FROMSOFT and Level Design

Game Dev — Part V: 13 Dimensional Space — In, what I believe to be, the final part of this FROM saga. Is it a saga? Maybe not in the traditional sense. Regardless, I’m calling it a saga since it’s in VIparts… deal with it

Spatial design can be as much of a storyteller as an NPC crammed full of exposition. This is especially true as a good layout feels effortless when we move through it. A journey, if you will. Falling Water is a pinnacle of incorporating the natural environment, confinement to openness, and things betwixt (I haven’t been, but I hear good things). The Guggenheim in New York has a large open entrance floor with an ascending spiral walkway around the sides where art can be seen. It provides visitors with a flow that naturally moves them forward and through the exhibit(s) to their inevitable conclusion. Or Myoryu-ji, a buddhist temple in Kanazawa, includes innumerable secrets, traps, and hidden paths, etc that provide an adventure to anyone who chose to enter. For example the temple is designed to look like it’s 2 floors from the outside, but is actually 4. Moving through any of these spaces provides story and intentionality. Enter FROM SOFTWARE

FROM has long been lauded for its level design, with Dark Souls as the vanguard. Anyone who’s made it to Firelink Shrine knows how brilliant of a setup for the world it is. Firelink is centrally located, with vistas that ascend and descend from view. The inquisitive will walk to the edges and look down or up to be greeted with sights of areas to come: Valley of the Drakes, The Depths, Blighttown, the Great Swamp, and the Undead Burg (to name a few). Like a Zelda game, FROM follows the design pillar, “If you see it, you can get to it”

Each environment in a FROM game is set up with 3 things in mind: exploration, combat, story. Players are meant to be consistently in the risk/reward state and the level layouts, “bonfire” (save point) placements, and enemy locations focus that to a sharp point

The hub of Firelink has paths leading in different directions. Players are nudged, not pushed, to a single reasonable path of least resistance. These areas are all pretty small, in terms of where players can physically go. One of the tricks the designers implement is creating the illusion of space through wide open areas with far away opposing cliffs/walls then incorporating crevices or other gaps that restrict movement. Spaces appear grand and open, but are actually quite small. This allows designers to better place enemies and set up those encounters to be complementary, but only make things claustrophobic when they want to. While Dark Souls allows players to go in different directions, it manages player movement carefully and creates clearly defined paths

FROM layers on top of their level design, again following a Nintendo-esque philosophy. They do this by filling the world with secrets. Some are relatively obvious, i.e. a glowing soul sitting under the aqueduct leading to the Undead Burg or the soul under the bridge just past the first bonfire therein. But many are akin to grabbing bombs in Zelda and just randomly bombing walls (in the case of Dark Souls this equates to whacking walls like someone who was just told their sword could break anything). But the intricacies of these hidden areas become so rewarding that it’s worth finding them

Shortly after starting any FROM game, players will inevitably be confronted with a “locked door” (these can be literal doors, ladders that need to be kicked down, etc). Locked doors are simple design tools to gate progress and keep players on a specific path. What Dark Souls, and each subsequent game did, was exceptional. Through some careful planning, paths would crisscross and wrap back on themselves. So a door that was locked from the inside, or a ladder that was held in place, could be unlocked by players later and create a shortcut through the level. This also allowed FROM to use the same “Bonfire” (save point) more than once. The use of locked doors made the sense of discovery endless. It let players skip a bunch of stuff they already did and made it exciting when a door was unlocked and your brain screamed, “Holy shit, I’m back here?!”

Next, let’s look at combat and the environment as a tool. As mentioned in the gameplay breakdown, players can hack away at the Asylum Demon or they can run behind it and drop on its head from above, doing substantially more damage. When they get to the Taurus Demon later, after panic subsides, clever players realize they can climb one of the caste towers and drop down on the ol’ TD and do some real damage. Reinforcing that the level design works hand and hand with core game concepts and encouraged players to find interesting ways to use it to their advantage

Finally, FROM is in a league of its own with environmental storytelling. The enemies, objects, etc, all tell a story of that specific area. If we take Farron’s Keep in Dark Souls 3 we can see it positioned right above the Catacombs of Carthus. The inhabitants of Farron’s Keep, The Abyss Watchers, are tasked with keeping the abyss at bay. Carthus is rotten with it, so the location is no accident. Curiously, darkwraiths, a powerful enemy and followers of the abyss, are present near the boss room, killing other enemies that stand in their way. When players arrive at the boss arena they hear fighting from inside; when entered, they see the Abyss Watchers fighting each other. Why? Most players won’t ask that question, but for those who do, answers are there. If players examine the armor of the Abyss Watchers they’ll notice tendrils of the abyss creeping up the sides. The abyss is taking those that are set to defend against it. It’s brilliant “show, don’t tell” storytelling that comes from the environment

What FROM does with its level design is masterful. They create a desire to explore everything a player sees, even if far in the distance. They use gaps and distant walls to make areas feel much bigger than they are without ever sacrificing the risk/reward of combat by constraining movement (this is even true in many areas of the open world, Elden Ring). Combat situations are carefully constructed around spaces players are traversing through chokepoints, verticality, and obstacles. And, “show, don’t tell” story is rich and deep for anyone willing to put in the time and effort. The worlds FROM creates and movement through them are exceptionally curated and provocative