开发者以具体产品为例阐述游戏中7个巧妙的伏笔设计

原作者：Richard Moss 译者：Vivian Xue

巧妙的伏笔实现了双赢——它使玩家感觉自己很机智，也使游戏设计者显得聪明。它增加了游戏的深度且无需冗长的说明，它还增强了重大事件的感染力，或是为在压力环境下使用新机制的玩家提供无形的帮助。

伏笔不仅仅是一种情节表现手法。它是每位开发者必备的宝贵技巧，能够被运用到关卡设计、对话、音频、剧情动画以及任何游戏体验元素中。但要想真正处理好伏笔并不容易，因此我们联系了一些有着丰富相关经验的开发者。

下面我们将介绍7个伏笔运用范例，它们的形式各不相同，还有一些值得进一步学习研究的例子。

1. 《爱丽丝：疯狂回归》（Alice：Madness Returns）

Opaque Space工作室的游戏设计主管Jennifer Scheurle很欣赏《爱丽丝：疯狂回归》中的伏笔。这款游戏巧妙借鉴了《超级马里奥 64》之类游戏的3D镜头指明前方道路。Scheurle指出游戏主要通过跳跃飞翔和仰视视角使玩家看清前方的所有事物。

这些使玩家能够提前计划大部分行动，并预测哪个方向可能会遇到敌人或其它考验。它们使玩家提前做准备，不断地建立期待，在此过程中形成一个良性的反馈循环——每个奖励都预示下一个奖励的到来，同时鼓励玩家朝着不远前方可见的最终目标进发。

经验总结：向玩家展示前方的道路并不会破坏惊喜，反而能激励他们继续前进，帮助他们计划行动并做好心理准备面对即将到来的考验。

Portal_2_Level_Design_Editor-Image-9-Updated(from gamedev)

2. 《弗吉尼亚》（Virginia）

Robot Invader工作室的创始人/首席执行官兼Oculus工作室合作商关系代表Chris Pruett认为《弗吉尼亚》在剧情和主题方面的伏笔设计得十分出色。这是一款悬疑惊悚游戏，采用电影式硬剪辑手法加速时间线和并行叙述事件，十分依赖镜头语言。Pruett认为角色梦境和其它幻想场景中的伏笔值得注意。[硬剪辑/拼接剪辑：hard cut，从一个场景直接切换到另一个场景，中间无任何过渡，游戏邦注]

“游戏建立了一个视觉主题来呈现这些梦境，”他说，“（即）一扇背后亮着红光的门，游戏在后期通过复现相同的视觉元素营造紧张氛围。某一刻主角梦见自己在排水管里爬行，忽然红光从另一端亮起，于是我们明白排水管的另一端和那扇上锁的神秘门之间的关联。”

Pruett接着说道，游戏中有一个幻想场景存在大量伏笔，并且它本身预示着一种可能的未来。“这是非常巧妙的叙事机制，它被成功运用到了这款游戏中，但这要归功于游戏采用的硬剪辑手法。”

经验总结：若运用得当，视觉隐喻是一种增加游戏剧情/世界深度的有效方法，并且如果它能与游戏的其它视觉语言融为一体，则该视觉隐喻——以及任何包含其中的伏笔——将更好地服务游戏叙事。

3. 《寂静岭》系列（特别是第二、四部）

《寂静岭》系列以恐惧感和不祥感著称，它们很大程度上是通过（环境、机制和叙事中的）隐喻性语言、强感染力的图像和声音共同营造出来的。但该系列在暗示未来情节方面同样手法精妙，例如通过向玩家展示事件的一角或者看似无关紧要的物品。

《寂静岭2》和《寂静岭4》在这方面做的尤为出色。在《寂静岭2》以煽动性、挑战禁忌的剧情闻名，第一个场景就预示了结局（之一）——游戏中的许多事件和隐喻也进一步暗示了这点。例如，主角在探索地下迷宫时可以在一块墓碑上找到自己的名字，该地下迷宫通常被解读为三位主角的恐惧和压抑记忆的具象化呈现。

Pruett指出，《寂静岭4》虽然作为一部游戏略显逊色，但它更值得学习研究，因为它采用的伏笔技巧尚未被广泛复制和分析。“游戏剧情讲的是与主角见面的人们接连遇害，”他说，“最后主角意识到自己是连环杀手的最终目标。”

Pruett将《寂静岭4》视为多种伏笔手法的试验集合。“我最喜欢的一个设计是，当玩家以第三人称视角靠近门时，镜头会发生某种扭曲，”他说，“这是一个简单的技术，但它能增强开门动作本身带来的紧张感。”

经验总结：视觉隐喻还能在角色行动或说话之前揭示他们的心智活动，甚至揭示他们尚未发现的真理。此外，镜头移动和音效暗示等简单的技术能够有效制造紧张感，从而预示厄运即将降临。

4. 《荒野大镖客》

华纳兄弟游戏公司电影艺术导演Marty Stoltz提到了《荒野大镖客》中“I Know You”任务的最后一幕，认为这是一个伟大的伏笔。该任务内容为，一名神秘男子声称自己多年结识了主角约翰·马斯顿，他似乎很了解马斯顿，尽管马斯顿对他一无所知。该男子给了玩家两个任务，两个都是道德难题，任务完成后——无论玩家做了怎样的道德抉择——该男子承认不记得自己的名字，然后把话题转移到周身的景色上，称自己在算“账”。

他暗示马斯顿将会为他的行为“负责”，接着再次提醒马斯顿他们站立的地方——在游戏结局中，这里是马斯顿的安息地。愤怒的马斯顿开了枪，但子弹穿过神秘男子的身体，什么也没发生。

Stoltz说：“玩家们能够根据这些进行推理，顿悟到其中的含义，就像得到了某种奖励。神秘人毫发无伤地离开使玩家感到此处必有情况。”

经验总结：尽管这种伏笔必须谨慎使用，但这些看似不可解释的事件和互动能够激发玩家的好奇心，从而增强游戏结局的感染力，或者使未来的奖励更具价值——前提是玩家能够把间隔遥远的事件联系起来。

5. 《莎木2》（Shenmue 2）

Pruett注意到《莎木2》游戏机制中的伏笔实现了一种共时性（synchronicity），游戏前期通过一些迷你游戏（抓树叶、搬书、练习武术等）介绍操作系统，这些系统到后期将以更复杂的形式再次出现。Pruett说这突破了标准设计概念(教程->模式->变体)，这种前期体验被嵌入到了游戏剧情和游戏机制的发展进程中。

“《莎木2》的剧情进程和机制进程之间的连接方式非常巧妙，”他说，“并且它预示了玩家未来将面临的大部分挑战。”

经验总结：教程和迷你游戏的作用不仅限于帮助玩家学习掌握游戏机制或操作系统，它们还能为情节发展和新机制的出现做铺垫，这些新机制具有类似逻辑但出现在一个不同（游戏邦注但具有相关性）的情况下。

6. 《传送门》（Portal）

《传送门》是一个展示如何通过整体设计介绍新机制的最佳例子之一，游戏使用了很多相同的伏笔。例如，有一次，反派格拉多斯（GlaDOS）宣布“测试完成后，您将被……怀念”。后来，她更加公然地暗示了玩家的命运，说道：“培训中心提醒您，您即将接受考（烤）验，之后将获得蛋糕”。

其它公告和墙上的涂鸦均表明，测试结束后的蛋糕奖励是个谎言，而格拉多斯的反复故障预示了她后来的精神病发作，游戏甚至暗中透露了一个事实——至少在《传送门2》中——光圈科技的设施不只有实验室。并且在一个令人难忘的场景中，玩家被迫焚烧（安乐死）一个“忠诚的”同伴方块，这方块是雪儿(Chell)的朋友。游戏在这里以一种残忍、微妙的方式暗示玩家雪儿最终也会被抛弃，不久又通过另一个测试者在墙上留下的涂鸦强调了这一点。

经验总结：伏笔可以把玩家导向一个虚假的结果，同时巧妙地暗示真实的结局，通过制造谜团或承诺激励玩家前进。

7. 《塞尔达传说》系列

Scheurle指出，塞尔达系列中的小boss往往预示了大boss的武器、攻击模式和招式。总的来说，塞尔达游戏受到广泛认可的一点是，它们总能以一种巧妙的方式向玩家介绍游戏理念和机制，在玩家真正能够使用这些理念和机制之前。

一直被模仿却从未被超越，塞尔达中的伏笔大多是为了提高游戏体验的回报性和深度。他们的成功源于遵循了一些最佳实践经验。例如，玩家总是很清楚自己当前的能力和道具无法解开某个问题，并且解决该问题的机制和剧情不久就会出现，预示玩家可以返回该谜题，——当然，这类情况大多发生在同一个地牢里，因此玩家能够立刻回想起可以使用新技能/道具的地点。

正如Why Not Games工作室的程序员/设计师Nikhil Murthy在一篇关于游戏机制中的伏笔的文章中指出的，这种设计带来了诸多好处。它改善了游戏深度设计（避免过早透露太多复杂性），使玩家产生期望，增强了游戏体验的可玩性和可信度，并提高了奖励的价值（玩家费了一番周折解决问题后会产生得意的瞬间，因此会更珍惜奖励）。

经验总结：优秀的伏笔设计使玩家产生期待并增加游戏深度，也减轻了学习新机制/系统、重大情节转折或位置变化造成的玩家认知负担。

提供“隐藏线索”

巧妙的伏笔就像为玩家提供一条“隐藏线索”，指引游戏的发展方向，但切勿明示玩家他们获得了这条“线索”或者可以具体用它做什么。悄无声息地把他们引导到这条线索上，让他们从潜意识上去体会它，如此一来，游戏的难度峰值将更易于控制，重大剧情将更令人震撼——更有意义，因为玩家对这些事件发生的原因或方式早已有所领悟，无论他们自己是否意识到了这点。

最佳的伏笔往往在被揭露后，人们方才发现最初的线索是如此明显——如《荒野大镖客》中那令人印象深刻的一幕，《传送门》中同伴方块的死亡，或者《寂静岭4》和《生化奇兵：无限》的第一幕。但游戏机制中的巧妙伏笔同样值得关注，像《塞尔达传说》系列、《莎木2》、《马里奥》、《洛克人》等游戏都值得学习。

归根结底，伏笔就是通过含蓄而非显性的方式向玩家传达信息。因此，它的最佳用途是作为一种早期提示系统，一种对未来的微妙暗示。

其它值得学习的优秀伏笔设计包括：《蝙蝠侠：阿卡姆骑士》在小丑尸体被火化时播放了Frank Sinatra的歌曲“ Under My Skin”，《半条命2》游戏前期在地平线上隐约可见的暗能城堡，《文明》系列中玩家首次遇到湖泊和其它文明，二者都预示着玩家将探索和对抗一个更大规模的世界。许多游戏先让玩家遇到上锁的门，再让他们找到钥匙（尽管你应该注意过度使用或误用这种技巧），还有《心灵杀手》使用主角小说中的段落或句子预示即将发生的事件等等。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Great foreshadowing is a win-win — it makes players feel smart and developers seem smart. It adds depth without any painful exposition, and it can add impact to big moments or lend a hidden helping hand to players using new mechanics in pressure-filled situations without explicit tutorializing.

Foreshadowing is more than a plot device. It’s a valuable technique that every developer should have in their arsenal, to use in level design, dialogue, audio, cinematics, and every other element of a player’s experience. But it’s easier to do it badly than to do it well, so we reached out to some designers who know their stuff for examples.

Here are seven games that make exceptional use of foreshadowing, in any of its myriad forms, plus some extras that are also worth studying further.

Alice: Madness Returns
Opaque Space game design lead Jennifer Scheurle loves the foreshadowing in Alice: Madness Returns, which expertly adapts the 3D camera lookahead lessons of the likes of Mario 64 to point the way forward. Scheurle notes that does this mainly by using level fly-throughs and elevated points that allow the player to see everything that lies ahead.

These make it possible for the player to plan out much of their movement and to anticipate where they might encounter combat or other trials. They prime the player for action, constantly building anticipation and in the process establishing a powerful feedback loop where each reward shows promise of the next one while also moving the player closer to the ultimate goal that’s so often visible in the distance.

TAKEAWAY: Showing the player the path ahead need not ruin the surprise. In any case, it motivates them to keep going and helps them to plan and mentally prepare for the trials to come.

Virginia

Robot Invader co-founder/CEO and Oculus developer relations rep Chris Pruett suggests Virginia as a compelling example of narrative and thematic foreshadowing. Set up as a mystery thriller and filled with movie-style hard cuts to advance time and juxtapose events, it leans heavily on its visual language. And Pruett thinks it’s worth looking at how it uses foreshadowing in character dream sequences and other “what if” scenes.

“The game builds a visual motif to represent these sequences,” he explains, “[namely] a door with a red glow behind it, and then uses that same visual style to build tension later in the game. At one point the protagonist finds herself crawling through a drain pipe when all of a sudden that same red light appears at the other side, and we understand that this signals an equivalence between the unknown end of the pipe and the mysteriously locked red dream door.”

Eventually, continues Pruett, there’s a “what if” sequence that’s been heavily foreshadowed and itself represents a possible future to pursue. “This is really just well-executed storytelling mechanics, but it’s enabled in this title by the interesting approach to abrupt scene changes that the game employs.”

TAKEAWAY: If used well, visual metaphor is a powerful way to add depth to a game’s story and world, and if it’s well integrated within a game’s broader visual language then the metaphor — and any foreshadowing that might be wrapped in its use — can be more easily layered into the narrative.

The Silent Hill series (especially 2 and 4)
The entire Silent Hill series is renowned for a sense of dread and foreboding, much of which is created through a combination of metaphorical language (in the environments, mechanics, and narrative) and atmospheric graphics and sound design. But these games also have a fine knack for hinting at future plot points through glimpses of events or encounters with objects that are more significant than they appear.

Silent Hill 2 and 4 do this especially well. In Silent Hill 2, a game renowned for its provocative taboo-grappling storyline, the very first scene foreshadows (one of) the ending(s) — which is further hinted at by numerous other events and metaphors throughout the game. The player can find the name of their character on a grave, for instance, while exploring an underground maze that’s often interpreted to be a physical manifestation of the fears and repressed memories of the game’s three principle characters.

Silent Hill 4, Pruett notes, is inferior as a game but perhaps much more important to study, as its foreshadowing tricks have not been as widely copied or analyzed. “The arc of the story involves the protagonist meeting people just before they are killed by a serial killer,” says Pruett, “and eventually realizing that he has been targeted as the final victim.”

Pruett sees Silent Hill 4 as a kind of collection of experiments in multiple types of foreshadowing. “My favorite trick from this game is the way the camera will twist as the player approaches a door in third person,” he says. “It’s a simple technique but it serves to heighten the tension involved with opening the door itself.”

TAKEAWAY: Visual metaphor can also reveal insights into the inner workings of a character’s mind before their actions or words do, and even present personal truths that they themselves are yet to discover. Also, simple things like camera movement or audio cues can easily and effectively build tension that foreshadows bad tidings dead ahead.

Red Dead Redemption

Warner Brothers Games director of cinematics Marty Stoltz points to the final scene of the I Know You mission in Red Dead Redemption as a great plot foreshadowing moment. The mission involves a mysterious man who claims to have known protagonist John Marston years ago, and who seems to know Marston very well even though Marston has no recollection of him. The man has two tasks he’d like the player to complete, both moral dilemmas, and then after these are done — regardless of the moral choices the player makes — he admits to not remembering his own name but draws attention to the spot he’s standing in and says he’s doing his “accounts”.

Marston “will be responsible” for his actions, he hints, before again drawing attention to the spot that at the end of the game becomes Marston’s burial site and walking away as an angry Marston’s bullets pass harmlessly through him.

“This allows the viewer to put two and two together,” says Stoltz, giving them the reward of saying ‘aahhhh I get it’. The fact that you try to shoot at him and nothing happens softens the viewer up to [the idea that] something funny is going on.”

TAKEAWAY: While this technique should be used sparingly in most games, seemingly unexplainable events and interactions can create intrigue that magnifies the impact of a game’s ending or strengthens a future reward — provided the player connects the dots between two connected but far-apart moments in their experience.

Shenmue 2

Pruett sees a synchronicity in Shenmue 2′s mechanical foreshadowing, which uses mundane mini-game sequences (catch tree leaves, carry a pile of books, practice martial arts techniques, etc) early in the game to introduce control systems that return in more complex forms late in the game. It goes beyond the standard design conceit of tutorial -> pattern -> variant, Pruett explains, in the way this early experience ties into the progression of both narrative and mechanics.

“I think the linking of the narrative progression to the progression of mechanics in Shenmue 2 is exceptional,” he says, “and it foreshadows much of the challenge to come before the story has really landed on a clear course.”

TAKEAWAY: Tutorials and mini-games can have a role beyond teaching and reinforcing mechanics or control systems; they can plant seeds for future plot developments and for new game mechanics that have similar logistics but that occur in a different (though related) context.

Portal

Portal remains one of the best examples of how to teach players new mechanics organically through world design, and it uses many of the same techniques to foreshadow its latter stages. At one point, for instance, antagonist GLaDOS announces that “when testing is complete you will be… missed.” Later, in a more overt hint at the player’s intended fate, she states “The enrichment center is required to remind you that you will be baked, and then there will be cake.”

Other announcements and wall markings make clear that the promised reward of cake at the end of the testing procedure is not what it’s made out to be, while GLaDOS’s repeated malfunctions foreshadow her later psychotic break, and there’s even an allusion to the fact that — as learned in Portal 2 — the Aperture Science facility extends beyond the test chambers. And in one particularly memorable scene the player is forced to incinerate — to “euthanize” — the “faithful” companion cube that had theretofore been depicted as Chell’s friend. Brutally, and subtly, the game here informs the player that Chell is ultimately disposable, a point reinforced just a short time later for players who read the scribbles on a wall left by another test subject.

TAKEAWAY: Foreshadowing can be used to prime the player for a false outcome while subtly indicating the true one, and it can set up a mystery or promise a big payoff that drives the player onward.

The Legend of Zelda series

Scheurle points out that the Zelda series is “super notorious” for using mini-bosses to foreshadow the weapons, patterns, and techniques of final dungeon bosses. More broadly, the Zelda games are widely recognized for their brilliance at introducing players to ideas and mechanics before players actually have the ability to use them.

Often imitated but seldom surpassed, Zelda’s foreshadowing techniques largely serve to increase the reward and depth of the experience. They succeed by following several best practices. It’s always clear, for instance, when a problem is insurmountable with the player’s current abilities and items, and the mechanics or narrative beats that get foreshadowed are seldom far off into the future — indeed, most are contained within the same dungeon and players may immediately recognize some past places they’ve seen where the new ability/item can be used.

This has many benefits, as Why Not Games programmer/designer Nikhil Murthy noted in a mechanical foreshadowing blog post — especially in open-ended games. It teases at the game’s depth (without piling on too much complexity too soon), builds anticipation, improves the playability and believability of the experience, and makes rewards more impactful (because it creates an “a-ha!” moment and gives the reward a greater sense of value).

TAKEAWAY: Good foreshadowing builds anticipation and increases depth, but it also eases the cognitive load of a new mechanic/system to learn or of a big plot twist or location change.

Giving an inside track

You could think of great foreshadowing as being kind of like giving players an inside track on where the game is headed, only without actually telling them that they have this knowledge or what they can do with it. It’s a way to let them in behind the scenes on a subconscious level so that difficulty spikes are more manageable or big narrative moments feel more remarkable — more meaningful, because, whether they realize it at the time or not, the player has previous insight into the how or the why or the what of those moments.

The very best examples of foreshadowing tend to be things that only become apparent as foreshadowing after the fact, once the thing foreshadowed has been revealed — as in that memorable Red Dead Redemption example or Portal’s companion cube death or Silent Hill 4 and BioShock Infinite’s very first scenes. But that’s not to discount the value of well-executed mechanical foreshadowing, as in the Zelda games and in Shenmue 2 and some Mario and Mega Man games.

When it really comes down to it, foreshadowing is about conveying important information to a player through implicit rather than explicit means. As such, it’s best used as an early warning system — a subtle indicator but never a direct explanation of what’s to come.

Other compelling examples of foreshadowing that might be worth a closer look include Arkham Knight’s use of the Frank Sinatra song “Under My Skin” while the Joker’s body gets cremated, Half-Life 2′s Citadel — which looms out from the horizon throughout the early stages of the game — and a player’s first encounters with water and other civilizations in the Civilization series, both of which hint at a much greater world to explore and contend with. There’s also the locked doors many games offer before presenting a key (though you should watch for overuse or misuse of this trick) and Alan Wake’s use of passages or phrases read in the protagonist’s novel that presage game events soon to happen.(source：Gamasutra)