Splash Damage was founded in 2001, and started out creating mods, non-commercially, for games like Quake III Arena, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and Counter-Strike. 'Brink' is set on and around the Ark, which is a floating ecosystem divided into two areas. The main island is populated by the rich citizens, and features futuristic looking buildings. The outskirts of the island are the slums, populated by the poor and needy. After being sick and tired of living amongst the rubbish and scrap, the poor decided to fight for what was equally theres. The game features two factions, the Resistance (the poor), and the Security. The resistance started out peaceful, but due to the conditions they are living in, they turned violent. The Resistance armed and defended themselves, using tools from work, and found objects such as license plates, drills, and scrap metal. The Security perceive the Resistance as terrorists, in there main role to protect the Ark from poverty.
The art director wanted to give the characters an exaggerated look, which was realised by elongating the faces and height. originally they intended on having characters of different heights, however due to technical issues, this was unable to happen. Instead they went for three different body types; light, medium, and heavy. The game features several Archetypes, all distinct, exaggerated versions of people on the Ark. This was done to make them iconic and recognisable. A few of these archetypes are listed below;
The Bug - A character for the Security side. With this character the art director wanted to return to the Sci-Fi look. With different coloured masks available to choose from, this is quite an intimidating guy.
The Look - Another security character, featuring full tactical clothes, headgear based on the jumping spider, and is light and athletic.
The Wasted - One of the Resistance characters, representing the absolute
lowest level of poverty
As the character development team consisted of 4 members, they wanted to focus on quality rather than quantity. That being said, they still managed to bring us around 16 very different characters, which can be extensively customised; from body type, facial hair, and face paint, to clothing and tattoos.
The characters sculpted in ZBrush, and Maya, were created with bold forms, emphasis on larger folds; in the clothing, and were low poly to allow for the technical capabilities of the consoles and PC.
Some things I learned from the Splash Damage team, were to start simple and prototype, allowing constraints to be identified, along with close collaboration being essential, to make sure everyones on the same track. The designs also need to reflect the tech limitations of the project.
Another talk I found to be quite interesting, was from 'thechineseroom', which is an independent games studio based around the research and writing of Dan Pinchbeck, experimenting with first-person gaming.
"Story is a system for manipulating peoples behaviour"
Dan Pinchbeck
'thechineseroom' released the critically acclaimed 'Dear Esther', in 2008. Based around the Half Life engine, 'Dear Esther', features a man (the character you play) stranded on a scottish island. Throughout the game snippets of voice messages are exposed to you, in a random order, as you walk around the island. This creates a lot of confusion, as a lot of the voice messages contradict one another. I found this really encouraging, and enlightening, due to the usual nature of First Person games, contrasted with this very eerie Source mod, which contains no action, other than walking and listening. It was created to experiment what makes a game good, the level of fun, or the story? Or can the story alone be 'fun' enough.
(Image of the highly detailed, remote landscape,
of the scottish island, featured in 'Dear Esther')
In 2009, 'thechineseroom' released the cult horror 'Korsakovia', which is also available as a Source mod. This has been described as 'the Silent Hill sequel that never happened. in comparison to 'Dear Esther', the game does feature action, as your main character is followed by enemies made of smoke, similar to The Fog, featured in the hit series Lost. It sounds like quite a frightening, on edge, game.
(Image of the strangeness featured in the source mod 'Korsakovia')
