Fallout 4

So Fallout 4 is a post-apocalyptic game set a few years after the previous game Fallout: New Vegas, your character is of your choosing so you can customise a male or female character and change the appearance through skin-tone, hair colour, eye colour and facial features. Your story will stay the same however despite if you choose different genders, you are the last survivor of Vault 111 and you resurface to the post-apocalyptic land of Boston, America 200 years after the nuclear bomb that dropped. The reason I'm really excited for Fallout 4 is the theories behind the story that fans have come up with, the one that grabs my attention is the theory that the vault you were in is actually a cryo-stasis vault and your character has been in a cryogenic sleep for 200 years. The world you have returned to in Fallout is post-apocalyptic but has been built upon by settlements, there is still crime that circulates as is expected of a worl like this and the most prominent form of danger next to raiders and enclave is the mutated creatures that the radiation has affected.

Killian Schoenberger

Killian Schoenberger is a German-Czech photographer who also studied geography in Bonn, Germany and since 2013 he has been living and working in cologne. Another fact about Killian is that he is colour blind but he takes stunning pictures of landscapes and buildings, below I have picked out some of my personal favourites of his work.

Types of Landscape I like

Landscape wise, I like really vast, huge landscapes that really take your breath away or dark with lighting such as lights or plants that glow, these types of landscapes are what I would love to create, to give you an idea I'll leave some images below of the landscapes I find to be the most appealing to my eyes.

Crysis 3

Skyrim

Island village

Game of Thrones

Skyrim

Magical forest

Magical forest 2

Castle

Landscapes

Landscapes are probably the thing I love most about art and games, because a landscape sets the scene for a game a gives off a "feeling" whether it be horror, action, adventure, calm, angry or anything else the setting of the game and its landscape is what makes you get that feeling. A good example of a game which has beautiful landscapes that feel real is Skyrim, this game is huge in terms of how much there is to explore and it has nearly every type of landscape ranging from snowy mountains and lush forests to large oceanic areas and large caves, I think one of my favourite and most memorable area in Skyrim was when I was exploring some Dwemer ruins and it lead me down deeper and deeper into caves until I came across Blackreach, a huge underground Dwemer village which had gigantic glowing mushrooms which looked like jellyfish and the air was a teal sort of colour with little white specs floating around, it looked like what you'd see if you went into the deepest pits of the ocean. I think that Bethesda (the developers of this game) got the idea to create Blackreach from the James Cameron film Avatar as they share similarities such as abnormal plants and it was like the place was alive.

Blackreach, entrance area

Blackreach, mid towers

Blackreach, birds eye view

Blackreach, main towers

Blackreach, waterfalls

Blackreach, concept art

Blackreach, watchtower concept art

Prototype 2

There's a game that I used to play called Prototype 2 which involved a man who became superhuman through an infectious disease that normally turns people into creatures, one of the things I loved about this game was its art style, it had large populated city areas with different settings for each such as the Red Zone which was a large mutant and military battlefield, it had the infection growing on buildings, had a red sky and had a very large presence of military and mutants, the Yellow Zone had a large military presence with some mutant breakouts but it was full of quarantine zones and gateways put up by the military, the Green Zone was the safe area for the most part, yet still had breakouts. Another thing I loved about this games art style was the cut scenes in the game, everything was black and white but anything that was a bold colour such as blue, red and orange such as explosions, LED's and clothing that were in the main focus of the shot in the scene remained the original colour, I imagined that this art style was inspired by the film Sin City as that also was in black and white but highlighted red areas.

Alex Mercer, Cutscene

James Heller, Cutscene

Alex & James, Cutscene

Alex Mercer & Soldier, Custscene

Destiny

So Destiny is a videogame that I play and put a lot of time into, it's a great game and has very good character design which intrigues me. The way the alien races in this game are designed by the developer is based off of historical mythology.

This race is called The Fallen and they're designed around the pirate age with the Captains often wielding dual sabers and having smaller ships compared to the Kells. Kells are the highest ranking amongst the Fallen and have very large Skiffs compared to Captains.

Dreg

Kell

Captain

Vandal

Skiff

The next race I'd like to talk about is the Cabal, this race of aliens are based off of the old Roman Empire so they have similarities in ranks such as legionaries, phalanx and centurions, they are the heavy hitters of the races with heavy armour, large weapons and they use a lot of explosives.

Phalanx

Centurion

Legionary

Psion

Harvester

Ok, next race. So the next race are called the Hive, these are off and inspired by the medieval era, the Hive look like undead and skeletons, their ranks are similar to that of a medieval army so they have acolytes, knights, wizards, ogres, thrall, princes and kings. There are a lot of named Hive enemies such as Crota, Oryx, Ir Anuk, Ir Halak, Ir Yut, Baxx, Urrox, Gulrot, Alak Hul etc. there's a lot of named hive as you can tell.

Thrall

Acolyte

Knight

Wizard

Crota, Son of Oryx

Oryx, Son of Osmium

The Vex are the 4th race in Destiny and they are based off of Greek mythology, they are a robotic race that were once created by the Traveler but they turned against him and became their own race that can teleport through time and space.

Goblin

Hobgoblin

Minotaur

Harpy

Hydra

The Taken are the 5th race in Destiny which are the normal races which have been possessed by Oryx, they have more abilities than the other races and they behave very twitchy and often move quicker, a lot of their abilities and shields are also the opposite elemental burn to the normal race that they originally were, meaning if an enemy previously had a solar shield and dealt arc damage they will then deal solar damage and have a void shield when they are Taken.

Taken knight, phalanx, captain, goblin, psion & thrall