Further Notes on A Melding of Concepts

1up has posted an absolutely excellent interview with Prince of Persia devs Benn Mattes (producer), and Michael McIntyre (level designer). The interview is long, but covers a ton of topics, including interesting ideas on co-op design, and offers some truly great insight into the minds of these developers and the philosophy of Ubisoft Montreal. I would highly recommend reading the article. But for my purposes, the developers discuss at length the game's level design, which I also discussed in an article a couple of days ago.

Their explanations differ slightly from my own earlier conclusions, particularly the use of the term "linear," but I think the end result is the same. They explain themselves far better than I ever could, so. . .Commence Quotations!

Ben Mattes:
But not sandbox. We literally tried sandbox and it didn't work. We literally had level design that was fully beautified. It was shippable quality -- we had post effects, and everything was working in it. And we brought it to be playtested, and no one got any flow because they were overwhelmed with choice. You still had the ingredient-based controls: A to jump, B to swing off the ring. And yet they'd jump and land on a beam, and then they would just stop, because they didn't know, "Should I swing off of that pole or climb on that ledge or go over to that crack or climb up that wall or drop down to that beam?" So every step was slow, and we weren't getting that flow through the world that we wanted.

Michael McIntyre:
For acrobatics, we wanted them to be Prince of Persia-like, meaning they require inputs -- different inputs the whole way along, not like Assassin's Creed where you hold down buttons and you just flow and go. As soon as we knew we wanted that philosophy, the idea of an entirely open world wasn't working, so that was where we really had to decide to differentiate ourselves with a very controlled open world with a network of designed paths -- that's when things really started working for us on the design side.

Ben Mattes:
Yeah, when we made that decision to go to the network structure, everything just opened up to us. One of the great things about this network structure is I really believe we found the recipe -- I don't know if it's the only recipe, but it's a really good recipe -- for giving the player some of the freedom of an open world game, i.e., "Do I want to go there first or there first or there first?" putting a little more authorship into the hands of the player in terms of the experience they're going to have when playing the game, while maintaining the benefits of an on-rails, hold-your-hand linear game. Because we can more or less be guaranteed that every X number of minutes, you're going to have a relatively major set-piece type of experience, and you're going to encounter something spectacular, and we're going to push the story forward in an important way because of the way the world is organized.

We really think that fans of Drake's Fortune and God of War and Prince of Persia and all those linear action/adventure games who've never played a sandbox game, they're not going to walk into this game and suddenly feel overwhelmed by possibility, because they're still going to have the benefit of Elika's compass power, and the map structure, and the way the world is organized to have a more structured experience. But people who really like the sandbox games should hopefully feel like they're in control a little bit more, so they kind of get to dictate how the game unfolds -- and hopefully, they'll enjoy that element as well.

Interesting stuff, for sure. Ubisoft's priority was on retaining the spirit of Prince of Persia, which meant creating an environment that promoted acrobatic flow. The game hasn't come out yet, but based on everything I've seen and read, I think their final conclusion on level design will prove effective.

A Melding of Concepts

The battle of level-based versus open-world games has raged since the early days of video games. Mario and Sonic were level-based, but Metroid and Zelda featured worlds open for exploration. Indeed, the two game design models are engaged in a never-ending tug-of-war. A few years ago, the commercial and critical success of Grand Theft Auto 3 KO'd the long popular level-based design, decrying level-based games as "linear." In this generation, for a game to be called "linear" stands out as the worst form of sacrilege.

Meanwhile, open-world games were a fascinating new breed, unbound by the constraints of a level-based structure, allowing players to stretch their virtual arms and relish in the beauty of freedom, exploration, and choice. Games that relished in open-world design include Crackdown, The Incredible Hulk, and the Mercenaries series. But as the past-generation fades and the present hits its limelight, critics and game designers alike have bored gaping holes into the formally lauded open-world structure, revealing many pitfalls of its own. The tug-of-war continues, with both level-based and open-world games planting their feet firm before the mud-pit.
Ubisoft's Far Cry 2 was released only a couple of weeks ago, and the reception has been fairly split. Just look at Gamespy and Gamespot's catch-lines for their respective reviews of the game.
Gamespot's Shaun McInnis writes, "...Far Cry 2's first-person action squeezes every last drop of potential out of the unique African setting." Whereas Gamespy's Fargo writes, "Visually breathtaking and ambitious in scope, Far Cry 2 falls shy of it's amazing potential."
McInnis goes on to write, ". . .Far Cry 2's free-roaming terrain brilliantly harmonizes with the first-person combat." Fargo, meanwhile, writes, "The pacing of the game is way off. The majority of your time is spent driving to or from missions or safe houses or bus stops." And continues, "Far Cry 2 could've easily been a four-star game or higher if the focus would've been on the missions and not the travel."

Similarly, Chris Remo wrote an opinion piece about Far Cry 2 on Gamasutra, about authored narrative versus emergent narrative. Remo writes:

The game's persistent component parts feel designed to convey a convincingly (but not flashily) coherent world, but even more importantly to increase the chances of memorable things happening. [...] In fact, the game tries to define a set of rules and an environment in which memorable experiences are likely to happen, and simply lets the player loose in its world -- a fascinating prospect.

Clearly, people are of split opinion on open-world structure and of Far Cry 2 specifically. But each of these three commentators above make valid points. McInnis believes that Far Cry 2's open-world meshes well with its first-person-shooter gameplay. Fargo feels the open-world structure (of Far Cry 2, at least) creates a cohesive world, but is hindered by hideously repetitive sequences. Remo, on the other hand, is excited by the "prospect" of memorable, emergent gameplay scenes only made possible by the game's open-world. Who is right? They all are, really. But lets look at some more examples.
A game which eschews the open-world structure, soon to be released, is Blue Omega's Damnation. Damnation is a level-based third-person shooter which emphasizes verticality. In fact, the game is often marketed as "Taking the Shooter Vertical." Jacob Minkoff was interviewed a few months ago in Play Magazine. In the interview, he defends Blue Omega's decision to keep Damnation level-based in a time when both publishers and gamers seemingly refuse to invest in anything but open-world. And I think Minkoff makes something very clear: level-based is not synonymous with linear. Level-based games have accrued this stigma of linearity, which even itself isn't bad but has been painted black by critics and forum-goers. Even so, Minkoff explains why level-based games can be fun without being linear:

I sort of equate it to the idea of a three-year-old getting their own soda from the soda machine. I love coke, and I love orange, and I love lemonade, and I'm going to put them all together--but then, oh my god, I don't want to drink this! I think that's the feeling that occasionally happens, it's like, you want choice, well here you go. Here's every choice you could ever want. Well, now there are so many choices I don't know quite what to do. What we're trying to do [with Damnation] is find that balance. You've got choice. You won't feel trapped or claustrophobic or held down in the game, but you're not set adrift.

To achieve this, every level in Damnation has a clear objective in the distance. The player's goal is to reach that objective by any means necessary. In the same Play interview, Minkoff likens the concept to a famous trilogy: "Lord of the Rings is all about that. Tower, get to it."

Taking the shooter vertical is more than just a marketing line, its a design foundation. Blue Omega didn't want for Damnation to fall prey to the pitfalls of the open-world genre, but also wanted to avoid the negative perception of the dullness of linear progression, and so they designed with a mantra of interesting, tall level design. The levels in Damnation offer multiple routes for tackling situations; players have to be both observant and skilled to make the most of the environment. Additionally, players have access to a "spirit vision" or a self described "wall hack" which allows them to see the glowing auras of nearby enemies. Everything works hand-in-hand.

And this is really the core philosophy behind Damnation: The levels, platforming, shooting, spirit vision; everything was designed in unison to function cooperatively. The game wouldn't be the same in first-person; the freedom of platforming would likely be lost. Likewise, the game wouldn't be the same with an open-world structure. You're probably thinking by now, "Well of course; that's obvious." Is it? The only reason it seems obvious is because Blue Omega designed a cohesive structure. They could have just as easily tried to fit Damnation into an open-world structure, but as is, the attempt would have failed. The point is that neither level-based nor open-world is "the right way." Both offer their own opportunities and limitations. Good design is taking advantage of either form and building a game to mesh with the chosen structure.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Another platforming game soon to be released is Ubisoft Montreal's Prince of Persia. Unlike Damnation, Prince of Persia takes place in an open-world. But just like it would be incorrect to label Damnation as linear, it would be unwise to label Prince of Persia with all of the negative connotations recently associated with the open-world structure. In an interview with IncGamers, Thomas Delbugeut explains PoPs unique structure:

Granted, there are a lot of things that are different about this Prince of Persia – the prince is completely different, the atmosphere is completely different – but we wanted to keep all the core elements that make it Prince of Persia. We lost most of that trying to incorporate an open world structure. So we went back to the drawing board and created more of a network thing, which allowed us to get more of those step-by-step sequences. It was a lot more interesting and ended up giving us the game we have now.

A network. Not open-world, not level-based, a unique approach to level design. In a Developer Diary, Producer Ben Mattes describes the structure "with an analogy" of a highway system, wherein players choose different routes connecting various cities in the world. As with Damnation, the routes are specifically designed to function with the Prince's acrobatic abilities and powers. Wall-runs, slides, pole hugs, shimmy's: sounds linear, doesn't it? But Montreal has in-fact (presumably, of course) completely avoided the stigmas of both level-based and open-world structures by merging the two forms. It's worth noting that Prince of Persia is different from open-world games such as Mercenaries 2 or Far Cry 2 in that it's not focused on emergent gameplay situations. But that's actually the beauty of the design. Prince of Persia is about scripted gameplay sequences; it's a puzzle-platformer. But by opening up the world halfway with a split-path structure, Ubisoft has avoided any prospect of being undermined as linear.
There's one more game coming out this winter that forgoes open-world structure for straight-up level-based gameplay. Not to say it's linear, either. I'm talking about Mirror's Edge, the first-person parkour game developed by DICE.

Chris Remo (again) recently interviewed Mirror's Edge producer Nick Channon for Gamasutra. In the interview, Channon discusses the philosophy behind the game's structure:

I think it's just looking at what you've got, looking at where your strengths are in your game, and in your mechanics, and building the levels out around it. And the fact that we could've gone open world, we could've made a game that felt very open, but we went for a more linear story, and we went for a more level-based game -- and the reason for that was that we wanted to pack as much action in as we could.

As soon as we'd have gone open world, I think that would've watered it down. So I think that was one learning, in the fact that a lot of people think, nowadays, that open world's the way to go, and it's the next-gen thing -- I don't think I believe it is.

It's clearly right for some games, absolutely, but you can actually get a lot more in, at times, in more of a level-based [game].

Channon hits the nail on the head. Open-world structure is right for some games, but it wasn't right for Mirror's Edge, and DICE realized this. DICE had goals, priorities. And like Blue Omega has also done, Mirror's Edge has been designed for every aspect to work cooperatively. Something I didn't mention earlier, Ubisoft didn't feel the open-world structure catered to the intense, one-on-one fights that were to take place in Prince of Persia; they weren't making Dynasty Warriors, and they knew it. So Ubisoft designed the world alongside the combat structure, so the two fit together like a nice little puzzle. In a similar manner, DICE had certain things they wanted to accomplish with Mirror's Edge, among them being a strong, linear narrative. And to achieve this, they designed the game with levels, because they felt it fit their intentions and motivations. But a linear narrative does not mean linear levels. Far from it. In the same interview at Gamasutra, Channon expounds upon the above statement.

You have to give a choice; it can't be just, 'Do this, do this,' you know. And that's what we've done: We've built every level out to have lots of choice, and I think the thing that we're really pleased about is that, actually, the amount of choice in every level is just limited to your imagination. Which really plays in the movement, and the parkour elements that we talked about.

You see what Channon is saying? Level based. In part to help the narrative, but still offering freedom of movement, split-second, instinctive choice, to complement the fast-paced action. Additionally, DICE has consistently said that they want the levels to be replayable. How many times have you played the demo? Exactly. Much like time trials in racing games, the levels in Mirror's Edge are intended to be played again and again, encouraging players to find, and successfully perform "that perfect run."

Here is the point of my rabble: it's about the design. Level-based, open-world, a mix of the two, they're all correct so long as the game is designed from every perspective, every facet, ever aspect to work cooperatively as one cohesive unit. Far Cry 2 was designed open-world to keep player's immersed in the illusion and to encourage experimentation with the nigh infinite weapons and approaches available to any given situation. Damnation promotes experimentation with approach as well, but in a completely different manner with a level-based, vertically oriented structure. Prince of Persia blends the benefits of both worlds to maintain its puzzle platforming gameplay without feeling overtly linear. And Mirror's Edge focuses high-speed action within a linear narrative by offering split-path levels.

The tug-of-war between the the two sides is likely to continue, but we're also starting to realize that both approaches offer plenty of opportunity for effective gameplay scenarios if designed properly.

Update: Mirror's Edge Discussion Continued Here.

Tomorrow: Linear is Fun

Sources:
Sonic and Knuckles from Neoseeker
All other images from Gamespot

Seamless Presentation

When Michelangelo sculpted The Pieta, he chose to make the figure of Mary larger than that of Jesus. This decision by Michelangelo was that of a specific presentation. Michelangelo is showing Mary as prominent over Jesus, literally, through her size. This unique presentation of a classic Biblical relationship leads admirers to reflect upon The Pieta's meaning and the significance of Michelangelo's decision.Game design encompasses the same issues of presentation and meaning. Like sculpture, painting, or music, game design is an art open to possibilities and options. Presentation is one aspect of design that is increasingly paramount in importance, and only limited by designers' imagination in terms of all the forms it can assume. As with all aspects of game design, a game's presentation must be designed in cooperation, or along with, the remainder of its elements. While there are countless ways of presenting information to players, the zeitgeist of gaming is shifting towards a more seamless approach. This shift reflects the western gaming culture's expectations of next-generation gameplay. Seamless presentation, as opposed to other approaches, is unique in its pursuit of an ideal immersive gameplay. These terms are synonymous; the choice to present a game seamlessly is the desire to create a highly immersive gameplay experience. Seamless presentation is by no means the be all, end all, of game presentation, but it is certainly a viable approach that is rapidly becoming more and more popular in the design community.

But what exactly are designers looking to present anyway? The answer is everything. For truly, presentation is a continuum. For the purpose of discussion, though, I've divided presentation as a whole into three parts: information, theme and story, and interaction. I will briefly discuss each of these points individually, then expound upon these basic explanations with specific examples from modern video games. As rivulets flow together to form rivers, once these three elements are presented in a similar seamless manner, they mesh and cooperate with one another to create a whole, immersive gameplay experience.Players need information to play a game. The style of presentation is the form in which any given information is fed. The most common form of information conveyance is the HUD, or heads-up-display. Generally, the HUD includes things like resource statistics, the ammo of a firearm, or the health of a character. And even simple information like these can be presented in varying forms. Take for example a vehicle's speed in a racing game. Designers can choose to feed this knowledge to players with a speedometer, or through a more simple numerical count.

But rudimentary information is not all that needs presenting to players. We all know games are more than just lives and top scores. Games evoke emotion. They have stories and plot lines and themes. Games have characters, landscapes, and environments. All of this must be presented to players. The original format for story presentation was the text-scroll. “All your base are belong to us” was as effective as it got back then. But technology has improved. And with it, game design. Since the days of text-scrolls, the continuous arrival of superior technology has inspired new opportunities for different kinds of presentation. The next-gen systems offer previously impossible or unavailable possibilities. Seamless presentation is profiting the most from these advancements.

The last area of presentation is interaction, which many would likely argue is the largest contributory element to gameplay. The presentation of interaction refers to how, or in what ways, players effect, manipulate, or respond to a game through control. Video games have always been about interaction. But just like other aspects of the medium, interaction can be presented in various ways. As we delve deeper into the next-generation of video games, a more immersive seamless approach to interaction is beginning to take hold.
The HUD or user-interface has been around since games were invented, but video games are increasingly presenting this very same information in a more seamless manner. One example is Lionhead Studios' Fable 2. The game is yet to be released, but already it is apparent that most everything the RPG has to offer will be presented with immersive gameplay in mind. This presentation includes seemingly basic information like player location and navigation. In Fable 2, players assume the role of young boy during his growth into hero or villain. During the game, players are accompanied by a pet dog to train, play, and fight with. The dog is more than just some superficial addition; governed by complex artificial-intelligence, dog and player can complete realistic and intelligent interactions. In his 2007 Game Developer's Conference presentation, Peter Molyneuax, head of Lionhead Studios and lead designer of Fable 2, demonstrates and discusses the dog as a functional aspect of gameplay.

“We ask what is his job here. What sort of gameplay can we get out of this dog? His job at this stage, he stays in front of me. That's very important. Quite often with co-op characters in games they stay to the side of you, or behind you. He's in front, he's scouting, he's looking for treasure, he's looking for new things. That's very important.”

“You'll notice that something is missing in this [television] screen. And what is it? It is, it used to be here [pointing to the top-right of the game screen], the mini-map. God I hate that thing. I hate the fact that in Fable 1, you could play the whole of Fable 1 with the mini-map. The millions of pounds and hundreds of hours of work that we put in the world were worth nothing cause you were playing the whole thing on the mini-map. Can we get rid of that mini-map? Can't he be your guide [pointing at the dog]? When you come to a junction like this can he point you down there? Now he's not a complete solution, but he's a partial solution.”

The mini-map is a standard piece of game presentation. It shows players their relative position, their surroundings, and usually their destination as well. And it serves these purposes nicely. But as Molyneuax suggests, the mini-map is so convenient, it actually interferes with a players' immersion in the game world. The dog in Fable 2 achieves the same purposes as the mini-map, but presents them in a much more seamless fashion. Instead of a mini-map showing a bird's-eye view of nearby paths, the dog will run ahead of players and actually trace the paths out and, to the best of the AI's knowledge, dynamically lead players to their destinations. Moreover, the dog, being a dog, has heightened senses and will recognize the presence of nearby enemies, and as any good hunting dog would, will bark and alert players to their presence. This is contrasted with red dots representing enemies on a circle in the corner of the screen. The dog is just one example of Fable 2's seamless presentation. The dog immerses players in their surroundings through player-interaction and the emulation of a real-life creature. At the same time, the dog is seamlessly presenting to players vital gameplay information with its behavior.

A second game offering seamless presentation of information is Valve's soon to be released Team Fortress 2, an online-multiplayer first-person-shooter. Team Fortress 2 is all about class-based team competition; players join opposing teams to fight as any of nine different character classes. Each class plays differently, possessing several inherent strengths and weakness that deign them either prone or resilient to other character types. Therefore, it is essential that players immediately acknowledge who are their allies and also who are their enemies. Team Fortress 2 is a fast paced game, players need to process player-class identity quickly to tactically adapt to any situation. To achieve this end, Valve employed a unique, pervading art direction which was fully-integrated with gameplay. In an “illustrative rendering” video featurette, a Valve team-member discusses the art design of Team Fortress 2:

“Through very intentional art direction, this goal was supported by designing characters with distinct silhouettes that can be easily identified even with no lighting cues. The body proportions, weapons, and silhouette lines were explicitly designed to give each character a unique silhouette. In the shaded interior areas of the characters, the clothing folds were designed to echo silhouette shapes in order to emphasize the silhouettes as observed in the commercial illustrations which inspired our designs.”
The individual character models are directly incorporated into the game world and gameplay, making for a seamless presentation of meaningful information. This art direction is not limited to characters alone but is indeed applied to the game's entirety, including an allowance for quick discrimination of team color and map location:

“For the architectural elements of the world associated with each of the two teams, we defined specific contrasting properties. While the red teams architecture tends to use warm colors, wooden materials, and angular geometry, the blue teams buildings are composed of cool colors, industrial materials, and orthogonal forms.”

By designing gameplay around a united art direction, Valve is immersing players more fully into Team Fortress 2. Valve's greatest achievement is their integration of gameplay with visuals. Every aspect of the game works in concert to both immerse players and give them the information they need to play well.

As we discussed before, information is only one area of game presentation. Our second type is equally important: theme and story. An excellent example of this is Shadow of the Colossus, an action-adventure title designed by Fumito Ueda and developed by Sony's SCEI studio. Shadow of the Colossus is about self-discovery, and more importantly, is about self-discovery through gameplay. Several themes are presented to the player via seamless means; among these are solitude and compunction.

In Shadow of the Colossus players become a man known only as “Wander.” The player's only mission is to resurrect a girl named Mono. To complete his quest, Wander must destroy sixteen different colossi, gigantic living stone creatures. With the help of a horse named Agro, players explore and traverse an expansive world to individually locate and defeat each beast.
In their search, players are meant to feel alone, isolated. In addition to the main character's name, Ueda presents this isolated feeling in a few ways; all of which are very simple but highly effective. In all of the game world there are only two characters aside from Wander and Agro. This in itself makes for a feeling of loneliness, being unable to interact with other people. A second effect is the size and desolation of the game landscape. Wander is dwarfed not only by the colossi but by the environments as well. The environment is constructed largely of big rock cliffs and deep, long valleys, presenting to players a sense of barrenness and emptiness. The third technique is silence; there is never music playing while Wander and Argo are traveling the land. Only the sounds of hoof beats and wind are emitted. These elements of desolation are naturally integrated into the world, seamlessly presenting a feeling of isolation to players.

Another game that has fantastic presentation of story and theme is Irrational Games' (now known as 2K Boston) recently released BioShock. BioShock takes place in desecrated underwater city called Rapture. What was intended to be a paradise has been destroyed by greed and madness. During their exploration of Rapture players must find a way to survive while searching for the reason behind the city's fall.
Players are wholly immersed in the world of BioShock. Visually, aurally, and interactively, players experience Rapture as if it were real. The story is presented to players primarily through audio-clips, being one of the most advanced pieces of technology available to Rapture. These audio logs were recorded by individuals of Rapture and are strewn throughout the game world, waiting to be discovered on desktops, dead-bodies, and enemies. Players are able to play each tape they find and as they do so learn more and more about Rapture's history. The varying denizens of Rapture offer differing accounts and perspectives of the city, allowing players to formulate their own opinions. This piece of story presentation is both functional and natural, immersing players in the game world while at the same time conveying necessary and interesting information about it.

As players explore Rapture they discover the primary theme of BioShock: no place is perfect for everyone, there is no eden for all. Players realize this theme through personal experience simply by walking through Rapture . Rapture is falling apart, ethically societally, and literally. Rapture was built to last forever, underwater and separated from other imposing societies. But in the cities negligence and metaphorical implosion, the beauty that was has been all but destroyed. Statues of grandeur once lining the walls are now nothing more than heaps of broken stone. Paintings are torn, wood is splintered and burning, the entire city feels forsaken. Even worse, the walls are leaking. No matter how well contained they build Rapture there will always be leaks.
The world of Rapture and this play experience serves to reflect the game's themes. Levine and the team at Irrational Games are presenting to players a world of moral corruption by allowing them to directly and representationally experience the effects of Rapture's greed. BioShock immerses players in Rapture with immaculate graphics and sound effects, seamlessly presenting players the story of Rapture and the themes and messages meant to be taken away.

The final point of seamless presentation is interaction. One title that has become very popular this past year exemplifies seamless interaction quite well: Wii Sports. Nintendo's Wii was specifically designed to be highly interactive and Wii Sports takes advantage of this goal quite well. Wii Sports is actually five games in one, featuring simulations of sports titles tennis, golf, boxing, bowling, and baseball. While some of these simulations are more successful than others, they all were designed with the same principle in mind: immersive interaction. With Wii Sports, Nintendo is presenting an alternative to analog sticks and buttons; they are presenting interaction that is more involving and in effect more seamless in its emulation of real-life activities.
In the tennis side of Wii Sports players swing the Wii remote as if it were an actual tennis racket, and similarly in baseball mode, swing the controller like they would a bat. In golf, players tee-off and putt as if holding a club. The remote becomes a virtual ball in bowling. And in boxing players grip and punch the nun-chuck and remote like they are truly throwing hooks.
Naturally, each of these games require different input methods or swings to play. But Nintendo designed the game to be simple renditions of each sport. Nintendo chose to present the games such that players can intuitively grasp the means of interaction. A controller pad as an interface does little to imitate playing tennis; swinging a remote, however, is physically fairly close to actually swinging a racket. By closely emulating reality, and requiring more active input on part of players, Wii Sports avoids the seams of button configurations and instead allows players to become immersed in their gameplay experience.

My final example of seamless presentation, and of seamless interaction, is Okami. Okami was released this time last year and developed by now disbanded Clover games. Players of Okami become sun goddess Okami Amaterasu in the form of a white wolf. The fantasy world of Okami has been invaded by a demon named Orochi and infested with a dark substance, polluting the land in a purple haze. Like Team Fortress 2, Okami was designed with very distinct, pervasive art direction inspired by the sumi-e painting style. The world's landscape is like a painting of its own, formed of large brush strokes and colored with pastels. Amaterasu exists in a living painting. Though this is cool in itself, the amazing thing about Okami's art style is how it crosses the gap from being purely aesthetic to wholly interactive.
As Amaterasu, players possess whats called a celestial brush that allows them to interact with and directly effect the game world. By holding R1 the screen becomes a canvas for painting. Manipulating the face buttons and analog stick, players are able to maneuver a paint brush and interface with the canvas as they please. Brush strokes from a finished canvas are transposed into the game, assuming form, shape, and function. Painting a line through the ground, for example, will create a stream of flowers, while painting a dot will plant a seed that quickly sprouts into a tree. Throughout the game, players learn new brush techniques which allow for new and helpful interactions. Painting a circle in water will create a large lily pad for Amaterasu to stand on; painting a spiral will create wind that blows out fire; and filling in the broken gap of a bridge will repair the damage.

Clover has synergized art-style with interaction. The celestial brush not only matches this feeling but is integral to gameplay, allowing players to naturally transform their painted world as needed. Okami is not special in allowing players to interact with the world, but rather is so for its presentation, the style by which players interact. The immersion as a player is derived from painting on a world that looks and feels just like a painting. Okami allows players to interact with the game seamlessly, using a paint brush as a means to affect a painted landscape.

Presentation is the form in which information is appropriated to players. Seamlessly presenting information is to do so in an immersive manner, allowing players to feel more absorbed within the game. I could go on about the dialogue system of Mass Effect, or the free-running or Assassin's Creed, or the minimalistic style of Defcon; but if we simply open our eyes we will see more clearly how many games involve players more completely and bring about a rich, enthralling gameplay experience for them. By seamlessly presenting information, story and theme, and interaction, we can immerse players more fully into our games and come that much closer to meeting, even exceeding, our definition of next-gen gameplay.

Image Sources
The Pieta
GRAW 2
Team Fortress 2 Characters
Team Fortress 2
Okami
Fable 2
Bioshock
Wii Sports

Gamasutra: Where's The Design in Level Design?

My brother recently pointed me to an interesting Gamsutra article entitled "Where's the Design in Level Design." Written by Tito Pagan. The article comes in Two Parts: One, Two. The first part is admittedly more interesting than the second, which focuses more on how to develop levels rather than the design aspect. A good summary article comes from the first page, actually, where Pagan writes:

A well-designed level takes into consideration a whole set of requirements, such as user interaction and navigation, which are inherent to the purpose they serve. How will the spaces control and direct the player throughout the explorative and interactive experience? What sort of directional and responsive feedback mechanisms will be provided to assist the process? How will all of the elements tie together to form a cohesive environment that is well understood without compromising aesthetic appeal? The level designer must also consider the impact of particulars such as sound, space, lighting, pace, and scale.

The article is worth reading, the first part at least. Pagan talks about wall orientation and window design that is interesting enough in itself, not to mention its application to game design.
Check it out.