Matthew Bradley

Vehicles
Players use a buggy for quick transit although travelling on foot will be imperative to the gameplay. Throughout the environment users will have to overcome logic puzzles involving the buggy to progress.

During the game players will also use a hot air balloon to traverse between continents. This will be important to see the entire game world and to take unique narrative exposing panoramic photographs.

Weather
Throughout the game players will experience realistic weather systems and day/night cycles to aid immersion. To reflect the narrative weather will often be more extreme.

Also different weather will affect the gameplay. A severe dry spell will dry up rivers and streams allowing players to travel along them while snow or ice will make it more difficult or even impossible to drive up steep inclines.

Real-time cinematics
In order to make the world more compelling real-time cinematics will take place. Depending on the players location a number of things may happen such as collapsing structures or avalanches. These cinematics will affect the game world, changing the layout making new routes for the player.

Orbiting Camera drone
To take maximum advantage of the detailed environment players will have the option to see it from a panoramic camera suspended high in the sky. On the press of a button the players’ point-of-view will shift to a robotic drone following in the air. Players will need to use this camera for specific parts of the storyline that cannot be accessed with the normal camera.

Collectables
Throughout the world are a number of special structures the player must photograph. This is to encourage further exploration and aid the overall narrative structure.

Gaia features unique, consistent stylised art direction, while not being ultra-realistic. Considering photographs of the world will be taken and viewed independently the game art must appear artful while not in motion. Therefore high-quality texturing and modelling will be vital.

As the game world is completely devoid of other beings the environmental art in Gaia is imperative to its success. The game’s aim is to showcase a sense of vast scale through the use of massive spanning vistas and huge man-made structures juxtaposed against intimate smaller areas.

Gaia does not feature a UI whilst in game in order to increase the cinematic quality.

Sound in Gaia acts as an emotional link between the player and the game, defining the atmosphere. It features a mostly ambient electronic soundtrack, with music inspired by Boards of Canada, Fila Brazillia and Jon Hopkins. There is minimal focus on sound effects and no voice-over to increase the games cinematic quality.

World streaming and view distances are technical issues to consider with Gaia. The scale is vast so while everything should be kept in view it must not be at great cost to performance.

Unreal Development Kit does not support native anti-aliasing, which could be an issue when viewing photographs because of the poor image fidelity. One solution may be to fake it in game using shader systems, another may be the option of adding filters to the photos after they are taken to compensate.

Last updated 29.06.10