After further thoughts and input from some outside influences + opinions, I have decided upon the two mechanics I will be using for each game. For God of War, I have selected ‘Achillies Armour’. It really boiled down to the Sickle or the armour but I could think of more gameplay scenarios revolving around the armour.
I scrapped the Hades Helmet early on because I thought it would be pretty boring and unfulfilling to use as most of its perks are performed automatically by the NPCs. I decided against the Mjolnir and Sword of Attila as there are already similar weapons on previous God of War games. So really, it was between the remaining three. The shield was next to go, first and foremost because the armour did the same job but the player wouldn’t have to be weapon-less whilst using it. I also had to try keep the appropriate God of War tone. Kratos is a character fuelled with rage and violence and him using a shield to protect himself didn’t gel as well as the other ideas.
To be honest, the decision wasn’t that difficult between the armour and sickle, I picked the armour because I’m already exploring Portal mechanics in Exercise One and wanted to make sure my work has some variety. So the Achillies Armour is the winner here.
Picking the Zelda mechanics were a little trickier as I thought I had several potentially interesting ideas to pick from here. First to the bin was the Climbing Claws. Although I can imagine some interesting segments using them, they’re pretty uninspired compared to some of the other ideas. Next was the Fairy Container, no real reason for chucking this one I just didn’t take a shine to it. I quite liked the idea of using the Spear in some of the level mechanisms but the scenarios in which you would have used it would feel incredibly contrived.
I decided against the Magic Flute as it felt like it was giving me more work than I really needed to take on. So between the Magnetic Poles and Carry Ball, I had to write and see for which of the two I could think of the most secondary uses for it. Between them both, the Carry Ball won. So the Armour and Carry Ball are the two selected mechanics for both games for which I will create a level design for.
It didn’t take me long after making those decisions to come up with concepts for a level. I knew for the Armour I wanted a level which would constantly expose the player to something dangerous that only the armour would protect them against. I quickly thought of the idea of Light or Heat. The movie ‘Sunshine’ (a film about astronauts travelling to the Sun), gave me the idea of the level I wanted.
I scrapped the Hades Helmet early on because I thought it would be pretty boring and unfulfilling to use as most of its perks are performed automatically by the NPCs. I decided against the Mjolnir and Sword of Attila as there are already similar weapons on previous God of War games. So really, it was between the remaining three. The shield was next to go, first and foremost because the armour did the same job but the player wouldn’t have to be weapon-less whilst using it. I also had to try keep the appropriate God of War tone. Kratos is a character fuelled with rage and violence and him using a shield to protect himself didn’t gel as well as the other ideas.
To be honest, the decision wasn’t that difficult between the armour and sickle, I picked the armour because I’m already exploring Portal mechanics in Exercise One and wanted to make sure my work has some variety. So the Achillies Armour is the winner here.
Picking the Zelda mechanics were a little trickier as I thought I had several potentially interesting ideas to pick from here. First to the bin was the Climbing Claws. Although I can imagine some interesting segments using them, they’re pretty uninspired compared to some of the other ideas. Next was the Fairy Container, no real reason for chucking this one I just didn’t take a shine to it. I quite liked the idea of using the Spear in some of the level mechanisms but the scenarios in which you would have used it would feel incredibly contrived.
I decided against the Magic Flute as it felt like it was giving me more work than I really needed to take on. So between the Magnetic Poles and Carry Ball, I had to write and see for which of the two I could think of the most secondary uses for it. Between them both, the Carry Ball won. So the Armour and Carry Ball are the two selected mechanics for both games for which I will create a level design for.
It didn’t take me long after making those decisions to come up with concepts for a level. I knew for the Armour I wanted a level which would constantly expose the player to something dangerous that only the armour would protect them against. I quickly thought of the idea of Light or Heat. The movie ‘Sunshine’ (a film about astronauts travelling to the Sun), gave me the idea of the level I wanted.
Keeping with God of War’s canon, I searched for a Greek God or entity that had the power of Sun or Light. Obviously Helios is the God of Sun in Greek Mythology but he has already been a reoccurring character in the franchise so I sought for something different. I found that the Titan Hyperion was the Titan of Light, also the father of Helios. From my knowledge Hyperion hasn’t made an appearance in the franchise as of yet so I thought that would be a good starting place.
Now in Greek Mythology, Zeus imprisoned all the Titan’s at the very pit of Hades in Tartarus. That gave me the idea that the level would be Hyperion’s Prison in Tartarus, over the years Hyperion becoming so furious and insane from imprisonment he emitted an intense light around the area. I drew some rough sketches and notes for the stage.
I wrote up a list of all the God of War play mechanics and tried to link them together to randomize and generate some order and time each mechanic could be used in the level. At the very start of the stage I want the player to see the scale of the stage from above it, so they know exactly what they are descending into.
My concept for the Zelda dungeon didn’t come as immediate as the God of War one did. I wanted to make sure the Carry Ball would get the right amount of expose so it had to be a dungeon where you had to shrink and carry things around. Initially I drew similarities to the Carry Ball being like a giant Poke-Ball but it carried objects as well as living things but somebody made a passing comment about how it was like Kirby (a Nintendo character who sucks enemies up and spits them out). The idea of the item being alive instead of just an object seemed infinitely more interesting.
So with this idea of the Carry Ball being ‘alive’ in some way I gave some thought to scenarios. I thought maybe the item might once have been a person who had a curse put on them. Then I had to consider who would have the power to put a curse like that on someone. After a series of convoluted thoughts I came up with the idea of a ‘Voodoo themed dungeon.’ The Voodoo dungeon would have a series of curses on the rooms the player would have to solve, as well as enemies and environments being themed after witch doctors and Voodoo culture.
So with both concepts in mind, over the coming weeks my primary task is to come up with all the puzzles and environments for these levels before finding a suitable method of presenting these concepts visually.
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