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How Earthbound Uses the Camera to Push You Forward

How Earthbound Uses the Camera to Push You Forward

How Earthbound Uses the Camera to Push You Forward

Mother 4 , the fan-made Mother series sequel, is coming out in a couple months, and in celebration of this monumental project, we have decided to take a look back on Mother 2 , aka Earthbound , the game that sparked the fanbase here in the U.S. and started everything for the designers that made Mother 4 a reality.

Today I’m looking at something very simple, but so easily overlooked: the camera. “But wait!” you may be screaming at your monitor as if I could hear you on the other end for some reason. “Earthbound was a top down 2D game. It didn’t have a camera!”

How Earthbound Uses the Camera to Push You Forward

Of course it did. It was just stuck in a top down position, and understanding where its camera was at all times allowed the designers to slowly edge the player toward where they needed to go.

Let’s look at some examples from the very beginning of the game. Your first task is to go to the top of a hill in order to examine a meteorite. As soon as you leave your house, you are presented with three directions to go, but you aren’t sure which one is correct. There are paths going left, right, and south, but the left and right path are squiggly and have people on them. The south path, however, is straight, and continues in the direction you were heading anyway with no possible obstructions. This just so happens to be the right path. The game was sure to show this to you as soon as you exited your house in order to push you in the right direction.

When you get close to the meteor, the path is blocked off and you are asked to return to your house. However, you do see the meteor in the distance at the top of the screen before you turn back. When you get back to the original intersection, near your house, your mom is waiting outside. You need to rest to make the game go forward, and so the game presents the person you need to talk to, your mom, directly in front of you upon your return. She is the only different thing on the map, so you obviously talk to her without even thinking about it. If she was inside the house and the map didn’t change, players would start getting upset and frustrated about not knowing where to go.

Your next job is to head back to the meteor because your friend Picky went missing up there. Luckily, you know where the meteor is even though you haven’t actually visited it. You saw it at the top of your screen, beyond the police blockade. So you immediately head back to where you were, to where the police barricade was.

How Earthbound Uses the Camera to Push You Forward

Now, the game uses the camera again to show you what to do next. It’s entirely possible that you never saw Picky before in the game, or at least didn’t pay attention to him, so you have no idea what he looks like. But as you walk to where you were before you see a blonde haired kid sitting next to the meteor. Since you are looking for someone who went to the meteor , you immediately recognize this as your goal, talk to him, and once again are able to move the game forward.

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