How The Endings Of Journey And Inside Inspired A Late-Game Mechanic In Before Your Eyes

Before Your Eyes is a game that makes you blink as life flashes before your eyes. We’ve witnessed numerous moments in the life of a talented artist, and while there are a few twists along the way, one of its most effective mechanisms is the one outside the core blinking mechanism.

Spoiler follows.

これは、Before Your Eyes の特定のメカニックのネタバレなので、軽視してください。 目を閉じて、ただ聞く必要があります. ゲームプレイの変更は信じられないほど効果的で、新しい方法で物語に完全に集中する必要があります. 最近、ゲーム ディレクターの Oliver Lewin とクリエイティブ ディレクターの Graham Parkes に、Before Your Eyes のモバイル デバイスへの導入、Netflix への配慮について話を聞きました。その会話の中で、その特定のメカニズム、それがどのように生まれたのか、そしてなぜそれが高い賛辞であるかについて深く掘り下げました。あなたが作ったものが悲しいと言われます。

長時間目を閉じて聞くだけという仕組みですが、それはどのように生まれたのですか？

Lewin: 私たちは非常に長い期間をかけてゲームを開発しました。Graham の非常に早い段階でのことを覚えています。 [Parkes] I had the idea of ​​closing my eyes and getting a glimpse into another reality, hearing someone’s voice or something. .

So it was pretty late in the development cycle when we thought, ‘Oh, there’s a good place for a third act like that. I really wanted to change the pace of the game so that the time wouldn’t come when it would cascade down on you in uncontrollable ways. It’s about trying to embrace that stillness very intensely, and in the game sequences, you’re mostly in your bedroom, and you’re limited in that way.

With your eyes closed, you can peer into another place, another person, and another memory. It’s this kind of liberating thing that really upsets the pace of the game. This is one of the last new features added to the game.

Parkes: There was always something I wanted to do because it was so cool. As storytellers, when we close our eyes, we are in this very vulnerable state, very kind of… we close our eyes to pray. We close our eyes when we listen to music. We close our eyes to these more exalted moments.

Is there any idea that you could actually let players do that? It’s kind of this amazing way of forcing them to push themselves deep into themselves and go into that introspective place. I always felt that I had to find It’s so cool and magical. As Oliver said, it took me some time to find the right version.

I think I was also influenced by games like Journey and Inside. In Journey, I’m constantly struggling with how far I can fly, and if I always fly a little, I lose my cape and fall. And then just before the final chapter there’s a section where you can’t fly at all, and suddenly in the final chapter you’re given the ability to fly infinitely, and the whole mechanic is completely over your head and free.

The inside does the same. You have to run away from bad guys for the entire game and are completely defenseless. And finally, you suddenly go through a maddening transformation, suddenly gaining extraordinary powers, and instead of fearing others, everyone becomes afraid of you.

And you are afraid of you too.

Parks: Yeah, exactly. That game is amazing. What narrative games can do is they can reverse their own mechanics, especially if it aligns with the story’s goals. This really felt like the perfect reversal when I spent the entire game out of control. It’s just an accidental blink compared to when your eyes are closed. When you want to open your eyes is completely up to you. So suddenly it’s going to give you autonomy for the first time after getting rid of it for so long.

There was an iteration with it early in the game, and I realized, “Oh no, I have to take them all out and save them.” I try to keep my eyes open.

Why, from a creator’s point of view, saying “your game made me cry” is a compliment. Why does that make you proud?

Parkes: Well, I think it turned out to be really cathartic. I think that’s the original role of drama. It should be this space where you can experience hard emotions in a safe space. For us, I love art that makes me cry, makes me feel emotional, and takes me to places.

Also, as people who love the medium of this game so much, we always felt that more could be done. , why doesn’t the game try as hard to get a really strong response from people as the music does?” I felt that it was something that I could not see very often. I think it started happening more when we went to college. You started seeing games like Gone Home, and suddenly the indie-like moments really started happening.

But I think we still have that feeling too. In the same way, I want to know what I can do with media that other people aren’t doing. Because it’s all about the medium plus the secret sauce of this totally crazy thing, the player agency. I think for us, it’s also a love of the media and saying, ‘Let’s see if we can do something different with it.

You can read GameSpot’s review of Before Your Eyes by following the link.