Contextual Analysis

 The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

For this session, I have to do a contextual analysis on my media text which is games and animation. I decided to focus my research on a game that I have played and has an 8-bit style, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. This game was released on the 21st November 1991 and was made by Nintendo and is about a knight (Link) trying to save Hyrule, defeat the demon king Ganon, and rescue the descendants of the Seven Sages and princess Zelda.

The locations in the game are very medieval and fantasy because there are no modern buildings. Some of the locations include; the lost woods, Kakariko village, Hyrule castle, lake Hylia, great swamp, desert palace and death mountain. 

The castle (icon) which is in the middle of the map suggests that the world is set in a fantasy. 

The sword (icon) is the main weapon that the player uses and it also suggests fantasy.

The most interesting part from the game for me is character design and animations and game features like using a sword to defeat enemies. I want to emulate something similar to the amount of sprite they used for Link's animation which is make multiple sprites for frames in an animation. I also want to try and make my sprites for characters look more lively and animated. The game's controls for weapons are also something I want to take inspiration from. Adding in areas to enter like entering a house would also add depth in the game. The characters and locations are represented fantastically in the game.

ZombiU

For this session, we played through a game that took place in the real world which is London. Since our FMP's theme is location, looking at games that use real world locations would be very useful in what type of game I'm making. The game we played is ZombiU which is a first person survival horror video game which was developed Ubisoft and released on the Wii U in 2012. The game is set in a zombie apocalypse London where the player controls a human survivor. I was supposed to be analysing how the game makes it look like a real world location with semiotics and makes it feel like its set in the real world.

The game's time period is set in 2012 and this is because of a newspaper item the player finds which reveals that the date is 2012. The locations in the game are real locations in London and the areas that we visited were Shadwell station, Brick Lane Market and Buckingham Palace. All of the location have changed to look run-down and decrepit to show how London is not safe anymore. Even outside Buckingham Palace's gates, the place is overrun with zombies.

Some zombies are wearing regular clothes to show that before they became zombies, they were regular people which makes this game feel like it takes place in the real world. Some notable zombies are wearing police outfits and armoured police outfits which are the police outfits in London. There are also the Queen's soldier's that have turned into zombies and there are electrical zombies that used to be steampunk electric guitar users. The permadeath system means that every time the player dies, a different survivor becomes the player. Every different survivor had a different occupation like a police officer, mechanic and musician to further show that the game is set in the real world.

There are also small details in the game that clue the player that its set in London. For example; the melee weapon the player uses is a cricket bat, which cricket is very popular in the UK. The loading screen is showing the Underground map which is the tube/train system in London. In the Brick Lane Market there are different shops which are always present in a high street, like the chicken shops which are very common in London.