A
particular game we can analyze would be one by the name of Guild Wars 2, a
Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) which is played on a PC, and created by the company
Arenanet. The world itself, named Tyria, is certainly not the same as the Earth we know; and beyond all the
strange races of beings, flora, and magic one might encounter, the physics are
quite notably stretched beyond comparison to our known reality.
One
example of such reality-stretching is found in the dynamics of jumping within
the game itself. Consider a moment, just
how much you jump places in your own
life. Unless you are quite into parkour
or prolific at dunking in basketball, it might seem like almost a laughable thought. However, in Tyria, this is certainly not the
case; for in many scenarios, incredibly long leaps across cliffs, platforms, or
terrain is an absolute must, it seems, breaking laws of Earth-known physics in
the process. Some structures are even
built with these gravity defying leaps in mind; imagine having to jump up every stair to get to work instead
of walking when the stairs are hovering in the air, approximately 3 feet apart,
and 4 feet elevated above the previous one.
It’s ridiculous when compared to what we know! But it doesn’t stop there.
The
game introduces something called ‘Jumping Puzzles’, in which it takes complete
knowledge of the absolutely ridiculous physics of the game (atop player’s
wishes to climb and jump up every strange thing they can find due to that
desire) and makes the ordeal into a challenge, stretching perception even
further. These Jumping Puzzles literally
have characters climbing up odd buildings, mountains, trees, volcanoes, and
jumping between floating boulders, geyser lifted stones, vanishing force
fields, tree branches, tiny ledges they can barely fit on, and just about
anything else to reach a particular destination for a prize. You don’t know how to do it or how to get
there, you simply try to push the physics of the game until you succeed. And despite it being possible, it’s quite
easy to miss the mark.
Which then
brings us to falling dynamics. Or more eloquently
put, the effects of gravity on the world or other characters. Even though everything still seems fairly
rooted to the ground, forces themselves, (especially those considered when
falling) seem to have been skewed.
Characters will take ‘falling damage’ in distinguished percentages; no
matter your stature, armor, or anything else, the damage you take from a fall
is calculated by how high up you’ve fallen from, and the same for all across
the board, - the only way you take no damage
at all is if you fall into water.
However, damage to your person is simply knocked off from your ‘health’,
and recoverable in mere seconds (as long as it doesn’t kill you), which
certainly isn’t comparable to the broken bones and who knows what else you
might be left with should you jump off a castle roof in Earth’s reality. By these things one might think that, perhaps
the gravity in Tyria is much less of a force than it is on Earth, though there
are other inconsistencies that conflict with this thought.
Beyond
mere jumping and falling, should gravity be lessened, how much force it takes
to move certain objects should also be affected. Though actually being able to interact with and
apply force to objects in the game is very hit or miss. On the one hand, certain heavy things like
boulders and various other items can be picked up and thrown great distances,
which would follow along with the ‘lessened gravity’ thought. And yet, pulling out a chair (or even moving
one at all) seems to be impossible.
Objects you think would be able to be pushed cannot be moved in the
least, and in many cases they can only be destroyed. But from there, it only gets stranger, as certain forces in Tyria seem
to be able to accomplish feats they never could on Earth. Such as felling stone-keep walls in minutes
by, quite literally, hitting them enough times with a sword. Or that one is capable of exploding entire homes by sending trained
animals to bite at the foundations.
There have been some attempts to preserve
physics as we know it, though they all fall a bit short. At the very least some sense of gravity is in
place, even if it is hard to believe in some cases. Some objects seem to be affected by inertia
and exhibit ‘follow through’ and ‘drag’ like moving hair, or clothing, however
it is selective and not as universal as a natural law might have you think it should
be. And though there are attempts to
create water resistance and allow for swimming complete with deep sea
struggles, the moving speed of someone swimming verses running is actually faster in water than on land. In Tyria, you’d make it somewhere quicker
swimming upstream than you would dashing on foot.
Though
despite all that, it was all part of what the creators of the world seemed to
intend. At least by way of the Jumping
Puzzles, the developers knew the
limits of the physics in the world, and utilized them, to make the world they
were creating interesting. It is in challenging
the dynamics they’ve created and the rules they’ve made that characters in the
world can get a prize. And knowing those
limits has quite an impact on how someone might play this game. While the physics of Tyria is little like the
physics of Earth in many ways, or potentially little like other worlds that may
be devised, they still have certainly been considered important.
