Landmarks - Week I - Exile

I - AugaTower

Nobody ever has a reason to visit The Land. I'm the only one I know of to go. I have many reasons for embarking on this trip, the strongest ones being perhaps the abandonment by fortune, and abandonment by a woman. Having nothing else to my name I sold what I had and started my journey into The Land.

Auga tower is the first of the marks of The Land. Like every other structure in The Land nobody knows who built it or what it was for. It's just there. Auga is the only structure for miles in a flat plain of nothing but tall grass. Furthermore the door is locked and nobody knows how to get inside. It, like all other places in The Land, is impervious to exploration, but is ever so mystifying all the same.


II - Dry Harbor

As I came to the mountains I approached the structure overlooking Dry Harbor. The ground before it was littered with pilings, oblong depressions, and overhanging structures. Yet, in all its history, no ship ever docked here.


III - Toll River

It seems the deeper I travel into The Land, the more of these structures appear. I sometimes think eventually I'll come to a city built by the people from Before, but so far there's been a curious lack of roads... and signs for that matter. Not a structure displays any hint of a language or writing.


IV - Slow Fall

At last I come to the source of the Toll River. Though I expected some structure here, I didn't expect to see water coming out of it. Whether it's the source of the falls or just there to augment the river in some way I'll never know...


V - Rivergate

Leaving the mountain ranges behind I followed the second arm of the Toll River to the east. It is said that The Land is nothing but a barren wasteland filled with relics of a lost people, but as I follow the sun I wonder how true this really is when I can hear the sounds of a sea...


VI - Lost Coast

And then the day came of my beloved's birthday. The loneliness of my journey and remembering her everything with fondness tore at my heart, and that day I collapsed on my knees and screamed her name in anguish.

But there was no reply. Only the waves lapping on the beach of a lost coast in The Land.

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When I went to the GDC a few weeks ago, the people at CCP observed that I didn't have 'finished' work in backgrounds and environment art. Looking at my portfolio, I realized I didn't have a lot of environment art altogether (just the Industrial Decay bits and the bridge of the KT). So, to exercise the muscles for environment art, I decided to embark on a daily sketch adventure and link them all together with a narrative.

I like the theme of coming across ambiguous objects and structures in the land that don't seem to have an obvious purpose for being there. I've seen many such things in California, particularly along the coast where things were built and perhaps forgotten. The structures in Halo 1 very much reminded me of this aspect and have stuck with me on this theme as far back as High School. These aren't forerunner structures, as I'm trying to stay away from the aesthetics added in the later Halo Games. But I like the big blocky abstract-ness of the structures from the original game... all monolithic but without a clear purpose as to why they are there.