From the moment you pick up the controller, waking I up your diminutive vulpine protagonist on a quiet shoreline, you're entirely on your own. For all its soft-edged charm, the world of Tunic is hostile signposted in an unintelligible language, with only disordered pages torn from a manual to fill you in on the basics. Eventually one of those pages grants you a scrap of map, and the world unfurls before you. A world with such ominously named locales as Dark Tomb and Forbidden Pass, dotted with question mark icons and, most curious of all, a handwritten squiggle that points towards a building called the Old House.
The shadow of the original Legend Of Zelda falls heavily on Tunic. Two titles separated by over 36 years and six console generations, yet both drawing from a shared source of inspiration: the joy of childhood exploration. Growing up, Tunic developer Andrew Shouldice would map the woods near his grandmother's house, drawing everything from a hill of fire ants to a secret entrance to a waterfall. "It wasn't about being accurate, it was about understanding how the spaces were spatially related," he explains. "A map is a cool artefact to have."
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/5226155156.jpg]
Maps have long been an intrinsic part of video games, from old-school dungeon crawlers which forced players to draw their own by hand to strategy guides published in the likes of Nintendo Power. We primarily think of them as navigational tools, something to ensure the player doesn't stray too far from the beaten path. Yet our relationship with in-game maps is evolving, perhaps best illustrated by the heavily stylised maps of open-world luminaries Breath Of The Wild and Elden Ring, departing from traditions long established by their genre stablemates. Developers and fans alike are taking notes, exploring both how maps can be used to increase our immersion within a virtual world, and remind us of treasured journeys.
Shouldice has fond memories of poring over game manuals as a child, analysing diagrams, bestiaries, maps and item descriptions. "It makes it feel like a living, breathing place," he says. "Your imagination could run wild." Every aspect of Tunic's world was designed to evoke this sense of wonder, from the isometric perspective that allows Shouldice to squirrel away secrets in every nook to the enigmatic notes scribbled on its maps that hint in their direction.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/6966255676.jpg]
Shouldice wanted players to feel the right amount of lost in Tunic, particularly during the game's map-free opening section. "There needed to be a lot of really deliberate landmarks that were unique and eye-catching, so that people could even without a map find their way." Indeed, Tunic was originally designed without a player icon on the map, in line with its presentation as a physical object, leaving players to orient themselves using landmarks. "The old-school approach of 'You need to do a little bit of cartography or landmark-searching to figure out where you are on the map' is interesting, but in the end, I think it was the right choice," Shouldice says. "One, to make the map more useful, just as a nice thing for players. Two, to teach the player that the manual itself is important."
SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES
In Carto, a unique approach is taken to the concept of an overworld map, the world divided into a grid so players can rearrange its tiles in order to solve puzzles, an experience equally reminiscent of both tabletop games and classic LucasArts adventure games. "I like to play jigsaw puzzles," director Lee-Kuo Chen says. "I feel like it's part of our nature to want to assemble things." For Chen, the appeal of studying a game map and navigating using landmarks is similar to the childhood joy of scavenger hunts. "I like games that trust players' ability to explore the world by themselves," he says. "It probably doesn't work for some games, though Carto isn't a huge world, so it's easier for us to do."
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/5546569545.jpg]
Meanwhile, map fragments themselves are often encountered out of order, teasing as-yet undiscovered landscapes or aspects of familiar haunts that were missed the first dozen times through. "I very much cherish the idea of handing the reins over to the player when it comes to deciding what they want to do, and how they want to approach problems," Shouldice says. "The idea of 'I might get lost', or 'I need to go on a dangerous journey' - a map being an important part of that, and having the player choose to use it as a tool, boosts the value of that experience."
Maps were drawn directly over screenshots of completed levels, but Shouldice intentionally limited detail in certain areas. "If you have a map that you know is completely perfect, then you don't need to ever worry about cartography or getting lost," he explains. "But if it instead is a projection of the world, or an abstraction of it to some degree, then you as a player need to actively engage your cartography brain to map this thing onto the real world. That is appealing and satisfying to me."
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/4996759914.jpg]
HAND IT OVER
The map that shipped with physical editions of Mafia III strongly evokes a '60s-era roadmap, with fold lines bisecting retro advertisements and gold stars indicating historical points of interest. The marks of a previous owner are also visible: bloodstains darken the corners, while mysterious hand-written notes dot the topography of New Bordeaux. For Cheever, creating a physical map allowed him to expand the city's boundaries, while rewarding players who study their map ahead of time. "I always believe physical stuff is great," he says. "If people can hold that in their hands, it bridges the identity of the game into their own physical life, versus just on the screen."
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/7562256976.jpg]
While Tunic may evoke the sense of flipping through a printed manual, Firewatch takes this idea one step further. Protagonist Henry navigates Shoshone National Forest with the help of a physical map and compass, which he holds up to the first-person camera in the manner of a protagonist in Far Cry 2. Far from being a finished document, Henry's map evolves over the course of a playthrough, whether he copies notes left by other fire lookouts or takes memos of his own. In an early scene, you're prompted to choose between naming a shale slide 'Cripple Gulch', 'Widowmaker', or 'Shitty Boss Is Going to Get Me Killed Hill'. Whichever you pick stays on the map for the rest of the game.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/1465246994.jpg]
"If you had to boil the game design of Firewatch down to one thing, it would be the same thing we did with the map that we did to basically everything else," designer Chris Remo says. "At any point, any narrative information can cause any other element of the game to change in any way, big or small." This reactivity permeates every aspect of Firewatch, from choosing between adopting a beagle or a German Shepherd, to the response from fellow lookout Delilah if you steal a teenager's boombox.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/5667574651.jpg]
For UI and level designer Jake Rodkin it was important that players of Firewatch felt a personal connection to the story, and had the sense of owning of their experience. "In a lot of these [narrative first-person games], you as the player are a narrative archaeologist," he explains. "You start with a blank map: it's not that you're given the map of the old ranger who lived there and you're uncovering their notes. As you play through the story, you're making an impact on the map: you being here mattered."
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/8269566264.jpg]
Exploring Firewatch's wilderness can be slightly overwhelming at first. Just as in Tunic, there's a player icon on the map, but where Shouldice leaned away from landmark-based navigation, Campo Santo allows you to toggle this marker off, relying solely on your map and compass. It's a particularly adventurous option given the game's forest setting, where clearly delineated paths aren't occurring naturally.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/5656749212.jpg]
During development, multiple passes and extensive playtesting were required to ensure environments were parsable. But not too much: Campo Santo wanted to make the game's space - which is roughly comparable to a theme park in its scale and density - to feel bigger and more wild than it truly was, Rodkin explains, deploying atmospheric "tricks", "cheaty" sight-lines, and a slow walking speed.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/6295689162.jpg]
"There are wilderness areas in [real] life where you could have no idea where you're going and get completely lost, even with a map," Remo notes. "We still wanted it to feel like you could sort of bumble your way through it. You'd eventually end up somewhere, even if you weren't glued to the map the whole time. Rodkin argues that getting a little lost is part of the fun. "You're supposed to feel like you're hiking in unfamiliar territory," he says. "We trusted that [players would] be hugging the map more in the early game and by the late game, they wouldn't need it."
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/9284619614.jpg]
For Remo, Firewatch's map serves a different function to the traditional pause-screen approach, describing its purpose as "half wayfinding and practicality, and half tonal and emotional". Rodkin agrees, noting that the focus and simplicity of Firewatch made its map easier to implement than it would have been in an open-world game such as Marvel's SpiderMan. "That map of New York City is almost like opening Yelp on your phone - and I don't even mean that a bad way," he says. "It's true that it's not very immersive, but that's because it's almost like: what experience do you want in this city next?"
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/5665812625.jpg]
But what if you're building an entire city and a fictional one, at that? For Mafia III's New Bordeaux, developer Hangar 13 drew heavy inspiration from the architecture, culture and unique layout of New Orleans. A plan was established based on a "memory map" of the city, focusing on iconic areas such as the French Quarter, before folding in narrative and historical elements to give each district its own distinctive character.
Some historic New Orleans landmarks were recreated wholesale, while others were altered to work within a game, such as a narrowed Mississippi River. Neighbourhoods were built around hubs - distinctive landmarks, prominent crossroads - with class and cultural divides carefully mapped out. All the while, developers needed to ensure that distances between key locations were carefully calibrated to ensure the game would feel right in play. "If you make the game world too tight, with too [many] high-interest points, it's going to turn into a cartoony theme park," Mafia III lead world designer Nathan Cheever says. "You want people to be engaged - especially in a driving game. But you need to have that flow of 'here's something cool; now there's generic urban building areas that aren't too interesting"."
The in-game map for Mafia III was created in the vein of those in Ubisoft action-adventure titles, with colour-coded mission markers displayed over a top-down view of New Bordeaux. For Cheever, this type of map functions as a sort of visual checklist for players; he describes it as a "cornucopia candy store of everything you can do in the game". While he acknowledges the functional aspect of this approach, allowing players to see what they can do there before investing time in travelling, Cheever praises the more minimalistic approach taken by Red Dead Redemption 2, as well as Elden Ring's more hands-off approach to guiding players through its massive world. The latter game in particular, he says, "swung the pendulum back to: pay attention to the world that's in front of you, and you will discover things as you explore".
Currently working on an MMO with Tencent's Lightspeed LA studio, Cheever finds himself tackling these open-world design issues yet again - the biggest of which he considers to be the genre-standard minimap. Mafia III implemented pop-up road signs as a diegetic substitute for its minimap GPS system, but the problem extends beyond just waypointing. Cheever uses the example of evading hostile police: how would a player track their locations behind a building without a minimap? X-ray vision in the style of the Arkham series presents one solution, but that doesn't necessarily fit into the context of every game. "It's very hard to do a realistic game that doesn't have a lot of weird vision modes, and doesn't have a minimap. How do you keep the player invested in the world itself, not [playing] the minimap game? How do you get the information the minimap is telling you from a top-down view that would be really informative to your immediate space?" Perh...
The shadow of the original Legend Of Zelda falls heavily on Tunic. Two titles separated by over 36 years and six console generations, yet both drawing from a shared source of inspiration: the joy of childhood exploration. Growing up, Tunic developer Andrew Shouldice would map the woods near his grandmother's house, drawing everything from a hill of fire ants to a secret entrance to a waterfall. "It wasn't about being accurate, it was about understanding how the spaces were spatially related," he explains. "A map is a cool artefact to have."
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/5226155156.jpg]
Maps have long been an intrinsic part of video games, from old-school dungeon crawlers which forced players to draw their own by hand to strategy guides published in the likes of Nintendo Power. We primarily think of them as navigational tools, something to ensure the player doesn't stray too far from the beaten path. Yet our relationship with in-game maps is evolving, perhaps best illustrated by the heavily stylised maps of open-world luminaries Breath Of The Wild and Elden Ring, departing from traditions long established by their genre stablemates. Developers and fans alike are taking notes, exploring both how maps can be used to increase our immersion within a virtual world, and remind us of treasured journeys.
Shouldice has fond memories of poring over game manuals as a child, analysing diagrams, bestiaries, maps and item descriptions. "It makes it feel like a living, breathing place," he says. "Your imagination could run wild." Every aspect of Tunic's world was designed to evoke this sense of wonder, from the isometric perspective that allows Shouldice to squirrel away secrets in every nook to the enigmatic notes scribbled on its maps that hint in their direction.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/6966255676.jpg]
Shouldice wanted players to feel the right amount of lost in Tunic, particularly during the game's map-free opening section. "There needed to be a lot of really deliberate landmarks that were unique and eye-catching, so that people could even without a map find their way." Indeed, Tunic was originally designed without a player icon on the map, in line with its presentation as a physical object, leaving players to orient themselves using landmarks. "The old-school approach of 'You need to do a little bit of cartography or landmark-searching to figure out where you are on the map' is interesting, but in the end, I think it was the right choice," Shouldice says. "One, to make the map more useful, just as a nice thing for players. Two, to teach the player that the manual itself is important."
SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES
In Carto, a unique approach is taken to the concept of an overworld map, the world divided into a grid so players can rearrange its tiles in order to solve puzzles, an experience equally reminiscent of both tabletop games and classic LucasArts adventure games. "I like to play jigsaw puzzles," director Lee-Kuo Chen says. "I feel like it's part of our nature to want to assemble things." For Chen, the appeal of studying a game map and navigating using landmarks is similar to the childhood joy of scavenger hunts. "I like games that trust players' ability to explore the world by themselves," he says. "It probably doesn't work for some games, though Carto isn't a huge world, so it's easier for us to do."
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/5546569545.jpg]
Meanwhile, map fragments themselves are often encountered out of order, teasing as-yet undiscovered landscapes or aspects of familiar haunts that were missed the first dozen times through. "I very much cherish the idea of handing the reins over to the player when it comes to deciding what they want to do, and how they want to approach problems," Shouldice says. "The idea of 'I might get lost', or 'I need to go on a dangerous journey' - a map being an important part of that, and having the player choose to use it as a tool, boosts the value of that experience."
Maps were drawn directly over screenshots of completed levels, but Shouldice intentionally limited detail in certain areas. "If you have a map that you know is completely perfect, then you don't need to ever worry about cartography or getting lost," he explains. "But if it instead is a projection of the world, or an abstraction of it to some degree, then you as a player need to actively engage your cartography brain to map this thing onto the real world. That is appealing and satisfying to me."
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/4996759914.jpg]
HAND IT OVER
The map that shipped with physical editions of Mafia III strongly evokes a '60s-era roadmap, with fold lines bisecting retro advertisements and gold stars indicating historical points of interest. The marks of a previous owner are also visible: bloodstains darken the corners, while mysterious hand-written notes dot the topography of New Bordeaux. For Cheever, creating a physical map allowed him to expand the city's boundaries, while rewarding players who study their map ahead of time. "I always believe physical stuff is great," he says. "If people can hold that in their hands, it bridges the identity of the game into their own physical life, versus just on the screen."
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/7562256976.jpg]
While Tunic may evoke the sense of flipping through a printed manual, Firewatch takes this idea one step further. Protagonist Henry navigates Shoshone National Forest with the help of a physical map and compass, which he holds up to the first-person camera in the manner of a protagonist in Far Cry 2. Far from being a finished document, Henry's map evolves over the course of a playthrough, whether he copies notes left by other fire lookouts or takes memos of his own. In an early scene, you're prompted to choose between naming a shale slide 'Cripple Gulch', 'Widowmaker', or 'Shitty Boss Is Going to Get Me Killed Hill'. Whichever you pick stays on the map for the rest of the game.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/1465246994.jpg]
"If you had to boil the game design of Firewatch down to one thing, it would be the same thing we did with the map that we did to basically everything else," designer Chris Remo says. "At any point, any narrative information can cause any other element of the game to change in any way, big or small." This reactivity permeates every aspect of Firewatch, from choosing between adopting a beagle or a German Shepherd, to the response from fellow lookout Delilah if you steal a teenager's boombox.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/5667574651.jpg]
For UI and level designer Jake Rodkin it was important that players of Firewatch felt a personal connection to the story, and had the sense of owning of their experience. "In a lot of these [narrative first-person games], you as the player are a narrative archaeologist," he explains. "You start with a blank map: it's not that you're given the map of the old ranger who lived there and you're uncovering their notes. As you play through the story, you're making an impact on the map: you being here mattered."
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/8269566264.jpg]
Exploring Firewatch's wilderness can be slightly overwhelming at first. Just as in Tunic, there's a player icon on the map, but where Shouldice leaned away from landmark-based navigation, Campo Santo allows you to toggle this marker off, relying solely on your map and compass. It's a particularly adventurous option given the game's forest setting, where clearly delineated paths aren't occurring naturally.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/5656749212.jpg]
During development, multiple passes and extensive playtesting were required to ensure environments were parsable. But not too much: Campo Santo wanted to make the game's space - which is roughly comparable to a theme park in its scale and density - to feel bigger and more wild than it truly was, Rodkin explains, deploying atmospheric "tricks", "cheaty" sight-lines, and a slow walking speed.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/6295689162.jpg]
"There are wilderness areas in [real] life where you could have no idea where you're going and get completely lost, even with a map," Remo notes. "We still wanted it to feel like you could sort of bumble your way through it. You'd eventually end up somewhere, even if you weren't glued to the map the whole time. Rodkin argues that getting a little lost is part of the fun. "You're supposed to feel like you're hiking in unfamiliar territory," he says. "We trusted that [players would] be hugging the map more in the early game and by the late game, they wouldn't need it."
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/9284619614.jpg]
For Remo, Firewatch's map serves a different function to the traditional pause-screen approach, describing its purpose as "half wayfinding and practicality, and half tonal and emotional". Rodkin agrees, noting that the focus and simplicity of Firewatch made its map easier to implement than it would have been in an open-world game such as Marvel's SpiderMan. "That map of New York City is almost like opening Yelp on your phone - and I don't even mean that a bad way," he says. "It's true that it's not very immersive, but that's because it's almost like: what experience do you want in this city next?"
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/TC3vM-UB11662979005506/5665812625.jpg]
But what if you're building an entire city and a fictional one, at that? For Mafia III's New Bordeaux, developer Hangar 13 drew heavy inspiration from the architecture, culture and unique layout of New Orleans. A plan was established based on a "memory map" of the city, focusing on iconic areas such as the French Quarter, before folding in narrative and historical elements to give each district its own distinctive character.
Some historic New Orleans landmarks were recreated wholesale, while others were altered to work within a game, such as a narrowed Mississippi River. Neighbourhoods were built around hubs - distinctive landmarks, prominent crossroads - with class and cultural divides carefully mapped out. All the while, developers needed to ensure that distances between key locations were carefully calibrated to ensure the game would feel right in play. "If you make the game world too tight, with too [many] high-interest points, it's going to turn into a cartoony theme park," Mafia III lead world designer Nathan Cheever says. "You want people to be engaged - especially in a driving game. But you need to have that flow of 'here's something cool; now there's generic urban building areas that aren't too interesting"."
The in-game map for Mafia III was created in the vein of those in Ubisoft action-adventure titles, with colour-coded mission markers displayed over a top-down view of New Bordeaux. For Cheever, this type of map functions as a sort of visual checklist for players; he describes it as a "cornucopia candy store of everything you can do in the game". While he acknowledges the functional aspect of this approach, allowing players to see what they can do there before investing time in travelling, Cheever praises the more minimalistic approach taken by Red Dead Redemption 2, as well as Elden Ring's more hands-off approach to guiding players through its massive world. The latter game in particular, he says, "swung the pendulum back to: pay attention to the world that's in front of you, and you will discover things as you explore".
Currently working on an MMO with Tencent's Lightspeed LA studio, Cheever finds himself tackling these open-world design issues yet again - the biggest of which he considers to be the genre-standard minimap. Mafia III implemented pop-up road signs as a diegetic substitute for its minimap GPS system, but the problem extends beyond just waypointing. Cheever uses the example of evading hostile police: how would a player track their locations behind a building without a minimap? X-ray vision in the style of the Arkham series presents one solution, but that doesn't necessarily fit into the context of every game. "It's very hard to do a realistic game that doesn't have a lot of weird vision modes, and doesn't have a minimap. How do you keep the player invested in the world itself, not [playing] the minimap game? How do you get the information the minimap is telling you from a top-down view that would be really informative to your immediate space?" Perh...
You're reading a preview of
Edge Uk (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2022