When constructing any story, the one important goal is to immerse the audience into the world that is created. Everything must flow in a way that makes it feel natural to the story, characters, and the world that they exhibit. One example of something that failed to accomplish exactly that would be the video game Dead Island. Despite large locations, beautiful visuals, and fascinating subtext, they largely fail to mesh together in a coherent fashion. This gives the game the impression that Dead Island is less a properly planned out location and more collage of different elements that were thrown together during the writing process.
The game takes place on the fictional resort island of Banoi, which is off the coast of Papua New Guinea. The levels on the island themselves are broken down into four key regions of the resort, the city, the jungle, and the prison. Throughout the game, the protagonists go through all four regions in a search for a way to get off the island, mostly being motivated by “The Voice” on the radio, while helping survivors by getting them aid or supplies. Overall, this is a very simple setting for a sandbox style zombie that provides opportunities for exploration and fighting the undead.
One of the more interesting points of the game actually is the location. Although zombies have been overused in culture and in different stories, the concept of doing them in a tropical resort is not as overdone so there is more merit in the location. In addition, it provides an interesting contrast between the resort and the inevitable death zombies represent.
As was noted by author J.P. Beaubien, zombies represent the slow, inevitable march of death that we all fear. They are literal walking corpses, people who were once alive but no longer, coming to takes us with them to the after life. Even if we do manage to outlast them, one day we will join them as none of us can escape death’s embrace.
The resort area is an excellent representation of this. Most of the zombies were actually people that had just come to have a good time and enjoy a vacation, only to become the vile undead that all people fear. In a way, it represents the harsh reality that even in the best of places, the most beautiful of locations, none of us can escape the hard reality of pain and suffering.
After that though, the next regions go to a run down city, the jungle, a lab in the jungle, and a prison. The theme of that as well as the uniqueness of the setting disappears as we go to regions unrelated to a resort and are seen far more regularly in other games. The uniqueness of the original setting is lost as the game progresses to more familiar locations.
To an extent, it is also worth asking what the regions have to do with each other. It makes sense that there is a city on the island as it is unlikely a place could exist without a working population, but a jungle loaded with natives (who randomly appear out of nowhere with no foreshadowing), a government lab, and a high security prison surrounded by mines with the world’s foremost criminals seems odd to put next to a resort. One would wonder why someone would build a resort next to potential lawsuits waiting to happen.
Well, fortunately, a coworker of mine who has family in Jamaica did actually have an explanation of how a region like that could theoretically exist. The resort could have an airstrip which would allow guests to avoid the other parts of the island, the city would provide workers and potential shops for interested patrons, the jungle could provide camping and hiking opportunities and be ignored if it was particularly remote, and in game the island was originally a penal colony. All these explanations do provide a sense of connection.
However, the game itself did not properly give a feel of how it is all related. Instead of naturally continuing from one region to the next, everything is largely separated as different zones when continuing through the game. As a result, the coherence is weakened when there could be a narrative fit.
Overall, there is a sense that the game was largely a mishmash of different elements that don’t always fit, as though the writers were trying to weave a story or location together instead of actually making a coherent story around the setting. The best description would be they came up with the idea for zombies at a resort and then just added whatever they felt like to actually have a purpose for the game to exist. Not helped by this is the fact that none of the main characters have an arc or the fact that a third of the game is spent at the resort while the other regions get progressively less screen time.
In the end, that becomes the problem with world building in a story. Everything should have a flow around the main setting. If we are skipping from place to place, we should be actually going to different locations far away from each other instead of feeling like there are a bunch of unnecessary locations next to each other. Otherwise, this can break the immersion.
There are plenty of examples of proper coherency, but the best would be a comparison to another zombie game such as Resident Evil. It is weird that the Umbrella Corporation would build a mansion to hide a lab, but if you can accept that as a possibility, then the layout of the mansion is coherent. The mansion disguises the lab from unwanted travelers while the lab is specifically out in the middle of nowhere to hide it from large populations should something leak. This narrative is cohesive and makes sense.
This becomes an issue with over focus on one element and not the rest. Every story that progresses should feel like the regions are connected properly and not hastily thrown together. Connecting it can give a sense of world building, while adding it for the sake of adding it will make it feel forced and disconnected. Remember that when crafting a location.
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