Coherent World

Thats J. J Abrams talk on TED about The Mystery Box, this was shown in one of my Contextual Study classes and I completely agree with his take on mystery and how its being applied on movies and narratives. I personally think this idea of less is more or mystery almost like a recipe/ theory even to some of the best, most immersive games I've ever played and hopefully will be making in the future.

So I based my CS presentation based on this idea and how it can be applied to making coherent world in games.

I picked some games out, Shadow Of The Colossus (SOTC), ICO, Red Dead Redemption (RDR, Portal, Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas (GTA:SA) and Assassin's Creed (AC). All of these games shares a very detailed, fully immersive 3D environments, but at the same time, also very vague and mysterious in a sense; many of what you encounter are not explained, sometimes in the narratives and others in the gameplay itself.
Many things are just left there for the players/ audience to bump into/ encounter and then have their own idea and interpretation about it, in most cases this becomes 'viral' due to discussions on forums and word of mouth.

To explain this further, I singled out this brilliantly beautiful game called Shadow Of The Colossus.

The objective of the game is simple; hunt down 16 colossus in this beautifully immersive free-roam landscape, there no enemies along the way, no traps, nothing, just simply find and kill bosses quest, and all you're armed with is with a sword and a horse, it gets no simpler than that, mind you, it sounds boring from this description but it is truly one of the most interesting game ever made as will be explained further.

There are lizards around this 'world' you can explore, that you can kill, acquire its tail and eat it, which boost your stamina (stamina is used to climb, whether the bosses or the path leading to it, so the more stamina you possess, the longer you can climb without falling off). There are also fruits on trees that you can eat to increase your health points, so far none of this is ever explained in the game and is in no way needed for you to finish the game and thats fine. However, this is where it gets interesting, in the beginning, your character, Wander, came from an 'outside world', crossed a bridge and down a shrine into this 'secluded world' of SOTC. When you try going back up across the bridge you'll realized that its blocked and therefore you're stuck in this land for the rest of the game (a way of keeping the players in the area). However, you'll then realize that behind this shrine just below the bridge, there are walls that are climbable, but you haven't got the stamina to do so because it was too tall, this is when you realized, you can boost stamina from killing lizards and also bosses to get you strong enough to climb these walls, and when you did, you're rewarded with the strangest yet most satisfying thing ever.

The climb was intense and annoying every time you fall off and die but when you get to the top, you'll find a Secret Garden that got briefly shown at the ending of the game, again none of this so far was in anyway explained or even mentioned in the game. I could probably go on to talk about the narratives and other brilliant stuff from the game, but I think this garden proved my point. Getting to it leaves you with a sense of achievement, discovery, awe, but at the same time confusion and questions, now this is when players and audience start discussing about this in forums or by other means which made this topic a myth, a legend and most importantly a cult hit.

Similarly to this, all the other games above posses the same sort of mysterious traits as well. Sure, the right cultural reference and settings are really important in creating a believable world such as RDR (sets in the old west) or AC (sets in the Holy Land of Jerusalem and also Europe), but again for example in AC, Ubisoft threw in this Symbolism mystery about Apple of eden (Adam & Eve), politics, historical figures, which are all extremely very controversial and makes the players think and question many things. It doesn't matter whether its intentional or not, the key thing is to get players to start discussing about it (in a good way of course and not because the game/ movie is a so open to discussion because its a blank canvas) and that way, automatically immerse themselves in this story created not just by the developer but by players' imaginations. That is what I think creates a good coherent world.

In conclusion, yes, coherent world is made up of immersive, culturally accurate, detailed and believable visuals, but more importantly, it is open for discussions/ interpretations and memorable, more importantly its in your mind.