Metro 2033 Level ETHEREAL 2008 - 2010
When the protagonist of the Metro 2033 history Artem rises to the top of the Ostankino TV tower, he hears the voices of the dark forces trying to manipulate him to stop. Artem falls into the world of his delusions. I decided to represent this world as a set of many concrete blocks that form the different volumes.
Initially the first part of the level was represented as a room, where every wall has a door. The hero, as it were, has to make a choice of his way to find an answer to the question “What do I do next?”. I decided to reinforce this point. Room is represented in the form of a huge vertical tunnel with doors on its sides. We see no ceiling or floor. I located a white fog at the top, where the tunnel wall fragments are passing. The bottom looks the same, but the tunnel walls are going into the dark abyss. We seem to be stuck in the space between light and darkness. I wanted to show the fragile break-even point. The concrete blocks appear under the feet, on which we can go to the door. They appear and disappear depending on the direction where the player is moving.
Tunnel walls consist of many damaged concrete blocks. I wanted to create an oppressive atmosphere of apocalypse, destruction.
The next zone is presented in the form of a labyrinth. Here the top of the walls are also hidden in a white fog. I decided to use abstract forms to set the player's imagination to work.
The last part is a destroyed tunnel. We have to escape from the dark man, who chaise us. The tunnel assembles into the whole out of pieces, scattered in space as we running forward.
It was an original idea to represent this level as a set of many concrete blocks. This is some kind of 3D pixels art that makes us turn on the imagination and fantasy. We obtained seemingly simple arrays, but at the same time the highly detailed objects of interest. When I was working upon this level and displayed the result to the team, many people stood for hours in front the monitor peering in the picture. Everyone could see something individual.