Technology, Mobility and Level Design in Quake II

September 14th, 2010

Quake II, as we’ve established of most genre-defining FPS games, is marked by its relationship to technology. So in order to understand id’s paradigm of technology creating and limiting FPS gameplay, let’s examine influence of technology over gameplay in Quake II.

Unlike FPS games a few years after its release, Quake II could not rapidly track small body parts in fast motion, namely the head, meaning that, without insta-kill head shots, shoot outs were longer and with only a limited number of AI at the one timze. id supported this technical dictation by ramping up the amount of damage which the player and their Strogg foes could sustain, thereby extending the duration of gunplay and making Quake II a game of manoeuvrability within arena designed levels.

(This design also works in well within the technical constraints, in that quicker deaths would require greater supplementation of enemies and therefore an increased likelihood of more enemies on screen at once, that of which the game couldn’t handle in a 3D environment. Furthermore, more hit points gives narrative credence to the Strogg’s being made of metal and other industrial fibre. By limiting the complexity of confrontations, the intelligent AI had a platform to be noticed).

But what do longer shoot outs mean exactly? Well, it means that standing still and firing off rounds of ammo won’t do much good. You’re rival will be acting likewise—and they’re designed so that once they lock-on they shoot liberally, never mind that they won’t run out of ammunition either—and you’ll both be running out of health which you can’t afford to do, so dodging, ducking and hiding become essential devices in overcoming enemies and defeating the game. The systems of shooting and movement support this type of environment and movement-centric play. Movement, for one, is quick, fluid and an advantage that you have over the slow, predictable enemy movement patterns in the game. There is also no reloading required whatsoever in Quake II and ammunition is plentiful which itself practically asserts the unimportance of arms in lieu of tactical use of the level design. Furthermore, there is no real tactical advantage in shooting certain body parts, so there’s little advantage in standing still and being too precise.

Initially, in the early levels of Quake II, which are less like a labyrinth and more open-ended, the player only needs to focus on their proximity to the foes around them. In later levels, where players are drawn into a series of arena-esque levels, the player must keep their distance while also leveraging the environment to exploit the weaknesses in the sophisticated (but decidedly predictable) enemy attack patterns. So, the levels are built to suit this type of play also.

(Backtracking from how technicality affects play behaviour and into how it affects other parts of the game. Similarly to Resident Evil 4, Quake II limits it colour palette to increase technical efficiency elsewhere, namely the fluid movement and steady performance. Also, it is the technical ability (and inability) of Quake II which structures it as a series of connected channels, bound by a level structure).

Conclusion

id established the first person shooter genre under the paradigm that technology creates game design. Quake II is an id first person shooter whose design is dictated by its technical ability and inability. As such, Quake II scales the shooting to only a few combatants at the one time and therefore emphasises the principles of mobility and tactical skills within the well designed levels.

Extended Readings
Coelacanth: Lessons from Doom

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id Software’s Design Paradigm and A Brief History of First Person Shooters

September 12th, 2010

Throughout the 90’s, id software’s Wolfenstien 3D, Doom and Quake series set the design paradigms and mentality behind the first person shooter genre. The first person shooter would drive forward new technology while at the same time use this technology to iterate and reinvent the dynamics of first person shooting. From Wolfenstien 3D to Doom, to Doom II, to Quake and Quake II each jump in processing power characterised these games through the improvement in playability from a primitive, pseudo 3D shooter, to the ultimate online deathmatch, truely 3D in both graphics and control.

By the time Quake III had rolled around, id had already established and refined the core properties that would define the first person genre (fully 3D movement, strafing, online multiplayer, etc.). At the same time, by the year 2000, the wheel of technology was beginning to slow, which meant that the genre has had to search for new paradigms or effectively scrape the bottom of the technology barrel for scraps. New paradigms have come in several forms: the shift to more narrative-based FPS (Half-life series), roller-coaster styled experiences (Call of Duty 4) and the hybridisation of the first person shooter and RPGs (Borderlands). As for technological advancements, open world gameplay (Fallout 3) and increased online functionality (Team Fortress 2), such as online co-operative or team play (the latter, MAG) have added new wrinkles into the FPS fabric.

While none of these examples should be written off, since in culmination they’ve seen the genre expand and splinter out like never before, very few titles have actually tinkered with the groundwork of the genre like id Software. The FPS framework has been moulded, given narrative context and added features, but over the past decade Portal has been perhaps the only game to change the shooting, by, in fact removing the bullets from the gun. The portal-shooting mechanic is a genius one as it re-purposes the gun to instead become a tool.

Maybe this is where first person shooters need to go, unexplored territory, abandoning the id Software paradigm of iteration through technology. id defined the shooter, just as Carmack’s technical wizardry defined the technology behind it. Yet with technology in games increasing at a relatively marginal rate compared to 20 years ago, such a paradigm is no longer sustainable, leaving new ideas built into the fabric of the genre as the future of the first person shooter genre.

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Super Metroid – Open-ended Linearity

August 31st, 2010

The original Metroid has a defining flaw that would later be rectified with its successor, Super Metroid. The open-ended environments are a composition of arbitrarily posted tile sets with little sense of direction. To put it frankly, the desolate planet Zebes is a maze. As a result, there’s a certain sense of dread you often feel when playing Metroid, as it’s very easy to lead yourself astray in the oxygen-less solitude and find yourself boxed in against an insurmountable tangle of similarly-looking tiles. Super Metroid avoids the confusion by providing sufficient scaffolding to lead players along without arousing their suspicion that the experience Super Metroid offers is a well managed, staged affair. In this way, it fools the player into discovering things for themselves, when in fact our exploration is preordained, and we love it all the more for it.

Let’s take a squiz at how exactly Super Metroid appears more open-ended than it actually is. Super Metroid utilizes the SR388 overworld as a hub which connects the player to the various planetary sub-sections. Overworlds are often interpreted as de-linearating a game and offering player choice, even though oftentimes they afford no such freedoms.Super Metroid‘s overworld is a guise. Players are free to search for and enter SR388’s separate domains before the game requires them to, but on stumbling upon Brinstar, Norfair or Maridia the player quickly realizes that their progress is limited by their current selection of power-ups. In this sense, the player’s sphere of progression is not tied to the seemingly open world, but to the power suit. Therefore, the limitations enforced upon the player are not presented in a way which can be translated into tangible areas of the map, by which, the player cannot properly understand what is or isn’t within their reach. The only way that they can find out is by looking for themselves. Not only does this unknown (but never hidden) factor liberate the player’s sense of exploration, but it also persuades them to gain their own bearings of the world through actual exploration. The map is therefore a clever aid in the exploration process, since it does provide that tangible reinforcement to the player.

The individual chunks of terrain that break away to your power-ups are doorways masked as environmental puzzles, where the power-ups themselves are switches that activate the opening of doors. When a player acquires a new power-up in Super Metroid, several gates are open. Of course, Super Metroid is still linear since the gates that lead to to the next major power-up (and so on until the end of the game) are pre-determined; all players will walk the same rough path. However, Super Metroid hides this very fact in three ways. Firstly, the player may take their own route to the next mandatory gateway. Secondly, when a power-up is gained, it opens the potential for the player to access peripheral weapon upgrades (which increases the number of items held), think of them as secondary doors. And lastly, on occasion, there is more than one mandatory gateway that leads the player to the next power-up; since there is some choice, this is thereby not linear. As you can see, it’s all effectively linear, but it’s mapped around a system of diversion. No first time player will stumble upon the perfect combination of clues to lead them linearly to the end of the game. Players will inevitably be de-routed, and on their way, stumble into weapon upgrades, dead ends, previously explored areas, and walk in circles; all are tricks to create a false sense of freedom.

So, the real meat of Super Metroid are the power-ups and respective gateways which forward the progression to the end game. These are directive tools which manipulate the player’s progression. And as can be seen, Metroid is highly managed, yet we love Metroid so much because the game tricks us into thinking that we are exploring by ourselves; however, we are exploring within the confines of a mold which is ultimately linear and intentional.

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