
it threw me into sheer darkness and the only comfort was the night vision mode
on my camera, even though the fear wasn’t removed because I knew the longer I
stayed with the camera on, the faster my battery was going to die. I needed the
camera on, however, because I was being stalked and needed to ensure I wasn’t
found. I had no other way of protecting myself other than my ability to sneak
and hide, which could have been taken away at any time if the batteries had
died. This mechanic made me panic and feel incredibly nervous and anxious
whilst in the dark.
Another survival horror gameplay mechanic is hiding.
Often I was forced to run away and hide in a dark room and wait for my enemy to
check the room. I would hide under beds with my night vision turned on so that
I could check when the enemy was in the room with me. I could only do this if I
had enough battery though, if I didn’t (which happened a lot) I would have to
rely on my senses, listening to hear the enemy walk away or close the door
whilst I was hidden in darkness.
Outlast Mechanic Influenced By Film
In an interview with
Red Barrels, the development team behind Outlast, Tim Turi discusses the
influences that went into Outlast.
“Amnesia may have helped Red Barrels nail
down gameplay concepts for Outlast, but both games obviously draw inspiration
from the horror genre’s long history of films.”
Chateauneuf explains that the camcorder
mechanic used in Outlast was inspired heavily by horror films “Rec” and “Quarantine”
both of
which utilize the “handy cam” approach to film making whereby the audience
see’s through the perspective of a film maker or reporter.
“The one that really inspired it was the
most I would say – it’s in little pieces –
but Rec and Quarantine were really something that inspired
us,” says Chateauneuf about the found-footage horror flicks. “In those movies
they are always recording or a reporter gets into places…and then you always
have that night-vision camera where we can see some things. That was something
that I thought, ‘Why is there no game like that?’”
This is actually the ending scene to
REC so don’t watch if you want to avoid spoilers, however for me this was the
scariest part of the film. The characters are hiding from an enemy who is
aesthetically unnerving when seen through the night vision camcorder. It is
overwhelmingly similar to scenarios from Outlast where I would be hiding myself
from an enemy. The emotions the characters go through in this scene are
entirely similar to those that I felt whilst playing Outlast and put in similar
situations.
Outlast - Implementing Horror Narrative Into Environments
Another thing I have decided to study in horror games to
help me design my own horror environment scene is how games inject elements of
horror narrative into their environments. Outlast does this particularly well I
have noticed, the environments often try to communicate something extra to the
player and that message is usually an uncomfortable one bathed in blood, guts
or unnerving objects.
This is something I want to focus on within my design, I
want to inject elements of fear into the audience by implementing elements of
horror narrative through design. You’ll understand further when you see the
following screen captures I took whilst playing.
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An oddly placed wheelchair, suggestion of panic and
struggle in the way it has fallen, with smears of blood stains along the floor
suggesting something painful has happened. Someone has been hurt and forcefully
dragged away from the comfort of their wheelchair, most likely against their
will, causes panic in the player, emotions of panic, anxiety and confusion.
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Religious symbols often cause players to feel uneasy,
those who don’t understand religion or comprehend its values to others can feel
a sense of abandonment and confusion.
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Writing scribbled in blood on walls ordering the player
to do a specific command or giving directions cause an sense of distrust.
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This was an area in the game I couldn’t reach, I could
only voyeuristically peer through the gates and try to understand what had
happened. It made me feel scared because of the blood and the fact that I was
in the dark, both metaphorically and literally speaking, scared me.
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This area really inspired me, the entire aesthetics of
the scene, the way its set up, lit, modelled and organised all help build a
horror narrative. The fallen ladder suggests struggle or failed escape,
something you don’t want to see whilst trying to flee, while the blood
emphasises the fact that there is significant dangers that may be fatal.
Aesthetically speaking, this is how I envision my environment to take shape.
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A dark mysterious cubby leads to a pair of legs, blood
leads the player causing nerves and panic, slowly revealing a un easy
narrative.
Outlast -Lighting and Atmosphere
Outlast has superb atmosphere and I have decided that
one of the reasons for this is definitely due to the lighting. The lighting in
Outlast is, in itself, terrifying. Usually because there is no light, but
that’s the point.
I would often see areas of environments soaking in as much light as possible to enable the player to catch a glimpse of something important or to reveal just enough detail so that the player knows where they are. Often in these pools of light, I would be faced with a mask of foggy mist, further decreasing my sense of vision and forcing me to feel nervous in specific areas. Lighting is something I really want to focus on for my environment project. I want to study horror lighting and the techniques used to induce emotions of fear, panic and anxiety in the audience. One of the main reasons for lighting causing distress, uneasiness and discomposure is that when playing a game that surrounds you in darkness to scare you, there is no good reason for the game to allow you the comfort of light. Therefore there is usually a reason, a unnerving reason, as to why the game has allowed the player to have light. Often while playing outlast, light would only highlight areas of the environments that caused me to feel intimidated. Whether an oddly bright flickering light was illuminated blood stained walls, or allowing me to see to the end of a corridor only to see an eerie shadow/figure/presence lurking at the end, I would always feel anxiety when the game allowed me light. |
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As you can see here, this environment was very
threatening to me as a player. I was confined in a jail like scene with very
little light. This specific part of the game made me jump as I walked along and
was
suddenly confronted by two NPC’s who were only just visible thanks to the light
placed behind them. There were other scenarios where I was put in a similar
situation…
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Shutter Island (film, 2010)
Martin Scorsese’s 2010 psychological thriller Shutter Island was
released in 2010, before Outlast, and has some scenes which use light almost identically to
Outlast, even using a prison environment.
Why am I saying this? Well the idea of both my research report and studio project is to study how horror is injected into games by analysing how it is created in other mediums too, such as films.
Later in the film, Leonardo’s character, Edward “Teddy”
Daniels, visits the infamous “Ward C” where it is known dangerous, criminally
insane, patients are housed. Daniels is banned from entering but breaks in
regardless to investigate.
The environment within Ward C is incredibly reminiscent
of Outlasts’. Little next to no lighting, dark claustrophobic areas, misty
atmosphere, grungy, dirty and messy. Perhaps it was an influence on the game?
Or maybe it’s just an example of how films and games can cross over, using
similar methods to evoke anxiety, dread, suspicion and panic into their
audience.
  
The Grudge (film, 2004)
The Grudge is a supernatural horror film released in
2004 and directed by Takashi Shimizu. It is based on and a remade version of the Japanese film Ju-ON: The Grudge.
The main point I wanted to make refers to a specific scene in the film (and it’s Japanese predecessor) whereby the audience is forced to peer down a long dark corridor as the grudge creepily moves towards them.
The Grudge was released when I was a lot younger and I
remember being incredibly scared by it, am emotion that has stuck with me since
I watched the film many years ago. So, when I came across this environment in
Outlast, it conjured up a large sense of fear and anxiety in me, simply because
of the “long dark corridor” technique The Grudge, and many other horror films,
used.
This last batch of screenshots show examples of similar
light set ups id like to recreate in my horror environment, I know I haven’t
got a solid concept or theme yet for my
environment but from the ideas I have flowing through my head, these are
certainly mechanics I want to look into further.
    
Conclusion
Outlasts’ environments are terrifying, I think this is
down to a mix of clever lighting, atmospheric mist/fog and clever use of
layout. Elements that I want to take onto my 3D environment are
certainly:
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