The Art of Authenticity
Authenticity is a vital part of what we do here at Gun. But that authenticity runs deeper than just Hero Art. For The Texas Chain Saw Massacre we didn’t just recreate locations and characters, we recreated a whole time and place in Texas.
Authenticity in the game industry can mean a lot of things. If you’ve played Friday the 13th: The Game, you’ve most likely noticed the detail in the different film versions of Jason Voorhees, the locations recreated in game like Packanack Lodge, Higgins Haven, and Camp Crystal Lake. These “Hero Assets” have to be exact to deliver a feeling of authenticity. But there can be so much more to this than just Hero Assets.
Photo: Sunflowers, TX. Ismael Vicens
What types of flowers grow along Quick Hill Road in the summer in Texas?
That level of authenticity is what we strive for, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre afforded us many opportunities to explore, dig deeper, and explore some more. Locations like the Family House and Gas Station, items like Leatherface’s mask and chainsaw, these Hero Assets would all be scrutinized to near absurd degrees. But along with that we would need to examine the textures of the sun-soaked asphalt, the colors and tones of a Texas sunset… and sunrise for that matter.
To accomplish this, we not only traveled to Texas to photograph the local flora and fauna and all remaining elements we could access from the original film, we also studied every frame, every shot in the hopes of capturing the elements we sadly could no longer access. This part of the research can be so exciting and so exhilarating, bread-crumbing your way from one thing to the next, one detail to the next minute detail, until breakthrough.
Photo: Chainsaw. Matthew Szep
With Texas being such a unique place, and the Texas Summer being such a unique season in a unique place, it was important to not only focus on the physical details, but all the tiny elements that build up to the whole. The 1974 film could only take place in Texas, those orange sunsets and sunrises and the waves of heat echoing up off the road, those are the elements you can feel while watching. Extracted from the whole, each single element does not have the same effect on your senses that they do cumulatively. If we were to achieve that same feeling in search of authenticity, we needed every last bit of the overall Texas feeling to drip from each screen.
In the coming weeks and months, we have a series of posts planned detailing the many branches of research and documentation that went into building our Texas. Everything from photogrammetry to chainsaw research, from a watch hanging from a tree to a cow we named The Captain, stay tuned to the Community Hub for more.