The term "interactive art" was coined by an article from the guardian , as a more appropriate description for the game :
"And what it actually is, is the key question. Because, by generally accepted definitions of the word, Journey is not a game. It has no fail state: although there is perceived peril, it seems impossible to actually "die" while playing. There is no time limit, so solving puzzles has no sense of tension. And although the presence of puzzles suggests challenge and therefore a game-like experience, these tasks are simple and toy-like...
..thatgamecompany continually refers to Journey as an experiment. When I interviewed the producer Robin Hunicke last year, she was very clear about that. Aware that they'd never produced a game with a traditional multiplayer component before, the studio set about exploring the meaning and conventions of online interaction, and sought to manipulate them to create something more spiritual and reflective. All thatgamecompany titles are effectively a Voight-Kampff test – they are designed specifically to provoke an emotional response. And in this sense, they are more like art than games."
Indeed, one of the key unique points of Journey that is has no dialog to communicate its stories , therefore they relied on the artistic style of the landscape and the interaction of the character to the environment around them to deliver it punches , helped along by cutscenes, hence , meaning that Journey is a pure "visual" production. In contrast to the logic of having less focus on sound and more on image, you would focus say on making the graphics more realistic perhaps, but like many other indie games out there, Journey relies on simplicity and style. This has 2 pros : first , being that the visual quality of Journey stands up to the test of time ( even till' this day ) and second ,it gave the designer incredible creative freedom and use it to create more of an emotional impact through their design as compared to what realistic graphic can.
This idea of simplicity was first demonstrated in the character design :
The picture above shows an evolution of the character concepts from the very beginning all the way to the final game. If you notice , there is a trend where it started out as a human figure, gradually evolving into something that is more detailed and complex , but started stripping it all down to the minimum toward the end , with the final design being essentially a tent with a head and 2 legs. One of the concept artists who worked on the game , showcased his early production art as various drawings of hooded human figures , with an emphasis on cloth. After a number of studies, he reached this drawing :
This was one of the earliest concepts that resemble the final character , and served as the base for the production from then on. One key interesting point about this , one of the reason that these earlier concepts weren't accepted were the fact that it would be too hard to animate, considering they uses lots of moving pieces and details , which pressured the designer to begin stripping away. As the game mechanic that was finalised uses little movement of arms, the arms was therefore stripped away , so were the feet , the straps , in its places the addition of a elongated cloth cape design that was one of the core mechanics of the gameplay , ...etc until we have :
So in this situation , we see design being altered by the need of gameplay , a very interesting point observe . If that was in animation , what would be to the case that could alter the design halfway through ?
Simplicity shows itself again through the landscape of Journey . Once again one of the earliest idea was to have a high-texture , detailed water-colour for the background ( so in similar sense to Ghibli's animation ) , but realistic necessity won and it was deemed too difficult ( and undoubted to expensive for an indie developer ) to do . That was when the idea to take away all the texture and emphasise on flat shapes came up , giving it a more illustrated look. At the end of production though , some of those texture idea creeped back up , and in turn create a unique blend between detailed texture (like the sand , snow ) with the flat colours of the larger figures in the background like dunes and mountains far away ), it was absolutely incredible to view.
The background were also uses as a tool to create an emotional factor to the gameplay , such as the designer wanted a sense of freedom and exploration for the player , therefor , they pushed the fog way back for open scene, emphasising on vast plains and ground that the player can go across. Moreover , the sense of scale in the game , having the character significantly smaller than the environment on screen , really add to the sense of grandeur of the journey , especially in the end bit there the character is flying up toward the mountain , combined that with the soundtrack and you get a hair-tingling sensation of epicness in the entire moment.
Adding up on top of that , interestingly enough , the use of colours is also used as an too to indicate progression through the story , as demonstrated by this colour composition used throughout each stages of Journey :
Overall , Journey's use of simplicity in the world of competing realistic-in-game graphics is very much closely related to the story of 2D animation in the CGI era , and really shows of the creative power it can provide if done right. This would be a great reference for my future project , especially in colour use and backgrounds.
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