Skip to main content
search
Tag

world-building

Andy Astruc
In Analysis

Genshin Impact builds a better, more connected open world

The blacksmith’s name is Wagner. This isn’t information I had to research, nor is it useful to know, it’s just a fact about the city of Mondstadt in Genshin Impact. At a very basic level, I know there’s a blacksmith because I need to use a blacksmith to play the game. Everyone in Mondstadt knows Wagner, though—the knights and guards go to him for their weapons, the food stall owners run into him at work, random residents see him hammering away near the gates—and as a result they bring him up in conversation now and then, or ask me to go speak to him while I’m doing a side quest about ghosts or potato supplies. Rather than being just a faceless NPC, he exists; Wagner is a three-dimensional piece of the Genshin universe.

Everything in the game follows this philosophy, a desire to make sure each person, object, concept, god or piece of fruit has a place to be and a role to play in the ecosystem (literally or figuratively). Often when players enter an open world playground they’re presented with a thousand disparate pieces, shiny characters and places that serve their purpose and then step politely back to make room for the next piece. Go here and find this item, speak to the man at the corner to get a quest about the old shack on the hill, climb a tower and search for the next man on the next corner. In the world of Teyvat (where Genshin Impact is set), all things are part of the greater clockwork of the universe, because that’s how it works in the real world, more or less. Genshin achieves this not with one silver bullet solution, but by using myriad mechanics and writing tricks to draw the player in and constantly feed them more information about—and empathy for—the world.

Through ordinary gameplay and dialogue, Genshin is constantly reassuring you about the continuity of the world, and making sure to organically merge the two sides. Upgrade materials include all sorts of flowers, rocks, plants and seeds from around the map, but these aren’t just items to be collected; characters frequently reference the fictional fruits, flora and fauna in quest dialogue and friendly exchanges, reinforcing the idea that this is a real world you’re living in, not just a sandbox for video game adventures. When characters talk about their favourite food, or discuss going out to eat as part of their interactions and quests, the food they mention always exists as a recipe the player can obtain and make themselves. There’s a constant flow of practical and narrative information, back and forth, keeping you from losing that belief in the reality around you.

It brings to mind the potions and mutagens of The Witcher’s universe, where Geralt calmly discusses the ingredients he will need to do his job, but now writ large over an entire open world ecosystem. You can easily imagine NPCs being able to direct you to the crafting ingredients you need if you could simply ask, without the need for layers of abstraction.

Let’s not forget about Wagner, though, or any of the random denizens of Teyvat. Characters are where Genshin Impact really shines, and, while they might not be blisteringly clever portrayals fit to put the stars of classic literature to shame, they manage to feel more like real people than most other games in the same space. Again, this comes down to respecting the ecosystem of the universe. Wagner forges weapons for many folks around town, including Noelle, one of the potential playable characters and a maid-slash-assistant to the Knights of Favonius. His weapons keep getting broken by Noelle and he eventually works out it’s because she’s ridiculously strong and basically shattering them with her raw anime girl power. Every quest you pick up, or piece of dialogue you scroll through, is full of these kinds of connections. One quest for Venti, the bard, involves him inventing a pair of goggles that let you see people’s imaginary friends, which leads you on a merry adventure around different NPCs, but makes one stop at the local pub to watch two of the male characters—Diluc and Kaeya—have one of their many sassy exchanges. This adds nothing to the quest itself beyond the satisfaction of knowing who these people are and enjoying the interaction. The value is in the context.

Genshin Impact fosters these connections to its characters by treating the players’ relationships with them as an ever-evolving, dynamic thing. Unlike in many open world titles, where NPCs primarily exist in their piece of the story, as part of their quests and narrative moments, before fading out of view, Genshin characters are always being constructed from several perspectives at once. When you unlock a character as playable and put them in your squad, they begin accumulating Friendship Rank, which is essentially a measurement of how much you’ve used them while playing. Higher ranks mean accessing more voice lines and backstory details, so you gradually get to know that person better, and they slowly become more well-rounded characters, even without any emotional dialogue scenes or dramatic moments. This slow-burn method of unveiling the details of a character feels truer to the way an open world game flows than simply dumping information into cutscenes; building a relationship with someone over the course of a journey feels more natural in a game than passively watching them in cutscenes.

As of the 1.4 update, Genshin added Hangout Events, which are essentially small outings you can go on with specific characters that have dialogue choices and multiple endings. Hangouts turn the game briefly into a dating sim of sorts, and they offer another way to get to know characters outside of a traditional quest. Also, crucially, while they do have multiple endings, the endings aren’t exactly mutually exclusive; rather than providing a series of what-if scenarios where you decide what might have happened if you said the right or wrong thing, the hangout stories play more like a set of possibilities that are all equally true. That means replaying them is less like creating an alternate universe and more like just learning more about your date. When singing deaconess Barbara meets you in the forest, it is equally plausible that you helped her chase off an over-eager fan and that you shared a quiet moment learning her recipe for alcoholic chilli. Both of these adventures happened. It’s another excellent example of how Genshin Impact takes advantage of the specific advantages of telling a story inside a game, where continuity is optional and time has no real power.

Now you can even invite your companions (unlocked playable characters) into your teapot for a nice, relaxing afternoon. At a certain point in Genshin, in case you’re confused, the main character is given a magic teapot, inside which exists a pocket dimension that the player can decorate like a tiny private estate. The 1.6 update added the ability to invite a couple of your friend in, and then wander over to speak to them about how they feel, or what they think of the magic teapot universe you filled with fruit stands.

How much they have to say while they’re visiting is tied to their Friendship Rank, and you can get into some reasonably meaty conversations with your favourite people. It speaks to the overall feeling you get while in the world of Genshin that this is a living space with characters you can spend time with, learn from, build relationships with. These aren’t simply cardboard cut-outs here to dispense sob stories and adventure hooks, they’re part of the same cities and stories and universe as you, they have agency and dreams, they have more to show you if you just take the time to pay attention.

That’s what sets it apart, really, that respect for the passage of time and how it interacts with a gaming experience. An open world game in particular is designed to be a leisurely experience full of discovery and immersion, but many games in the genre treat the concept as more of an excuse to checklist a bunch of cool experiences that have very little to do with one another. Genshin is a set of strings on a board, all connected to one another, and when you pull on one of the strings it shakes everything else just a little bit. The end result is a very satisfying experience, because it rewards players who invest in the world with more of the world they already love. Quests get easier because you understand the environment, stories become more engaging because you’re motivated to be engaged, not just for this piece of narrative but for all those in the future. Genshin Impact is a true open world, rather than a sandbox. And Wagner is going to keep being rude to me for a long time yet; that’s honestly so like him.

Andy Astruc
In Analysis

Even in a dream: Bloodborne, hope, and keeping horror cosmic

Plant eyes on our brains, to cleanse our beastly idiocy. This article contains mild spoilers for Bloodborne. Click here to be taken back home.

Bloodborne opens in a dark room, with the player lying on a doctor’s examination table. A silhouetted figure in the darkness speaks of blood and mysteries to be solved, and a contract to be signed. Even when he rolls into the light, his face is obscured by hair and bandages. The player passes out, and wakes to a nightmarish world plagued by dessicated werewolves and tiny, pale messengers with sideways mouths. But we never see the world outside this bad dream, so maybe it was always like that.

Cosmic horror is difficult in any medium. By definition, the genre is concerned with the unknown and unknowable, the idea that the reality we take for granted is a tiny box that exists in a grander, more terrifying universe. Lovecraftian stories invite us to think about what makes us most uncomfortable, and discover everything is many, many times worse than we could have ever imagined. Good cosmic horror is characterised by a certain sense of hopelessness in the face of unrelenting and incomprehensible forces that exist at a scope which makes humans less important than the dust in their lungs. But it also walks a knife edge, presenting stories in which characters are always seeking that unattainable knowledge, looking for answers, believing that a mystery can be solved and everything can finally be okay. Comic horror is about struggling, even when the robots say resistance is futile, even when the cultists finish their chant and the sky opens, even as they lock the door to your padded cell.

No game understands this contradictory interplay between the known and the unknown better than Bloodborne. What begins as a gothic adventure as obsessed with blood as Castlevania and as keen on hats as Abraham Van Helsing slowly and expertly peels back its own skin to reveal darker and darker truths underneath. Bloodborne drags players down so gradually and with such sweetness that you are likely to have a moment, far too late, that leads you to wonder how things got quite so bad on your watch. What Bloodborne sees, more than any other game in the genre, is the need for hope.

Players, like the protagonists of a cosmic horror story, need to believe there is a reason to keep struggling. They need to see a way forward, even if the path is made of eyes and the moon that lights their way turns a sickly orange red. Which is why every tiny mechanical choice in Bloodborne works in service to that goal, as the world itself sprouts segmented legs and the flesh falls from its cursed bones.

In the opening alone, you can see the perfect setup: a mysterious figure sets up the existence of a mystery, sending you in the direction of further knowledge, and character creation is tied to the signing of a contract, which unambiguously positions the player as making a choice to experience whatever comes next. You are very explicitly asked to shape your whole experience around this conscious desire to unravel the mysteries of Yharnam. This is key to the cosmic horror experience, characters frequently reach a point where they could easily back away from the shadows ahead, but instead they move forward. It’s akin to the broader horror trope of the teenager entering the clearly-dangerous haunted mansion, except the cosmic horror protagonist enters mind open, seeking. After a scene involving monsters big and small, the game gives players control and situates them inside a familiar setting: a medical clinic.

Familiar, yet different, of course. Everything in the early parts of the game is a creepier, more unsettling version of something at least passably recognisable. The townsfolk are townsfolk, although they seem far too tall and far too violent; the buildings are impossibly tall as well—and arranged as if they grew organically from a central point—but they recall memories of real-world gothic architecture; werewolves feature prominently among the city’s threats, but their fantasy origins are well-entrenched in the public psyche, meaning they are, for a scary story, a kind of expected occurrence. Because of this groundwork, placing the familiar among the unsettling, when recognisable aspects fall away it feels all the more horrible. When the werewolves slowly become discoloured and eventually mutate into twisted wolf marionettes, burdened with extra human arms and legs where none should be, we remember what they used to be, and the dread of realising how far from reality we’ve drifted is brought home.

But you have to get there, first; keep your spirits up long enough to get to the cold, unfeeling end of the world. One big way Bloodborne does this is with From Software’s skillful use of shortcuts. Exploring the world can be a confusing and daunting experience, since the geography of Bloodborne’s universe is only euclidean because the PS4 demands it. When players head down a stray alley, or jump from a hidden ledge, only to catch an elevator back to an earlier location, the euphoria is a direct response to the dark and pointless world surrounding them. You’re not just excited because you unlocked a shortcut, you gouged the smallest, brightest nugget of hope out of the impassive wall of nightmares blocking your path.

Finding a shortcut in Bloodborne is a sign that progress can be made, even against the worst horrors. The game, despite its difficulty, wants to be explored, picked apart; it wants to be known. So it encourages discovery, and the foolish cosmic horror protagonist, buoyed by their meagre success, slips a little further towards madness.

The game brings otherwise mundane mechanical aspects of the experience and ties them to the specific needs of the genre. Healing is accomplished by consuming blood vials, used in what Yharnam refers to as “blood ministration,” meaning that with each use the player is being drawn in and becoming a part of the town. Using the Madman’s Knowledge item, encountering bosses, or witnessing other important game events gifts the player with insight, a consumable resource that can be used not only to help with certain character stats, but also to warp the world. Previously invisible creatures appear in all their mind-burning glory, inanimate things come to life, new enemies begin to crawl in. Active participation in the world of Bloodborne is mandatory for all of this, and the many positive and negative results of this provides another intoxicating push.

Many of these mechanics have familiar counterparts in the other Soulsborne games. But where a game like Dark Souls provides them as tools to survive in a harsh fantasy world filled with dark creatures, Bloodborne makes it very clear that every action you take as a player is weakening your tether with reality. Knowledge is dangerous, fear is justified, and ignoring those ideas is a choice you are making. Even From Software’s penchant for leaving world-building to be discovered rather than gifted to the player is a service to the cosmic dread. Learning about how the mechanics and items work, examining the bosses and enemies, is necessary to play the game, but is also inviting further decay into the mind.

Cosmic horror is often shorthanded to large space monsters with face tentacles and madmen screaming in spooky asylums. But the core of the genre is far from the vast, unknowable intelligences that oversee reality; at a human, knowable level, it’s about the feeling that something isn’t right. Cosmic stories are the shadow that looks like a man standing in the corner of your bedroom until the light reveals it was only a coat, except the light never turns on. They’re the niggling feeling that you could know more about the world, and the knowledge that you shouldn’t. Where other games unceremoniously slot in Cthulhu-adjacent monsters and sanity effects, Bloodborne is content to be the slowly spreading smile on the lips of a helpful doctor. It sits, confident in the horror that exists below the surface and perfectly fine with the idea that you might never get far enough to see it. The fingers were always there, softly stroking your forehead.

Perhaps there’s a little Lovecraftian DNA in every From Software game. Each of them asks players to trust the game to lead them to something interesting, slowly absorbs them into the world, teaches them secrets that are incomprehensible to an outsider, and leaves them not viewing anything in quite the same way afterwards. A hunter is a hunter, even in a dream. And there’s no way back.

Andy Astruc
In Analysis

The Outer Worlds’ hollow star and why the player’s role matters

French? I can't f***ing read French. This article contains mild spoilers for The Outer Worlds and Prey. Click here to leave the colony.

In the film Groundhog Day, weatherman Phil Connors is stuck in a time loop, living out the same day over and over again. Maybe forever. And he’s super bummed about it at first, until someone points out that a person in his position could literally do whatever they want. Lie. Cheat. Steal. Learn to play the piano. Eat forty cakes and wash it down with ten bottles of whisky. Armed with this knowledge, Phil goes on a hedonistic rampage, living out the dream of a life with no consequences. After an unspecified period of time, however, the novelty wears off; being an unkillable god-like being untethered from the petty concerns of biology and polite society means no relationships, no lasting developments, no impact on the world at large. Phil, unable to move forward, becomes suicidal, depressed and nihilistic. Nothing matters.

Video games always cast us as Phil Connors, in some way. No matter the game, every time we boot up an interactive experience we consent to being placed inside one time loop or another, slowly finding our way towards whatever point this particular universe wants to show us. That means the way the main character is positioned in the story is pretty important, and how they interact with the game world is very different to other mediums.

This is all my very roundabout way of trying to figure out a puzzling question: why don’t I enjoy playing The Outer Worlds? Obsidian’s newest RPG is a fine example of the genre, a worthy follow-up to their other work, and a valid, unsanctioned response to an unspoken request for a Fallout game that isn’t full of bugs. The combat is fun, with time-dilation powers, laser-powered swords and guns that make all the correct boom noises. It has a wonderfully endearing cast of support characters and an interesting, topical story about the dangers of corporations holding power. The artwork is beautiful, casting off all notions of muted colour palettes in favour of the true psychedelia of alien worlds. The music, acting, mechanics, setting, enemy design all range from good to excellent. And yet, it’s a struggle to get from point A to point B; each moment spent with the game feels like an enjoyable slice of something but fails to compel me to move forward. A quirky space adventure with a dry sense of humour and the freedom to do mostly whatever I choose should be a slam dunk.

Part of the problem comes down to me. The ‘me’ inside the game, that is, not the real me. The version of me that I lovingly crafted in the prologue, the one making all those big decisions and riding in the spaceship. The most important person in the universe. At first, I named my hero Jervan Cudgel; the plan was to make him the sort of melee-focused pugilist I had so much fun roleplaying in Fallout: New Vegas many years ago. He would be honest (to his own detriment, if necessary) kind of dumb, and look like the bronzed, curly-haired star of a 1970s pulp sci-fi film. This was the plan, anyway.

None of that matters. The Outer Worlds opens with some remarkably efficient storytelling which lays out a few salient facts: there’s a colony called Halcyon where corporations run everything, it sucks, a ship full of colonists got lost, and a wanted terrorist is going to break one of them out to help him with his plan to overthrow the status quo. Like much of the game, this is actually pretty interesting and engaging, but it also puts the main character in a very distant position from the outset. You, the player, are one of said lost colonists. Because you’ve been in cryogenic stasis for a few decades, you have no idea how anything works on Halcyon, you don’t know anyone, you have no contacts and you can barely conceptualise the societal norms that perpetuate this twisted version of our own civilisation. Unfortunately, the overall effect of this framing device is a trending towards apathy. Since none of these people are important to me, and I don’t even live here, there’s no reason for me to engage with their plight on a personal level. There’s a beautiful synergy that happens in games at times, where the player and their avatar have motivations, goals or emotions that sync perfectly with each other. The result of this is usually a more cohesive and natural-feeling game experience, since you can more easily empathise. Unfortunately, The Outer Worlds hops onto this train too early, giving us a character that syncs with the player’s state of mind, rather than convincing the audience to synergise with the hero. You currently don’t care about Halcyon colony and you have no idea what’s going on? Good news, here’s some dope who also thinks like that.

When you experience the world a little further, you may find yourself actually caring about what happens there; it is, after all, a well-realised science fiction world, full of likeable characters. But once you do, your avatar is still that dope, with no connection to the world beyond the dialogue trees available, no context for his or her actions, and no reason to pick one decision over another. As I decide to shut down the Saltuna factory on Terra 2, saving the deserters and dooming the loyal factory workers, it’s me making the decision I would make as myself; Jervan Cudgel might as well not exist, he has no opinion on the subject.

The main character in Prey (the one from Arkane Studios) enters the world in a similar, baby-like state, unmolested by the complexities of the universe and carrying a big box of Convenient Amnesia. But the very different methods of building the protagonist and the role they need to play in their world make for an interesting contrast. Morgan Yu wakes up to a laboratory in turmoil, with the bodies of people they don’t know strewn all over and an infestation of aliens they don’t understand. Much like The Outer Worlds, Prey provides its hero with access to various computer terminals, many of which contain bits of world-building or character flavour. However, many of these pieces of correspondence refer to Morgan by name, or are actually addressed to them. Those that aren’t can usually be traced to someone on the station who this email version of Morgan Yu interacted with, allowing you to trace their significance back through the chain and connect some dots about who they were to you. Recordings and AI companions speak directly to you, as Morgan, and tell you in no uncertain terms why player and avatar alike should give a lot of damns about everything happening. Family members, angry work colleagues and possible lovers drop in either live or posthumously to offer their opinions and emotions to the main character, cementing the idea that you are very real and vital to whatever happens next.

You could argue, of course, that there are successful stories which lean into the idea of a featureless protagonist shaped only by the player’s own choices. All the recent Fallout games do this, birthing you from the door of one vault or another into a wasteland you never knew, or simply giving you a job to do. But Fallout 3 motivates you with the mystery of a missing father, New Vegas has someone try to murder you and bury you in the desert, and someone in Fallout 4 steals your actual baby. Regardless of how well each of these was handled, they all stick some simple, primal idea in the player’s head that they can agree with the protagonist on. Revenge, mystery, loss. The Outer Worlds has some very grand ideas about the corrupting influence of money and the value of repairing a broken society, but it makes no attempt to earn the hero’s attention on those fronts. If you want me to engage with your universe, I need to be in the shoes of someone worth guiding to that goal, and I have to understand how they work.

The way various mechanics function in the game do it no favours in regard to building a main character with some meat. Everything in Halcyon bends just a little too easily to the will of the player; from persuasion checks to combat encounters, there’s an overall sense that The Outer Worlds really wants you to succeed. It is almost cartoonishly easy to lie and steal your way through the game. The overall effect of this freedom is to make the player feel as though they’re in a sort of inflatable playground where nobody can get hurt and everything will be the safest kind of fun. You can die, like in most games, but you’re psychologically prepared for the inevitable truth: the hero is important and powerful, and they’ll be fine. Plus, they don’t matter, so it’s okay if they do happen to die.

By presenting players with a protagonist without context, The Outer Worlds inadvertently creates a stunted version of Groundhog Day’s Phil. Without the motivation to improve themselves, they never have any desire to move out of the consequence-free simulation full of cake and shrink rays. Lacking the self-awareness that eventually crushes Phil Connors, they are unable to see the value of limitations and complicated relationships. They stay in the loop forever, completing meaningless, hedonistic tasks. Nothing ever matters.

So, is this why I can’t see myself playing The Outer Worlds to completion? Is the lack of a compelling main character enough to soil a game that is otherwise very accomplished? Maybe. Games are defined by their interactivity, and that interaction is primarily delivered through the player character’s perspective. Even if a story isn’t literally told by the protagonist, we’re invited to frame everything as part of their personal journey. So that journey has to matter, it has to be meaningful even while it allows for the spectrum of player choice. Much like picking a narrator for a novel, choosing a game protagonist has the potential to drastically alter the reading of the story developers want to tell. Dragon Age II is the strange, personal RPG it is because it’s about Hawke; Alien: Isolation feels so immediately connected to the Alien mythos because Amanda Ripley is the daughter of Ellen; Oddworld feels desperate and oppressive because we’re cast as a slave who could be turned into a popsicle at any moment.

Oddly enough, the one time I felt really in-sync with The Outer Worlds was in a third attempted playthrough as an unrepentantly duplicitous bastard, lying my way from conversation to conversation without a single care for the consequences. Finally, the Stranger and I were on the same page. Nothing mattered.

Close Menu