It’s like some kind of reverse evolution. In the long forgotten past of gaming, text based adventures would deliver exposition via characters that would be directly interacting with the character. 3D engines, advanced animation and billion dollar budgets later and my favourite way of receiving story is via audio/video logs that I non-sensically pick up off the ground and plug into my magical PDA.

I don’t know what it is, but something about the atmosphere of this method really takes me. Obviously, certain situations are idyllic for it – mostly survival horror or at least creepy games where there is a logical reason for little or no actual contact with other non-aggressive characters. But even during the introduction to these games, for example Doom 3, it can be brilliant for setting a story.

Who better to tell the history of a location and set the scene than the individuals who inhabit that place, before their untimely internal combustion/devouring/demon possession/decapitation? Hell, other than the magical-PDA problem earlier and the often odd location of the diaries (would anyone actually leave those in their workplace, ever?) it makes a little sense. Future-tech-people would keep audio logs right? If Scrubs has taught me anything, it’s that doctors do it already, without that!

Okay, so where have we seen it? The games that came to mind were Dead Space, Bioshock, the afore-mentioned Doom 3 and the recent acceptably allstar Batman: Arkham Asylum. Each used logs in slightly different ways; all of which I’d like to explore. I’ll start with the most recent: Arkham. The interview tapes that are collectible throughout the game serve no purpose whatsoever other than to provide background on the events at Arkham leading up to the game and information on the super-villains that oppose you. Our other examples often use these logs to provide key-pad codes, directions or other help that is useful in the gameworld – either to continue the plot or simply unlock ammo crates or further asides – Arkham does not.

And that is a good thing. Logs in general are easy to miss. In all games, they are usually small and hidden. This means that the “important” ones can sometimes be overlooked or are forced to be no challenge to find at all. Also, the more action-focused players – who may ignore logs in general, simply out of disinterest – take time out of their playstyle to bore themselves. Even those who do are often forced to relisten to the unskippable parts because they forgot the vital code in the 30 seconds it took them to get to the right place.

Arkham’s other major success is something I have never seen elsewhere and demand that EVERY. SINGLE. DEVELOPER. who is planning this strategy implements right away – if you have “sets” of recordings that tell a story, then no matter which order I pick them up in, they should be in the right order. To hell with realism, I don’t like missing out or spoiling something for myself. I realise this isn’t always plausible; particularly if you need certain logs to say certain things about the room or area they are in, but good lord was I happy when I figured this out.

Alright, let’s move on. Bioshock. Much like System Shock 2 (because I haven’t played it, that’s why it’s not the main focus of this paragraph), Bioshock uses logs as one of its main story-telling mechanics. While the main plot can be distinguished without them, there will be holes and pieces that seemingly don’t make sense. There are times when this is very effective – the puppy-killing phrase reveal is amazingly atmospheric; the log found in a room which tells the story of the player character’s brainwashing as a child and the horrific implications. It’s a work of art.

In other areas, these logs simply tell of the life of Rapture, before and after it’s apocalypse. The politics and the violence. It paints an amazing picture of a world that should have been perfect, but simply wasn’t. There are highlights – police officers talking of torture; the story of the main character’s birth leading to an iconic hallucination; the story of Adam. This was just the right way to tell it – signs would make no sense; video would seem too high tech; actual interaction with characters would ruin half the plot.

Dead Space and Doom’s usage are subtly different. There is more game advice here – Doom 3’s immortal sin of codes-for-doors while Dead Space has the slightly more acceptable “don’t shoot them in the head, morons” – but what they have most in common is horror. Both use their audio logs to enhance the scares, allowing the player to experience events which happened elsewhere or elsewhen.

For Doom 3 this is particularly effective, due to the “normality” of the base before the cataclysmic events that occur. It allows that player to be shown that there was always something not quite right about the goings on of certain individuals – most notably the eventual villain. The base is shown to have always been a little eerie, a little strange; as one might expect for an island of law and order in a sea of airless, red Mars dust. Even the video-logs, which are simply descriptions of the on-goings of the base, have a dark foreboding to them: they’re a little too mechanical, a little too clean.

Both games do one thing perfectly however: That “oh shit” moment. That bit where everything goes to fuck. Dead Space has two – when Isaac himself discovers the infestation, and the “original”, conveyed throughout the opening chapters in logs as Isaac discovers the remains of various crewmen. Both the audio and video that Isaac receives play wonderfully into the “no UI” feel of the game, as all is played out in front of the character via his mini-projection unit. This unsettles and heightens the realism of both game and story.

Doom 3’s is a little different: its one “ah hell” moment really is that, a superb bombardment of light and sound; screams of dying men; the ever popular “THEY’RE COMING THROUGHT HE GOD-DAMN WALLS”; flying skulls burrowing into flesh and demons of all sorts devouring an entire human colony. The logs, rather sadly, not live up to it – there is way, way, waaaaay too much “the new keycode is 9182″ and not nearly enough “OH GOD EVERYONE IS DEAD”. There are exceptions: the one marine lost in Hell, the panicked maintenance crew. The purely radio and log contact is a wonderful way to set the scene for those few characters you do meet. Those that look peaceful and are then suddenly floating head-n-spinal-cords all the more jarring after hours of naught but sound.

So, a salute then, the a happily increasingly popular piece of game design. May it long continue and may it learn from itself.

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So I’ve also been working for GamingDaily.co.uk, hence my long silence. This is a really nice piece of work I think. Plays into my voice acting bit well, and is something nice and positive for once. I have no idea when or what I’m going to write next, so don’t hold you breath.

I’m no developer. I don’t know how to code, design or draw. This means that the only thing I can base ideas for game design around are the experiences I have while enjoying finished products, and two things are always at the forefront, whether they are exceptional, terrible or bland. They can single handedly make or break a title’s success for me personally and entirely govern the atmosphere and success of a scene. I am talking of animation and script.

Both of these things are so utterly vital because they are so common. Every movement of a character or object is “animation”, every piece of text – whether voice acted or simply a character’s text-only journal – comes under the heading of script. If a common animation is off, in any way, it can be disastrous to the enjoyment of the player. Equally, voice actors phoning it in or terrible dialogue can utterly destroy any suspension of disbelief.

In the case of animation, it’s pretty shocking how poorly this can be done by even the most professional development studios. Bethesda’s Oblivion and Fallout 3 stand testament to just how much this vital piece of design can drag a game down if implemented poorly. The constantly clunky feeling to characters movements, as well as being generally ugly, really highlighted the bugs in game AI. This was not helped by voice acting which seemed no better than bored at times – not to mention the ridiculous changes in accent due to some lines only being recorded by some voice actors.

An amazing experience I had was, having played Fallout 3 for a day beforehand, I booted up Dead Space. The introduction sequence was like some sort of devine intervention:

Oh, so that’s how it’s meant to be done. The slickness of human movement, the real emotion in the voices. Dead Space is a game where atmosphere is vitally important and the movement of the monstrous beings you encounter perfectly transmit this. Clawing along the walls, popping from vents, some slither – it all combines to create a feeling of something utterly alien, unknowable and uncommunicable with. A direct helper to this is the brilliant voice acting of various characters: They sound realistic, actually scared, panicy in that introduction as they careen towards possible destruction. Dead Space being one of many games to exploit the “log” system (whereby unseen characters leave behind video/audio recordings for the player to find), voice acting was especially important while constructing the plot of the surroundings and past events. The fear in the voice of hunted men who’ve worked out a key fact was a component that added so much to the experience.

An extension of this is live action videos, as employed mostly by the Command and Conquer series. Let’s make one thing very clear – if we’re too busy laughing (or staring at breasts) to take in cutscenes, you’ve probably done something wrong. I’m looking at you, Red Alert 3. The interesting thing about this medium is it’s almost entirely down to the actor, at least for me. Whereas in audio, it can seem that if half a coversation is poor, everything is dragged down, in video I find that (for example) Joe Kucan portraying Kane is something I will never get tired of. Particularly in dance remixes.

On the subject of dialogue and VAs, I also want to mention Republic Commando which (nearly) gets a certain aspect spot on. This is the random speech triggered by events dialogues that occur frequently throughout the game. They are nailed by their VAs, but most importantly they are either short or are said extremely rarely. There are a couple of exceptions (usually relating to health pick ups), but overall their execution is preferable to other ways I have seen it done. Valve also comes close with Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 – but these suffer from either being so rare as to never be heard by most players, or being so common as to become memes.

Why is it that so many companies don’t seem to see the value in decent animation and voice acting particularly?  What’s the point in a super-sexy Unreal 3 rendered Crysis-level awesomesauce graphics engine when there’s nothing good to look at?  Why include sound software that can accurately reproduce the sound of a gunshot, when your dialogue isn’t actually worth hearing?  These things are important, they can ruin games.

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Something I would be interested to know about is the exploits of indie gamers. How do they do in the region of animation and, particularly, voice acting? Many don’t even have something that would classify, I suppose. Most being 2Dish games without much talking (or, with text). Do comment if there are any that did anything particularly impressively (or hay, really, really badly).