Transcript of Games that Don't Fake the Space
Jacob Geller
0:00This video is better on Nebula, both because
there are no ads and because you can follow0:04it up with an exclusive recording of a live
talk I recently gave at my local library.0:09Okay, shh, now the video’s starting for
real.0:14Sometimes, huge feels bigger than infinite.0:18Let me explain.0:21No Man’s Sky is, more or less, infinite.0:25A space game with 18 quintillion planets,
a number that– while not technically limitless–0:32approaches the number of planets in our actual
universe, a figure so unfathomably large that0:38it shoots right past meaninglessness.0:41I can no more easily conceptualize one quintillion
planets than 18, or even a billion.0:47It is so big that words fail.0:52But allow me to present a counter-example,
a game that has stuck in my brain for years.0:58The racing game FUEL.1:01Developed by Asobo Studios in 2009, FUEL is
a fairly middling racing game with mediocre1:07handling and weird opponent AI.1:10And yet, FUEL has a serious claim to fame;
the game’s map is fourteen thousand, four1:18hundred square kilometers, or five thousand
five hundred square miles.1:25This is obscene.1:26I have thought about Fuel for more than a
decade now simply because of this staggering1:32number, 120 klicks long, 120 klicks wide,
thousands upon thousands of tracks to race1:39upon in the middle.1:40That’s 370 times larger than Skyrim, nearly
200 times as large as GTA5.1:47It is so big that the entirety of a real-scale
Mount Rainier sits on the top of the map and1:54hardly even dominates the space.1:56It is as big as…Connecticut.2:00Or Puerto Rico.2:03And this number still, basically, rounds down
to zero in comparison to something like No2:08Man’s Sky or Elite Dangerous, but it sure
doesn’t feel like zero when you can pick2:13one direction and drive for literally hours.2:17It doesn’t feel like zero when you watch
one biome gradually melt into another over2:22the course of miles of road.2:25You might have recognized the name Asobo Studios
from another game– they went on to develop2:30Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, a game that
literally contains a 1:1 scale model of the2:37Earth, one of the most staggering technical
achievements I’ve ever seen.2:42In hindsight, Fuel seems like a test-run for
this, a huge game created using a mix of procedural2:48generation and satellite imagery that can,
somehow, run on console.2:54And, while I love Flight Simulator and have
written about it at length, I think this makes2:59Fuel the stranger cultural object.3:03Unlike Flight Simulator, or No Man’s Sky,
or Elite: Dangerous, you don’t have access3:08to vehicles that can cross vast distances
near-instantly.3:12You have a car, a grounded, limited, car,
to cover this landmass and because your perspective3:18and options are so limited, Fuel still- to
me- manages to feel big in a truly radical3:26way.3:30In the decade after Fuel’s release, two
other racing games with similar missions came3:34out, Ubisoft’s The Crew and The Crew 2.3:38Unlike Fuel, which covers an undefined portion
of post-climate disaster America, The Crew3:44makes its map explicit; it is the whole country,
from east coast to west, tip to tail.3:53Kinda.3:54The maps of The Crew games are large, but
not nearly as large as Fuel, let alone the3:59United States.4:01To adjust for this, the America of The Crew
looks a little like one of those “draw the4:06country from memory maps.”4:08You can map the roadtrip of your dreams in
this game, but charting a route from, for4:13instance, LA to San Francisco will reveal
that one is about 10 miles away from the other.4:20The graphics and detail are a significant
jump from Fuel, but in a way that only highlights4:26the artifice.4:27You can, hilariously, visit many landmarks
in The Crew, like Mount Rushmore, which appears4:33to be in a Denny’s parking lot, or Mesa
Verde, maybe?4:38Or my favorite, Niagra Falls, which has been
made so modest you can drive over the top4:44of it.4:46Cities demonstrate this same artifice in a
slightly different way– storefronts display4:51what appear to be the average of all possible
commercial writing, like this one that boasts4:56“50% off- buy one get second one- t-shirts
4 for $5- 15% off.”5:02Or this bookstore with a large banner that
simply says “Store” and smaller text detailing5:08that it is actually a secondhand and antiquarian
electric, or this gift shop that upon closer5:14inspection is actually a grocery store, or
this pizza place that “has all flavors.”5:20The Crew games, while easy to make fun of,
are almost certainly more mechanically satisfying5:26than Fuel.5:27The squashing of America down to a handful
of iconic cities and the roads in between5:32is a genuinely interesting idea to explore.5:36But I still come back to Fuel.5:38Because while its cities are even less compelling
than The Crew and its driving kinda feels5:43like butt, there’s this indefinable power
to just how big the game is.5:49You can start driving through a dried up Grand
Canyon, and just keep going and going and5:55going, the cliff walls stretching into the
horizon.5:59Fuel refuses to make the landscape small in
order to increase density and visual diversity.6:05Simultaneously, it doesn’t push its procedural
generation so far that it breaks human imagination,6:12creating a quintillion planets consisting
of the same basic tropes.6:17It pulls a trick far more stubborn and yet,
to me, far more compelling.6:23It refuses to fake the space.6:31If you are anything like me, you’ve probably
googled “biggest video game maps” at some6:37point, and run into your own personal conflict.6:40What counts as big?6:42What’s a cheat?6:44What’s a technicality?6:46One of the biggest ever video game maps is
The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall, released6:51on MS-DOS in 1996.6:53Daggerfall looks like this, its world map
like this, and is reportedly “about the6:59size of Great Britain.”7:00And I look at that and think…okay, sure
dude.7:05Daggerfall has several large regions, and
the landscape within those regions is entirely7:10procedurally generated; the exceptionally
patient youtuber “How Big is the Map”7:15has a video walking across Daggerfall’s
landmass in real time, and the first of 157:21videos in the playlist is 7 and a half hours
of trekking across identical gray mountains.7:28Each generated world of Minecraft has the
potential to be many many times larger than7:33Earth.7:34But Minecraft is, of course, randomly and
procedurally generated.7:39The fact that there’s essentially no authorship
in a Minecraft world or in the middle of the7:44Daggerfall continent lessens their impact.7:47This rationalization of what feels big and
what doesn’t is made up and inherently imperfect.7:54Fuel uses plenty of procedural generation,
no human decided on the elevation of 14,0008:00km of terrain.8:02But Fuel’s procgen works in conjunction
with satellite data, and the map is ironically8:07small enough that it can still feel huge rather
than…meaningless.8:13Essentially what I’m saying here is I’m
working more in the realm of what emotionally8:18registers as big, rather than the raw numbers.8:21And while I’ve talked about map size as
a whole thus far, I’ve actually more often8:27found these moments, awe at the sheer size
of something, hidden in more traditional levels.8:33A single instance of big-ness shattering the
imposed reality of the rest of the setting.8:39Am I speaking complete gibberish right now?8:42As I’m writing this, I genuinely can’t
tell.8:46Anyway.8:47A lot of game development is creating the
illusion of a holistic space and continuous8:51progression out of several distinct pieces.8:54I remember being mind-blown many years ago
watching one of the special features on God8:59of War 2, in which they note that if a piece
of a level isn’t visible, it simply doesn’t9:05exist.9:06This makes sense for titles with a fixed camera
like God of War, but it’s not uncommon for9:10any style of game to take what we might consider
“shortcuts,” building environments based9:15on what the player will see rather than real-world
architecture.9:19As digital explorers like the YouTube channel
Boundary Break often find, even seemingly9:24straightforward environments, like the office
of The Stanley Parable, are not as they seem.9:30They’re essentially games’ version of
matte paintings or false building facades;9:36ways to communicate a grander space while
still staying within the constraints of budget9:40and memory.9:43Because games don’t have to abide by real-life
physics, they can have fun with this as well–9:48the endless staircase in Mario 64 is an iconic
example.9:52Near the top of the castle, the player finds
these stairs ascending into the dark and runs9:57up them.9:58The music continuously works its way higher
and higher, the paintings rush by, and if10:03you’re 10-year-old me you might run up these
stairs for minutes before turning around and10:08realizing…you haven’t moved at all.10:11It’s a trick as simple as it is effective-
Mario is being invisibly teleported backwards10:17almost continuously, creating an illusion
of infinite ascension with only a single flight.10:23It’s fun to think that, even in the early
days of 3D games, developers were already10:28having fun with tricks of perspective and
space.10:32But there are counterexamples to this, a bigness
that’s not simply a mirage of clever programming.10:41One of the best levels in Silent Hill 2–
which, by default, makes it one of the best10:45levels of all time– is the Historical Society.10:49A museum located off the main road, the first
few minutes in the historical society are10:55almost normal, at least by Silent Hill standards.10:59Photographs cover the walls of the entryway,
offering a bit of background on the town and11:04of course your old pyramid headed friend.11:07It is punishingly dark and a sort of foghorn
emanates from the walls but it’s not until11:12you walk through this hole smashed in a wall
that the historical society tips its hand.11:19Beyond the hole are stairs that go down, and
down, and down.11:25It is minutes of walking into the black.11:28The foghorn gets more frequent.11:30James’ footfalls repeat endlessly.11:33And then, suddenly, you reach the bottom.11:38In typical fashion, there’s not even a big
reveal at the end, just another office room.11:43Mario’s run up the stairs is accompanied
by what’s called a “Shepard scale,”11:48a sort of musical illusion in which a series
of notes can be made to climb infinitely by11:53overlapping them an octave apart.11:56The effect is bizarre, to say the least.11:59Click around on a ten minute loop of the track
and every bit sounds identical– but listen12:03to it continuously and you’ll swear the
notes are working their way up.12:07But the tone can descend as well.12:10As Gareth Damian Martin notes in their seminal
piece, “The Basement’s Basement,” Silent12:15Hill 2’s descent functions in much the same
way as this scale.12:20“If you listen to a descending Shepard tone
for any length of time, the feeling of being12:26slowly dragged down, almost compressed, is
unmistakable.12:30It’s that downward movement, the slow decay
of a sound.12:35How far can it continue?12:36You ask yourself, how much deeper?12:40But the tone is steady, its slow descent both
rapidly falling and yet going nowhere at all.”12:47Following the staircase, James falls further
into the earth, continuously choosing to jump12:53down pits with nothing but dark at the bottom.12:57Silent Hill relishes in the impossibility.13:00After falling miles into the ground, you eventually
emerge…on the shores of a lake.13:06The spatial absurdity is the point, rapidly
falling and yet going nowhere at all.13:12But each pit James jumps into is accompanied
by a cutscene and a loading screen, two embellishments13:18that– while necessary– remove us just
slightly from the environment.13:23In those jumps, a reminder of Silent Hill’s
gaminess returns, that the environment is13:28constantly being built around us instead of
existing all at once.13:34The staircase is different.13:37There is no load, no movie, to separate us
from it.13:40And, as you might have guessed from this video’s
topic, the stair doesn’t fake it.13:46It’s all there.13:47Every step rendered in real geometry, at the
same time.13:51I worked with streamer Brossentia to capture
this footage, and his other out of bounds13:56footage is more what you’d expect; half-built
architecture, streets that end in nothing,14:012D planes to portray distance.14:04But the staircase…is just there.14:07“This thing is ridiculous,” he said, “Nothing
else is at all close to this.”14:15And I can’t get this staircase out of my
head, perhaps because the out of bounds footage14:19is just as nightmarish as the in-game perspective.14:23There is no illusion, no Shepard scale.14:26James, in this moment, is walking into the
bowels of the earth in as real a way as the14:31game allows.14:38Several iconic game moments center around
nothing more than this sort of transitory14:43environment, the ~liminal space~ if you will,
of an exceptionally long journey up or down14:50a single object.14:52The ladder after The End in Metal Gear Solid
3, the ladder back to Iosefka’s clinic in14:57Bloodborne, the climb up the stairs of the
Shinra building in Final Fantasy 7, the elevator15:01down into the Siofra River Well in Elden Ring.15:06Some of these are “all there” as with
Silent Hill 2, some are pieced together from15:10multiple different chunks, all are cool and
memorable sequences.15:15But when I think about enormous transitory
spaces, there’s only one that matches the15:21energy of Silent Hill.15:27Years ago, I talked about the indie game NaissanceE,
an impersonal and unsettling trek through15:32an endless brutalist nowhere-scape.15:36My first encounter with the game was in the
magazine Heterotopias (fittingly also penned15:41by Gareth Damian Martin).15:43The game’s developer said in that magazine
that there are no invisible walls in NaissanceE,15:48and thus no security.15:51This speaks to how I first experienced the
game– it is a challenging, frustrating experience–15:57but on a recent revisit, I took this no-invisible-walls
statement as more of a challenge.16:04Enabling flying in the console commands certainly
breaks the game progression, but it doesn’t16:08break the world nearly as much as you might
think.16:13It just keeps…going.16:15This mechanical chasm in the architecture
is modeled well above and below what the player16:21is ever able to normally see.16:23In this endless row of identical blocks, you
can fly for what feels like miles.16:29This dark, electrical canyon has details a
player would never find.16:36But like Silent Hill 2, it’s the big staircase
that takes the cake.16:41Towards the end of the game, you emerge from
a dense ventilation network and are met with16:45these white stairs, going up instead of down
but similarly shrouded in dark.16:52So you start going up.16:55And keep going up, or at least that’s what
you assume because it’s so punishingly dark17:00that you can barely see the step in front
of you, and you do this for minutes on end,17:05even longer than the historical society, so
long it seems they may truly never end, and17:11then you’re at the top.17:14Like Silent Hill, the space defies all expectations;
After the endless ascension, you emerge not17:19on top of the mechanical expanse but somehow
at the bottom of a desert, your forever-climb17:25landing you in a place that feels lower than
you started.17:30The stairs are nonsense, they’re impossible,
and yet they are, also, all really there.17:37Enabling a wireframe outline allows us to
see through the dark, but even it can’t17:42display the true scale because the stairs
simply fade from view.17:47Like Silent Hill 2’s descent, there’s
nothing lost by going out of bounds here,17:52in fact the construction is even more impressive
and preposterous.17:58I’ve found this kind of thing more frequently
in indie titles– the more big and expensive18:06a game, the more often it needs to be absolutely
optimized so it can squeeze every drop of18:11hardware power into its intended visuals.18:14In God of War 2, by making everything you
can’t see non-existent, everything you can18:19see could receive that little extra oomph.18:23But smaller independent titles, either because
they’re not as graphically taxing or because18:27they’re not subject to the same terms of
optimization, have space for all this extra18:33stuff.18:34Sometimes, it feels like they’re nothing
but extra stuff.18:39Sometimes that’s the whole point.18:42The game Babbdi, released for free late last
year on Steam and Itchio, is a game about18:48the extra stuff.18:50The objectives of Babbdi are as straightforward
as they could be; get a ticket for the train,18:55tickets are sold out so get one from your
neighbor, leave on a train.19:00The appeal is instead the setting, this cold
concrete cityblock that is so much larger19:06and more vertical than the stated goals of
the game require.19:10Babbdi– the name of the city as well as
the game– is a brutalist playground, a place19:15where every balcony can be clambered over
and if you wander the underground enough,19:19you might find people having a trashfire-jukebox
dance party.19:25Or you might not!19:27One of the strangely appealing things about
Babbdi is that as often as there’s something19:32to find, your curiosity can also take you
into places that end without fanfare– the19:38massive reservoir the city sits on is completely
open, and although its corners hold no secrets,19:44there’s nothing to keep you out of it either.19:48Eventually I found a pickaxe that allowed
me to scale any wall, and my reward was just19:53that, the intrinsic pleasure of finding that
yes, every building has a roof, yes, with19:58enough work I can stand upon the tallest spire.20:04Because Babbdi so effectively communicates
that every piece of it is real, every piece20:09is there, I never even paused to wonder if
the game would get in the way of my exploration.20:15Like its entire, run-down vibe, the environment
of the game feels more or less lawless, that20:21there will be no artificial impediment to
wherever you want to go.20:25It is not massive in the way many game cityscapes
are massive; it’s 1% of a GTA map.20:32But Babbdi feels big because its utilitarian
art style implies that every building is truly20:38there, nothing is a hollow facade, nothing
fancifully painted with the false textures20:44of civilization.20:46Maybe the best way I can put it is the objectives
of the game aren’t indicated by the design20:51of the environment itself.20:53This city doesn’t seem built for the player
to have an adventure in.20:57It was built, existed, and then some time
later the player stumbled in.21:08The language I’ve been using in this video
is inherently flawed.21:12I know that.21:13The verbiage of “real” or fake, “illusion”
or genuine, “trick” or legitimate, isn’t21:19suited to video games.21:21A computer is making me think there’s a
world inside this flat screen– the whole21:26thing is an unbelievably complicated illusion,
a magic trick so impressive we don’t even21:31think about it.21:32There is no staircase, there is no Babbdi,
there is no 14,000 square kilometers of post-apocalyptic21:39wilderness.21:40For the purposes of this video, I’ve made
my scales of realness completely relative.21:46The Historical Society’s stairs are real
only when compared to Mario 64.21:52It goes back to what I said at the beginning–
this is about what feels real, what emotionally21:56registers as big.21:58And in using this language so loosely, I think
I’ve completely shot myself in the foot22:04for the last game I want to talk about.22:07Because the thing about Anor Londo, the shining
city atop the world of Dark Souls, is it’s22:13all an illusion.22:14In lore, in the game’s reality, what we
are looking at is fake.22:19The dazzling sunlight vanishes when questioned,
the castle's polished halls fall into shadows.22:25And it goes further, because under that illusion
is another, kept in a crypt far beneath the22:31throne room.22:32A massive statue blocks the way, only to fade
with the sun or in the presence of a special22:37ring.22:38When it disappears, it reveals– what else–
a staircase down.22:43But the stairs aren’t the notable part here.22:48Beyond the door at the bottom lies Dark Sun
Gwyndolin, one of my favorite souls bosses22:54purely for visual splendor.22:56It is a fight based on illusion; Gwyndolin
curses you for entering and then throws the23:03back of the hallway into the infinite, the
statues on the wall repeating endlessly as23:08they vanish into the horizon.23:10The fight is one of the rare instances where
Dark Souls transcends into the environmentally23:15surreal, and accordingly, one of its most
conceptual battles.23:20Gwyndolin only has a few attacks, and no real
close-range ability.23:25Instead, every time you get close, the boss
teleports away, giving you time to only get23:30in a few strikes before running again down
the endless hallway.23:35After Gwyndolin falls, the hall returns to
normal; the end and its ensuing rewards are23:41revealed to be just a few dozen yards away.23:46On first blush, I assumed this hall was more
or less like the Mario stairway.23:51After all, that’s what the imagery basically
implies.23:53You’re trapped in an endless illusion, run
all you want and you’ll never escape.23:58But that’s not true.24:02Going out of bounds during the cutscene reveals
the normal hallway swapped for this.24:06It’s a combination of clever framing and
brute force of scale; the original hall is24:12replaced with a wile coyote-style false ending,
which is then shot down the new MILE of architecture24:19the game just spawned in.24:21And this isn’t just for looks.24:24You can, if you are both stubborn and focused
enough, take the boss fight all the way to24:29the end of this passage.24:31You can chase Gwyndolin until both of you
are backed up against this brick wall all24:36the way at the end (at which point the boss
AI basically breaks).24:42There is a canon ending to this fight in which
you push Gwyndolin’s endless hallway until24:47it falls apart, and then you just stand swinging
limply at each other, incredibly far from24:53where you started.24:56This is what’s so fascinating about games,
and so challenging about this language of25:01real vs fake I’ve tried to build around
it.25:05Because we know it’s an illusion, in the
game it’s supposed to be a trick, and yet25:09look at it!25:10There it is, hundreds upon hundreds of statues
in perfectly orderly rows, as or more real25:18as anything else in the game!25:20Gwyndolin faked the space; Dark Souls did
not.25:29The other day, I booted up Fuel, I told my
computer to open all the countless miles of25:35road from 2009, and I just started driving.25:39It is an inherently silly thing to do; burn
fake gasoline on the bluffs of a fake desert,25:45without so much as a fake objective to give
me direction.25:49But as false night passed into false day into
false night again, I thought about movie scenes25:56with the “special effect” of hundreds
or thousands of real actors, the “illusion”26:02of an entire world built temporarily for a
single scene, the “trick” of genuine acrobatics,26:08falls, explosions, captured once to be replayed
again and again.26:13As I drove through the artificial walls of
a canyon constructed out of digital triangles26:19from actual satellite data, I reflected on
our ability to understand something as false26:24and true at the same time, an artistic representation
that tirelessly reproduces the space it simultaneously26:32abstracts.26:34There is no aesthetic failing in illusion–
the success or failure of a project rests26:40on its emotional communication, no matter
the strategies used to achieve it.26:45But still; knowing that when I walk down those
stairs in Silent Hill 2, every step really26:51exists before me sends a wonderful little
chill down my spine.26:57Knowing that there are no hollow buildings
in Babbdi makes the whole tiny city more enthralling.27:03Every game fakes its space, in one way or
another.27:07But I will always love stepping outside the
bounds and marveling at how the trick might27:12be that there’s simply no trick at all.27:18Okay this wasn’t an intentional connection
for this essay, but I recently gave a talk27:29in a real space!27:31For the very first time!27:37Last month I was lucky enough to speak to
a couple hundred people at the Durham Public27:41Library in a talk I loosely titled “A Beginner’s
Guide to Game Analysis.”27:47Am I bragging a little?27:49Sure, but I am also excited to tell you that
the full recorded talk is now available on27:54Nebula!27:55Both the scripted part of it and the 40-plus
minutes of Q&A afterwards, featuring super28:01thoughtful and interesting questions from
the audience.28:05Nebula sponsored this video, and Nebula has
allowed me to do so much cool bonus content28:10this year– from cooking videos to whole
additional essays to now, hosting my recording28:15of this live talk.28:17It’s a healthier, more sustainable streaming
ecosystem that I’m proud to be a part of.28:22It’s also, here’s the thing you might
not know, cheap!28:26Follow my link in the description to get a
solid eight HOURS of exclusive content from28:30me, and countless hours of other creators
exclusive series, movies, classes, and more,28:36for just over 2 bucks a month.28:38Doing a talk at a local library was a very
specific dream of mine, BUT the fact that28:43it was, you know, local, left a lot of people
out.28:47Now you too can see me walk through how I’d
come up with an essay about Elden Ring, make28:52jokes about Animorphs, and answer all sorts
of great questions from an audience that-28:58you can’t see them in the video, but they’re
actually there I promise.29:01I wasn’t just giving my talk in an empty
room.29:04You’re gonna have to trust me on this one.29:07Anyway, Nebula!29:08Watch my talk, watch a whole heap of other
exclusive videos, support creators like me,29:13for just over two bucks a month.29:15And then go support your own local library!
4,318 words · 379 lines
