Medical Meltdown
The Last of Us is a game that could so easily be a best selling series. It meticulously combines entertaining gameplay within it's ability to story tell for a gripping adventure story you can sink your teeth into with every passing level.
My goal with this level was to craft an experience that would fit right into The Last of Us if I were to be on the design team. A level that establishes a conflict the player must resolve in order to continue on to the end of the game. To achieve these results I had set myself a few goals.
The Goal
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Design a level with a changing objective.
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To design a space where players must observe their surroundings for the best results.
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To utilize the already existing mechanics and enemies in their best light.
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To further develop my technical skills as a level designer.
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To develop an understanding of industry standard for White Boxing, and Documentation.
Design Pillars
Realism.
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The Last of Us has a very realistic setting. This means I wanted to design the hospital space to be realistic, and then inject clinical gameplay into the space.
Exploration.
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I noticed in The Last of Us every space is like an adventure. You never truly know what you will come across and I tried to embody that with a constantly changing situation throughout the mission.
Resourcefulness
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The Last of Us features some very resourceful characters (Joel and Ellie in particular) who always seem to have the solution to every problem. I believe I created an environment that allows the player to showcase their ability to be resourceful by utilizing their surroundings to accurately solve the situation at hand.
The Biggest Takeaways
Backstory and Intent
A hospital is a place people come to when they are in need of medical attention. Its a place people come to in hopes that they will be treated with care and professionalism. The hospital is also a place some people have to spend a few days at and therefore needs the necessary utilities to support multiple people for long periods of time.
My intent with this space was to create a functional hospital space with all of its usual necessities. Bathrooms, treatment rooms, a lobby, a cafeteria and inject gameplay into it to give it realism. I also intended to flip the hospital norm upside down. This space went from being a spot where people get treated for illness or injuries, to a spot where you must be careful or leave with illness and injuries.
Approach
In the beginning I did a lot of research on hospital layouts. I navigated blueprints and identified key elements of hospitals to bring them into my own layout. I decided to choose a smaller design as I wanted this to be a small town hospital. The other research I did was watching a lot of The Last of Us' gameplay. I needed to remember how the game played, all of its mechanics, all of its enemies and how they interacted with the spaces and player. I wanted some sentience as well so I introduced bandits instead of just the infected to up the difficulty of your enemies.
Challenges
A big challenge I had in the beginning was making my 2D layout easily readable. In the beginning it was cluttered with imagery and unnecessary information. Removing dimensions and an overhaul of iconography helped clean up some of the information that would be actively changing during design, and helped remove non essential assets from the play space.
I also learned to make sure my white boxes stay simple. Initially I had cluttered the spaces with set dressing and other random assets to make the spaces look pretty. Soon I learned to avoid set dressing and only include essential props to drive home the gameplay side of my levels.
The last big challenge I faced was designing in third person. Since the camera is detached from they player my level had to undergo certain design changes to compensate for the camera. I had to widen hallways and doorways. Ceilings were raised to accommodate the camera as well. I learned to assume the camera was an extension of the player and treat the space as if my player was an extra meter or so tall.