As stated before, creatures are very important in a lot of games. Many games, such as Spore and Dark Souls make creatures the primary focus. These sorts of games appeal greatly to me, as they often allow the player to become the creature, using their inhuman abilities to traverse their environment and, often, hunt human characters. There is just something about being able to control something with such abilities that is so enjoyable. An interesting point that I have noticed is that where I would much rather play as a creature, one of my friends, who I often play games and discuss such topics with, would rather play as a human character. This shows to me that it is quite often a good idea to cater to both tastes in game play. The afore-mentioned game, Evolve, does this very well, with 4 vs 1 player combat, the single player taking the role of the creature, the team of four assuming the role of the human hunters. Here is a link to a game play footage video of the player using one of the creatures of the game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR-AaNrOC9s
Of course, playable creatures are all very well and good and truly awesome, but what about non-playable creatures? Well, they're just as important when it comes down to it and they all have their separate roles, whichever category you place them in. Often these categories will overlap however, but that just adds extra layers of meaning to their importance.
- enemies
- wildlife
- hostile
- friendly
- interactive
- non-interactive
So if I were to use an example, the slogs from the Oddworld series (see picture below) are an enemy, they are also incredibly hostile and they are interactive in that they will most definitely try to eat the player.
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| Oddworld series - Slog |
Another example would be the Popo from the game series, Monster Hunter (pictured below). They are friendly wildlife that can turn hostile against the player if they are to antagonise them. They are also interactive of course, as the player can attack them, be hurt by them and carve from their corpses.
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| Monster Hunter series - Popo |
Of course, then there is the interesting case of creatures such as the birds in XCOM: Enemy Unknown. They are wildlife of course, but they are neither friendly, nor hostile. They are non-interactive creatures. What makes them so important is that they add life to the environments. They also make contextual sense, as they are there when the player investigates an alien craft having crashed or landed in woods. Of course, the aliens have no interest in killing simple birds and such wildlife, so it makes perfect sense that they would still be there. Just small things like that adds so much to a game and brings an otherwise 'dead' environment to life.They also provide the player with small scares when they flit across the screen, causing the player to lose concentration on the task at hand.
With all this in mind, it is therefor down to the artists to create creatures great and small; from full on bosses, to background wildlife. Therein lies the challenge artists must face with the conflict between 'rule of cool' and practicality. What i mean by this is that the most successful designs, in my opinion, are those that serve their purpose best. It's all well and good making something really cool, but if it doesn't work game play wise, surely it's not a successful design? Or is that the down to the actual designers to make it work? In the same vein, it wouldn't make sense to make less important creatures anywhere near as cool as the main ones in games. The game Dark Souls, for example, focuses the majority of it's attention on bosses. It wouldn't make sense to have a basic enemy outshine something that the player is supposed to gape at in awe or find terrifying. An example of this below would be two creatures from the same area: a basic enemy, the Basilisk; and the boss, the Gaping Dragon.
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| Dark Souls - Basilisk |
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| Dark Souls - Gaping Dragon |
So where does this put me at this point? This thought process has helped me to see the importance in all creatures, so when it comes to designing whatever it is I end up with this year, I don't just focus on the 'cool' things and spend equal time on the less up-front creatures. I will continue to study the topic of creatures in games and update this post with more information as it arises.
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