How Level Design Can Tell a Story

Imagine a version of Bioshock without cutscenes. Without Andrew Ryan’s bathysphere Powerpoint. Without Atlas yapping in your ear. And without those juicy audio diaries. Do you think players would still understand what the game was all about? Well, I think they’d actually have a pretty good idea. Because all you have to do is look at your surroundings. The game is set in a massive city at the very bottom of the ocean.

One clearly made for those in high society, considering the fancy bars, apartment complexes, and theatre districts. And it’s a place built on lofty philosophical ideals. But it’s also a place of ruin and despair. There was obviously a moment of downfall. Some people split into violent factions, and others just lost their minds. And this all went down on New Year’s Day, 1959. Bioshock is a wonderful example of how a game’s environment can be an effective method of storytelling.

And how embedding narrative elements into the very spaces and places that we visit throughout the game, can speak just as loudly as more traditional forms of storytelling. And that is exactly what this episode of Game Maker’s Toolkit is all about. In this video I’m going to focus on three ways that the environment can be used for storytelling - and talk about how level design can drive our understanding, feeling, and identity.

Starting, with understanding. So the signs, stiffs, and scribbles in Bioshock are examples of “environmental storytelling” - the use of set dressing to create small, optional, and self-contained vignettes. Like warnings written in blood, or the many, many skeletons in the Fallout games, who have been deliberately posed by the game’s designers to suggest humorous or melancholy ways that people have died. The term was first coined, as far as I can tell, by former Disneyland designer Don Carson, who wrote an influential article in 2000 about what game developers can learn from theme parks.

The term was then made even more popular in a GDC talk by Harvey Smith and Matthias Worch, where they described the technique as “staging player-space with environmental properties that can be interpreted as a meaningful whole, furthering the narrative of the game”. The cool thing about environmental storytelling is that it requires a certain level of deductive reasoning, as we connect up details to create an overall story.

We use investigative and archaeological skills to determine relationships, cause and effect, and history. This makes us an active participant in the storytelling process, and not just a passive viewer. Plus, if you just want to focus on the shooty stuff, you can do that without the story getting in your way. For the most part, environmental storytelling is about static objects - but it can also stretch to things like overheard conversations, animations happening in the level, and of course… text, in things like books, item descriptions, scans, notes, and emails.

And while it is generally used to describe what happened before you even got to a space, it can also be used as a way of highlighting how your actions have impacted the environment in the time since you visited. So if you kill a shop keeper in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, later in the game the shop will be a police crime scene, and then permanently closed to the public. It’s also worth noting that environmental storytelling isn’t just for narrative, but can have gameplay uses too.

A saw blade stuck in a sliced-up zombie suggests using these saws with your Gravity Gun to defeat enemies. An enemy fried on a fence warns us about the dangers of touching it. Maps and signage can help us navigate complex spaces. And props can suggest puzzle hints in a non-intrusive way. But here’s the thing. “Environmental storytelling” - if we’re using the term specifically to mean those micro-narrative vignettes - is just one part of a larger structure of using the environment to suggest narrative.

It’s the high level stuff. Below that, then, is the individual places in a game. You know, a farmer’s market, a bar, a medical pavilion, and a theatre district. And beyond that, the individual rooms in those zones. That’s the medium level, which might be most accurately called, well, level design. And this can also be used for narrative because things like architecture, layout, materials, and scale can tell us a lot about the people who use those spaces.

For example, in Dishonored 2’s Dust District, the level designers at Arkane use verticality to show how the working class are literally underneath the people in power. And the sheer opulence of Talos I in Prey tells a very different story about its use, compared to the more utilitarian Sevastopol in Alien Isolation. And this also provides gameplay hints, too: like in Lord Bafford’s Mansion in Thief, where all the gold is naturally found in the lord's chambers - but there’s little of value in the servant’s quarters.

By making the place a believable location, the player can use real-world knowledge to help orient themselves in the space. Of course, one big challenge of making spaces where people can actually live or work, is crafting locations that can actually logically exist with all the bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, and so on to support hundreds of people. I asked the IO Interactive designers about this when I did my Hitman 2 video and they said they focus on levels that are “credible”, which means the level meets your basic expectations for how a space works - but it doesn’t have to make perfect sense.

To finish off our pyramid, we need the low level - which is the overall setting of the world. This is world building, and is where the developers and narrative designers set things like the factions, the major plot points for the world’s history, and the main players in the story. All three parts of this structure should work in concert, and - ideally - ideas should echo up and down the stack. Here’s an example of that working in practice.

In Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the low level setting is a futuristic Prague where augmented humans face oppression from those without modifications. This is represented in the mid level by places like train stations with different cars for naturals and augs, and a slum-like city where augs are kept in dire conditions. And then the smaller narrative moments on the high level also talk about oppression and racism, though anti-aug graffiti, and emails about being kicked out of the capital.

Every level is talking about the same theme - from a grand, systemic level on the high level, to to more intimate and specific stories on the low level. Of course, easter eggs and moments of humour are fine too - but storytelling like this is at its best when all aspects are marching towards the same thematic goal. This can be quite challenging in practice because, on many large games, each level is looked after by a completely different person.

So it’s vitally important for teams to come together to make sure the vision is being shared across the game as a whole. So designers can use world building, level design, and environmental storytelling to convey literal and specific information about the world and its inhabitants. But, the design of a world can also be used in a more evocative and emotional sense. Game designers can use things like scale, shape, and colour to evoke certain feelings in the player.

Here’s Naughty Dog level designer Emilia Schatz talking about how she did this in Uncharted 4 EMILIA: “If i want to have the player feel triumphant at the end and scared towards the beginning, I might make the environment create a lot of pressure on the player. I might make the ceiling very low, might make the walls come in, so you feel tight and constrained. And eventually as we get to the end of the level, bring you out way into the open and give you this giant vista”.

The shape of the cave doesn’t give us any further understanding of the backstory in Uncharted. It’s just a cave, after all. Instead, it creates emotion - which helps the player better understand how the character is feeling. Here’s a good example of just that in the most recent God of War. The story beat is that Kratos starts to panic because Atreus has run off and may be in danger. Here’s how the designers manipulate the environment to ensure that you, as the player, also feel this sense of tension.

So, the space constricts to narrow pathways. There are dead ends, forcing you to turn around and backtrack. Your visibility is reduced thanks to a thick grey fog. And the final squeeze between rocks completely slows Kratos down. It’s only when you get through that the world opens up, the fog lifts, and colour returns, letting you know that Atreus is safe and that this mysterious person is probably not there to hurt you or your boy.

Or take the original Portal. The first half of the game takes place in a test lab, and the second half has you escaping from an evil AI and darting through a maintenance area. This dramatic shift in the game’s story is emphasised through all sorts of environmental choices. The lab is white, sterile, and lacking in detail. The maintenance area is bathed in warmer orange tones, and looks lived in and used. In a talk in 2017, former Crystal Dynamics art designer Brian Horton talks about this part in the Tomb Raider reboot.

At the start, Lara is low down, with the environment bearing down from above her. Everything is plunged in an ominous dark green colour. As you become level with the environment, the colours begin to lighten up. And then as you climb, you’re actually high above the level, and Lara is bathed in a warm, orange sunlight. Her journey of survival - from a point of despair to a point of hope - is emphasised through the level design.

As a practical method of achieving this, I want to point to a GDC talk by former BioWare level designer Dave Feltham who talks about two tools they used when making the levels for Mass Effect 3: Emotion Charts and Intensity Charts. So the level in question is set on the planet Tuchanka, and involves providing a cure for the Genophage - a biological weapon deployed against the Krogan. The level sees you landing at the hollows, driving towards the shroud tower, having your convoy get blown up, sneak through some catacombs, pop up in the city, take down your first reaper, and - well - I won’t spoil the mission anymore than that.

So the designers broke the level down into a bunch of sections. They then decided what theme needed to be represented in each part. And then decided what emotion the player should feel at that time. Finally, they used environment design to evoke those emotions. For example, in the pre-crash you should feel a sense of hope and confidence about defeating the reaper. So there’s a huge convoy of vehicles at your back to make you feel strong, and the Krogan are happily lazing about to suggest nonchalance.

After the crash, you should feel a sense of chaos. So there’s flames, explosions, and your convoy is destroyed. In the catacombs, you should feel a sense of mystery - which is driven by the statues and murals of ancient Krogan life, And then the triumphant reveal of the city is supposed to make you feel awe at what the Krogan empire grew to become before the Genophage. And make you feel guilty if you were planning to betray them.

The contrast from the dark catacombs to the open city emphasises the reveal. Finding the right environmental tricks to convey the necessary emotion can be tough, but here’s how a few other games have done it. Half Life 2 creates a feeling of oppression through claustrophobic corridors, tall buildings, cages, and security cameras. PT creates fear by asking you to repeatedly turn the same corner, but you’re never sure what will be on the other side.

It’s important to note that these environmental choices have to gel with the game’s mechanics, though. For example, in a horror game, darkness is obviously intended to evoke feelings of fear. But in a stealth game, darkness might actually provide feelings of power and safety. After picking the environmental details, BioWare uses intensity charts. Basically, the designers have a desired intensity level - hoping for low moments for story beats, and high moments for combat.

But this has to be checked against play-testers who describe how intense each area feels. If the chart is off, changes must be made. For example, the catacombs initially had enemies - but fighting monsters by torchlight was found to be extremely intense, and pulled away from the intended feeling, so the monsters were scrapped to bring the level in line. Also, a cutscene of friendly bombers was added on the road towards the reaper, just to give the player slightly more hope that they might win.

The ultimate goal for BioWare was to create a mission that matches a sort of typical three act structure. With rising action, a low moment of despair, and a final climb to victory. This three act structure is used wonderfully by 2D platformer Celeste, where the actual topology of your climb mirrors that graph. Level after level you climb higher up the mountain, hitting small set-backs and climb-downs but ultimately heading forever upwards.

That is until the stage Reflections which sends you plummeting back down to the base. The story’s lowest point is also the environment’s lowest point. If there’s one game that truly uses the environment to tell a story, though, it’s Journey. It uses moments when you’re climbing to evoke feelings of strength and progression, and moments where you’re plummeting down to create a sense of loss and hopelessness. And notice how the team at thatgamecompany uses colour to express different sensations - orange for the calm mystery of the desert, dark green for the spooky underground graveyard, white for the biting cold, and bright blue for the moment of rebirth.

This game doesn’t need any words to tell you what to feel, because the environment says it all. The final thing I want to touch on, is the way environments influence our identity. Video games typically put us into the shoes of a character, and ask us to perform as they would. As players, we’re constantly looking for clues as to what sort of person we are inhabiting, and what sort of actions will be expected, permitted, and punished.

Of course, the heavy lifting is done by the available mechanics, the way systems react to our choices, and our preconceived notions from the marketing and genre norms. But the environment can also play a large part in this. For example, in the original Bioshock I found it easy to murder people and steal from cash registers and safes. Whereas in Bioshock Infinite, i found these actions a lot less comfortable. A large part of this comes from the fact that Bioshock’s Rapture is in ruins, and the only people around are insane, bloodthirsty splicers.

Bashing their skulls in and looting everything I can fit in my pockets just makes sense. Infinite’s Columbia, on the other hand, is still a semi-functioning society when you get there, with working shops and innocent citizens. So violence and robbery just makes less sense in that environment. Back down on Earth, the Hitman developers use this technique to subtly explain how the world will react to your presence. It’s often pretty obvious which areas you can casually stroll into, because of our understanding of real-world social behaviours and rules.

This comes from a GDC talk by IO developer Mette Andersen who says “when we design these spaces, we’re designing rules of behaviour and we’re designing something that’s going to tap into your knowledge of ‘how should I be in this space?’”. Mette splits the world into public spaces, which are available from the get go and explorable in any costume. And private spaces, which require some ingenuity to enter, and a costume to stay hidden.

She then splits those further into sub categories, where social rules go from vague to strict. The best levels in Hitman, says Mette, incorporate a rich mix of these area types. So video game environments can be a staggeringly effective medium for storytelling. Whether they’re telling stories about events that happened before your arrival, giving clues about the people who live there, evoking emotions through architecture, or providing context for player identity, these spaces can speak volumes.

Let me know your favourite examples of storytelling through the environment, in the comments down below. Hi, thanks for watching. As you might have noticed, this is a re-uploaded version of a previous video. Unfortunately, that video was labelled as not age-appropriate, because of some of the examples I gave - and so the video had a big scary warning before you could watch. Ultimately, I want my channel to be accessible to as many people as possible, and so I’m going to work hard in future to make sure my stuff is suitable for a general audience.

I’m still going to talk about shooting people, because, hey, my channel’s about video games. But, still, I’ll take care not to slip into gratuitous depictions of violence and other icky stuff. If the original video made you feel uncomfortable, then I do apologise.