University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Breathless: depressed away from home

(USC Thesis Other)

Breathless: depressed away from home

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content BREATHLESS: DEPRESSED AWAY FROM HOME
A THESIS PAPER ABOUT THE CREATION OF THE PROJECT BREATHLESS
by
Ziqiao (Cloud) Tian
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
(INTERACTIVE MEDIA)
May 2022
Copyright 2022 Ziqiao (Cloud) Tian
Dedication
This work is dedicated to my high school teacher Mr. Song Xu, also known as Richard
Song, who guided me through the uncharted and helped me become who I am today.
ii
Table of Contents
Dedication .................................................................................................................. ii
List of Figures ........................................................................................................... iv
Abstract ...................................................................................................................... v
Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................. 1
1.1 Project Overview ............................................................................................................ 1
1.1.1 Main Mechanics ...................................................................................................... 1
1.2 Background .................................................................................................................... 2
1.3 Thesis Statement .......................................................................................................... 4
1.4 Features and Design Choices ..................................................................................... 5
Chapter 2: Act I, Start of John’s Downfall .............................................................. 8
2.1 Narrative Design Iteration Outcome ..........................................................................8
2.2 Story Synopsis .............................................................................................................. 8
2.3 Prior Art: What Remains of Edith Finch ................................................................... 9
2.4 Feature 1: Environmental Subtitles ......................................................................... 14
2.5 Feature 2: Taking Away Controls ............................................................................. 16
Chapter 3: Act II, The Futile Struggles .................................................................. 18
3.1 Story Synopsis ............................................................................................................. 18
3.2 Prior Art: When the Darkness comes ...................................................................... 19
3.3 Prior Art: Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice ....................................................................20
3.4 Feature 3: Spatial Audio ............................................................................................ 22
3.5 Feature 4: Mixed Language ...................................................................................... 23
3.6 Feature 5: Perspective Shift .................................................................................... 24
Chapter 4: Act III, A Hopeful Return ..................................................................... 26
4.1 Story Synopsis ............................................................................................................ 26
4.2 The Ending Message ................................................................................................. 26
Chapter 5: Conclusion and Future Steps ............................................................. 28
Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 30
iii
List of Figures
1 In-game screenshot demonstrating main mechanics, Breathless................................. 2
2 In-game screenshot of environmental Subtitle, Breathless............................................. 6
3 In-game screenshot of environmental 3D text, What Remains of Edith Finch........... 10
4 In-game Screenshot of Calvin on the swing, What Remains of Edith Finch ............... 11
5 In-game screenshot of Lewis Finch’s story, What Remains of Edith Finch ................ 12
6 In-game screenshot of Escape on Street sequence, Breathless .................................. 15
7 In-game screenshot of prompted button scene, Breathless ......................................... 17
8 In-engine screenshot of mental palace, Breathless ........................................................ 18
9 In-game screenshots, When the Darkness comes .......................................................... 20
10 In-engine screenshot of spatial audio implementation, Breathless ............................ 23
iv
Abstract
In walking simulation games, the gameplay and story are often designed to pull the
players into the character’s shoes so they can experience the character’s life first-hand. In
Breathless, our team aimed to create an experience that allows the players to feel
dissociation from the character, which coincides with what the character is going through
in the story. To achieve such an experience goal, we implemented five key features:
environmental subtitles, player control removal, spatial audio, perspective shift, and the use
of mixed languages in voice-over. The result for our assumed goal depends largely on the
player’s subjective feelings, but during playtests we have conducted, we have learned from
our players that they have not been able to focus closely on the character because some of
the implemented features confused them as we intended. This feedback showed that our
implementation was, to some extent, working and directionally correct.
v
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Project Overview
Breathless is an interactive narrative experience where the player plays as
John, a Chinese international student majoring in electronic engineering. Being
debased by his lab partner and all of his lab work deleted, John experiences the
onset of his first depression and descent into his mental abyss. The player is going
to observe John’s internal journey and his struggle to get his life back from the
mental downfall.
Over the course of the experience, the player will walk amongst our everyday
reality as well as John’s inner world to discover and hear John’s story. The player
will feel pressured, depressed, and lonely while experiencing dissociation within the
character.
This project intends to touch on the subjects of college student depression
and also the marginalized group of international students. By telling the story of an
individual, this experience hopes to show the players a slice of life and, in turn, help
the player see and understand more about international students and what our
lives can be.
1.1.1 Main Mechanics
Since this project is a walking simulator in which the player utilizes only the
WASD key for movement and the mouse for the camera, the main mechanic is
simply walking. There are two more mechanics that occasionally appear throughout
the experience. The player can interact with certain objects and inspect them by
1
rotating their mouse, and there are two places in the game that will require the
player to perform a QTE-like (Quick Time Event) button press.
Figure 1
In-game screenshot demonstrating main mechanics, Breathless.
1.2 Background
The whole idea of the project’s storyline came from my own experience as an
international student and a foreigner. Since the beginning of my ideation phase, I
knew that I wanted to create a project that tells a personal story. As the global
pandemic kept ramping up, news about international students kept popping up in
news feeds. The combination of lethal virus and international travel ban caused
waves of panic and despair among us - a large portion of the student population
wanted to go home and stay safe and alive, while circumstances worked against
2
them and kept them away from home. However, as the virus spread rapidly and
infected the whole world, the returning students became potential virus carriers,
making it dicult and dangerous for disease control organizations to contain the
infection rate. Then, there came the discouraging voices from social media:
suddenly, Chinese international students who just want to be home were spat at
doorsteps and bullied on social media for being the bringers of the deadly virus.
This coincided with many prejudices Chinese international students
previously faced. We were stereotypically perceived as spoiled children who escape
the system by studying abroad and who live a life full of booze and parties. Even
though that impression started as a fantasy based on Hollywood movies, scandals
about us throughout the years reinforced and deepened that misunderstanding. On
the other hand, media coverage rarely touches on the daily life of Chinese
international students, so there are very few ways that the mass public can know
the actual everyday lives we are experiencing. Among those everyday lives are the
cases where some of us get depression for many reasons. I was depressed and it
developed further into depression during my time in undergraduate study, and I
kept hearing other Chinese international students experiencing similar struggles. I
realized that, throughout the years we were educated in China, there were simply
not enough mental health sections. We are not familiar, let alone prepared, to
understand what has happened to ourselves and so we are more likely to feel
secluded and desperate when depression happens.
And so the idea of telling a story about depression came to me. I have talked
to friends of mine who had depression at some point in their lives. The consensus I
3
heard was that if someone learns other’s experiences with depression through
sharing processes, they are more likely to better handle their own depression. They
are more inclined to actively look for help from mental health professionals, which
is the healthy way for everyone.
By telling my own story, I hope to reach out to other Chinese international
students who are currently or have the tendency of experiencing depression during
their time away from home. I hope this work can also show the wider public what
kind of lives we might be living - the ones without spotlights and confetti, the
normal ones just like everybody else.
1.3 Thesis Statement
Walking Simulators have become an increasingly common genre in the field
of video game and interactive media projects that focus on storytelling and viewing
experience. Games such as What Remains of Edith Finch create a world similar to
the one we live in and mix it with surreal elements to create dramatic narrative
e ects. In games such as this, the story is often told from the perspective of the
player: Edith Finch is the character the player controls and the story is all told from
Edith’s first-person point of view so that the story has more direct embodiment.
This storytelling technique is used to maintain consistency throughout the entire
gameplay, but I wanted to experiment with the perspective shift by transitioning
back and forth between first-person and third-person in my game.
In Breathless, we, as a team, intended to explore this side of storytelling
where we seemingly tell a story through the character’s first-person point of view
4
but, from time to time, the character will tell his story from a third-person
perspective. The e ect we hoped to achieve here is to create a sense of
disassociation for our audience, which is within the character’s mind during his first
onset of depression. In addition to the perspective shift, we used a mixture of
languages in one sentence, a common speaking pattern observed among Chinese
international students, to enhance this dissociative e ect.
1.4 Features and Design Choices
Throughout the experience, we designed and/or implemented 5 features that
are closely related to my thesis statement. I want to briefly introduce them below
and will talk about them more in-depth in later chapters.
Environmental subtitles are 3D texts that are placed inside the game world.
They will always appear within the player’s frame of vision as actual objects along
with the voice-over monologues. This design is inspired by one of our prior art
references, What Remains of Edith Finch, which I detail in a later section. Normally
in most games, subtitle or captioning is an option that is mostly turned o by
default; when turned on, it’s usually displayed at the bottom of the screen and
doesn’t look like it’s part of the experience. The subtitles are meant to be assistive
features for those needing the spoken text to be presented visually. In Edith Finch,
the subtitles are used as a tool of expression and guidance. The texts are always
placed inside the game world and near the point of attention, serving as an
attraction to the eye. The player cannot turn them o as they can with normal
subtitles.
5
Figure 2
In-game screenshot of environmental Subtitle, Breathless.
Throughout the game, there are a few moments where we deliberately take
away the player’s control over the character. All these moments coincide with
John’s mental downfall and the story’s progression.
Inspired by Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, we committed a major portion of our
sound design to spatial audio. Similar to the directional whisper and chatter in
Hellblade, we designed an audio playback arrangement called the “halo”, which
were six audio sources surrounding the player all the time and can playback audio
clips by design.
In the second act of the game, the player starts to see and hear more and
more non-English languages, specifically Chinese and Japanese. This is a
phenomenon that is commonly observed among international students where we
would use multiple languages in one sentence that makes sense only to people like
6
us. This intentional narrative design is used to display the protagonist’s state of
mind and his way of dissociation.
Influenced by Japanese author Osamu Dazai and also my personal
experience, we also incorporated perspective shifts to add to John’s character
traits. The perspective shift would happen during parts of John’s monologue, where
he will shift the self-referencing pronunciation between first, second, and third
person. For example, in the mental palace scene, John first talks about himself by
saying “...a programming portion might have dropped my score even lower…” and
then he changes pronounciation in the next line: “He had so much more discipline
in high school…” In doing so, we add on and reinforce the impression of John
dissociating from himself.
In the following chapters, I will walk through the entire story of the
experience and connect our prior art references with the previously discussed
features.
7
Chapter 2: Act I, Start of John’s Downfall
2.1 Narrative Design Iteration Outcome
After a lot of ideation and an abandoned concept revolving around two
characters and the topic of suicide, I eventually settled on basing the game around
a story about the experience of someone’s first onset of depression.
I wanted to bring more attention to the issue of depression in international
college students. The protagonist John is an international college student of age
20. The storyline focuses on the events happening to John after he gets debased
and cast out by his engineering lab partner because of a failed lab exercise. The
major part of the story happens during a time when John’s mental health is
deteriorating, as he descends deeper into his own space of negativity. Inspired by
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, I decided to convey the narrative through audio
hallucinations and John’s internal monologuing which the player sees articulated
as environmental subtitles inside the virtual world.
2.2 Story Synopsis
During a seemingly normal lab time, John returns to his lab partner, Albert,
after class, only to be told that his half-finished code has been deleted. In a
dismissive manner, Albert deems John’s code useless and tells John that he’s not
needed. Triggered by this incident, John starts internalizing Albert’s comment and
having negative thoughts. After exiting campus, John starts to experience audio
8
hallucinations on his way home. In a moment of panic, John rushes back to his
apartment and shuts the world behind him.
In the lonely and dark apartment, John feels like he’s been rejected by
everything in his life. Because of the lack of mental health education, John does
not realize he’s experiencing depression and so he wants to simply sleep away
these unfamiliar feelings. During his first night, John enters his own space of
negativity, known as the dark ocean, for the first time, where his negative thoughts
reappear, and he feels lonely and exiled.
2.3 Prior Art: What Remains of Edith Finch
Here I would like to look into and discuss the first of our prior art references.
Created by Giant Sparrow, What Remains of Edith Finch is an interactive narrative
game where the player plays as the youngest living member of the Finch family,
Edith, returns to the old family house to explore and discover her ancestors' stories.
The player is able to walk around the house, interact with objects that are tied to
one of the family members, trigger fully voice-over narratives that switch between
Edith and other family members depending on whose room the player is currently
in, and morph into other characters/creatures to experience their bizarre
experience through their eyes. It is a compact story told from a first-person
perspective with surreal elements.
9
Figure 3
In-game screenshot of environmental 3D text, What Remains of Edith Finch.
Edith Finch is relevant to our project on several points. First, both projects
are walking simulators at their cores. In Edith Finch, the story is always told through
the first-person perspective of the player character- which could be Edith or her
deceased relatives- with what they see, hear, and think. In Breathless, we took the
same design to let the player see and hear through John’s eyes and ears. The
narrative is conveyed through voice-overs and environmental subtitles (3D
subtitles that exist in the game world). The environmental subtitles provide extra
attraction to the eyes and, because it is in sync with the voice-over, it helps the
player to focus more on what the voice is saying. When the player reads and listens
to the same line, it leaves a stronger impression on the player because the line has
entered the player’s memory and the voice-over has brought the memory alive with
emotions. This is an interesting way of storytelling that I want to incorporate into
10
our project because it attracts more attention to the voice-over and pulls the
audiences closer to the story as they walk and breathe in the story first-hand.
Figure 4
In-game Screenshot of Calvin on the swing, What Remains of Edith Finch.
Secondly, from the mechanics perspective, Edith Finch has a unique way of
making meaningful play. In the example of the swing section, the player morphs
into Edith’s deceased family member Calvin and sits on a swing to play as if they
were in Calvin’s childhood body. The interaction design is simple: the player can
only press forward or backward to control the swing. The objective of the
interaction is to eventually send Calvin flying o the swing to his anticipated
demise. But the player also has the freedom to keep swinging forever. Knowing
Calvin’s fate early on, I — as the player — felt a great deal of reluctance to complete
the objective and so I kept swinging for a long while before I finally let go.
11
The emotion I felt at the time was regret and sadness: the interaction put me
in Calvin’s shoes, just enough to let me connect with him, but not too close to be
deeply a ected by his death. I’m connected because I’ve been through Calvin’s
story at the wedding and I felt his anger and pain; I then controlled his swing and I
eventually made the decision to stop swinging and let Calvin fly. I’m connected
because the story continued on my decision and my action has a consequence, and
so I have a certain degree of agency over the story. I’m not too close to Calvin
because of the anticipation given by the story’s premise - that all the members
have died and they are all gone by the end of their story segment. This is a level of
emotional connection I wished to achieve with our game: we wanted to pull the
audience close so they can feel what John’s going through but not too close to
have them personally a ected and personally triggered.
Figure 5
In-game screenshot of Lewis Finch’s story, What Remains of Edith Finch.
12
The use of surrealism in Edith Finch is also what I wished to emulate for our
project. In Edith Finch, the game often juxtaposes various imaginative objects or
scenes on top of the real world, or it simply transforms the environment or the
player's character to achieve the same e ect. For example, in the fish factory
scene, the player takes on the role of Lewis Finch, whose only task is to stand still
and chop o fish heads over a guillotine station. But the player is also seeing Lewis’
much more vivid internal world transposed on top of the factory. The story is told in
a “wonderland” while the player is still chopping o fish heads. This juxtaposition
creates a strong contrast and sense of suspension, which leads to the climax of the
section.
For my project, we wanted to similarly express an unusual and dream-like
state of mind. Surrealism is a great way to design and build our visual world for two
reasons. First, this story is based on my personal experience, and I was having
surrealistic moments while I was in the same state of mind: I dreamt of waking up in
a familiar white space for the first time while familiar objects from my life scattered
around the space. After I woke up from those dreams, I sometimes can’t clearly tell
if I’m back in reality or not and I wanted to replicate that experience in this project.
Secondly, surrealism is a way “...to release the creative potential of the unconscious
mind” (Google Dictionary, 2022), and dissociation is “...a break in how your mind
handles information. You may feel disconnected from your thoughts, feelings,
memories, and surroundings. It can a ect your sense of identity and your
perception of time.” (Wiginton, 2021) They are connected because they can both
happen on a subconscious level and, when John is dissociated from himself, he
13
enters his mental palace, which is a fictional world he conjured and relives his past
real-life trauma as a bystander or commentator. I believe this is a fitting way of
presenting my experience of depression as they are connected not only on the
conceptual level but on my personal perception level as well.
Another related point is the voice-over of the character’s thoughts. It’s a
powerful tool, when combined with the environmental subtitles, to convey the
emotion and mood of the current point in the story. With the support from other
non-lingual sounds such as sound e ects and music, it would, ideally, create a
strong sense of audio theater and enable the player to focus on their ears to
perceive the game.
2.4 Feature 1: Environmental Subtitles
After examining the design in What Remains of Edith Finch, I would like to
revisit some features in our project that are inspired and related by this game.
In a similar fashion, we designed and committed to using environmental
subtitles to carry out our story. From a narrative presentation perspective, this is an
attempt to display a special state of mind: John is entering a phase of self-pity and
self-deprecation. On his way out of campus immediately after being fired by his lab
partner, John begins to stop recognizing other people and starts to filter them out
of his sight. He starts to question, judge, and blame himself. As the surrounding
stimuli become more and more acute and unbearable, John sees the world closing
in on him. He starts to have out-of-body experiences where he sees himself as a
protagonist of a movie, and this is when the dissociation happens; this is also where
14
the game starts shifting between di erent perspectives. On his way back home, he
becomes unable to see the real world and starts hearing things that feel out of
place.
Figure 6
In-game screenshot of Escape on Street sequence, Breathless.
By using environmental subtitles, we project John’s thoughts outwards right
in front of the players’ eyes while they listen to what they see. There are two e ects
we achieve by doing this. The first one is to build John’s character. The combination
of environmental subtitles and voice-over brings forward a character who is always
speaking their mind out loud at a somewhat self-conscious level. This is exactly
who John is once he starts self-deprecating. The second e ect is to double the
impact of the monologue on the player. While a monologue alone would require too
much focus for the player’s ears, adding environmental subtitles would provide
visual stimuli and so the monologue would be less likely to be boring.
15
2.5 Feature 2: Taking Away Controls
In the street scene where John struggles back to his apartment, the player
had full control at the beginning of the level. As the player moves forward, John
starts going down his mental slope and, in the narrative, losing his grip on reality.
We gradually remove control during John’s changes: first the ability to simply walk
backward, then the ability to freely turn the camera, and finally all control is lost
except for one button that’s been prompted on the screen. This process is subtle
and sometimes unnoticeable, which is metaphorically parallel to John’s way of
losing himself without knowing. Breaking rules of game design, this loss of control
design is unusual but fitting to emphasize John’s state.
Similarly, in a later scene in the dark ocean, the player falls beneath the water
surface and is destined to drown. During this level, the player can only press the
spacebar - which is a limited control - to try to resurface. We deliberately set an
invisible barrier at the surface to ensure however hard they try, the player is going
to fail and have to give up. The agency in this scene occurs when the player learns
the futility of the struggle and actively releases their hand from the keyboard and
watches John going under.
16
Figure 7
In-game screenshot of prompted button scene, Breathless.
In both scenes, we take away the player’s control to increase the emotional
intensity of the story and the tension in the player. In the story, the player is seeing
John going through moments of crisis and panic and John is trying his best e ort
to get to the place he wants to. Meanwhile, the player is assumed to physically and
repeatedly press the prompt button as fast as they can. The player’s action aligns
with the character’s action and so the player has a chance to really feel the
extortion and emotion of John.
17
Chapter 3: Act II, The Futile Struggles
3.1 Story Synopsis
When he wakes up again, John finds himself unable to get up from bed due
to a lack of motivation. After falling asleep again, John unconsciously enters his
mental palace, a primitive space that stores all of his memory, and he is here to
search for strength and motivation to get him back up to normal.
Figure 8
In-engine screenshot of mental palace, Breathless.
During his searches for external strengths, John reencounters his past
academic achievements that used to remind him of being a good student, but his
poor self-image only lets him reinterpret his past as a trick of his own pride. After
failing in searching for external motivation, John’s mind brings him to another
location in the mental palace, where he relives a traumatic event of getting publicly
ridiculed and rejected by his grade school class and the person he loved. This
18
deepens John’s perception of being exiled and not needed, and so he collapses and
falls down into the dark ocean and drowns underwater. As he realizes he could
never get to the surface for air, John gives up and sinks into the abyss.
In the next few days, John remains paralyzed in bed while his mind wanders
in an ambiguous space with two paths leading out of the small platform he wakes
up on: one goes down and seems short and easy while the other one goes up but
appears really far away, with a little bit of light at its end. Every time John chooses
to take the shorter way, he returns back to his bed, staring at the ceiling just like
the previous day; alternatively, if John chooses to go the lengthy path, he will
proceed further into the sequence and back in his mental palace.
3.2 Prior Art: When the Darkness comes
When the Darkness comes is an interactive experience about social anxiety
and depression. The experience is shown in 3D and the player experiences by
walking through a series of surreal worlds and experiencing the occasional horror
moments and puzzle/obstacle elements. This experience aims to pose a question or
exhibit a mindset more than to provide a solution or show some kind of meaning.
The strength of this game is within its surrealist design of all the
environments. Similar to Edith Finch, this game uses environmental texts; however,
the texts are not subtitles of the voice-overs and their function more as a means of
environmental storytelling. By walking around and seeing the floating text display,
the game intends to put pressure onto the players themselves, so that the player
can experience, first hand, the feeling the author once had. This point coincides
19
with our project in a way that we want to use texts to make the player be more
conscious about the narrative.
Figure 9
In-game screenshots, When the Darkness comes.
The simple environment and art style in When the Darkness comes is also
highly favorable for our project. Not only does the style create a sense of
surrealness, but it also presents a great feeling of loneliness in certain scenes. The
highly symbolized human shape (with two glowing eyes and mysterious clouds
surrounding the heads) is an excellent way to leave a mark of human presence
while creating a feeling of isolation and loneliness, as well as anxiety and horror.
See figure 9.
3.3 Prior Art: Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a third-person action game where the player
plays as an ancient Celtic woman, Senua, going on a journey to revive her loved one
20
by completing the trials of the gods. This game is excellent in environmental
storytelling and surrealism both in visual and audio design.
The strength of this game that we emulated is the 360-degree audio design.
In Hellblade, the player can constantly hear auditory hallucinations such as
indistinguishable whispers and chatters (called “the Others”) around them at all
times. Senua’s hallucinations came from a combination of paranoia, dementia, and
schizophrenia, and so she heard murmurs in the midst of sound as if all the ghosts
from her past were around her and talking about her movement as if she was being
watched.
During boss fights, important information (such as boss attack directional
alerts) will pop out of the mist of sound with directional instruction to help the
player continue the game. This surrounding audio design provides the player with
an immersive experience that adds to the character, making her story more
compelling. This was an important reference for audio design in our project as we
created a character with a similar mindset, who also has auditory hallucinations as
one of the symptoms of psychosis.
An interesting aspect of Hellblade is that this game focuses on the
protagonist’s mental health issues. In the game, the player observes the symptoms
of psychosis on the heroine Senua. During the course of the game, puzzles and
combat sequences appear because of Senua’s hallucinations and delusions. The
previously-mentioned 360-degree audio design is one of the design features to
represent Senua’s condition. In Breathless, we intended to use a similar design to
represent John’s own depression, as John perceives the world around him through
21
his ears and his memory recall is majorly in the audio form. Although the two
projects deal with di erent mental illnesses, we still believed the spatial audio
design from Hellblade would help us create similar auditory experiences and help
the players better understand John as a character.
3.4 Feature 3: Spatial Audio
Inspired by such audio design, we designed something we called the “halo”.
The halo consists of six audio sources that surround the player character at all
times in certain scenes such as the street. The audio sources are placed at the
same distance from the player and they form a hexagon when looked at from
above. Programmed through Wwise, audio files are played at random times through
any random three of the six sources. Audio files are made in a certain length to
make sure no audio gaps exist. This design intends to deliver John’s auditory
condition directly into the player’s ears and create a chilling and unnerving
experience.
For other sound e ects that happen diegetically around the player, we also
committed to placing the audio exactly where the objects or the imagined sound
source are. By doing this, all the sounds the player hears will have nuance changes
that will provide directional and distance information, bringing as much immersive
audio experience as possible. For some of our music, we also have designed them
to be implemented as spatial audio and placed them in the virtual world. The e ect
we hope to achieve here is to bring the audience physically in the middle of the
music where it happens, instead of the traditional way of merely listening to the
22
music through pre-panned stereo channels. The question of how e ective this can
be is the one we want to experiment with and see the result of.
Figure 10
In-engine screenshot of spatial audio implementation, Breathless.
3.5 Feature 4: Mixed Language
As I have briefly mentioned before, the player will start to hear more and
more Chinese and Japanese after entering the second act. This narrative design
comes from my real-life experience as an international student with English as a
secondary language. When we are familiar with the language long enough, our
secondary language(s) represents a di erent way(s) of thinking. In John’s case, his
native language is Chinese but that is the least used language in the game whereas
English and Japanese are much more common.
For John, the Chinese language is something that reminds him of his past,
which contains undealt issues and traumas, so he unconsciously stays away from
23
speaking in his native tongue. English, on the other hand, is a more explanatory and
logical language for him, and so it is the most used language throughout the game
as John describes his thoughts and movements almost like captions. Japanese is a
special case here. John is not a born Japanese but he is absolutely fascinated by
the language and culture mostly because of Japanese anime. Even though such
background is not explained in the story, John has learned Japanese on his own
time out of his fascination. During the course of the story, we see John doing a
thing where he inserts words or short phrases into sentences just to feel cool and,
specifically for John, distant and dissociative.
For example, when John reaches the auditorium in his mental palace, he
deprecates his past achievement. One of his monologues is the following: “Hmph,
guess I really peaked this early. It’s nothing but downhill afterward. でも考えてみると、
俺、本当にそんなに高い成果( せいか) を収( おち)めましたげ？ (But to think about it, did I
really achieve that much?) hmph, 笑わせな (don’t make me laugh).” In this line, John
starts with English but quickly switches to Japanese because for him, switching
languages makes the self-deprecation less painful and he doesn’t want to even
face his own criticism.
3.6 Feature 5: Perspective Shift
Because of his fascination with Japanese culture, John has also read
Japanese literature and Osamu Dazai is his favorite author. Remembering Dazai’s
work The Setting Sun, John makes the comment when he sees the setting sun on
his way back home and puts himself in comparison to Dazai’s story. Dazai was
24
allegedly influenced by Franz Kafka and both authors were known for their
depressive tone. Additionally, in both authors’ works, there were instances where
the characters talk about themselves from a third-person perspective as if they
were talking about someone else. We learned from the method of writing and
consider this a great way to show dissociation. Hence the weird third-person view
that shows up in some of John’s monologues. For example, right when John is
about to exit the SAT testing hall in the mental palace, he has the following
monologue: “He had so much more discipline in high school. And even then…… ただ
恥である (just an embarrassment).” This sudden change in perspective will likely
create confusion within the audience because it seems like John is talking about
someone else.
25
Chapter 4: Act III, A Hopeful Return
4.1 Story Synopsis
Eventually, John decides to walk through the longer path leading to the next
sequence and ends up in the bottom of his mental palace, where he meets another
version of himself, his ego. The traumatic items John saw previously reappear
around him and his ego encourages and reexamines them with John while helping
John get a grasp on his condition. After a long conversation with his internal self,
John starts to realize his need to face his past and trauma head-on and the
shame-free fact that he needs help to do that. After John’s ego o ers a possible
solution, John bids his ego farewell and returns to reality to follow through with the
plan.
For the last time, John wakes up from his bed and successfully gets up. He
still feels depressed but slightly better, good enough to support himself stepping
out of the apartment. In the end, John pulls open his door and heads into the
morning sunlight to the mental health clinic center on campus to seek professional
help.
4.2 The Ending Message
We intended to have John's story start and end on the same mundane,
everyday experience. John doesn't go on a hero’s journey- there is no holy grail nor
an epic dragon fight in the end to save the world. Instead, the story simply ends
back on his normal day and also on a more positive note, that John has gained a
26
much better understanding of himself and has taken action to seek professional
help and get better.
There are two messages in this narrative design. First and foremost, we
wanted to plainly express the notion that it’s perfectly normal to have depression
and then to seek professional help. Such a message doesn’t need to be delivered at
a dramatic climax. We wish to make the action of seeking help as normal and
acceptable as possible so that more international students who don’t have enough
or proper mental health education can feel normal to do such a di erent action.
Another message is rather personal for me as a creator. John’s story is far from the
end, rather it’s only the beginning of a much longer journey of life. I understand
from personal experience that this first onset is only one of many more to come,
that I can never know how the future onsets will a ect me, and that the road to
recovery is a long and painful one. And so I don’t want to end this story on a high
note like a traditional climax because there wasn’t one and I don’t think there will
ever be one. These are the messages I want to send out through this project and I
hope to use this unusual way to get the message across.
27
Chapter 5: Conclusion and Future Steps
Reflecting back on my thesis statement and the emotional impact of our
experience, I think this project has achieved the goals to a certain extent.
To summarize our approach to achieve our design and experience goal, we
used the combination of environmental subtitles and voice-over to deliver and
reinforce the narrative while providing visual and audio attractions for the player. To
create and strengthen the feeling of dissociation, we deliberately mixed in multiple
languages to create momentary confusion out of lingual misalignment while John’s
monologues constantly shift between the first, second, and third-person
perspectives. With the help of spatial audio, we were able to display John’s state of
mind and the way he perceives the world around him.
From the playtest feedback and data we collected, we confirmed that the
combination of environmental subtitles and voice-over monologues works well to
pull the player into the story and convey the designed emotion. The mixed language
and perspective shift feature confused some of the players, but they were all able
to move forward after the brief confusion. Given the fact that the playtest build did
not include the entire story, I can hold on to my assumption that the players can get
to understand John’s character through these two narrative features.
For spatial audio, the current playtest data shows that only a portion of the
spatialized sounds can be recognized. This could be improved by readjusting the
spatial parameters such as range and the exact placement of the audio source
object in the engine. But the fact that some spatial audio can be recognized by
28
some players and they feel like the game sounds di erent gives us confidence that
our design would work if we keep refining it.
Now that all the foundational features have been, at a certain level, proven to
work, the next step for us seems clear. We will focus on assembling all the
sequences together to reach our alpha milestone so that the story is complete and
that the players can now get to the full view of the experience. Then we’ll be able to
perform more playtests and know for sure if our features work to show what we
designed for.
29
Bibliography
Google Dictionary. (n.d.). Surrealism. In Google.com dictionary. Retrieved March 15,
2022,
from
https:/ /www.google.com/search?q=surrealism&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS948US94
9&oq=surr&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j0i20i263i433i512j46i67i433j0i67j0i67i
433j0i10i67j69i60.836j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Wiginton, K. (2021, June 28). Dissociation: Causes, Diagnosis, Symptoms, and
Treatment.
WebMD. https:/ /www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociation-overview
Giant Sparrow. (2017). What Remains of Edith Finch. Annapurna Interactive.
http:/ /edithfinch.com/
Sirhaian. (2019). When the Darkness comes. Sirhaian.
https:/ /store.steampowered.com/app/1021950/When_the_Darkness_come
s/
Ninja Theory. (2017). Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Ninja Theory.
https:/ /www.hellblade.com/
30

Abstract (if available)

Abstract In walking simulation games, the gameplay and story are often designed to pull the players into the character’s shoes so they can experience the character’s life first-hand. In Breathless, our team aimed to create an experience that allows the players to feel dissociation from the character, which coincides with what the character is going through in the story. To achieve such an experience goal, we implemented five key features: environmental subtitles, player control removal, spatial audio, perspective shift, and the use of mixed languages in voice-over. The result for our assumed goal depends largely on the player’s subjective feelings, but during playtests we have conducted, we have learned from our players that they have not been able to focus closely on the character because some of the implemented features confused them as we intended. This feedback showed that our implementation was, to some extent, working and directionally correct.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Hedge hug -- a narrative-driven interactive exploration on low self-esteem and social anxiety

PDF

Try again: the paradox of failure

PDF

Inclusive character creator: an exploration of inclusive design for 3D character creators

PDF

Wandering light: an interactive visual novel

PDF

Reversal: expressing a theme through mechanics

PDF

A monster's hearth: seeing yourself through monsters

PDF

Last broadcast: making meaning out of the mundane

PDF

Come with Me: a cooperative game focusing on player emotion

PDF

Reversal: tell a story about social hierarchy and inequality without using text and dialogue

PDF

Shepherds - cooperating from divergent path: a design exploration

PDF

Metamorphosis: Thyota's journey - embedding environmental themes into fantastical elements in games

PDF

Garden designing a creative experience with art and music orchestra

PDF

The Darkest Plague: insights on the development of an action adventure game

PDF

That's not how it happened: unreliable narration through interactivity

PDF

Untitled: an exploration of virtual reality as a cinematic medium

PDF

Morana: explore healing potential of virtual reality storytelling

PDF

Spectre: exploring the relationship between players and narratives in digital games

PDF

Chaos

PDF

Sentenced an interactive exploration of compassionate communication through a black lens

PDF

Developing a playful situational creator for mixed reality: design analysis on Neon City, a city building game

Asset Metadata

Creator Tian, Ziqiao "Cloud" (author)

Core Title Breathless: depressed away from home

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Degree Conferral Date 2022-05

Publication Date 04/14/2022

Defense Date 04/13/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag 3D,audio hallucination,Chinese international student,daily life,Depression,emotional,internal distortion,Mental Health,multilingual writing,narrative-driven,OAI-PMH Harvest,relatable,spatial audio design,Surrealism,walking simulator

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Lemarchant, Richard (committee chair), Bilson, Danny (committee member), Fullerton, Tracy (committee member)

Creator Email cloud.z.tian@gmail.com,ziqiaoti@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC110963580

Unique identifier UC110963580

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Tian, Ziqiao "Cloud"

Type texts

Source 20220415-usctheses-batch-924 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given.

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu