Earthly Gamma

Summer has a specific feel. Something quite additional to just the hard shadows and squinting brightness. Smell is a significant factor - the melting tarmac, the heightened pollution. The ambient sound also changes. Insects buzz, traffic noise somehow seems more prominant. Planes go over, patches of cloud push the earthly gamma slider around.

Games (thought I was straying there?) overstep or understate a good deal of the environmental sensory detail that's needed to create the mood for a scene. A summer atmosphere can evoke a lazy calm, or a heightened anger spurred by the heat. Winter; a whitened clarity, or a desperate foreboding maybe. So let's feel this in-game.

The best example of this I can think of was in San Andreas. I was knocked off my bike as I wheelied down my girlfriend's street - barged off the road, landing flat on my face. Standing up, shaken, I surveyed the area for the silver BMX. The sight before my eyes was one that was profoundly based on the environmental elements. The grass was long, neglected, blowing wavily around my knees. The low set houses, little more than shacks were mostly boarded up. A gun shot could be heard in the distance, and the heat haze blurred the cars at the junction up ahead. A perfect atmospheric composition. Even better is the level design to make your initial home where it is. My most distinct memory of San Andreas is riding across the train tracks on the main road near Carl's house, "Wrong side of the tracks" kind of symbolism immediately conjured. I'd bunny hop the curb to the gym in my wide jeans and white vest. Sandy buildings, contrasty shadows. That moment was hugely memorable. To me, it's what defines the game from it's predecessors. It was the authenticity of the setting - the economic but artful choosing of environmental detail.

The famous image of Stalker is the abandoned ferris wheel. Of course! What image could better connote the eerie, meloncholic emptiness of Chernobyl?

Don't confuse my point with something graphical - although these elements are graphically represented, it's the strategic and tactful choosing of these elements that makes effective environments. Summer is more than a fancy lense flare.