Cogito Ergo Sum
Project Overview
Engine: Fallout 4 Creation Kit
Platform: PC
Synopsis: “Cogito Ergo Sum” is a single-player quest in Fallout 4. It’s takes place within a small town named Shady Oaks on the western edge of the Commonwealth. The quest revolves around trying to save the quest giver’s brother, Adam, from the Institute and himself.
​
Key Takeaway: Learning to work in passes to create an even spread of progress helps to create levels that have the same level of quality throughout.
Design Goals
Verticality in Combat
Encouraged Exploration
Personal Story Told Earnestly
The first combat encounter gives the player a height advantage to assist in repelling an assault, however the enemy that spawns on the roof also gives the gameplay an element of challenge, to spice up the combat
Verticality in Combat
With my design I knew I wanted to accentuate the native capabilities of Fallout 4 regarding verticality, but I wanted to play with it even further. I wanted to have the player drop down in some locations and then flow back upward in a different location. I worked to create combat scenarios where there was combat not only at their present height but above and below the player at most times. This was all to create a space that felt more alive and interesting.
Encouraged Exploration
One of my favorite aspects of Fallout 4 is the exploratory nature of the game, and how environments can feel massive and interesting. I wanted to replicate this same feeling in my own level. To do so, I created several opportunities to further explore the area, just off the critical pathway.
Sometimes, it was as simple as placing an obvious fence nearby the critical path, or creating a locked door that players didn't initially have the key for at that moment. It’s a non-essential room, but the window helps to draw the player curiosity to what is in the room, and they’ll keep it in the back of their mind while they explore looking for the key.
In both instances, I made sure to include strong conveyance techniques to try and call attention to the spaces and give the player the opportunity to become curious about exploring further if they wanted.
Leading lines from the fence draw the players eye to the gate, as well as contrasting texture on the dirt help to convey the optional exploration area to players
While the light above the door helps to convey the proper path forward, I also wanted the optional room with lore to have a lot of interesting set pieces to help draw the player's eye as they walk past on their way forward
Personal Story Told Earnestly
My goal while undertaking the creation of this level was a more personal story, with intense consequences to a small group of characters. When I thought about stories that left me with the greater impact after playing through them, I found that the larger the scope of the story, the less I felt the weight of the decision on the characters.
I wanted to create a story that at the end of the quest the player felt their play had a greater impact on a character's life. I primarily worked to do this by staging the conflict in my story around two characters and reducing the number of greater stakes outside of their relationship. This way the only stakes are the ones that the player personally attaches to the characters.
What Went Well
-
Aesthetic Detail
During the later portion of production I was able to focus on aesthetics of my spaces, and in that time I was able to really hone into some strong detail in all my spaces.
-
Narrative Structure Planned Early
The story I wanted to tell was planned out early, allowing me to get the structure implemented quickly, which left time to iron out the finer details over production.
-
Effective Cuts
I was struggling to get all the content I wanted to create to the same level of quality, after discussions with my stakeholder, I made the call to make a cut to reduce the overall size of the level, allowing me to deliver a quality result level from start to finish.
What Went Wrong
-
Non-linear Room Planning
My early design ideas for the level incorporated a lot of non-liner flow in my rooms. What I discovered later was that this was causing the gameplay in my interior spaces to become more unfocused and hard to follow. The construction of the space to repair this flow took a decent amount of production time to repair, and understanding the repercussions of this decision earlier on would've saved me that time to invest elsewhere.
-
Narrative Writing Experience
I've not had much experience writing stories in the past, so when creating the dialog for the quest it took me a longer than normal time to nail down the intricate details. Gaining confidence in my writing skills by writing more and believing in the stories I tell helped alleviate these issues.
-
Uneven Workflow
One of the bigger issues that occurred during my production focusing too intently on specific details, spending time working to get the aesthetics right on one portion of the level, when another portion hadn't been touched since the previous milestone.
