By Sam Coles:
There are times where we the players stop and take in the environment
we are in, this can be because the situation is tense in horror or we are in
awe as we explore a beautifully crafted open world as we drive, ride or fly
through it. I want to go through a few examples of atmosphere in video games,
from the dark and oppressive to the serine and calm and why they had an impact
on me.
The first time I played The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion I
wasn’t expecting it to impact me as much as it did when I first played it on PC
when I was 14 years old. It started off by dragging me by the nose through a
linear corridor within the Imperial Dungeons curb checking cult members,
however it was when I left the darkness of dungeon is when I was encapsulated.
The first time I emerged from the dungeons into the world of Cyrodiil, I was
enthralled as sun shined over the green rolling hills as the magnificent
musical score of Jeremy Soule chimed in.
Oblivion has a calm and collective atmosphere, I feel safe
when I play this game as it is a game I like to play to relax with the vast
towns, cities and rural villages, which I have yet to discover all of them over
a decade later. Not to say that game can’t be action packed and tense, all you
have to do is enter a cave or dungeon with the music switching from relaxing to
dark and foreboding. When I play Oblivion I don’t necessarily partake in specific
quests, I generally just roam the lands exploring, greeting NPCs and just
soaking in the markets of the various towns as if it were my own region where I
know the ins and outs of the area. The game is certainly crude by today’s
standards but if you can ignore the character models and just take in the environment,
it is almost tear inducing with how beautiful it is this why I hold this game
in higher regard than Skyrim.
Another game that had me just exploring and just taking in
the environment was The Witcher 3, I played The Witcher 2 before hand in 2012
when it debuted on the 360 where I then went back and read the two books that
were translated into English at the time. The second game had detailed
environments, but lacked the exploration of the world that I felt when I read
the books as Geralt hunted monsters with his sharped witted friend and bard Dandelion.
When first started to explore the open world of The Witcher
3, I felt like Geralt did in the books where he was searching every nook and
cranny for his prey while asking the locals, it represented his character from
the books more in the third game compared to the second. As I walked through the
streets of Novigrad and Oxenfurt it is as if they have leaked off the pages and
onto my television screen, coupled by the beautiful musical score provided by
the Polish folk band Percival.
Now we have the other end of the spectrum of atmosphere with
the dark and oppressive environments in the world of F.E.A.R, this game at
first seems to be another action game following the popularity of the Matrix of
the time but it is more than that. F.E.A.R is more than just an action game; it
is dripping with atmosphere, with its deep and dark corridors with music at a
minimum. When there is music it has an industrial tone as you trudge through
the oppressive environments as you hear are your footsteps echoing, coupled
with the distant whispers of threats that are unknown which can be sweat inducing.
F.E.A.R is a game where you have to embrace the darkness, 99
percent of the game is enveloped in a thick layer of pitch black darkness, you
would think this would hinder the experience but it doesn’t as it makes you
feel uneasy as you have no idea what lurks human or not. The game is over the
top with the gunfights, but after firefights the game slows down as all you can
hear are the subtle laughs of Alma as well as objects flying off shelves as the
restless ghosts are trying to push you away.
Resident Evil 4 although predominantly an action game, has a
surprisingly solid horror atmosphere, don’t get me wrong you’ll be mainly knee capping
monks and suplexing them. However the game can suddenly change and be very
tense, as it disarms the player making them think this is a harmless action
game and then it goes quiet and you just hear the ambient noises or the
terrifying Regenerators. It was always a good juxtaposition to the action and a
good reminder that it is a Resident Evil game, you have high octane action for
it to then to switch the atmosphere to terrifying, and again the lack of music
in these segments coupled with the sound of the environments is all you need.
Atmosphere in video games can be something that comforts you
or it can be used to terrify the player and keep them on edge, when a game gets
it right it is absolutely beautiful and it sucks you into that world.
I love the environments in video games. it makes the game stand out
ReplyDeleteIndeed! I love roaming the world of The Witcher 3 and Oblivion.
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