In this lecture we were introduced to level design, we discussed the brief and everything we would be doing forwards from the lecture. We discussed what makes a level a level and what makes good or bad level design and a bad level entails.
A good level needs 3 things which can be visualised as a pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid we have World building, this is where the developers and the narrative designers set things like the factions, plot points for the worlds history and the main players for story.
The middle section of the pyramid is simply level design, this can be used for narrative through things like architecture, layout, materials and scale can tell alot about the people who use those spaces. An example of this is Dark Souls, where alot of the lore behind the game is left to the player to figure out through the use of architecture and other means, in Dark Souls 1 you can find an area called Anor Londo, a grand castle, but when you revisit Anor Londo in Dark Souls 3 after it has become home to one of the main bosses of the game you find that the castle is in a horrible state, with bones and what seems to be dirt (or flesh) covering the floor. This tells you that in the span of time between the games a great battle may have occured, one which the inhabitants of the castle were devastated by.
The top level of the pyramid is environmental storytelling, this can be things like overheard conversations, animations happeing in the level and text found throughout the area in places like books or signs. An example of this comes from Dark souls (again), in Dark Souls 1 you can find a Blacksmith in Anor Londo, but when you revisit the area in Dark souls 3 where you once found the blacksmith you find his corpse, fallen over to the side in the area he once sat. This tells the player a story of the tragic death of the blacksmith who was killed in the place he once sat, perhaps hammering away until the end.
In class we also discussed how Sonic the Hedgehog is terrible level design, which I 100% agree with, the concept of the game is that it is a speed orientated platformer but the level design constantly punishes you for going fast with things such as sudden stops that completely wipe out your momentum or spikes that damage you and make you lose all of your rings.
On the topic of good and bad level design, here are a few games with good and bad level design I know.
Good Level Design
Jet Set Radio, Shin Megami Tensei 5, Persona 5, Sonic Mania.
Bad Level Design
Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne, Persona 3, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Jet Set Radio has good level design that makes the gameplay shine, from half pipes to rails to grind on and steep hills, it all makes the player feel the rush of rollerblading around even when it's only a game.
Shin Megami Tensei 5 was a long awaited sequel to the Shin Megami Tensei series, it takes place in a post apocalyptic Tokyo after a war had taken place 18 years prior, all around the environment there are plenty of demons who tell you what happened to the world way before the story tells you.
Persona 5 has great dungeon design compared to the Persona games that came before it and Sonic Mania actually allows you to go FAST.
Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne had great environment storytelling but terrible dungeon design, the dungeons in the games are mostly mazes with no story to the architectural design.
Persona 3 had you climbing up the multitude of floors of the Tower of Tartarus, most of which were the same since they were procedurally generated.
The Wind Waker is an example of a game where deadlines took a toll on the overall outcome of the game, if Nintendo had given it a while longer it could have turned out to be a much more amazing game but instead it's left with a massive gaping hole known as the "Triforce Fetch Quest". This is where the developers ran out of time to complete 2 dungeons so instead they replaced them with a massive segment of the game where you have to search for pieces of the Triforce all over the Great Sea. Another example of bad level design in this game is how the islands are all randomly over the map, there is no meaning to their placement which is a massive letdown.
SEVEN more to go, ridiculous.
Hollow Knight
Hollow knight is an example of fantastic level design, what was meant to be my first 15 minutes playing ended up being 46 minutes after I was caught up in the game's narrative and amazing design. The game uses the world you play in to tell the story of Hollow Knight, you could infer more about the story and lore of the game from it's strange architecture and insectlike structures found across the map. From what I could tell the game takes place in a fallen insect civilisation after a catastrophe took place which leads to it's inhabitants going mad, I would have to play more of the game to understand more but from the introduction of the game it is an interesting narrative which pulls me in to want to play more so I can know more.
