Photography and Staging in Wolfenstein: The New Order. Criticism and Analysis.

Hello gaming photography lovers! I am here again to share with you some of the photography and staging that occurs in this incredible pre-apocalyptic futuristic war game. The cinematics of games are evolving more and more towards cinematographic horizons, where the use of composition techniques of staging, photography, the construction of scenarios, and their architectural design layout take a fundamental role in being able to analyze the art of video games from another perspective where gameplay does not prevail.

As I said, Wolfenstein is a war adventure so the color palette is full of cold colors although the red of the blood and flags prevail along with the black of the uniforms, grey, brown, olive green, and dark blue. They are the main colors that we will find accompanying the photograph.

For this particular post, I have decided to analyze one of the game's cinematics offered by the story fragment in which I am playing. We must get on the roof of a prison transport, which will take us to a maximum security prison where our friends are located.

Analysis:

The scene itself is designed as an opening for the next chapter and although it is not relevant, we can point out that the montage is narrative, and dynamic and allows suspense to arise amid the character's uncertainty. Opening with an overhead shot the character infiltrates the roof of the truck.

In contrast, we have a shot on the ground from a quite voyeuristic sense where it shows us the adrenaline and anguish of the character:

As we mentioned above, architectural design plays a fundamental role in these games and even more so when a location is presented. The beauty of architectural photography is that the lines of the buildings almost always flow very well by creating vanishing points and composition in the image.

The importance of the shots from the ground in the photographic design of the scene is extremely important since these swooping shots reflect the defeatist attitude that the character presents and the same feeling of smallness in the face of a machinery of terror.

At the same time and in the opposite direction we then have the enemies who are presented with a swooping shot making them appear in control of the situation, giving them more importance, showing a frontal face in a medium plane.

Closing the image with a portrait shot very tight to the character, tense, without any type of air at the edges or the top, practically suffocated, again created to generate just that, the tension that the protagonist feels, his pressure, anguish to risk everything against a brutal enemy.

Within the game, we also find, for example, some really enjoyable spaces and shots like this one:

Critical Conclusion:

Without a doubt, the cinematic photography in this case is very well designed in terms of the context and situation that tells about the character and the story, it highlights the emotions and prepares you for what is to come, and then it introduces a new facet of the story in suspense, so I think the narrative montage is very well done, the composition in the images is not the best in the world, but they are neat and play an interesting game of counter shots.

Another achievement is that playing with such flat scenarios and making them look imposing when presenting a location, is sometimes difficult, but I think that the presentation of the prison and the game that exists in the montage, where they make us see what represents and the evil force it exerts, are very well designed.

So, well, I hope you liked this post, contribute your photographic knowledge in the comments. See you.