I know I have never been to the fortress of Butcher Bay, but I feel like I know this fictional place from the inside out. I have never been arrested for felony, let alone convicted for manslaughter, and yet I feel like I had a glimpse of how that feels, and how people with such a history could behave and relate to each other. I have never even gotten into a fistfight, but after playing the first Chronicles of Riddick game, something tells me that it must be kind of exhilarating, in a vicious and painful way.
In a somewhat more peculiar manner (at least for a resident of the eastern part of North America), I have not yet been to New York City. Countless movies have shown it to me, many of them tried to impart how it feels to actually live there, and a few interactive programs have let me wander in various fantasy interpretations of it. But now I know that one of the first things I will have to check out when I eventually get there is... the subway network. And it has better be as amazing to hang out in as it is in The Darkness, or else I just might stick to video games for the rest of my life.
This last statement may seem a little childish and over-the-top, but the fact that a video game environment succeeded in creating expectations regarding its real-world counterpart appears to me as a testament to the power of simulation. Point being, the two aforementioned action games from Starbreeze Studios managed to transport me in imaginary settings more convincingly than pretty much any other game I can think of, and attained a degree of internal reality that I felt rendered the "gamey" acts taking place in them transparent and believable. Even though my status as an industry outsider prevents me from understanding them in practical terms, I shall try to praise their merits a little better. Surely there must be more to it than good level design... right?
Much has been written about Escape from Butcher Bay (not least because of its re-issue with follow-up Assault on Dark Athena, which is the version I have played), but I have yet to stumble upon an article dedicated to the exceptional sophistication of its first-person perspective (any heads-up would be appreciated). I lack the technical expertise to describe it in finer detail, but basic photographic knowledge allows me to appreciate that the virtual lens through which Riddick's point of view is shown is considerably wider than that of most first-person shooters. This accentuates the sense of depth in the picture and tends to distort the edges, compensating for an overload of optic information ; features that are intensified when crouching, which makes sneaking around a thrilling endeavor on a purely visual level. Subtle adjustments of the character's head upon stopping, visible limbs, motion blur, pronouced shadows of a remarkably animated character model ; such traits are all absent from many high-profile titles (Bioshock, for instance), and speak of the developer's willingness to immerse the player in the game world via striking physicality.
But how does this translate to The Darkness, which does not recount the exploits of an over-perceptive galactic predator engaged in evasion, but of an ordinary New York hitman facing unfortunate circumstances? To be sure, the "Creeping Dark" ability justifies the sort of trickery one could expect from the camera department behind Chronicles of Riddick, and the shadows, blur and limbs carry over from this title, but for the most part The Darkness employs a more classical first-person camera than its stealthier cousin. And this is where the many uses of light and color come into play, instilling the games with distinctive qualities. It is very telling that both games open with the selection of a basic contrast profile ; Starbreeze want every player to appreciate the nuances of their lighting efforts to the best of their capacity. While initially jarring, the saturated bloom effects of Riddick serve dual purposes, injecting the world with an atmosphere of suffocation and clearly associating brightness with danger ; replete with breakable light sources that also fill an important role in the gameplay, the playfield of The Darkness remains ever-visible through a stunning "contour" effect that covers the objects with a current of shifting light, underlining the supernatural force of the game's namesake. While they don't exactly contribute to the specifics of the game world proper, these atmospheric features contribute in making the games constantly stimulating to navigate, with various levels of light singling out various levels of interest, and so and so forth.
To illustrate my appreciation of its environmental design better than anything could, let me describe an episode I had very early on in The Darkness: inspecting the halls of Canal Street Station after a pretty agitated first segment, I came across a television set, sitting slightly crooked in an tramp's cart. It was broadcasting a report concerning events of the story, and I stopped to look. When the news segment was over, the program switched to a heavy metal music video. Curious, I flipped the channels... and discovered that Otto Preminger's The Man With the Golden Arm was showing. I was floored, and watched the movie for a good ten minutes, even though I had never seen it ; that Starbreeze's art directors (or whatever department thought of this) actually went so far as to include a compressed version of an American cinema classic (as well as other entertaining broadcasts) to flesh out the universe of their video game and give it style and character appeared, to me, as a remarkable display of dedication to the audience's enjoyment. In Riddick, that level of craft is apparent through the rugged textures of the walls, the obsessive detail of the machinery, the crazy architectural figures of the prison infrastructures, all combining into an incredible sense of place. In both games, further exploration of the levels is specifically rewarded with glimpses at the process behind the design and art direction ; The Darkness even has phone numbers hidden on the numerous posters covering its walls, which led me to scan its locations even more intensively. All of this seems intended to properly engulf the player in the universe of the fiction, should he simply be willing to.
But at the end of the day, the kind of immersion I am speaking of perhaps couldn't even be viable if the stories taking place in these worlds didn't warrant a certain degree of interest in the first place. To be fair, both games' plots don't exactly rise above the fare of standard pulp fiction, but it is the details and quality of the execution that renders them so effective and quickly engaging. Certainly the voice acting in them stands clear above par (at least as far as video games go), and the character models and animations are convincing without trying too hard. But there is more to it than that: the character networks in Starbreeze's efforts actually seem to fit in their surroundings, which I believe is not as easy to achieve as it seems. From the very early sections of these games (the first conversations with the inmates of Butcher Bay, the amazing tunnel sequence of The Darkness...), you get a sense that these digital people inhabit a world with rules and logic, an overarching order that is not immediately spelled out, but reveals itself over time. In narrative terms, both games lead the player to progress towards areas or characters that he has not yet seen, but that numerous comments from the supporting cast have helped shape an imaginary picture of. As such, the handling of the population becomes as crucial to the story's delivery as the level design: the "scum" of Butcher Bay, its various factions honoring different codes, know the workings of the prison and how to get things done, but have simply not gathered the will to try ; the mafiosi of The Darkness, on their end, have even more of a reason for wanting Jackie to succeed in his revenge, while the ordinary New Yorkers lurking about the stations add flavor and life to a mundane background (imagine Fulton Street without the break-dancers). And don't get me started on the few but memorable friendly denizens of the "Otherworld"...
So there you have it: my admiration-laden ode to Starbreeze's digital creations. I imagine that similar words could be applied to many other games of recent years, but these two strike me as full realizations of what unified and integrated art direction can yield. It is probably worth mentioning that I have somehow managed to spill 1500 words on two first-person shooters... without even mentioning the word "shooting". Something that I take as proof of how far a developer can take its products by polishing their delivery and making their worlds have a life of their own. The only thing we can wish for now is that comparable skills and technical assets be applied to ever more compelling narratives, or at least that they continue making tired subject matter seem fresh and relevant again. After all, if a video game can make a fellow care about Vin Diesel as much as I did, who knows what's next?
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