Our first set work was to look at a game with fairytale aspects in groups of 3-4
Our group chose to look at the game 'Folklore', which is heavily influenced by fairytales, mythology etc.
Right off the bat however if setting is in a real location: Doolin, Ireland; which gives the whole game a more authentic feel and also makes it easy to relate to; as opposed to an entirely made up setting.
The player is introduced to the 'Netherworld', where the faeries reside; its setting is very fantasy, almost macabre is some aspects.
The fairy tale creatures are easy to spot, some being more recogniseable than others whould be.
For the two main characters, they each have their own 'companion' so to speak, one being the invisible man and the other being a scarecrow.
The whole basis of the game is stories that inspired fairytales, even the word 'Folklore' is fairytales and cultural tradition.
There are parts of the game with a picture book aspect to it, making it more so like a fairytale. When looking at the different enemies in the menu a book opens out revealing images of them along with old 'outdated' text below it.
Wednesday, 12 October 2011
Friday, 25 February 2011
Thursday, 24 February 2011
Big Budget vs. Indie
Activision
A high end, big budget company; vastly differing from tale of tales in both style of games and commercial appeal. They churn out more games that appeal to a massive audience, the prime example of this being films that have been made into games; the film itself have taking the audience’s attention makes the game interpretation catch their eye by the association that they are already familiar of this; basically easy money.
I imagine that when it came to beta testing for their games it was to a very closed off select group of people; so it wouldn’t have reached a broad opinion on what would be most appealing for the audience, not just in aesthetic sense but the overall quality.
In terms of variety, Activision aren’t exactly adventurous compared to tale of tales, they stick to a safe zone and don’t stray too far. Whereas tale of tales has been very experimental with all of their games, not one has been all that similar to another. Which Is personally what I found most interesting about this company.
Monday, 14 February 2011
Big budget vs. indie
Tale of tales
A small indie company, consisting mostly of collaboration works to produce their games. Very arty, pretentious approach to their games; focusing on the overall style, an interesting concept of storyline and the goal in each game.
For example: The Path. This games appearance, the overall concept of it is a very macabre take on little red riding hood. There are seven sisters, who the player works their way through each of their version of the story; which is essentially, go to your grandmother’s house. However this goal isn’t as simple as the player perceives, just following the path grandma’s house winds you up with a game over; it involves exploration of the forest; more specifically, finding ‘your wolf’ before progressing to grandma’s house
Compared to Silent Hill 3...
Spyro compared to SH3
They wanted have a game in full 3D , but the primary focus is interaction with the animations.
Most difficult part was coming up with the concept of the game; what kind of game to do. Craig Stitt, Artist for insomniac games came up with the idea of the game having something to do with dragons; an appealing idea as they can be capable of so much and ‘and they’re cool’
Came up with having a panoramic 3D engine for the playstation 1, this took up a lot of effort considering this was for an early console. Alex Hastings (V.P. Software) was told specifically what to do for the idea, but went a completely different direction which is what the game ended up keeping. He needed to work on seven different renders for the environments, working on different levels of detail. And also created an engine where you could see more detail in closer view, and to be also to still see things in the distance; every transition they tried to do a fade or morph to make it so you didn’t notice this. The sky itself taking up well over 5,000 polygons, which was almost pushing the extent of the playstation back then.
Mini game, the free flying levels were purely down to how the player wanted to take it on to achieve the goal, collecting the objects.
They used the new dual shock controllers to its extent too, when you charged into object the controllers would vibrate as if your feeling the recoil from the impact.
The soundtrack, Spyro’s voice: Carlos Alazraqui went through an array of different styles of voices just to pick out Spyro’s, from high nasal-y voice to a deeper cooler voice but was found to be too mean, were aiming for a more friendly voice; in the end found on in between the two.
Tuesday, 25 January 2011
Game Comparrision
1st game: Silent Hill 3
After watching the making of video of silent hill, I have even more appreciation for the game than I already had. The sheer degree of effort that went into all of the work is astounding.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f6EWqCscyc
The creation of the game started very soon after the release of Silent Hill 2, with the same script writer, the team wanted to focus more on fear in this. Silent Hill 2 aimed at the fear escalating to horror with a thought or an idea of something scary.
3 was intended to be a more direct fear - Shock.
The team used real areas for reference in the environments, but added to it to make the whole area seem that much more shocking for the audience. For example, bleeding walls, burning walls.
For even more realism the maps were also as real as the areas they referenced. One in particular, the chapel map looks as though it's a childs drawing which it was in fact done by a 5 year old child.
The starting sequence when it first sets the scene for the start of the story, is a simple closing in shot of Heather (the main character) waking up in a cafe. The effort in one of the most simple scenes is staggering, the sunset leaking through the windows is made to appear redder than it usually is meant to, 'as if something red is waiting'.
So the colour of the whole scene sets a foreboding image with the audience.
Heathers design was based off of people like Sophie Marceau and Charlotte Gainsborg
The design process for Heather went through a lot of stages, originally having long hair and trousers she progressed to have her shorter, wavy hair; and in a skirt instead.
Once the character design process had gone through the team held auditions for the characters actors, both voice and motion capture. The whole of the game was motion captured.
Soundtrack-
The sound designer, Akira Yamaoka composed the soundtrack after the script for the game was completed, reading through it and coming up with the music purely by the emotion of the script.
This was the first Silent Hill to have a voice in the soundtrack, Akira flew out to LA to look for the right sound, Finding Mary Elizabeth McGlynn.
Yamaoka also composed the background sounds that are heard through out the game, strange erratic noises that are intended to make the audience feel uncomfortable. Along with that he designed the sounds the monsters make in the game, using pretty normal things to produce the noise; for example the 'Closer' monsters: the noise for them was actually a rhino.
http://images.wikia.com/silent/images/4/4b/Closer.png
This leads into the design for the monsters, Masahiro Ito (monster designer, closer art above by him) chose to stick with the human for for the monsters 'refuses to use elements that are too far from the human being' , 'deformed human appendages'. Every monster, with the exception of a few bosses and the spilt head dog monster, all of the monsters to have the human form taken into account. This link possibly making the player question why Heather's physical manifestations take such forms, it is pushed further as in one point of the game is shocking the audience into wondering if they really are monsters, that we are only seeing what Heather see's, not everyone else. In short it is implied the monsters are infact human.
at 2:20 onwards, the rug is pulled from under the players feet; but the character Vincent, playfully implies he is joking, only making it worse. It makes you look at the monsters in a somewhat different light.
The Silent Hill series is known for its deep psychological horror theme. A lot of the even the smaller features has meaning behind them.
In one case the recurring theme of the toilet stalls in the games, actually refers to an old horror story to scare children. In earlier years when toilets were just a hole in the floor that you stood above; if you fell in you would be lost forever. Clearly just to scare kids, but the use of this in the game as surprising, I didn't know the theme went as deep as that. Its shows just from that the whole idea of the games, being lost in a town with no idea of how to escape.
Another example is Valtiel (His name deriving from 'valet', being Gods valet) who is more often than not seen turning valves. This actually was made to represent the passage between the two worlds, the nightmare world and 'real; the turning of valves being 'water flows through pipes... valves allow and obstruct flow.' signifying the Valtiel is the one causing the shifts between the two realities.
The aim of Silent Hill 3 was to create a world permeated by doubt, doubt - Fear.
After watching the making of video of silent hill, I have even more appreciation for the game than I already had. The sheer degree of effort that went into all of the work is astounding.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f6EWqCscyc
The creation of the game started very soon after the release of Silent Hill 2, with the same script writer, the team wanted to focus more on fear in this. Silent Hill 2 aimed at the fear escalating to horror with a thought or an idea of something scary.
3 was intended to be a more direct fear - Shock.
The team used real areas for reference in the environments, but added to it to make the whole area seem that much more shocking for the audience. For example, bleeding walls, burning walls.
For even more realism the maps were also as real as the areas they referenced. One in particular, the chapel map looks as though it's a childs drawing which it was in fact done by a 5 year old child.
The starting sequence when it first sets the scene for the start of the story, is a simple closing in shot of Heather (the main character) waking up in a cafe. The effort in one of the most simple scenes is staggering, the sunset leaking through the windows is made to appear redder than it usually is meant to, 'as if something red is waiting'.
So the colour of the whole scene sets a foreboding image with the audience.
Heathers design was based off of people like Sophie Marceau and Charlotte Gainsborg
The design process for Heather went through a lot of stages, originally having long hair and trousers she progressed to have her shorter, wavy hair; and in a skirt instead.
Once the character design process had gone through the team held auditions for the characters actors, both voice and motion capture. The whole of the game was motion captured.
Soundtrack-
The sound designer, Akira Yamaoka composed the soundtrack after the script for the game was completed, reading through it and coming up with the music purely by the emotion of the script.
This was the first Silent Hill to have a voice in the soundtrack, Akira flew out to LA to look for the right sound, Finding Mary Elizabeth McGlynn.
Yamaoka also composed the background sounds that are heard through out the game, strange erratic noises that are intended to make the audience feel uncomfortable. Along with that he designed the sounds the monsters make in the game, using pretty normal things to produce the noise; for example the 'Closer' monsters: the noise for them was actually a rhino.
http://images.wikia.com/silent/images/4/4b/Closer.png
This leads into the design for the monsters, Masahiro Ito (monster designer, closer art above by him) chose to stick with the human for for the monsters 'refuses to use elements that are too far from the human being' , 'deformed human appendages'. Every monster, with the exception of a few bosses and the spilt head dog monster, all of the monsters to have the human form taken into account. This link possibly making the player question why Heather's physical manifestations take such forms, it is pushed further as in one point of the game is shocking the audience into wondering if they really are monsters, that we are only seeing what Heather see's, not everyone else. In short it is implied the monsters are infact human.
at 2:20 onwards, the rug is pulled from under the players feet; but the character Vincent, playfully implies he is joking, only making it worse. It makes you look at the monsters in a somewhat different light.
The Silent Hill series is known for its deep psychological horror theme. A lot of the even the smaller features has meaning behind them.
In one case the recurring theme of the toilet stalls in the games, actually refers to an old horror story to scare children. In earlier years when toilets were just a hole in the floor that you stood above; if you fell in you would be lost forever. Clearly just to scare kids, but the use of this in the game as surprising, I didn't know the theme went as deep as that. Its shows just from that the whole idea of the games, being lost in a town with no idea of how to escape.
Another example is Valtiel (His name deriving from 'valet', being Gods valet) who is more often than not seen turning valves. This actually was made to represent the passage between the two worlds, the nightmare world and 'real; the turning of valves being 'water flows through pipes... valves allow and obstruct flow.' signifying the Valtiel is the one causing the shifts between the two realities.
The aim of Silent Hill 3 was to create a world permeated by doubt, doubt - Fear.
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