Date: July 30, 6-8pm
Location: Room 621, K17 Building, UNSW
Abstract:
In this month’s GDG, we’ll be looking at the Ocean House Hotel from Troika’s cult classic, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. As well as being one of the scariest levels in any videogame ever, the Ocean House is a remarkable example of mise en scene: that is, telling a story using the environment rather than with more explicit forms of exposition such as cut-scenes, dialogue etc. In analysing the methods Troika used to design the Ocean House, we will hopefully develop a better understanding of the relationship between level design and narrative, particularly with regard to games in the horror genre.
VtMB is available from Steam (or if you ask Malcolm nicely, you can borrow his copy). The original game is fairly buggy. The Unofficial Patch is recommended.
This is a very cool topic.
There is a nice breakdown of another such level called The Cradle from the Thief game series. PC Gamer did a 10 page breakdown on it which was quite fascinating and makes a really good read.
You can find the PC Gamer article here:
http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?page_id=618
Comment by Piyush — July 24, 2009 @ 1:12 am |