Week 6: Environmental storytelling

Module: GAR106 environment art 2

Brief: “Model, texture and present in UE5 a Victorian three-storey terraced building with a shop on the ground floor facing the street.”

House: Gryffindor

Plot number: 16 (corner)

Week six: Mon 27th Feb to Sun 5th March 2023

Environmental storytelling is the use of the environment in a game to aid in the narrative experience. It includes adding details to the environment that tell the player a story, whether that is the overarching story of the game or a smaller one, and it is a technique that makes a game world feel fuller and richer and encourages player exploration.

There are both macro and micro elements for effective environmental storytelling:

On the macro level, you have architecture and how your game world functions aesthetically, which informs the rules for environment designers when they build future levels and helps to define potential environmental interactions that can be included for the players. Architecture must remain consistent throughout the playable world, otherwise you risk breaking a player’s immersion in the world and story as an inconsistent environment can be jarring.

On the micro level, you have assets; these reinforce the narrative by either being active assets that a player can interact with to progress or passive assets that add visual clutter and sometimes narrative insight into the environment.

Collectively, environmental storytelling can be seen as an expression of ‘mise en scene’; this French theatrical term refers to the placement of all visual elements in front of the camera (the term translates to ‘placing on stage’). These elements include settings, props, costumes, hair, makeup, facial expressions, body language, lighting, colour, and the positioning of characters and objects within the frame.

For my shop, I knew that I wanted to go with an older looking design, not only to match the older Victorian theme of Diagon Alley as a whole but to also match the concept of my shop which was an antique shop. I utilized dark shades of wood to help make the exterior look more imposing and aged and added dark green moss to the window frames to hint at the idea of the wood being so old that it has started to rot. For the glass textures themselves on the windows and lanterns, I added layers of dirt for the same affect and created a stained-glass window texture in Substance Designer (the effect in Substance Painter wasn’t quite what I wanted so I had to go back to Designer) to add to the centre window as stained glass was a prominent feature in Victorian architecture throughout the 19th century and I felt that it added some extra charm to the design.

The sign, however, I kept as a lighter wood as well as keeping it clean as I felt that this would be a feature that the owner would replace frequently to convey that despite the exterior’s age, the shop was still open and functional. I also felt that having a dichotomy between an old antique shop exterior and a clean shiny sign added visual interest to the shop and overall made it more interesting.