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I have never designed a 3D world for a video game, but I can imagine that it's frustrating. A company like the developer of Tomb Raider, Eidos Montreal, employs an army of artists and designers to create a realistic and immersive environment, but it must also make this space fun and easy to navigate for millions of players. It's at this point that studios are starting to rely on tricks. In the restart of God of War, Sony Santa Monica gave the players a companion to act as a guide. In the recent Tomb Raider games, Eidos has chosen to follow a white paint trail that always points players in the right path.
If an explicit white paint trail sounds like a cheap trick, you're not alone. Following the release of Rise of the Tomb Raider, a fan movement called "GROWL" (Get Rid of White Ledges or, possibly, Group for the White Ledges Removal) arose in response. The problem is that even though people hate getting lost and disoriented in games, they also do not want designers to rely on a track as obvious as shortcuts.
And you want to know who also agrees with this criticism? The team of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which is the latest entry in the long-standing franchise that launches September 14 for PC and consoles.
Last weekend, I spoke with Daniel Bisson, director of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Mario Chabtini, senior producer, and they revealed that they understand the problem of white paint better than anyone else.
"When you build a world, you do not think of white paint at first," Bisson told me. "The white paint always comes after. It's when people are lost that we have to paint that. In this case, we have this awesome world of discovery where Lara finds her first living tomb. It's a great feeling – but then you get lost and we add white paint and suddenly you lose that initial vision, that initial beauty of being there because now you know you're back in a video game and you only follow this painting. "
Thus, Bisson and his team listened to the community and decided not to use white paint in the normal difficulty setting (and higher) in Shadow. But the studio still had the same problem of getting lost and being frustrated, and without the white paint, Eidos should be creative.
"The worst is that the player drops the controller," said Chabtini. "We want to avoid that."
Bisson echoes this.
"Taking the white paint was an obvious choice," said the director. "But people stop playing. They say, "I'm stuck here. I do not want to continue. "
Players have seen many expansive 3D worlds, open and easy to move. The God of War mentioned above told Atreus (the lead character's son) if you were going in the wrong direction. If you look at secondary content, Atreus will wait for you on the main path. Uncharted Naughty Dog games also use companions in the same way.
Other games try their own version of the white paint, but many of them come out integrating it to the environment or to the story. Monster Hunter: World has scouts who guide you like a giant living arrow. The Dead Space games of developer Visceral have a personal GPS device that illuminates the ground to tell you where to go.
But Eidos does not want to use white paint or something similar, so how can Shadow of the Tomb Raider push players in the right direction and get them on track? One of the answers is just in the name of the game.
"We can use light," said Chabtini. "The lighting is very important in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. We use it to make sure we make these areas where we want the player to look. "
Light and shade do much of the white painting work in Rise of the Tomb Raider, but it does so in a way that does not feel cheap and entertaining. Where in Rise I would notice a white ledge and consciously realize that it is there that the game wants me to go, in Shadow the light draws you and the shadows push you back to a more unconscious level.
But Eidos does more than create a tunnel of light to follow. In my time, I noticed that the camera will release cinematics with a keen sense of direction. The game also often catches your eye on the horizon by creating spaces in the foliage of the jungle.
In cities with people, Eidos even uses psychological tips to discourage you from wanting to go into some alleyways. On a road you can find a dense crowd of people where the other route is relatively empty. In a more tense moment, a table full of fragile porcelain blocks a path. You can not climb above this table, but you would not want it either because it seems that you break everything and you draw attention to yourself.
Finally, the game uses giant landmarks such as giant pyramids to train players. The path to the pyramid is rarely a straight line, but Eidos apparently installed it so that if you try to move to that landmark, you will eventually find the next detour or challenge on your way to that destination.
Of course, all of these solutions are still very "visual" to get the players in the right direction, but the crowd of GROWL has never hated white paint as it has attracted a lot of attention. The tips in Shadow, meanwhile, avoid this problem by using the variety and subtly.
"You have to feel real, as much as possible," Bisson said. "Even with the benchmarks. You can have a pyramid in the jungle – great, I know where to go now. But you can not place a pyramid in every beat, you know? It does not make sense! You have to find other things, more creative ideas, that are part of the world, but that also help you navigate the world. "
And although the final game is not over yet, I am convinced that Eidos Montreal has managed to preserve this authenticity. I think because Chabtini and Bisson have noted that the game still contains some examples of white paint, although it is not considered a complete track. But when I came across the first instance of this case, it was not presented as a shortcut for designers. Instead, he felt like a natural part of the world.
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