Contrast & Imagery

Latest excuse to talk about Arcane #27…

One of the things this show does quite brilliantly is direct contrast.

It's not something it created, contrasting imagery and sound is something that's been done for generations in all forms of art. Arcane's just one of the most obvious examples of it.

It's done to surprise, to transition, to characterize, and to dramatize.

There's tons of material on the internet delving deeper into various aspects of this show's brilliant cinematography…

…but why am I talking about it?

I had some disconnected thoughts.

One, animation has an incredible ability to use contrast, and two, games don't really do it very often.

I can think of tons of games where you start in one type of atmosphere and later arrive to another. Lots of soundtracks dynamically mix to score the player's various actions in the same level. Some games even let you pick between different types of play.

When it comes to Arcane's type of contrast though, one that's immediate, and hits the viewer's eyes and brain like a freight train (rhyme not intended), the only game that instantly pops into my mind is Titanfall 2, and that level.

I think another reason this topic came to mind is because I gave The Medium a try, and if there's any video-game that's intentionally using contrasting visuals, it's this game. The whole experience is framed around the protagonists ability to exist in two dimensions simultaneously. Our real world, and a distorted, twisted, magical world. It's a quite gorgeous game in an ugly way, if that' makes sense.

Despite these good qualities however, I dropped it, because an hour and a half of moody, somber, horror-drama becomes just that, and the irony is the biggest thing I took away. The irony of a game where someone exists in two worlds, never once using it (in the time I played) for contrast.

Not like how film and TV does anyway. It uses a split-screen to contrast two worlds visually, but not to really make any point or observation or stylistic flow. Nothing like this frame, where even if you haven't seen the show, you know something about the story.

Pictures really are worth a thousand words, and while I don't want video-games to copy film and television, I sometimes think we are squandering their visual potential.