Brink Writer Reveals Eco-City Concept
Wants to "let players make up their own mind" about what's wrong or right.
Brink developer Splash Damage has been doing the rounds on Bethesda's blog lately, and today the game's Lead Writer Ed Stern reveals the process behind creating the story.
"We were making an action shooter, so we didn’t want to set it too far in the past (melee and magic) or too far in the future (lasers, which can feel like distance magic)," notes Stern. The team settled on an eco-city after reading up on Geoff Manaugh's bldblog and researching into the Santiago Calatrava, Patrick Salsbury’s Oceana and the Shimizu Pyramid among other things.
The eco-city in Brink is called Ark, and is the result of venture capitalists and eco-visionaries clubbing together to build "a floating habitat to showcase and further advance sustainable development; a zero-carbon, fossil fuel-free blueprint for future cities." That gave the studio a challenge in designing living quarters out of "Tetris-stacks of plain blocky shipping containers."
Speaking of the morality of the main characters, Stern writes that it was more interesting to let players decide which faction fought for a just cause. "We could have made it Hero Cops vs. Evil Terrorists, or Hero Freedom Fighters vs. Evil Stormtroopers, but it seemed much more interesting to let players make their own mind up about what’s taking place on the Ark."
"In the real world very few people agree entirely on what’s going on, who’s to blame and what should be done about it. Man is not a rational creature, but rationalizing. We come up with reasons why we’re right. So we decided to make the game world as various as the real world and let our factions be right (at least in their own opinion) and let the player decide what side they take."
All interesting stuff - we suggest you give the whole blog post a read to while away this rather sunny Friday afternoon.
"We were making an action shooter, so we didn’t want to set it too far in the past (melee and magic) or too far in the future (lasers, which can feel like distance magic)," notes Stern. The team settled on an eco-city after reading up on Geoff Manaugh's bldblog and researching into the Santiago Calatrava, Patrick Salsbury’s Oceana and the Shimizu Pyramid among other things.
The eco-city in Brink is called Ark, and is the result of venture capitalists and eco-visionaries clubbing together to build "a floating habitat to showcase and further advance sustainable development; a zero-carbon, fossil fuel-free blueprint for future cities." That gave the studio a challenge in designing living quarters out of "Tetris-stacks of plain blocky shipping containers."
Speaking of the morality of the main characters, Stern writes that it was more interesting to let players decide which faction fought for a just cause. "We could have made it Hero Cops vs. Evil Terrorists, or Hero Freedom Fighters vs. Evil Stormtroopers, but it seemed much more interesting to let players make their own mind up about what’s taking place on the Ark."
"In the real world very few people agree entirely on what’s going on, who’s to blame and what should be done about it. Man is not a rational creature, but rationalizing. We come up with reasons why we’re right. So we decided to make the game world as various as the real world and let our factions be right (at least in their own opinion) and let the player decide what side they take."
All interesting stuff - we suggest you give the whole blog post a read to while away this rather sunny Friday afternoon.
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