Symbolic!
One of the things I want to do with Her Majesty's Hackers is to get the player deeply involved with the personality of the characters. Given that the characters are not exactly high-fidelity, it's important that I utilize as many of the tricks of the trade as I can find.
One trick of the trade that no algorithmically-narrated game ("The Sims", for example) has ever used is "symbolic drift".
Symbolism is one kind of symbolic drift. Something comes to stand for something else. A crow stands for death or for the soul. A flag stands for freedom... or slavery. The exact meaning of a symbol changes from story to story, and is carefully carved out of the portrayals in the story.
Of course, a symbol doesn't have to be something tangible. The color red can be a symbol, and so can a phrase or even a single word.
Once you have a symbol, you can develop it to mean dozens of things, and hit the audience with it any number of times, either subtly or overtly. For example, someone taking out a memento of his dead mother is pretty obvious. Having the final fight just before dawn is slightly subtler, but still pretty clear to people who watch for symbolism. Subtler was the origami unicorn in Blade Runner - how many of you even caught it, the first time through (presuming you watched the version which contained it, of course)? Subtler yet are choices in colors and layouts - shots which subtly suggest imprisonment or freedom by their choice of rigid or flowing layouts.
Obviously, the subtler symbols are not symbols which usually undergo much change. Sometimes, they act as clues. More often, they merely act as emotional touches. Either way, they are usually imported wholesale from the outside world. They are not built up inside the story.
On the other hand, the more overt symbols can be developed openly and joyfully within a story. They are a place for you - and the characters - to hang your emotions and memories.
It would therefore make utterly perfect sense to use these kinds of symbolics in Her Majesty's Hackers, because I know precisely who is feeling what when.
So, I think I'm going to include something that makes physical and linguistic symbols. I think it's gonna be great. :)
One trick of the trade that no algorithmically-narrated game ("The Sims", for example) has ever used is "symbolic drift".
Symbolism is one kind of symbolic drift. Something comes to stand for something else. A crow stands for death or for the soul. A flag stands for freedom... or slavery. The exact meaning of a symbol changes from story to story, and is carefully carved out of the portrayals in the story.
Of course, a symbol doesn't have to be something tangible. The color red can be a symbol, and so can a phrase or even a single word.
Once you have a symbol, you can develop it to mean dozens of things, and hit the audience with it any number of times, either subtly or overtly. For example, someone taking out a memento of his dead mother is pretty obvious. Having the final fight just before dawn is slightly subtler, but still pretty clear to people who watch for symbolism. Subtler was the origami unicorn in Blade Runner - how many of you even caught it, the first time through (presuming you watched the version which contained it, of course)? Subtler yet are choices in colors and layouts - shots which subtly suggest imprisonment or freedom by their choice of rigid or flowing layouts.
Obviously, the subtler symbols are not symbols which usually undergo much change. Sometimes, they act as clues. More often, they merely act as emotional touches. Either way, they are usually imported wholesale from the outside world. They are not built up inside the story.
On the other hand, the more overt symbols can be developed openly and joyfully within a story. They are a place for you - and the characters - to hang your emotions and memories.
It would therefore make utterly perfect sense to use these kinds of symbolics in Her Majesty's Hackers, because I know precisely who is feeling what when.
So, I think I'm going to include something that makes physical and linguistic symbols. I think it's gonna be great. :)
posted by Craig Perko at 7:36 PM
2 Comments:
Are you going to manage symbols adaptively, that is along dynamisms, so that a symbol can become one thing or the other depending on the discourse? If you're talking about a static library of symbolisms, then you're basically in the same design territory as Storytron, but with real-time gameplay.
Static symbols would be no freaking use at all! I'm going to allow them to grow out of the natural discourse of the game, to support the ever-changing emotional nature of a given character arc.
I know how I'm going to do physical symbols. Linguistic symbols MAY be outside my capability...
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