Matthew Bradley

Gaia, a non-linear first-person exploration-adventure game is Shadow of the Colossus meets Wall-E set on a desolate world where photographing the environment reveals the story.

Players use a special camera to take photographs of the past to discover a lost worlds secrets. Each photo documents the history of the planet from the perspective of the images' subject. This design utilises the benefits of agency to enhance the storytelling experience; making it more personal to each player by deploying story through user-driven non-linear gameplay.

Gaia takes inspiration from the success of games such as Flower and Shadow of the Colossus as artful games with complex mature narratives and as such it is aimed at the same demographic.

It is made using Unreal Development Kit for PC, Playstation Network and Xbox Live Arcade platforms. The Unreal Engine is an established development environment for a vast array of first and third-person action adventure games such as Mass Effect 1 & 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Mirror's Edge making it ideal for this project.

The ultimate goal of Gaia's story is to make players contemplate the way we treat the planet and each other.

The game is set on Earth in the year 2719, but it follows what happened to earth 550+ years previous. The world is desolate with no human life. The mark of fallen humanity is indelibly strewn across the planet. Buildings lie dormant, houses empty, cities deserted. Over-population has resulted in drastic shortages in food and water, while the world has become over urbanised to accommodate. Pollution has ravaged the atmosphere and there is a mad scramble for renewable energy. In desperation many of the world’s nations have become insular and paranoid believing other nations are withholding information and keeping secrets in finding solutions to the problems, culminating in wars between rival countries. As the story unfolds it becomes clear that mans ultimate downfall is himself.

As this story will have many differing perspectives it will fully take advantage of the unconventional method of narrative delivery. To fully achieve this, the story will be ambiguous, having no dialog and the world will feature no other NPCs, meaning no combat. Also the players’ character is never revealed to reinforce this idea.

Players begin Gaia by randomly spawning in one of six areas that best represent the planets diversity. They are:
1: Desert/Canyon
2: Alpine/Mountain/Snow
3: Rainforest/Lagoon/Mangrove
4: Coast/Dunes/Caves
5: Urban/City
6: Volcanic

All areas are open for exploration and some interconnect to give the effect of an entire planet. Each area features unique photographic landmarks and environment-specific storylines.

Photography
Players are equipped with a camera in Gaia. As there is no dialog it’s the primary tool for exploring the world and uncovering the story. Players can take pictures at any time during the game. When a photo is taken of anything of significance an image or short video of what was once there is shown. This reveals a perspective on the narrative from the point-of-view of the environment, building or its inhabitants.

For example: a photograph of a derelict settlement may reveal a mass of refugees living there in the past. When combined with multiple other photos the player can build up the story of why the people were there. Then use that story as a piece in the jigsaw to build the overall narrative.

The overall story will be unique for each player as photos will be taken in a different order, making their interpretation slightly different.

Photo album
In order for players to be able to piece together the narrative they will have to revisit old photographs, so they will be saved to their photo album which will be accessible in-game and from the players’ operating system outside of the game.