The Sinking City Update #6 – The Art Of Visual Storytelling
Our cinematic team sheds light on the tricks and techniques we use for an immersive visual storytelling in The Sinking City
Our latest update will show you a few visual techniques we use for storytelling in The Sinking City!
It’s been a few months since we released our latest developer update. Time is going crazy fast, and with GDC, EGX Rezzed, E3 and Gamescom, we barely had time to share some news from inside the studio. Now, though, things are more or less back to normal, and our schedule is back on track!
Storytelling might just be the most fascinating part of any medium. Probably, more important than the story itself. In The Sinking City, there’s quite a few ways we want to tell our story to the player. Not only through texts, dialogues and cutscenes, there’s also a more subtle approach. We, obviously, are not going to tell all our secrets, but a few of them can really give you a taste of what to expect.
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For example, in our cutscenes we are using three different and distinct color schemes. One of them is dominated by the red color, which for a lot of people means immediate danger. But one color can usually have multiple meanings, says our cinematic artist, Andrew Kudriashov. In our game, red means that our hero, Charles Reed, is going through a mental fight because he is struggling to accept his own actions.
The three color schemes go hand in hand with lighting. Lighting is a tremendously powerful tool. We use it more often to accentuate the ongoing events, rather than simply illuminate objects. For example, in the shot below light and dark symbolize the well-being of the main hero and the insanity that slowly destroys him.
There’s also something else we want to touch upon. The video game industry naturally faces a lot of technical limitations, and sidesteping these limitations is a form of art itself. Sometimes, it can bring results event better than you’d expect if you didn’t face any of these issues!
The Sinking City is coming to PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on March 21, 2019.
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