Ryan Higgins
Level Design
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The Illusion of Larger Worlds
The goal of my thesis was to create a In the process of developing this project, I
narrative history appear to extend beyond storytelling, and narrative design, and
world where both physical space and
what players can interact with. For my
artifact, I created a massive underground
facility built within Fallout 4 aimed at
conveying the sense of a larger world.
In my level, players travel upwards through
a series of huge abandoned buildings.
These were once home to many dark
researched world building, environmental
sought to catalog my findings in the form of
a best practices list.
Two of my greatest takeaways for
effectively designing large worlds include:
•
experiments where researchers had
attempted to irradiate human subjects to
create beings of immeasurable power.
Players navigate the ruins of this facility
and must confront the remains of a
rogue branch of the brotherhood who are
attempting to restore and re-weaponize
these dark experiments.
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LEVEL DESIGN
Worlds should showcase their
connections, allowing players to
understand that a world is linked and
•
not separated into isolated chunks
Environmental storytelling can greatly
benefit from leaving room for players
to imagine and interpret scenes to tell
their own story.