作者：Stanislav Costiuc

我们可以使用各种工具为玩家创造情感弧和游戏角色。这些工具包括，但也不只局限于叙述结构，视觉设计，关卡设计，游戏机制等等。在本文中我将以《神秘海域：德雷克的宝藏》为例进一步去探索武器进程在呈献给玩家特定情感体验方面扮演着怎样的角色。

Uncharted Drake’s Fortune(from pcpop)

在《神秘海域》中，武器被划分成不同层面。即标准和强大。所以每种类型的武器（游戏邦注：包括手枪，万能手枪，冲锋枪，突击步枪，猎枪）都拥有一种标准模式以及伴随着更大的杀伤力，射程等等的更强大的模式。这里同样也存在两种层面的敌人，即标准海盗以及更强大的专业雇佣兵。

前半部分的游戏进程更加线性化。玩家将获得标准武器并与标准敌人进行对抗，经过一段时间后便会出现更加强大的敌人，而玩家也开始获得更高层面的武器，所以玩家是处于一种公平竞争的环境中。

当玩家进入地下墓穴（即藏着所有人都渴望获得的El Dorado宝藏的场所）时，情况将变得较为复杂。当玩家完成一组引导谜题后，他们将面对一群由反派角色Eddy Raja所带领的海盗们。玩家可以使用第2层面的武器轻松对抗这些海盗们，所以这时候玩家会觉得自己比敌人厉害。在这种情况下，大多数海盗都拥有第2层面的武器，所以你可以不断补充自己的装备。

然后你会到达一个圆形如竞技场一般的房间，在这里Nathan会找到他Sir Francis Drake的遗体。这是一个非常特别的时刻，在这之后你会注意到的第一件事便是房间四周都是第1层面的武器。因为这个地方是你在与名为Descendants的怪兽对抗后被Eddy所囚禁的地方。

这款游戏为这些怪兽的出现设下了许多伏笔，所以你不会觉得任何这些怪兽的出现太过突然。它们非常强大，具有复原能力，并且能在近战中杀死你。在这种战斗中，这些敌人永远都不会消失。所以你将消耗掉你所拥有的最强大的第2层武器去对抗源源不绝的怪兽。当你的第2层武器已经弹尽粮绝时，你将只能不断拼凑第1层武器以继续战斗。

在某一时刻，Eddy被消灭了，而你将使用那些更弱的武器继续与敌人战斗，直至你的盟友Elena投下绳索帮你逃离这个房间。但是战斗还未结束。

在下一个场景中你将努力逃命，枪杀你背后的怪兽，并因此消耗你最后的第1层武器，直至逃离地下墓穴并进入Nazi地堡的临时安置点。是的，这里有一个Nazi地堡，而它的存在也是合理的。Nazi和你一样也在寻找着宝藏，而正是他们的一大发现将你引向带有El Dorado的岛屿。

在这之后你将与Elena分开，即你将深入Nazi地堡去探索充电的方法。所以如果说密封空间，黑暗，不断涌现出来的怪兽等等元素还不够让人紧张的话，这里还存在唯一一种你能够找到的武器，即MP40。这并不是第0层的武器，而是-1层的武器。

所以游戏氛围将从惊心动魄的冒险转变成让人紧张与不安的体验，而不只是通过叙述和关卡设计表现出来，同时也是基于武器进程，即你会逐渐消耗掉所有最佳武器，并且你可能只能找到一些最糟糕的武器。不过有总比没有的好不是吗，而比起其他游戏角色，你还是相对较弱的。

在地堡中花了些时间后，你将在某个时候开始寻找走出地堡的方法。你不仅会遭遇突变异种，也会遭遇到一些雇佣兵。不过也有一个好消息就是，这时候你可以再次开始使用第2层武器了。还有一个不是很好的消息是，你获取弹药的唯一方式便是消灭雇佣兵，所以你只能万分谨慎地去使用这些武器。

最终玩家将走出地堡，游戏也将重新回到惊心动魄的基调上，同时也伴随着各种行动以及第2层武器和弹药。玩家将在游戏最后再次与Descendants撞上，但多亏了这时候玩家拥有了强大的猎枪，并且此时身边还围绕着一些联盟和敌人，所以比起惊恐在这里玩家更多地感受到了刺激与兴奋。

《神秘海域：德雷克的宝藏》并不像其它续集那样拥有明确的定位，并且它所设定的范围也很小。如果你仔细观察《神秘海域》系列大多数让人印象深刻或玩家最喜欢的时刻，那么90%的答案都会是“游戏最初伴随着僵尸的部分。”

当然了，武器进程并非西班牙僵尸部分获取成功的唯一原因，我只是想要描述那些我们本来未曾想到但最终却创造出让人印象深刻的情感体验的内容而已。

在玩《神秘海域：德雷克合集》之前我并未玩过第一款《神秘海域》游戏。几年前我曾在PS3上玩过《神秘海域2》和《神秘海域3》，但今年我的第一次游戏体验献给了《德雷克的宝藏》。熟悉我的人都知道我并不是非常喜欢恐怖游戏，如果我打算玩这类型游戏我就需要为此做好心理准备。这是与玩像《夺宝奇兵》等冒险游戏截然不同的体验。

我发现在游戏中我一直重复着这样的话：“我知道你在做什么，你怎么敢，你怎么敢！你已经这么做了！我现在一个人待在阴森恐怖的古堡里。让我们快结束吧。”而在完成整个游戏环节后我便会暂停游戏并离开电脑一会，因为游戏真的太让人紧张了，虽然从客观来说它并不像恐怖游戏那样吓人，或者也不是非常困难。但是因为基调的切换，我敢保证在很长一段时间后我仍会记得游戏中突然变异的僵尸。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Creating Emotional Arcs With Weapon Progression

by Stanislav Costiuc

There are many tools we can use to create emotional arcs for the player, as well as the character(s) of the game. The list consists of, but is not limited to, narrative structure, visual design, level design, gameplay mechanics, and many other things. In this particular post, though, I want to explore how weapon progression can play a big role in providing a certain emotional experience, on the example of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. Be warned, there will be spoilers.

In Uncharted, the weapons are divided into tiers – standard and powerful. So each type of weapon (pistol, magnum pistol, submachine gun, assault rifle, shotgun) has a standard model and a more powerful model with more damage, range, clip capacity, etc. There are also two tiers of enemies – the standard pirate enemies and the more powerful professional mercenaries.

The first half of the game the progression is pretty linear. You got your standard weapons, fighting your standard enemies, after a while more powerful enemies appear but you also start to get more and more of the higher tier weapons, so you’re on a level playing field.

Now, things start to get played around with when you get into the catacombs which supposedly hold the treasure of El Dorado everybody’s after. There, after completing a set of navigational puzzles, you face off a bunch of pirates led by one of the antagonists, Eddy Raja. These pirates are fairly easy to dispatch with the tier 2 weapons, so you get a chance to feel yourself above the enemies. And in this particular instance, most of the pirates have tier 2 weapons themselves so you can replenish plenty of your ammo.

You then get to a round arena-like chamber, where Nathan finds the body of Sir Francis Drake, his alleged ancestor. It’s a nice character moment, and the first thing you notice after it is that all around the chamber there’s tier 1 weapons lying around. That’s because this is the chamber where you get trapped with Eddy as you fight the monsters, called the Descendants, for the first time.

The game has provided plenty of foreshadowing for these monsters appearing, so it’s not totally out of the blue. They’re strong, resilient, and also can kill you in several melee hits. And in this battle, there’s a never-ending amount of these guys. So your most powerful tier 2 weapons that you have, you spend them all on killing the monsters that just keep coming. There’s no ammo for tier 2 weapons, so you frantically scramble for the tier 1 weapons to continue the battle.

At a certain point, Eddy dies, so you’re left fighting alone with weaker weapons against these mutants, until your ally Elena lowers down a rope letting you climb out of the chamber. But the conflict doesn’t end here.

Next comes a scene where you’re running for your life, gunning down the monsters behind you, and thus spending the last of your picked up tier 1 weapons as well, until you get out of the catacombs into the temporary safety of a Nazi bunker. Yes, there’s a Nazi bunker, but it all makes sense narrative-wise. The Nazis were after the same treasure as you, and it’s actually thanks to one of their findings that you get to the island with El Dorado.

After this, you have to get separated from Elena as you go deep into the powered down Nazi bunker in search of a way to get electricity up. So, closed space, darkness, monsters creeping around, if that wasn’t tense enough, there’s also the fact that the only weapon that you can find down there is an MP40. Which is not even a tier 0 weapon, it’s like a tier -1 weapon.

So the change of the game’s mood from a swashbuckling adventure to a very tense and uneasy experience happens very organically, not just from the point of narrative and level design, but of weapon progression as well as you gradually get stripped down of all the best weapons you had, to the very worst one you can find. Which is better than nothing, but still you’re relatively powerless in comparison to the rest of the game.

After a whole section spent in the bunker, at a certain point you start finding your way out of it. And you’ll encounter not just the mutants, but the mercenaries as well. So it’s a three way confrontation between you, mutants and the mercs. The good news is, this is the moment where you can start using tier 2 weapons again. The not so good news, the only source of ammo are the mercs themselves, so you have to be pretty careful how you spend it between them and the monsters.

Eventually, though, you get out of that area, the game returns to its swashbuckling tone, and lots of action and tier 2 weapons and ammo alongside it. You do meet the Descendants again close to the very end of the game, but thanks to the powerful shotgun that you get at that point, and the allies and enemies and chaos all around, it’s exciting and thrilling rather than creepy.

But you know, it all really works. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune doesn’t really have as many set pieces as its sequels, and the scope of the ones it has is much, much smaller. However if you look at all the lists or surveys or threads of most memorable or favourite moments from the Uncharted series, there’s a 90% chance you’ll see, ‘that part with the zombies in the first game’.

Of course, weapon progression is not the sole reason of the Spanish zombie section success, but I just wanted to show how even pieces we don’t instinctively think about contribute to the overall goal of creating emotional and memorable experiences.

I haven’t played the first Uncharted game until I got the Nathan Drake Collection in preparation for Uncharted 4’s release. Several years ago I played Uncharted 2 and 3 on PS3, but this year was my first experience with Drake’s Fortune. And, you know, I’m not really a big fan of horror or creepiness, it’s the kind of thing that if I decide to experience, I want to come in mentally prepared. Playing an Indiana Jones-like adventure doesn’t really prepare you for turns like that (which is also one of the reasons why this section works so well).

And as I was noticing all these things that I’ve detailed in the post, I kept saying to the game, ‘I know what you’re doing, don’t you dare, don’t you dare, dooooooon’t….sigh. You’ve done it. I’m alone in a creepy unlit bunker now. Well, let’s get this over with.’ And after finishing up the whole section I had to pause the game and just go away from the console for a bit, because it was so intense, even though objectively speaking, it wasn’t as scary or disturbing as an actual horror game, or even that difficult (at least on normal settings). But thanks to the difference in tone and how it was handled, I’m sure gonna remember the monster mutant zombies for a very long time.

Thank you all for reading. All comments are welcome. In my next game analysis post, I’m gonna take a look at how Uncharted 2 handles its pacing to keep players constantly engaged. If you’d like to keep an eye on that post, feel free to follow me on Twitter @farlander1991:)(SOURCE:GAMASUTRA)