Defining atmosphere through BioShock

Games tell stories through dialogue, narration, and cutscenes, but it’s environmental storytelling, often referred to as atmosphere, that usually tells the most about a character or setting. One of the first things they teach in film study classes is the phrase, Mise en scène, translated from French meaning placing on stage. It means nothing in a scene is there by accident, everything is meticulously placed and serves a purpose.

Most games set up their environments effectively, but BioShock is one of the few games in recent years to do it eloquently, making the underwater city of Rapture feel not only natural, but real. From its art direction, taking on a retro 50s era aesthetic, to its inclusion of timely music from that era, BioShock created a unique place that, despite its dead and abandoned nature, felt alive and left its mark on players.

What makes up the atmosphere is a combination of art direction, sound design, and environmental details. The clip above encapsulates all these with the corpse of a Big Daddy sitting in the middle of the room, the wooden beam breaking from his dead weight, and the blood stains against the far wall, probably from the struggle between the Big Daddy and its attacker. But it’s the sound design that relies most heavily in this moment.

If you listen to the clip above and with your eyes closed, it’s amazing what you can interpret through just the audio. The voice of Dr. Tenenbaum realizing where her hatred is rooted from, the flooded area sways with the sound of water, the creaking of walls as water pressure pushes against them, the moan of the Big Daddy draws dread with each clamoring footstep, the mutterings of a splicer just outside the room looking for you. All of that is illustrated just with sound.

No matter how fantastic or unrealistic a premise might be, small details like stumbling uponwhat looks like a lived-in bedroom, rather than just a sterile room, helps create the sense of place. It’s one thing to find a crate lying around lifelessly that has no connection or context to it, it’s another to come across a half-played game of pool with bags of potato chips and bottles of liquor strewed about unfinished. It conjures narrative questions like, who was here, and what happened to them?

PAX East 2011: From Background To Center Stage: Building Game Worlds As Main Characters

Irrational Games is one of few developers that hold a distinct grip on creating unique and memorable game worlds. In System Shock 2, the game took place on a faster than light military spacecraft. In BioShock, the underwater city of Rapture captured the imagination and wonder of growth during the 1960s in a dystopian setting of degradation and madness. BioShock Infinite, their upcoming title, is set in the city of Colombia, a city built in the clouds set in 1912. While the game may not take place in the same setting or feature the same characters as BioShock, it features the same themes and ideas about a failed utopia.

2010 VGA Picks

The list of nominations for this year’s Spike Video Game Awards was released today. After going through the list, it really reminds me of how much of a great year in gaming its been. While there are some obscure nominations (Danica Patrick as Herself in Blur for "Best Performance by Human Female”), generally all the nominations I agree with. So while these might not become actually winners, they are who I would choose.

Not Everything Needs Multiplayer

Multiplayer is a strong feature on games and consoles since its first inception on the Sega Dreamcast back in 1999. As the console generations have matured and grown, multiplayer had a foothold on the generation as a way of bringing together gamers over long distances to play their favorite games together. Halo and the Call of Duty franchises are at the forefront of multiplayer games. The wide-spread popularity and the polished and refined gameplay helped keep these games among the top played games online. So when other game companies see the kind of numbers these multiplayer franchises are getting, they want a piece of the pie as well.

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

I’ve been on a mission the last couple months to play some of the great games that I’ve missed. Either by reason of just not bothering or not having time, these were games that received great scores and reviews. Some were even Game of the Year. Sadly, I’m reminded why I skipped several of these games; they are all too short.
I created a list a while back of great games I had missed that I wanted to catch up and play. Some of these included games I talked about last time (Mass Effect 1 & 2, Fallout 3) but some were critically acclaimed games. The rest included Batman: Arkham Asylum, Bioshock 2, and Splinter Cell: Conviction. I also have not played Assassin’s Creed 1 or 2, but I haven’t felt inclined to play an open world collect-stuff game.