Amarna Forum

I find architecture in video games to be the most interesting part of a game. Use this thread to share interesting buildings in video games. 




The Palisade Blade from Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

It reminds me of the Antwerp Port Authority building:



The triangular facets on it are just like the ones everywhere in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.



There are an increasing amount of traditional European buildings with modern facades added later. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided sees this as the future of Europe. It's pretty convincing. The Prague of Deus Ex isn't like most future cities that are solely ultramodern future buildings, there is still the foundation of what the city used to be below. 

The contrast between the new and the old is great in this game:



The architecture in this game is awesome:

Off the top of my head, EYE: Divine Cybermancy has always stayed in my head because of the pretty armours and because of the architecture, especially the interior of the home base, as seen in this video, starting from 20 mins:


Unfortunately, I can't find any good pictures, but I liked the cities as well.

Nu-Deus Ex's architecture evokes in me the same feeling as this,



In fact, the whole game does. Interactive Saudi luxury.

The world of SWAT 4 is a reproduction of the real world. It's very utilitarian, these are cops after all. The digital world of Swat 4 is like a model of our own. The buildings you breach with your team don't feel like video game buildings with cordoned off sections to funnel you to the boss, they feel like actual layouts of a building. They are designed like they would be in real life. A loading zone at the back of a convenience store leads to a storage area which leads to a staff area and register. It's all very convincing.

Something I find interesting is that there is an explanation for the way you get each blueprint. For the convenience store you get the real blueprint from the owner, for the bar you get an off duty bartender's approximate drawing on a napkin. Each story is believable. 




A map I particularly like the Fairfax residence:






It's very familiar:



It even shares the same strange design of having the main floor elevated and a floor below it. The floors are offset about a half-floors worth. 

It's meant to be a hoarder's house. It's dirty and gross but nothing gets in the way. I imagine this was done intentionally so that you can clear the whole thing. Chris couldn't even access certain rooms in his own house. This would feel cheap in SWAT 4 though. 
"You can't go in this room because there is stuff behind it."




The similarities between the Fairfax family and the Chandlers is very strange. Demented, psychotic, hoarder mother and retarded, rapist son. SWAT 4 came out in 2005 and Chris wasn't known until 2007. It's almost predictive except Chris didn't rape college girls, he raped his mom.

A note on the thread:
In my first post I discussed video game architecture as if it was no different from real life architecture. It's a bit reductive. Video game architecture can be so much more because it doesn't have to be grounded by reality.

(07-09-2023, 07:28 PM)Albicacore Wrote: [ -> ]

The world of SWAT 4 is a reproduction of the real world. It's very utilitarian, these are cops after all. The digital world of Swat 4 is like a model of our own. The buildings you breach with your team don't feel like video game buildings with cordoned off sections to funnel you to the boss, they feel like actual layouts of a building. They are designed like they would be in real life. A loading zone at the back of a convenience store leads to a storage area which leads to a staff area and register. It's all very convincing.

Something I find interesting is that there is an explanation for the way you get each blueprint. For the convenience store you get the real blueprint from the owner, for the bar you get an off duty bartender's approximate drawing on a napkin. Each story is believable.

SWAT4 is a very cool and very interesting game. It's probably some of the best use of incidental detail in a video game. Very elaborate and well thought out without drawing attention to itself like later games, including the later works of this very developer. Things like AUDIO LOGS, passwords to locks scrawled in GIANT letters on walls, extremely staged and attention grabbing scenes which all but SCREAM what happened here at you but aren't TELLING you so the video essay dictums are technically being obeyed. SWAT4 is a game which shows rather than tells without being a gigantic faggot about it. Actually quite rare. For an example of what I mean, I can't remember why but I was discussing Dishonoured with people recently.



This is related to what you've said and I've said above, this doesn't look natural (you could say one character is like this but EVERY DESK in Dishonoured looks like this), it looks retarded, busy with detail because they're showing off. It also relates to what I said about the newer Resident Evil games. You're meant to interact with certain objects on this desk. Can you tell which ones? You might be able to guess if you look close. Then imagine this for every room in the game. Like Resident Evil glowing outlines and pickup prompts are made necessary by the excess of high fidelity clutter. SWAT4 doesn't have this problem both due to restraint and not demanding fine interactions with small objects.

Other thought on SWAT4. It's very faithful and restrained on this end. Real. The violence might seem excessive, and also the police restraint laws. It's a kind of exaggeration of reality on these levels and I can tolerate that just fine. Where things get silly is in the stories of the levels. What's happening and why. The buildings and interiors are a kind of virtual social realism. But the stories are also social realism. And by that I don't mean this game is held back on story by its adherence to reality. By that I mean the stories are a neurotic Jew's caricature of American society. A couple of minor ethnic scuffles and gang fights justify a couple of levels, highly organised white guys doing Michael Mann stuff are a few more, then for the rest of the game you're fighting an out of control wave of RethugliKKKan Crime Squad raids against the liberal institutions of are democracy.



These guys are not Michael Mann fans. We didn't just stop North Hollywood. These guys are a Catholic militia who raided a university to stop genome research. Now, Catholic Militia who dress like Heat characters and wage paramilitary crusade against bug-science is actually an awesome idea. But which is it? Are we hard social realism with a bit of exaggeration and style? Or is this Predator 2 America in which every group has an insane Saints Row gang armed to the teeth to represent them in street warfare? What it is is SWAT4 America. In which every race except blacks has a problem element who make trouble, and whites make the most trouble because they are entitled and don't like change. Stay safe America. 6 million dead from RethugliKKKan retribution in the last decade.

As you can see from the above screenshot the level we're in is very pretty and well realised. A bit of exaggeration within such scenes would be perfectly nice, but the overwhelming bias within these exaggerations becomes laughable very quickly. Or at least did for me. On the whole I would still call SWAT4 an exceptional example of realism in video game architecture. But a flawed whole because it was written by 2000s American liberals with the writing headed by a woman.