Stick your Sherlock hat on...

Arron

Hey all!

I've built a small set design experiment in the Cryengine mod sandbox using assets from Crysis 2. I was wondering if you guys could help me out. Its part of my degree, I’m basically looking into how we can use the environment to narrate a story.

If you wanna help me out with my research, stick your Sherlock hat on and I’ll give you some information as to why you as the ‘player’ are in the room and what role you are ‘playing’ in the game. (Sadly I can’t actually release the environment since I ran out of time, but the images and a video are below).

Story:

The police have been called by a CCTV operator who explains that one of his cameras partially overlooking a disused industrial building has caught site of a man acting suspiciously.

You’re role in the game:

You are the officer responding to the call and the first on the scene having navigated heavy traffic with the use of sirens. You've entered the disused warehouse to find this room. No sign of the suspect.

What can you deduce from the environment?

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFGYrtmxN88&list=UUDw8Y_1hSsqrygzjUVabE4Q&index=1&feature=plcp"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFGYrtmxN88&list=UUDw8Y_1hSsqrygzjUVabE4Q&index=1&feature=plcp[/ame]

nathanbarrett

I've just finished my dissertation which was partially on environmental storytelling so I'll give it my best shot with what I learned...

A focal point of the scene is the V for Vendetta-style mask that's been graffiti'd on the wall. This is probably from the suspect as some sort of calling card.

The room looks overturned, and the use of the open boxes, opened filing cabinets, and papers all over the floor suggest whoever was in the room last was looking for something frantically.

The billy can and matches on the floor suggest a failed attempt at burning whatever evidence or documents they had left.

The malfunctioning monitors and broken one say to me that whoever was in there wasn't after anything of value, as the hi-tech computers still remain.

Overall it says to me the suspect had an agenda and was searching for something. He sees himself as elusive, but has screwed up this time with the sirens forcing him to leave in a hurry before being able to burn anything.

Darkleopard

Yeah Nathans pretty much said what i was thinking

1. Draws open/papers everywhere - Suggests someone looking for something. The fact they are not packed away again suggests that they did not have time or were planning on getting rid of it
2. The can and matches - suggests they wanted to get rid of the scene/any evidence.
3. The V for vendetta style decal - Suggests that the environment was inhabited by probably some sort of freedom movement/extremist, the setup suggests a singlar or two people lived here.

I get the feeling that this was not an outside guy looking for something (ie intruder), but the guy who lives here trying to collect something particular before burning the rest and ridding his presence there.

The entire scene, including it looks like its in a basement suggests that the guy is not operating by the law, is seeking to hide, and has had to move last second before completing whatever he was doing.

That was fun

Arron

Hey nathanberrett, Darkleopard

You both completely nailed it! I even caught myself checking my Youtube channel in-case I had given anything away, seriously it was pretty much what I wrote down when I made it haha.

Cheers for your feedback it will be really useful for my evaluation. I'm glad you both picked up on the V for vendetta mask since this was a big part of the experiment. I think without it, its really hard to confirm what the room was for and that they are being elusive as you both pointed out.

I’m basically trying to disprove a claim that “[…] You cannot have interactivity and narration at the same time. And this means in practice that games almost never perform basic narrative operations like flashback and flash forward. Games are almost always chronological.”

I reckon if you use the environment to a certain extent you could have interactivity at the same time as flashback narration.

It would be interesting to find out if people who haven't studied this area would pick up on it during game-play.

Cheers again!

WarrenM

This sort of thing would be a fun challenge ... given a scenario, set up a scene that tells that story.

Or, I guess even better, create a scene that tells a story and if the judges can work out what you intended then you succeeded.

Arron

Yeah guessing a scene that tells a story would be fun for both the person creating it and judging it, it does sound like a pretty cool challenge now that you mention it! Maybe we should set one up.