Ta Exedore, how did the session go?
You mention flanking routes, if there’s one frustration of have with playing objective based games with some people is them often being too focused on the objective, often only taking the shortest path to it and ignoring the other routes.
Ditto with people not understanding the importance of high ground.
It will be interesting to see how this goes for Brink, there is of course the potential for it to be mitigated by the combination of people just wanting to try out the movement/climbing everywhere, and the fact that some routes are made for this.
The routes mentioned there being somewhat asymmetrical are really interesting, with previous games movement systems you could have a route one sided for a team (ie ramp from one side to a drop at the other), but with the varying movement of the body types you now get more options to how you want to set up the route/who you want to let through.
This year’s GDC Europe is fast approaching and Brink’s Lead Designer Neil ‘Exedore’ Alphonso has taken it upon himself to represent Splash Damage there as part of a panel about level design. Titled The Tao of Level Design: A Study of 3 AAA Games, the session will strive to find out just what makes an effective level designer. Neil’s panel-partners in crime will be EA DICE’s Elisabetta Silli and Remedy’s Mikael Kasurinen, and the three of them will be using Alan Wake, Mirror’s Edge and Brink as practical examples to share their advice with the audience.
