🚀 go-pugleaf

"Roger Squires" <rsquires@flash.net> wrote in message
news:F6ZRa.1494$IA7.834@newssvr32.news.prodigy.com...
> > [Unreal2] sucked because it was a film - one long interactive cutscene..
> and not a
> > game - the greatest games ever created don't have narrative.. ( tetris
for
> > example )
> > the narrative was so strong that they focused on the artwork rather than
> the
> > gameplay
>
>     This is a good criticism.  There basically is not enough for the
player
> to do, not enough freedom for exploration, and its too linear, with little
> environmental interaction.  The StarTrek EliteForce1 game struck me as
> exactly the same type of game.
>
>     Its a hard problem.  As an outsider to how game production proceeds, I
> can only imagine that individual workers get so lost in the details that
> overall goals, desires for gameplay get lost, while the executive
producers
> set their sights too low, and tell individual workers to make
all-too-linear
> levels, which then are attached to one another like C++ code segments.
>
>     Its certainly easier to partition the gameplay into straightforward
> video/linear-mission sections, but an experienced player quickly sees this
> for what it is and is disappointed.
>
>     More effort needs to be put into integrating individual levels into an
> overall scheme, and interweaving the missions so they are less obviously
> separate entities and flow into one another.  I'm thinking here of
> SystemShock1 and SS2, where you had separate missions, but missions which
> occurred within a connected space and which reinforced the player's
> immersion.  Unreal2's missions were presented as completely separate
worlds,
> and were so short as to be perceived by players as disjointed, which
> decreases immersion.
>
>     Another approach is to have missions in separate environments (with
> common elements, like sound and basic architecture elements), but which
are
> large and rich enough that the player has time to lose him/herself in the
> individual missions and regard each mission as a worthy goal in itself.
I'm
> thinking of the Thief games and DeusEx as examples here.
>
>     I believe the Unreal2 engine is a magnificent achievement, and hats
off
> to Sweeney and the other brilliant developers.  I do not think the engine
> has been utilized properly to date.  The original Unreal1 had more
> environmental interaction, atmosphere, and storyline than its sequel did,
> what, several years later ?
>
> rms
>
>

You must have played a different Unreal 1 than I did :)  The storyline was
thin, there were no NPCs to interact with at all, and no scripted sequences
after the first 2 levels.

Open any U1 level in its editor.  Then do the same with any U2 level.
There's the answer to why U2 was so short, with so many features missing.
The level of detail that newer hardware has made possible (and that players
now demand) has exponentially increased the man-hours it takes to make a
level.  Even just placing the actors, meshes, etc in one U2 level involves
as much work as several U1 levels; and that's not counting modelling,
texturing, or animating the vastly more complex actors in the newer game,
recording dialogue, setting up the complex AI scripts . . .

This is common with recent games.  Do a Google groups search for the
bitching about the limited number of Mechs in recent MechWarrior games.  One
dev said he could have competed all the mech in Mech 2 in the same time it
took to do ONE Mech 3 mech.

When content creation is so much more labour-intensive, meeting gamers'
expectations is pretty hard.  The developer can hire a huge team and get the
game out on time, feature complete, and way over budget.  Or it can go the
Unreal 2 route and cut back on features/content, get the game out, and
hopefully make it up in patches.  Or, it can end up like Duke Nuken Whenever
:)

Also, don't forget the underlying business model.  Many of these games,
including U2, are unfortunately designed to be ported to consoles, which
usually leads to design decisions that anger PC gamers.

RedEye(Co30)