Geography as a Game-Play Element
Game: Etrian Odyssey IV
It is important to know that this game is for the Nintendo 3DS, which has two screen displays: one shows you the game worlds in three dimensions, and the other shows you two-dimensional images on a touch screen.
The land of the game is a maze seen in 3D first-person; you, the player, must make your own overhead map to navigate. (You can judge distance with the 3D screen and draw your map on the touch screen.) Your success at the game depends in part on your ability to read both screens’ descriptions of the landscape as a cohesive whole.
There are strong monsters you can see on mapped portions and avoid by observing their movements. These monsters are often too strong to fight when first encountered.
There are weaker monsters you can’t see on your map that wear on your resources as you travel, making route choice important.
If your party perishes, you can choose to still have your mapwork survive. You may restart from your last saved point with all the work you penned in your doomed expedition intact. The game recognizes the worth (and invested effort) of the map.
Game: Etrian Odyssey IV
It is important to know that this game is for the Nintendo 3DS, which has two screen displays: one shows you the game worlds in three dimensions, and the other shows you two-dimensional images on a touch screen.
The land of the game is a maze seen in 3D first-person; you, the player, must make your own overhead map to navigate. (You can judge distance with the 3D screen and draw your map on the touch screen.) Your success at the game depends in part on your ability to read both screens’ descriptions of the landscape as a cohesive whole.
There are strong monsters you can see on mapped portions and avoid by observing their movements. These monsters are often too strong to fight when first encountered.
There are weaker monsters you can’t see on your map that wear on your resources as you travel, making route choice important.
If your party perishes, you can choose to still have your mapwork survive. You may restart from your last saved point with all the work you penned in your doomed expedition intact. The game recognizes the worth (and invested effort) of the map.
Sense of Place Game: Journey
Outside locations throughout Journey are partially defined by their spacial relationship to the mountain seen in the opening and title screen. It is this mountain to which you, the player, must strive, for progressing in the game demands nearing it. Much like Katsushika Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (a series of ukiyo-e prints depicting 36 landscapes in which Mount Fuji is always seen from one angle or another), your view of this nameless yet iconic mountain changes with the stage (in the linked video, 2:25, 17:49, 19:20, 22:30). Like the views of Mount Fuji, again, eventually Journey’s mountain is no longer recognizable in the view you are given, for it is no longer a background landscape, but a physical space surrounding the viewer: you, the player, stand upon its very slopes!
The soundscape of Journey is concerned with the details of crunching sand, the wind, the flap of heavy cloth, and music that sweeps into hearing for emotional scenes, then fades into the background to let the sound effects again take precedence. We are treated to two landscapes of our eponymous journey through sound: the physical (sounds) and the emotional (the music), but indeed emotion can be fed by sounds, sight, and interaction, as discussed below.
Throughout the game, the revealed visual histories endow the places, or spaces, the player travels with historical meaning (see 21:16 in the video for one such instance). The journey is not only a pilgrimage to the mountain, but a tour through the past. Thus, there is a peripatetic approach to history and place in Journey.
There are dark and light peripatetic journeys: sun-bathed, open areas can give way to narrow, dark areas haunted by foes and the dire, historical significance of a place shown you before entering.
These dark peripatetic can offer areas for others to pour light into them: other players can randomly appear in each other’s games online, and you can bolster each other's scarf (flight ability) by pressing the "voice" button nearby. There is a place in the game where the weather saps your strength, and you trudge uphill (too weak to fly) through snow a long way into the wind, and the strength to keep moving comes from the other player as you walk together, huddled close, pressing that button to ward off the cold.
Outside locations throughout Journey are partially defined by their spacial relationship to the mountain seen in the opening and title screen. It is this mountain to which you, the player, must strive, for progressing in the game demands nearing it. Much like Katsushika Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (a series of ukiyo-e prints depicting 36 landscapes in which Mount Fuji is always seen from one angle or another), your view of this nameless yet iconic mountain changes with the stage (in the linked video, 2:25, 17:49, 19:20, 22:30). Like the views of Mount Fuji, again, eventually Journey’s mountain is no longer recognizable in the view you are given, for it is no longer a background landscape, but a physical space surrounding the viewer: you, the player, stand upon its very slopes!
The soundscape of Journey is concerned with the details of crunching sand, the wind, the flap of heavy cloth, and music that sweeps into hearing for emotional scenes, then fades into the background to let the sound effects again take precedence. We are treated to two landscapes of our eponymous journey through sound: the physical (sounds) and the emotional (the music), but indeed emotion can be fed by sounds, sight, and interaction, as discussed below.
Throughout the game, the revealed visual histories endow the places, or spaces, the player travels with historical meaning (see 21:16 in the video for one such instance). The journey is not only a pilgrimage to the mountain, but a tour through the past. Thus, there is a peripatetic approach to history and place in Journey.
There are dark and light peripatetic journeys: sun-bathed, open areas can give way to narrow, dark areas haunted by foes and the dire, historical significance of a place shown you before entering.
These dark peripatetic can offer areas for others to pour light into them: other players can randomly appear in each other’s games online, and you can bolster each other's scarf (flight ability) by pressing the "voice" button nearby. There is a place in the game where the weather saps your strength, and you trudge uphill (too weak to fly) through snow a long way into the wind, and the strength to keep moving comes from the other player as you walk together, huddled close, pressing that button to ward off the cold.
The Roles of Maps Game: Final Fantasy XIV
These three different maps of the in-game world, Eorzea, illustrate the varied roles, or uses, maps may take in video games, and how some uses can be abstracted away while others are emphasized.
The continent map does show vaguely where to navigate in-game, but physical layout is not the only information on it. Also included are the cultural relics of that world: writing (which is actually a code that can be read), national banners (used in-game to show the alignment of outposts and settlements), and creatures and ships (most encounterable in-game). The depiction of detailed space is subservient to the evocative depiction of the spirit of the game’s world.
The continent map does show vaguely where to navigate in-game, but physical layout is not the only information on it. Also included are the cultural relics of that world: writing (which is actually a code that can be read), national banners (used in-game to show the alignment of outposts and settlements), and creatures and ships (most encounterable in-game). The depiction of detailed space is subservient to the evocative depiction of the spirit of the game’s world.
Not only is this map for tourists in the game’s world, but it is fancied to be an artifact or relic from the game’s world itself. Looking at the image of a map seen in a game’s cut-scene (the in-world map), we can see that the continent map above resembles a map a character actually holds in the game's world. When we look at the continental map, this cultural relic, we see how the characters in the game's world view their own world. Also, by using this map while playing the game, we are in the same shoes as a denizen of the game's world, our experiences made parallel in some markable way and hence cementing our role in this role-playing game. The player also has a mini map accessible in-game to navigate; it fills out as we explore the space. This mini map is smaller scale, and more abstracted in that it shows us the walls of walkable pathways laid over the more game-world like drawings of dragons, name banners, and compass roses. The abstracted, colored walkable areas are akin to the abstracted, colored lines designating train routes and roads (drivable areas) on maps we use use today, but they are definitely not very scenic or culturally revelatory in the information they portray. Those uses have been abstracted away. Some train maps even collapse actual space and distance in favor of fitting the entire network of lines and sequential stops (their important information) into one, tidy space. Contrarily, on amusement park maps, often exact size of the walkways are skewed in favor of displaying a scenic bird’s-eye landscape of the varied attractions the park has to offer. This would be more akin to our continent map. |
Sound and Music Game: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Clip of "the Royal Family Tomb" area at 4:45
Whenever these walking-dead-like enemies, the Redead, are found in a room, you hear the unique sound of their murmuring; it’s their signature sound, and only they make it. You almost always hear them before you see them. The sound only stops if all Redead in the room are defeated. The sound is thus a direct indication of their presence. It serves as a warning of their presence, but also a warning of their nature: The ReDead murmuring resembles the human voice close enough to accomplish an uncanny resemblance; one cannot actually make out any comprehensible speech in its white noise, and the pitch of the voices are synthetically deep. Though their unearthly sound is designed to haunt the player, it can also haunt them through connotation, for this enemy, the ReDead, inspires dread in the player of the game with these five points, observable in the clip: (1) they're immune to any projectiles owned when you first meet them; (2) if you venture too close, they audially punish you with an alarming shriek and completely freeze you for several seconds, disabling your ability to fight or flee as they inch slowly toward you; (3) they suck a lot out of you if they reach you in that time; (4) they take 8 hits to defeat (more than some bosses); (5) they normally do not drop power-ups, and; (6) they don’t even "die" normally: in a game where most enemies quickly explode and vanish when defeated, ReDead crumple to the floor like a corpse and stay there for a relatively long period of time, after which they simply fade away. One can observe one player's reactions, which confirm these points (https://youtu.be/2Gx14Wr4olI?t=4m40s): He knows "zombies" are in the room before he sees them, he is creeped out by the sound, and he is dismayed at both his weapon’s inability to fight them as well as their lack of "loot". Audial connotation plays an important role too when a similar synthesized voice is used in the location music of later places in the game containing ReDead and worse, namely the Bottom of the Well and the Shadow Dungeon (https://youtu.be/sZwolhdsukk). The sound’s inclusion in the music helps to cast a pall of eerie anxiety over the entire dungeon.
-Joseph Willis
Clip of "the Royal Family Tomb" area at 4:45
Whenever these walking-dead-like enemies, the Redead, are found in a room, you hear the unique sound of their murmuring; it’s their signature sound, and only they make it. You almost always hear them before you see them. The sound only stops if all Redead in the room are defeated. The sound is thus a direct indication of their presence. It serves as a warning of their presence, but also a warning of their nature: The ReDead murmuring resembles the human voice close enough to accomplish an uncanny resemblance; one cannot actually make out any comprehensible speech in its white noise, and the pitch of the voices are synthetically deep. Though their unearthly sound is designed to haunt the player, it can also haunt them through connotation, for this enemy, the ReDead, inspires dread in the player of the game with these five points, observable in the clip: (1) they're immune to any projectiles owned when you first meet them; (2) if you venture too close, they audially punish you with an alarming shriek and completely freeze you for several seconds, disabling your ability to fight or flee as they inch slowly toward you; (3) they suck a lot out of you if they reach you in that time; (4) they take 8 hits to defeat (more than some bosses); (5) they normally do not drop power-ups, and; (6) they don’t even "die" normally: in a game where most enemies quickly explode and vanish when defeated, ReDead crumple to the floor like a corpse and stay there for a relatively long period of time, after which they simply fade away. One can observe one player's reactions, which confirm these points (https://youtu.be/2Gx14Wr4olI?t=4m40s): He knows "zombies" are in the room before he sees them, he is creeped out by the sound, and he is dismayed at both his weapon’s inability to fight them as well as their lack of "loot". Audial connotation plays an important role too when a similar synthesized voice is used in the location music of later places in the game containing ReDead and worse, namely the Bottom of the Well and the Shadow Dungeon (https://youtu.be/sZwolhdsukk). The sound’s inclusion in the music helps to cast a pall of eerie anxiety over the entire dungeon.
-Joseph Willis