Player emotion – Anxious, engaged urgency.
Motivation – Find an Ixian decoder. An emergent goal is to rescue a princess.
The emotions are achieved through low lighting levels, tilted floors, and audio queues for the Suboids. Hazards like radiation and fire create an evolving sense of urgency. Switching up the environment just before the final encounter is intended to increase the players’ misgivings and tension, followed by the run out of the exploding ship.
On Wreck of the Hephaestus, I was responsible for the gray level and initial combat pass. Another designer carried the approved gray level to completion. The player and Feyd arrive at the crash location looking for a Bene Gesserit for some answers.
The flow includes several gates that the player must pass through before entering the hold area. Here, they begin encountering suboids, some poisoned and free of Ixian control. The first hold serves as an arena where the player must survive to escape. Between the holds, the player encounters radiation from the wrecked ship, creating some pressure to move forward quickly. The second hold is another encounter, but the player learns the Bene Gesserit may be a trick.
Tension rises as the player must pass between broken pieces of the ship while fighting off the suboids in a massive sand storm. Finally, the player finds answers in the broken bridge section after a final conflict with suboids and cinematic.
Finally, the player must escape the ship as it detonates around them.
