Environments and Stories: The Architecture of Play

Creeping around a corner of a police station overrun by abominations and observing signs of blood-spattered passage, listening to the plight of a people long gone in a creaking watery city, feeling utterly flawed with fascination at the design of a bridge – it’s struts growing impossibly high into the sky – wondering what this says about the society that stood here so long ago now…the environments we walk through tell stories. These can be part of our own individual story, or they can be a separate tale. Large, small, intimate, all-encompassing – environmental design is the most powerful author there is in video games.

Faith in Design

The design of Mirror’s Edge was admirable: it encouraged practice, learning, a heightening of skill, and above all fun. It had a tacked on story that didn’t really encroach upon the fun – something about parkour messengers and a dystopia.

Le Corbusier had more to do with story in Mirror’s Edge than anything else. The sparseness of the skyline was the perfect backdrop for the uncluttered nature of play. It freed the mind and the legs to soar, and take in the real story around you. There wasn’t really much of anything there, but in the harsh white walls, cut glass lines, and function-meets-style office blocks, there was a lot communicated to the player. We were on the roof for a start. The elevated position with which we were able to observe gave us the position of arbiter, of critic; we were able to scrutinize with the advantage of impunity and freedom.

Here was a society that valued cleanliness of surface above substance of interior. We knew our place in that society was outside of it (or more specifically, on top of it), both skimming the surfaces – getting right up close to them until the solid white gives way to a dulled gravel texture – and seeing the concealed. The grime of the rooftops, the glimpses inside office windows, the birds, the puddles of water that compromised the ruthless organisation everywhere else – signs of dirty, vibrant life were there for you to find them.

In fact just like Le Corbusier’s designs, the story that the architecture in Mirror’s Edge conveys is stark and minimal in itself, yet highly functional. Everything you need is there: ordered regime meets disordered individual. Subversion was the order of the day: rooftops became floors, walls became launching pads, the angles were there to be exploited and they took on new meaning. This new meaning was entirely separate from Faith’s story, and was told to the player instantly, at first sight.

The Artist Would Not Fear the Censor

In the gaps between fire fights, bids for survival against overmatched monstrosities, and the desperate grasping and clawing at nooks and crannies for bullets and sandwiches, there was much to be observed in the doomed city at the bottom of the sea.

In the first Bioshock game, there wasn’t a lot to Jack that we could invest in. This was down to the fact that a lot of his story was purposefully obfuscated from us for narrative reasons. This did draw attention to a number of things, because while Jack did have an on-going quest with goals and a final gruesome purpose, often the people he encountered on his way coloured the narrative more than he did. It was the environments that acted as the canvas to tell a far grander story.

It was a practical necessity to be observant of one’s surroundings, especially early on in the game, but also later. The blood and bodies would signal activity not so long ago; it would alert you to the presence of something lurking not so far ahead, and so we would pay attention not just to bullet holes but to everything. There were many stories to be told. Most through the medium of the audio log; this brought you into the intimate inner circle of many of Rapture’s former citizens. Crucially the audio log allowed you to observe with dual purpose: to take in the tragic and sinister message within the log, while keeping your eyes open and taking in your surroundings.

The first Bioshock game was about a city. There were bit players along the way, sure, but ultimately the star of the show was the leaky, groaning, dazzling watery metropolis – and who can forget the first descent in the bathysphere? It seemed to signal that we had truly arrived at the next phase in gaming.

Hector Guimard, champion of Art Nouveau and one of the early key architects in the Art Deco movement is responsible for much of Rapture’s look and feel.

The way Rapture’s design blends and clashes with its ocean setting is masterful; it carries over the hope and defiance of Ryan’s vision with elegance and silence. One of Art Deco’s major tenets is the embrace of technology into design, and this dovetails Ryan’s embrace of innovation with the stubbornness required to build a city at the bottom of the ocean. The proud, tall buildings we first see in the bathysphere make it clear that the city was built on rebellion, the buildings stand like beacons signalling the single-minded focus of their father and creator.

The different places we visit in Rapture tell us the story of the war without any words. You need to only venture from Olympus Heights – the luxury apartments of the rich and prominent, gilded and lavish, airy and grand – to Apollo Square – the lower-class residential district, boxy and plain, grubby and cramped – in order to see the gulf between the classes in the city, which serves as the wider narrative alongside Jack’s quest. Seeing the true degradation of Pauper’s Drop is enough to be aware of the plight of the lower classes – dilapidated, dangerous, and depraved.

Jack’s journey is a brilliant Carte Blanche. A walking tour from one area to the next, Bioshock’s campaign serves as a vehicle for observation, the emphasis on the protagonist’s narrative actually taking a back seat to the environment and stories within and without. This subversion, this leaning toward the external, works equally as powerfully as when the ratio is skewed the other way –something that Fumito Ueda is only too aware of.

Shadow of the Architect

Ueda’s wonderful ‘design by subtraction’ philosophy stripped away as many elements as possible (HUD, map, weapons) in an effort to refocus the player’s attention on what mattered both within the game world, and within the immediate scene.

The result is that we have our eyes drawn to feats of architectural creativity that we had not been privy to in games up to that point.

It’s difficult to find a contemporary real-world comparison for much of Ico’s architecture. The Gothic castles of medieval Europe would be the reference point that most players would have quickest to hand, and this fitting. The fairy tales that Ico imagines in its construction are perfect for the kind of emotions the game’s author wants to instil in you. The frightening Gothic of The Castle of Otranto and the isolated terror of Castle Dracula are benefactors to the experience of roaming Ico’s halls.

Ueda’s Ico conjures a fascination within us to know more about the civilisation that built the castle we are trapped in. The intense feeling of isolation we feel during the game’s adventure makes us yearn for human contact, this extends to our natural curiosity about the people that built the ground we stand on, what they thought, felt, and were trying to communicate with these otherworldly designs.

One of the reasons Ueda’s philosophy succeeded to the degree it did with Ico, is down the focus it places on the player. The player’s narrative – that of rescuing Yorda, escaping the castle, and trying to stay alive and free from persecution – is one that is brought to the fore as we are made to ponder our place within this world. There is not ‘data dumping’ here. A fantastic world like that we find in The Witcher, has a huge history which players can learn about – and indeed, they are given volume upon volume to read and decipher, which will eventually paint a vivid picture in the mind of the player. However, the problem with this method is that volume doesn’t equal depth, and nor does it equate to a genuine connection.

The genius of Ueda’s strategy is that it allows – nay encourages – the player to make an imprint on the design. There was very little information to go on in this world, outside of what we could piece together in the cut scenes, which were few and far between. The alienating and ethereal architecture of Ueda’s fantasy land made our narrative converge with that of the castle: our questions, when met with so few answers, inspired us to step outside of our own narrative within the game, and imagine the people that were here before us, to dream of their stories. This inevitably brought us back to introspection; after all, what was our story?