Islands

by Dr_Worm on Apr 2nd, 2014

Islands are a pretty interesting facet of game design to me. They’re often used because of their natural barriers, with water as far as the eye can see on all sides of the islands. Sometimes the player can try to escape, but often there’s just nothing out there. Islands provide a way to keep players contained in open world environments without the need for invisible walls.

There are many, many examples of islands in games. When you think about it, they’re probably the most common landscape for games. The Grand Theft Auto series is a prime example, having full cities, and in San Andreas’s case a whole state, surrounded by water. When you consider these are supposed to be parallels of real life coastal American cities, it’s kind of weird that they’re locked on all sides. GTA 3 is the only one of the modern GTAs where they land you can’t actually access, to give the impression that there’s more beyond Liberty City. You couldn’t swim in GTA 3, but players found a way to reach that land, and were disappointed by there being nothing but hidden resources for the opening cutscene.

The Elder Scrolls series is inconsistent when it comes to islands. The first game was one gigantic continent, but you could still consider it an island. Daggerfall, the second game in the series, was a peninsula instead, but was much larger than Arena. Morrowind took place in the titular province of Morrowind, but mostly just the island of Vvardenfell. Even though the island isn’t far from land, you still can’t swim to the to the surrounding continental parts. Oblivion and Skyrim both incorporated invisible walls into their game worlds, due to them being at least partially landlocked. Hell, Cyrodiil is about as un-island as you can get. When you try to leave, the games stop you dead in your tracks and pretty much just say “no, you can’t.” Pretty restricting for an open world game, but understandable. Interestingly, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim each had expansion packs taking place on islands, Morrowind’s and Skyrim’s being the same island.

Islands in games are absolutely not a new concept, however, and not limited to open world games. Just think about how many classic games took place on islands. Donkey Kong Country, island. Crash Bandicoot, islands. Myst, island. Link’s Awakening, island. Sonic 3 took place on an island, as well as its pseudo-sequel, Sonic & Knuckles. Adventure Island, Monkey Island, Yoshi’s Island, believe it or not, all islands. Might & Magic 4 and 5 both took place on space islands, where the worlds are flat and the edges of it are vast expanses of outer space. Toejam & Earl is another example of space islands. It doesn’t matter whether it’s an adventure game, or a linear platformer, islands are everywhere.

Some games have more than one island, like a few that I mentioned. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker not only has lots of islands, but encourages you to go out and explore to find them. You can spot an island’s silhouette from a distance and just go in its direction until you reach it. This is a case where islands aren’t necessarily as restricting as they traditionally are in games. Other games only have the occasional island, like Banjo-Kazooie or Super Mario 64. Speaking of Mario, Super Mario Sunshine had an island setting. And speaking of Banjo, the second game kind of revealed that you’ve been on an island the whole time in both games. It seems like islands are a great getaway place, a locale that doesn’t matter where it is in the world. It’s hard to piece together where exactly all of Mario’s worlds are in relation to each other, and with islands it just doesn’t matter – it could be anywhere.

Islands in games may be naturally restrictive, featuring dangerous, unfamiliar and intimidating environments, but to me they’re home. Yeah, they serve as a reminder that even the most expansive game landscapes are truly limited, but that doesn’t matter to me as long as the world is interesting. There isn’t really a whole lot more to say about islands – what it all boils down to is… I just like islands. Plain and simple.

Categories: Features