Inside a makeshift photography studio.
"No need to do a cutscene? What do you mean?"
Lucas halted the filming preparations and looked at Lin Lixin with a puzzled expression.
Video playback has always been a great technology pioneered and popularized by Gamenova.
Since video game storage media upgraded from cartridges with a limited capacity of a few kilobytes to optical discs with capacities of hundreds of megabytes, the use of these games has become increasingly unrestrained.
For Lucas, using cutscenes to narrate the plot and advance the story in the game is undoubtedly his comfort zone.
After all, before making games, Lucasfilm was his main business.
Ideally, the technologies from both fields could be cleverly combined.
However, Lin Lixin said that this time the work does not require any video recordings.
"Yes, not even a second. This set is enough."
"Uh... I don't get it."
"Gestalt, that's all you need to remember, Lucas." It's true that this kind of thing is difficult to explain to them in an abstract way.
But once the final product is revealed, everyone will understand its beauty.
" Return to the Obra Dinn " is a great application of Gestalt completion theory.
"We won't let players see the entire event; just the moment it happens, or the most important moment, is enough."
While a complete cutscene can indeed provide players with more information.
But this would disrupt the entire reasoning process.
The answers should not be fed directly to the players, but rather they should be discovered emergently and autonomously by them.
"Essentially, we are trying to replicate real-world accident investigation practices."
How so?
Lin Lixin did not answer immediately, but instead pulled Lucas into the set.
Stepping onto the makeshift wooden deck, he looked around, his eyes lighting up. He quickly ran a couple of steps and picked up a prop knife from the table.
Then, they pulled over a crew member from the set. "Come on, try acting out what it looks like when someone's throat is slit, and they're clutching their neck and falling to the ground."
"Okay!"
The young man was flattered, but he quickly recovered and immediately forced a pained expression.
He gasped for breath as he knelt on the ground.
"Okay... perfect... stop! Yes, keep it like this!"
Lin Lixin shouted, then gripped the knife and made a running motion towards the captain's cabin.
"Now... Lucas, what do you think happened here?"
He's not exactly an expert in film and television, and his ability to control the camera is indeed somewhat lacking.
But the whole scene is not complicated, and its general outline can be quickly sketched out.
Lucas stared at the scene of the tragedy, his gaze shifting between the kneeling young man and Lin Lixin, before finally settling on the knife.
"Perhaps... you killed him?"
"That possibility cannot be ruled out." Lin Lixin nodded, fiddling with the small knife in his hand.
"But every sailor on the ship was issued one of these knives, so it's also possible that I witnessed someone harming him and was about to intervene."
That's its magic.
Give players ample room for thought.
"You see, the same scene can have completely different interpretations as the player gathers more and more clues. Perhaps after a few more shots, you'll discover that the sailor who was killed was actually the bad guy, and the murderer was trying to save someone else?"
Because of the existence of Gestalt, when humans see incomplete information, they will automatically try to find all the useful clues possible.
And attempt to establish causality on top of this.
"Furthermore... a static shot is more suitable for investigation than film; it is essentially a 3D stereoscopic image."
Lin Lixin stopped what he was doing and strolled over to the young man who was still diligently playing the role of the victim.
Whether it's animation, film, or broadcasting, it's essentially an art of time.
The director decides the changes in camera angles, and determines when and what the audience will see.
Everything was under control. But the frozen moment was different.
It will never change again; no matter how you wander through the scene, it will remain forever in that moment.
This means...
Players can examine the scene like they would a photograph, pausing, zooming in, observing closely, and making comparisons.
If it's a single, linearly narrated cutscene, players will need to constantly adjust the timeline as needed.
This has added tons of investigation costs out of nowhere.
"So, while it may seem to increase investigation costs, it actually makes it easier for players to solve puzzles?"
Lucas seemed lost in thought.
A very... very unique way of handling things.
But it must be said, it is indeed very useful.
Just imagine the moment when the clues gradually become clear, the several scenes that were previously considered the end of the deduction begin to be constantly reinterpreted and redefined, and everything suddenly becomes clear.
Lucas felt completely refreshed. That was the thrill of deduction!
Moreover, this approach seems to have a very inconspicuous but equally important function... saving development costs.
Creating a complete playout for each shot would be a significant expense, both in terms of storage and filming costs.
But all they need now is a fixed shot.
Then all you need to do is adjust and render the existing ship model.
Development costs and rendering expenses have been further reduced significantly.
It's practically magic!
When considered in conjunction with the significance of the previously mentioned 1-bit black and white image, this is truly a breathtaking technological feast.
It's not that the hardware is limited, but rather that it was intentionally designed this way for optimization, which also makes the game more fun.
It saves money for itself, makes players feel like they've gotten a great deal, and significantly reduces hardware requirements, allowing even NX to run smoothly...
It's a win-win-win situation.
Perhaps this is the ultimate secret of optimization. Compared to Battlefield 1991, which relied on its absurdly poor optimization to cause massive crashes, Return of the Obra Dinn has taken a completely different path.
It's like meticulously sculpting a work of art.
Every stroke and every line is a choice made after careful consideration.
Lucas even felt a chill run down his spine.
He glanced silently at Lin Lixin, who was still eloquently explaining Gestalt theory.
Just how far could this guy's eyes see?
He probably already had a complete project plan when he first proposed the project.
It's more accurate to say that he may have already prepared everything, but simply lacked an opportunity to realize it.
Recalling the initial three-choice option proposed by Lin Lixin.
Lucas suddenly felt a tickle in his heart.
He couldn't wait to find out just how much more was in Lin's head.
To be fair, in this respect, Lucas feels that he and Lin Lixin are quite similar. When he first met Spielberg in Hawaii, he did something similar.
That year, Star Wars had just been released.
Fearing a box office collapse, Lucas simply packed his bags and went on vacation to Hawaii to escape the pressure.
There, he met Spielberg had just finished filming " Close Encounters of the Third Kind ".
Spielberg said he's always wanted to make a James Bond movie, 007.
After listening, Lucas bluntly stated:
"I have something even more amazing than 007... it's called Indiana Smith."
That is, the later Indiana Jones.
How did he manage to get Spielberg on board with Lucasfilm?
Lucas reminisced about those times.
Perhaps it was Indiana Jones's image as a pure Adventure, stripped of the constraints of the British gentleman, that attracted him.
It could also be that he and Lucas, both at the peak of their careers, shared a mutual appreciation. But Lucas felt that the most important reason was perhaps that he himself had initially proposed multiple ideas for this IP.
Raiders of the Lost Ark wasn't something that was born out of a whim.
When he presented this idea to the other party, Lucas had actually been developing this story for a long time.
What he handed over to the other party was a complete blueprint for a TV series.
As time went on, the entire project took shape much faster than expected.
This is understandable, since although Return to the Obra Dinn is great, it was actually developed independently by lucaspope.
Assuming the overall strategy remains sound, even though the infrastructure is far behind, a sufficient number of personnel can still make up for much of the time difference.
All 60 crew members have finally been identified.
At the same time, Lucas also brought over several researchers who had been deeply involved in the Uncharted Waters to assist other departments.
It's quite unprecedented for a group of historical investigators and maritime surveyors to participate in game development.
"But how do we design a narrative like this now?" Faced with the "stop-motion narrative" created by Lin Lixin and Lucas, a group of Adventure game developers who were used to linear narrative structures were stumped.
Should we zoom in one shot at a time?
After recounting the events, players are asked to guess based on the scene.
It's interesting, but something just doesn't feel quite right.
It's less about deduction and puzzle-solving and more like... storytelling.
Especially considering there were 60 people on the ship, if all the corpses were placed here, the sheer amount of information would likely deter 90% of the players.
Only true enthusiasts of mystery games can maintain their focus and continue playing steadily amidst such a terrifying onslaught of information.
Frankly, this is very much against the spirit of Adventure games and the basic theories of video game design.
"It's very simple; we won't use linear narratives, nor will we use branching narratives."
In traditional text Adventure games, linear and branching modes are the two most common patterns.
The former is a standard RPG story, where the reader gradually enters the story as the plot progresses. This classic technique is favored by various epic productions.
Romance-themed visual novels, also known as galgames, fall into the latter category, relying on numerous branching choices to achieve different routes. "We use a combined narrative."
Combined narrative, or fragmented narrative, can also be understood as... fragmented narrative.