How Level Design Can Tell a Story

Summary

This video script from Game Maker's Toolkit explores the power of environmental storytelling in video games. It discusses how games like Bioshock use their settings to convey narrative, invoking player emotions and shaping their identity without relying on traditional cutscenes. The script delves into three levels of environmental storytelling: world building, level design, and micro-narrative details. It also touches on how game designers use environmental cues to evoke specific feelings and align with game mechanics, ultimately showcasing how immersive game worlds can tell compelling stories.

Takeaways

• 🎮 Bioshock is used as an example to illustrate how a game's environment can effectively convey a narrative without relying on traditional storytelling methods like cutscenes or dialogue.
• 🌆 The game world's setting, such as a city at the bottom of the ocean with high society elements, can provide players with a strong sense of the game's themes and backstory.
• 📜 Environmental storytelling involves using set dressing and small details within the game world to create self-contained narratives that players can piece together.
• 🔍 Players are encouraged to use deductive reasoning to connect details and become active participants in the storytelling process, rather than passive observers.
• 🏙️ Level design, including architecture and layout, can communicate information about the inhabitants of a game world and provide narrative clues.
• 🎨 Game environments can evoke emotions in players through the use of scale, shape, and color, enhancing the emotional impact of the narrative.
• 🚶‍♂️ The design of a game world can influence player identity by providing cues about the character they are playing and the actions that are expected or permitted.
• 🛠️ Environmental storytelling is not just for narrative purposes; it can also serve gameplay functions, such as hinting at puzzle solutions or indicating dangers.
• 🎬 The video discusses the use of emotion and intensity charts by game designers to plan and evoke specific feelings in players throughout a game level.
• 🌈 The game Journey is highlighted as an example where the environment and color palette are used to express different sensations and emotions without the need for words.

Q & A

How does the game Bioshock use its environment for storytelling without traditional narrative methods?

Bioshock conveys its story through the game's setting, which is a massive underwater city with elements of high society, ruin, and despair. The game's environment suggests a downfall on New Year's Day, 1959, and allows players to deduce the narrative through observation and exploration.

What is 'environmental storytelling' and how does it engage players?

Environmental storytelling is the use of set dressing to create small, optional, and self-contained narratives within a game's environment. It engages players by requiring them to use deductive reasoning to connect details and create an overall story, making them active participants in the storytelling process.

How does environmental storytelling differ from traditional narrative methods?

Environmental storytelling allows players to discover the narrative through exploration of the game world, rather than being passive recipients of cutscenes or dialogue. It often involves static objects, overheard conversations, animations, and text, and can highlight the impact of the player's actions on the environment.

What is the role of level design in conveying narrative elements in a game?

Level design plays a crucial role in storytelling by using architectural elements, layout, materials, and scale to provide insights into the people who inhabit the game spaces. It can also give gameplay hints and reflect the themes of the game's narrative.

Can you provide an example of how a game uses level design to reflect social hierarchy?

In Dishonored 2's Dust District, level designers use verticality to show the working class being literally beneath the powerful, indicating a social hierarchy through the game's spatial design.

How do game designers use environmental details to evoke emotions in players?

Designers use scale, shape, color, and other environmental details to create specific emotional responses. For example, narrow spaces and low ceilings can create a sense of压迫, while open vistas can evoke feelings of triumph or relief.

What is the significance of the three-act structure in game level design?

The three-act structure in game level design helps to create a narrative arc with a clear beginning, middle, and end. It includes rising action, a low moment of despair, and a final climb to victory, which can be mirrored in the game's environment and mechanics.

How does the game Journey use its environment to tell a story without words?

Journey uses environmental changes such as climbing and falling, as well as color shifts, to evoke feelings of strength, progression, loss, and hopelessness without the need for dialogue or text.

How do game environments influence a player's identity and actions within the game?

Game environments provide context that helps players understand the character they are inhabiting and the actions that are expected, permitted, or punished. The design of the environment can make certain actions feel more or less appropriate based on the setting and social rules implied by the game world.

What is the importance of ensuring that environmental storytelling is accessible to a general audience?

Ensuring environmental storytelling is accessible to a general audience is important for maintaining a wide player base and avoiding alienating players with content that may be too mature or sensitive for some audiences.

Outlines

00:00

🌊 Bioshock's Environmental Storytelling

This paragraph discusses the effectiveness of environmental storytelling in video games, using Bioshock as a prime example. It suggests that even without traditional narrative tools like cutscenes, players can understand the game's story through the game's setting and design. The paragraph highlights how the game's environment, including its architecture and the state of ruin, conveys the narrative of a once-luxurious underwater city that has fallen into despair. The concept of environmental storytelling is introduced as a method of using the game world's details to create small, self-contained stories that players can piece together, making them active participants in the storytelling process.

05:04

🏙️ Level Design and Narrative

The second paragraph delves into how level design can contribute to storytelling by examining the architecture, layout, and materials of in-game locations. It contrasts the lavishness of Talos I in Prey with the utilitarian design of Sevastopol in Alien Isolation, illustrating how these design choices can provide narrative cues. The paragraph also touches on how level design can guide player behavior and provide gameplay hints, such as the placement of valuables in Lord Bafford’s Mansion in Thief. It discusses the challenges of creating credible spaces that can logically support the game's world and its inhabitants, emphasizing the importance of consistency across different levels to maintain a cohesive narrative.

10:06

🎨 Emotion and Identity Through Environment

The third paragraph explores how game environments can evoke emotions and influence player identity. It discusses the use of scale, shape, and color to create feelings of triumph, fear, or constraint, using examples from Uncharted 4 and God of War. The paragraph also explains how environmental design can reflect a character's emotional journey, as seen in the Tomb Raider reboot. It mentions the use of Emotion Charts and Intensity Charts by game designers to plan and evoke specific emotions through level design. The paragraph concludes by discussing how environments can provide context for player actions and expectations, affecting how players perceive their in-game identity.

15:08

🔍 The Impact of Environment on Player Actions

The final paragraph focuses on how the environment can shape player behavior and actions within a game. It contrasts the player's comfort with violence and theft in the decayed setting of Bioshock's Rapture versus the more intact society of Bioshock Infinite's Columbia. The paragraph also discusses how Hitman uses public and private spaces to subtly guide player behavior and understanding of social rules within the game world. It emphasizes the power of video game environments to tell stories, evoke emotions, and provide context for player identity, concluding with an invitation for viewers to share their favorite examples of environmental storytelling in games.

Keywords

💡Environmental Storytelling

Environmental storytelling refers to the use of a game's setting and design to convey narrative elements without direct exposition. It's a method where the environment itself 'tells a story' through its details, such as the arrangement of objects, the state of decay, or the remnants of past events. In the video, the script explains how even without cutscenes, players can understand the game's narrative by observing the surroundings, like the city in Bioshock, which is a place of ruin and despair despite its high societal aspirations.

💡Level Design

Level design in video games involves creating the spaces and environments that players interact with. It encompasses the layout, architecture, and aesthetic choices that not only serve gameplay purposes but also contribute to the game's narrative and atmosphere. The script mentions how level design can drive understanding, feeling, and identity by using elements like verticality in Dishonored 2's Dust District to show social hierarchy.

💡World Building

World building is the process of constructing an immersive and coherent game world, complete with its own history, cultures, and rules. It's the high-level structure that sets the stage for the narrative and provides context for the player's experience. The video discusses how world building, when done well, can echo themes and ideas throughout different levels of the game's structure, from the overall setting down to individual narrative moments.

💡Emotion Charts

Emotion Charts are tools used by game designers to map out the emotional journey they want the player to experience throughout a level or game. They plan which emotions should be evoked at different stages and use environmental design to achieve these emotional responses. The video gives an example of how BioWare used Emotion Charts for a level in Mass Effect 3, planning environments to evoke hope, chaos, and awe.

💡Intensity Charts

Intensity Charts are similar to Emotion Charts but focus on the pacing and intensity of the gameplay experience. Designers use these charts to plan for moments of high and low intensity, such as combat sequences or quiet narrative beats. The video explains how BioWare adjusted the intensity of a level by removing enemies from the catacombs to align with the intended feeling of mystery rather than fear.

💡Thematic Consistency

Thematic consistency refers to the alignment of a game's narrative, mechanics, and environmental design to support a unified theme or message. The video emphasizes the importance of all levels of a game's structure—world building, level design, and environmental storytelling—working together to reinforce the same thematic goals, as seen in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided where oppression is a recurring theme at different scales.

💡Evocative Design

Evocative design in game environments uses elements like scale, shape, and color to elicit specific emotions from the player. It's a way of communicating feelings and atmosphere beyond narrative descriptions. The video cites examples from Uncharted 4 and God of War where environmental changes like constricting spaces or color shifts are used to reflect the characters' emotional states.

💡Player Identity

Player identity in video games relates to how the environment and game mechanics contribute to the player's understanding of the character they are controlling and the actions that are expected or permitted. The video contrasts the player's comfort with violence and theft in the decayed environment of Rapture versus the more intact society of Columbia in Bioshock Infinite.

💡Social Rules in Design

Social rules in design refer to the implicit and explicit guidelines that govern player behavior within different types of spaces in a game. The video discusses how Hitman developers use public and private spaces with varying degrees of social strictness to subtly guide the player and explain how the game world reacts to their presence.

💡Game Mechanics

Game mechanics are the systems and rules that govern how a game functions and how players can interact with it. While not explicitly detailed in the script, game mechanics are foundational to player identity and are mentioned in the context of how they work in conjunction with environmental design to set expectations for player behavior.

Highlights

Bioshock's environment can effectively tell the game's story without traditional cutscenes.

Environmental storytelling uses set dressing to create self-contained vignettes.

The term 'environmental storytelling' was coined by former Disneyland designer Don Carson.

Environmental storytelling requires deductive reasoning to connect details and create an overall story.

Environmental storytelling can include static objects, conversations, animations, and text.

Level design can drive understanding, feeling, and identity through architecture, layout, materials, and scale.

Dishonored 2 uses verticality in level design to represent social hierarchy.

Environmental storytelling can also highlight how player actions impact the game world.

Environmental details can provide gameplay hints, such as using a Gravity Gun with saw blades.

World building involves setting factions, plot points, and main players in the game's history.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided uses level design to reflect themes of oppression and racism.

Game designers can evoke emotions through scale, shape, and color in the game environment.

Uncharted 4 uses environmental design to create feelings of pressure and openness.

God of War manipulates the environment to create tension and a sense of danger.

Portal uses environmental changes to emphasize the game's story shift from testing to escape.

Tomb Raider reboot uses color and environment to reflect Lara's journey from despair to hope.

BioWare uses Emotion Charts and Intensity Charts to design levels that evoke specific feelings.

Environmental choices must align with game mechanics to effectively convey intended feelings.

Journey uses the game's environment to evoke feelings of strength, loss, and rebirth.

Video game environments can influence player identity and expectations of character actions.

Hitman developers use public and private spaces to subtly explain how the world reacts to the player's presence.

Transcripts

Imagine a version of Bioshock without cutscenes.

Without Andrew Ryan’s bathysphere Powerpoint.

Without Atlas yapping in your ear.

And without those juicy audio diaries.

Do you think players would still understand what the game was all about?

Well, I think they’d actually have a pretty good idea.

Because all you have to do is look at your surroundings.

The game is set in a massive city at the very bottom of the ocean.

One clearly made for those in high society, considering the fancy bars, apartment complexes,

and theatre districts.

And it’s a place built on lofty philosophical ideals.

But it’s also a place of ruin and despair.

There was obviously a moment of downfall.

Some people split into violent factions, and others just lost their minds.

And this all went down on New Year’s Day, 1959.

Bioshock is a wonderful example of how a game’s environment can be an effective method of

storytelling.

And how embedding narrative elements into the very spaces and places that we visit throughout

the game, can speak just as loudly as more traditional forms of storytelling.

And that is exactly what this episode of Game Maker’s Toolkit is all about.

In this video I’m going to focus on three ways that the environment can be used for

storytelling - and talk about how level design can drive our understanding, feeling, and identity.

Starting, with understanding.

So the signs, stiffs, and scribbles in Bioshock are examples of “environmental storytelling”

- the use of set dressing to create small, optional, and self-contained vignettes.

Like warnings written in blood, or the many, many skeletons in the Fallout games, who have

been deliberately posed by the game’s designers to suggest humorous or melancholy ways that

people have died.

The term was first coined, as far as I can tell, by former Disneyland designer Don Carson,

who wrote an influential article in 2000 about what game developers can learn from theme parks.

The term was then made even more popular in a GDC talk by Harvey Smith and Matthias Worch,

where they described the technique as “staging player-space with environmental properties

that can be interpreted as a meaningful whole, furthering the narrative of the game”.

The cool thing about environmental storytelling is that it requires a certain level of deductive

reasoning, as we connect up details to create an overall story.

We use investigative and archaeological skills to determine relationships, cause and effect,

and history.

This makes us an active participant in the storytelling process, and not just a passive viewer.

Plus, if you just want to focus on the shooty stuff, you can do that

without the story getting in your way.

For the most part, environmental storytelling is about static objects - but it can also

stretch to things like overheard conversations, animations happening in the level, and of

course… text, in things like books, item descriptions, scans, notes, and emails.

And while it is generally used to describe what happened before you even got to a space,

it can also be used as a way of highlighting how your actions have impacted the environment

in the time since you visited.

So if you kill a shop keeper in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, later in the game the shop will be

a police crime scene, and then permanently closed to the public.

It’s also worth noting that environmental storytelling isn’t just for narrative, but

can have gameplay uses too.

A saw blade stuck in a sliced-up zombie suggests using these saws with your Gravity Gun to

defeat enemies.

An enemy fried on a fence warns us about the dangers of touching it.

Maps and signage can help us navigate complex spaces.

And props can suggest puzzle hints in a non-intrusive way.

But here’s the thing.

“Environmental storytelling” - if we’re using the term specifically to mean those

micro-narrative vignettes - is just one part of a larger structure of using the environment

to suggest narrative.

It’s the high level stuff.

Below that, then, is the individual places in a game.

You know, a farmer’s market, a bar, a medical pavilion, and a theatre district.

And beyond that, the individual rooms in those zones.

That’s the medium level, which might be most accurately called, well, level design.

And this can also be used for narrative because things like architecture, layout, materials,

and scale can tell us a lot about the people who use those spaces.

For example, in Dishonored 2’s Dust District, the level designers at Arkane use verticality

to show how the working class are literally underneath the people in power.

And the sheer opulence of Talos I in Prey tells a very different story about its use,

compared to the more utilitarian Sevastopol in Alien Isolation.

And this also provides gameplay hints, too: like in Lord Bafford’s Mansion in Thief,

where all the gold is naturally found in the lord's chambers - but there’s little of

value in the servant’s quarters.

By making the place a believable location, the player can use real-world knowledge to

help orient themselves in the space.

Of course, one big challenge of making spaces where people can actually live or work, is

crafting locations that can actually logically exist with all the bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens,

and so on to support hundreds of people.

I asked the IO Interactive designers about this when I did my Hitman 2 video and

they said they focus on levels that are “credible”, which means the level meets your basic expectations

for how a space works - but it doesn’t have to make perfect sense.

To finish off our pyramid, we need the low level - which is the overall setting of the world.

This is world building, and is where the developers and narrative designers set things like the

factions, the major plot points for the world’s history, and the main players in the story.

All three parts of this structure should work in concert, and - ideally - ideas should echo

up and down the stack.

Here’s an example of that working in practice.

In Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the low level setting is a futuristic Prague where augmented

humans face oppression from those without modifications.

This is represented in the mid level by places like train stations with different cars for

naturals and augs, and a slum-like city where augs are kept in dire conditions.

And then the smaller narrative moments on the high level also talk about oppression and

racism, though anti-aug graffiti, and emails about being kicked out of the capital.

Every level is talking about the same theme - from a grand, systemic level on the high level, to

to more intimate and specific stories on the low level.

Of course, easter eggs and moments of humour are fine too - but storytelling like this

is at its best when all aspects are marching towards the same thematic goal.

This can be quite challenging in practice because, on many large games, each level is

looked after by a completely different person.

So it’s vitally important for teams to come together to make sure the vision is being

shared across the game as a whole.

So designers can use world building, level design, and environmental storytelling to

convey literal and specific information about the world and its inhabitants.

But, the design of a world can also be used in a more evocative and emotional sense.

Game designers can use things like scale, shape, and colour to evoke certain feelings

in the player.

Here’s Naughty Dog level designer Emilia Schatz talking about how she did this in Uncharted 4

EMILIA: “If i want to have the player feel triumphant at the end and scared towards the

beginning, I might make the environment create a lot of pressure on the player.

I might make the ceiling very low, might make the walls come in, so you feel tight and constrained.

And eventually as we get to the end of the level, bring you out way into the open and

give you this giant vista”.

The shape of the cave doesn’t give us any further understanding of the backstory in Uncharted.

It’s just a cave, after all.

Instead, it creates emotion - which helps the player better understand how the character

is feeling.

Here’s a good example of just that in the most recent God of War.

The story beat is that Kratos starts to panic because Atreus has run off and may be in danger.

Here’s how the designers manipulate the environment to ensure that you, as the player,

also feel this sense of tension.

So, the space constricts to narrow pathways.

There are dead ends, forcing you to turn around and backtrack.

Your visibility is reduced thanks to a thick grey fog.

And the final squeeze between rocks completely slows Kratos down.

It’s only when you get through that the world opens up, the fog lifts, and colour

returns, letting you know that Atreus is safe and that this mysterious person is probably

not there to hurt you or your boy.

Or take the original Portal.

The first half of the game takes place in a test lab, and the second half has you escaping

from an evil AI and darting through a maintenance area.

This dramatic shift in the game’s story is emphasised through

all sorts of environmental choices.

The lab is white, sterile, and lacking in detail.

The maintenance area is bathed in warmer orange tones, and looks lived in and used.

In a talk in 2017, former Crystal Dynamics art designer Brian Horton talks about this

part in the Tomb Raider reboot.

At the start, Lara is low down, with the environment bearing down from above her.

Everything is plunged in an ominous dark green colour.

As you become level with the environment, the colours begin to lighten up.

And then as you climb, you’re actually high above the level, and Lara is bathed in a warm,

orange sunlight.

Her journey of survival - from a point of despair to a point of hope - is emphasised

through the level design.

As a practical method of achieving this, I want to point to a GDC talk by former BioWare

level designer Dave Feltham who talks about two tools they used when making the levels

for Mass Effect 3: Emotion Charts and Intensity Charts.

So the level in question is set on the planet Tuchanka, and involves providing a cure for

the Genophage - a biological weapon deployed against the Krogan.

The level sees you landing at the hollows, driving towards the shroud tower, having your

convoy get blown up, sneak through some catacombs, pop up in the city, take down your first reaper,

and - well - I won’t spoil the mission anymore than that.

So the designers broke the level down into a bunch of sections.

They then decided what theme needed to be represented in each part.

And then decided what emotion the player should feel at that time.

Finally, they used environment design to evoke those emotions.

For example, in the pre-crash you should feel a sense of hope and confidence about defeating

the reaper.

So there’s a huge convoy of vehicles at your back to make you feel strong, and the

Krogan are happily lazing about to suggest nonchalance.

After the crash, you should feel a sense of chaos.

So there’s flames, explosions, and your convoy is destroyed.

In the catacombs, you should feel a sense of mystery - which is driven by the statues

and murals of ancient Krogan life, And then the triumphant reveal of the city is supposed

to make you feel awe at what the Krogan empire grew to become before the Genophage.

And make you feel guilty if you were planning to betray them.

The contrast from the dark catacombs to the open city emphasises the reveal.

Finding the right environmental tricks to convey the necessary emotion can be tough,

but here’s how a few other games have done it.

Half Life 2 creates a feeling of oppression through claustrophobic corridors, tall buildings,

cages, and security cameras.

PT creates fear by asking you to repeatedly turn the same corner, but you’re never sure

what will be on the other side.

It’s important to note that these environmental choices have to gel with the game’s mechanics,

though.

For example, in a horror game, darkness is obviously intended to evoke feelings of fear.

But in a stealth game, darkness might actually provide feelings of power and safety.

After picking the environmental details, BioWare uses intensity charts.

Basically, the designers have a desired intensity level - hoping for low moments for story beats,

and high moments for combat.

But this has to be checked against play-testers who describe how intense each area feels.

If the chart is off, changes must be made.

For example, the catacombs initially had enemies - but fighting monsters by torchlight was

found to be extremely intense, and pulled away from the intended feeling, so the monsters

were scrapped to bring the level in line.

Also, a cutscene of friendly bombers was added on the road towards the reaper, just to give

the player slightly more hope that they might win.

The ultimate goal for BioWare was to create a mission that matches a sort of typical three

act structure.

With rising action, a low moment of despair, and a final climb to victory.

This three act structure is used wonderfully by 2D platformer Celeste, where the actual

topology of your climb mirrors that graph.

Level after level you climb higher up the mountain, hitting small set-backs and climb-downs

but ultimately heading forever upwards.

That is until the stage Reflections which sends you plummeting back down to the base.

The story’s lowest point is also the environment’s lowest point.

If there’s one game that truly uses the environment to tell a story, though, it’s Journey.

It uses moments when you’re climbing to evoke feelings of strength and progression,

and moments where you’re plummeting down to create a sense of loss and hopelessness.

And notice how the team at thatgamecompany uses colour to express different sensations

- orange for the calm mystery of the desert, dark green for the spooky underground graveyard,

white for the biting cold, and bright blue for the moment of rebirth.

This game doesn’t need any words to tell you what to feel, because the environment

says it all.

The final thing I want to touch on, is the way environments influence our identity.

Video games typically put us into the shoes of a character, and ask us to perform as they would.

As players, we’re constantly looking for clues as to what sort of person we are inhabiting,

and what sort of actions will be expected, permitted, and punished.

Of course, the heavy lifting is done by the available mechanics, the way systems react

to our choices, and our preconceived notions from the marketing and genre norms.

But the environment can also play a large part in this.

For example, in the original Bioshock I found it easy to murder people and steal from cash

registers and safes.

Whereas in Bioshock Infinite, i found these actions a lot less comfortable.

A large part of this comes from the fact that Bioshock’s Rapture is in ruins, and the

only people around are insane, bloodthirsty splicers.

Bashing their skulls in and looting everything I can fit in my pockets just makes sense.

Infinite’s Columbia, on the other hand, is still a semi-functioning society when you

get there, with working shops and innocent citizens.

So violence and robbery just makes less sense in that environment.

Back down on Earth, the Hitman developers use this technique to subtly explain

how the world will react to your presence.

It’s often pretty obvious which areas you can casually stroll into, because of our understanding

of real-world social behaviours and rules.

This comes from a GDC talk by IO developer Mette Andersen who says “when

we design these spaces, we’re designing rules of behaviour and we’re designing something

that’s going to tap into your knowledge of ‘how should I be in this space?’”.

Mette splits the world into public spaces, which are available from the get go and explorable

in any costume.

And private spaces, which require some ingenuity to enter, and a costume to stay hidden.

She then splits those further into sub categories, where social rules go from vague to strict.

The best levels in Hitman, says Mette, incorporate a rich mix of these area types.

So video game environments can be a staggeringly effective medium for storytelling.

Whether they’re telling stories about events that happened before your arrival, giving

clues about the people who live there, evoking emotions through architecture, or providing

context for player identity, these spaces can speak volumes.

Let me know your favourite examples of storytelling through the environment, in the comments down below.

Hi, thanks for watching.

As you might have noticed, this is a re-uploaded version of a previous video.

Unfortunately, that video was labelled as not age-appropriate, because of some of the

examples I gave - and so the video had a big scary warning before you could watch.

Ultimately, I want my channel to be accessible to as many people as possible, and so I’m

going to work hard in future to make sure my stuff is suitable for a general audience.

I’m still going to talk about shooting people, because, hey, my channel’s about video games.

But, still, I’ll take care not to slip into gratuitous depictions of violence and other icky stuff.

If the original video made you feel uncomfortable, then I do apologise.