Throughout this blog, I will be analysing the level design of 'Securing The Lincoln Memorial' & 'Roosevelt Island Stronghold' inside The Division 2. This breakdown will cover key points on how The Division guides the player using push and pull techniques.
Before we continue, you need to understand why we guide the player through levels. This creates more satisfaction for the player while freeing up their concentration to allow a more immersive flow. Guiding the player should relieve them of some frustration and try to steer away from linear levels.
We will be looking at the six core push and pull techniques;
Drive with goals and narrative.
Facilitate Mental Mapping
Using the facilitate mental mapping technique allows the player to grasp a general idea of how a level is laid out and what their current position may be within that level. If this technique is implemented correctly, the player should make a simple educated guess on the given paths they need to take within the level, providing a less frustrating experience and planning out more advanced tactics.
Simplify
If you design a level by simplifying it, this can be a good starting point as it makes high-level layouts easy to understand. For instance, players don't need to have full knowledge of the design and structure of the level if they can identify important details like size, floors, the overall shape and access points.
Simple Geometric Shapes
Shapes like triangles, squares, circles and hexagons are beneficial starting points as they are accessible for the player to remember. For example, in the image below taken from The Division, you can see a corridor that uses a simple rectangle structure, allowing the player to grasp the scale of their environment while in an intense combat situation.
Symmetry
You can use symmetry to help identify more reference points. However, the drawback of using geometric shapes is that they can provide too much symmetry, making it difficult for the player to orientate themselves. The Division use symmetry well while the player is underground as the pillars act as cover, giving advantage points to the player, allowing them to plan their next move.
Recognisable Features
When you see stairs in any game, you are more than likely able to walk up to a new area or get to an advantage point, as that's how we would use steps in real life. In The Division, that's what you're able to do. The image below highlights the recognisable features as stairs that rise to an advantage point with cover before the player has to enter an intense combat situation.
Familiarity
This concept focuses on environments the player may be familiar with, making the layout easy to understand. In The Divisions case, they did this through a tree walkway as many players will have experienced nature walks in real life, TV shows, movies, and games. Not all these will have the same layout each time you see them but do provide standard components like linear trees and a path to allow the player to grasp the structure of this generic environment.
Creating A Scene Of Geography
Vantage Points & Overviews
Vantage points help provide a quick overview of the environmental layout, helping the player to try and make a mental map of all the connections within the area. This creates depth perception, giving the player a sense of scale and direction. For instance, in the image below, the player can see enemies between them and the door, but a pillar obstructs their sight, allowing them to piece together a mental map to plan the best course of action, whether it be loud or stealthily.
Landmarks/Weenies
Landmarks can also be helpful to create or expand the player's mental map, whether it be an object you've to travel to or not, or if they're a part of the narrative. They are a powerful tool to help guide the player as they act as links between what the player takes in from a vantage point and what they can experience after leaving the vantage point.
In the image below, you will notice The Washington Monument far in the distance of the player's view; this helps to identify one of the control points the player has captured or which need to be captured and can be seen as a safe space to upgrade your character if it has been captured.
Reference Points
As discussed above, landmarks help to orientate the player. However, reference points don't have to be as apparent as landmarks, as references can relate to the overall structure of an environment. For example, the image below highlights how the ground slopes up towards the Lincoln Memorial building, making it intuitive for the player to know whether they are getting closer to the object (up the hill) or heading away from the objective (downslope).
Influence Via Composition
The exciting thing about composition at any level is that it is sort of already established within people, as you don't need to provide any sub-text or convention for it to work, as Mateusz Piaskiewicz wrote. An article on 'Composition in Level Design' suggests that you don't have to adopt existing elements of nature or architecture. Still, Piaskiewicz compares a level designer to a painter and how the level is an art gallery and the level vistas as paintings, allowing the player to traverse from one composition to another.
Contrast
Colours with opposite characteristics contrast strongly when placed beside one another. In contrast, warmer colours tend to appear closer to one another to make the scene pop, than do colder colours which are more distant.
This can be seen strongly within the Roosevelt Island Stronghold mission as they use cold dark colours to set a cold, damp environment as the scene is placed beside the water at night time. However, they also use colours like red to pop out against the setting to show explosion able objects, along with yellow to indicate cover. The combination of cold and saturated colours helps the scene contrast with the environmental objects, giving the player a clear visual perspective of their surroundings.
Framing
Framing is used to help funnel the player into new areas, boss battles and intense situations. This is most commonly done using windows, doorways and tunnels but can also be much more subtle, like the silhouette of a tree, and this is precisely what The Division does: it uses a road of trees to funnel the player across the open forest, not making them question if they are on the correct path.
Lines & Curves
Lines & Curves help guide the player through the narrow spaces and ensure they travel within the correct direction. This can be seen within The Division as the players travel through an underground cave. They are guided with wire lights on the roof and boxes and shelves on the ground. This can be seen in the image below highlighted by the red marker.
Lure With Affordance
Perceived Affordance
Any type of element or object that communicates a type of interaction is perceived as having affordance. When something has an affordance, that object itself invites the player to interact with it in a certain way. This can be seen within the image below, where the player can walk over to a lift button with an up-facing arrow, telling the player they've to press the button to go up a floor.
However, suppose an object looks like it's meant to have a specific interaction but doesn't. In that case, this can create frustration and breaks suspension of disbelief as if a player should be able to vault over a low box but can't, or an enemy drops a weapon, and the player can pick it up, then breaks that affordances. Fortunately, I couldn't pick out anywhere within the level where The Division breaks its affordance with the player.
Lure to Mechanics of critical accordance & incentives
Gameplay mechanics can attract the player by their interactions, and if placed correctly, they can act as guides in cases where the structure of the environment may be too complex. The Division does this nicely through all their levels as they have loot boxes scattered smartly across the rooms on the player's main path, acting as breadcrumbs to highlight any unclear paths.
Communication through a language
Vocabulary
Vocabulary is used to improve the player navigation, giving them confidence that they understand the environment and highlighting key points within the scene. This is done through eight tools;
Aspect
Lighting & effects
Mechanics
Links
Metrics
Barriers
Modifiers
Feedback
If we look at Aspects and how the division has implemented this into their level.
Aspect
Aspect is when you give a specific element a unique look to help explain the visual language to the player. This can be done by using colour, and The Division makes good use of this by having;
Explosion canisters being red.
Self-healing being green.
Enemy dropping ammo being white.
Enemy dropping loot being purple.
Since so many games use this technique but have introduced many colours over the year, it's challenging to use colour conventions. Still, the developers at Ubisoft figured a way to use colours within their level early on to keep it consistent.
Show with UI elements & cut-scenes.
User Interface (UI)
The rest of the push and pull techniques were meant to allow the developers to avoid using UI, for the most part. Nevertheless, it is helpful to note that not all UI elements are harmful, especially in an open-world game like The Division. If these UI elements weren't introduced, the player would struggle to navigate the level based on player orientation.
Cut-Scenes
In relation to UI, cut-scenes shouldn't not be used as they can be a reliable tool to tell stories that people love to be a part of. However, inadequate use of potential cut-scenes ruins a fantastic game as you take control away from the player. In many new games being released in 2021, games have introduced cut-scenes that interact with the environment by still allow the player to have control just by changing their perspective.
The Division doesn't introduce any environmental cut-scenes within this level. Instead of having ones throughout the level that have put it at the end of the mission allowing the player to receive that player feedback that its time to start a new chapter of the story.
Beat Chart
If you watch the 'Securing The Lincoln Memorial' mission, you will see how the thirty minutes of gameplay has been placed into a beat chart. The beat chart allows us to see the intensity of the level as the player carries it out.
I noticed how the level was strongly focused around combat and didn't introduce unique scenarios for the player relating to the mechanics as every combat situation just revolved around the player shooting at the enemies.
Conclusion
At this stage, you should understand what some of the push and pull techniques are and how they've been used within games such as The Division to help guide the player through visually and narratively.
Therefore, this analysis will allow me to introduce these push and pull techniques into my pre-production document to help create a more immersive flow. One of the issues I will have to keep in mind when carrying out the pre-production is how I can use these techniques to reduce UI and how cut scenes shouldn't restrict the player and should emerge within the environment.
Helpful Links
Melendez, C., 2016. Clement Melendez. [online] Clement-melendez.com. Available at: <https://www.clement-melendez.com/portfolio/essays> [Accessed 5 October 2021].
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