Leave it to the imagination

Having been around as a gamer for many years now, I have played and seen many different types of games, and it's no surprise that with the advancement of technology come the advancement of visual fidelity. Playing a game like Crysis I am sometimes awestruck by the near photo realistic renditions of a virtual world. And other times I feel as though someone has missed the mark with trying to emulate how the world looks.

What is it about photo realism that we as artists and developers find so interesting? Is it because we want to create a new world while retaining all the qualities of the one we live in? If that's the case, would the location have the same sort of impact if it was set on the surface of Titan, or Venus? Two areas that are covered by thick clouds, dimly lit, and a landscape that is unlike anything we've seen.

Maybe it's because I've been involved with making games for so long, but I can't help starting to feel that the better the visuals, the more we're being spoon fed all the information, leaving little to the imagination. Maybe its why, as with my previous post, canned scenes are as intriguing as they provide mystery and only fragments of information. There is no denying that old first person shooters such as Unreal, Half-Life, SIN, System Shock 2, and look pretty dated these days, and with their simplicity the player really has to fill in the blanks themselves, for better or worse. But back in those days in the mind's eye those games looked just as good as Crysis looks now, except they had a lot more atmosphere.

Unreal 1, for example, was a game that really pushed the visual limits in 1998, and I was blown away by the fact that I was now playing in huge outdoor areas, and seeing structures like the sun spire that I had never seen before. It truly was an alien world, even though it was made up of city block sized flat planes :) But what I remember most is the progression of time from level to level, and the sounds and music. The fact that it felt like an adventure across an uncharted alien world, it truly was, Unreal. What else was there to explore? How did this area come to be?

Other games such as SIN also had very unique level locations, but the atmosphere and the sounds made it come to life, despite it looking very primitive. But again, it too took the player on an adventure through the world.

And the two games that probably give me the fondest of memories are System Shock 2 and Deus Ex. The two games where visuals were sorely lacking (Even when they were released), but I would play them again and again and again. What did those games have that modern games don't? Even Bio Shock doesn't hit home as well as System Shock did. Deus Ex 2? Good, but not quite there. Unreal 2? Hmm, I'd have to give it a separate article!

In System Shock I remember the sounds; walking through the corridors of a dying ship with an ever present rumble, alone in space. And when the rumble wasn't there it was an echoy wind noise, or a groaning of a giant organic being. Something was always there even though I could not see it. Add to all that faint whispers from pipe wielding mutants walking around, talking to themselves. Was it a voice that I heard? Or was it just my imagination… eep! Are those footsteps coming towards me? Or are they leaving? Maybe if I hide in this corner it will all go away!

Deus Ex, while being grounded on earth, was completely different than SS2, but still left its mark like a brick in the face. At the time it didn’t run all that well, the AI was kind of silly, and all textures were 256x256 max, thanks to 3dfx's limitations. But I was so drawn into the world that it didn’t matter, I just wanted to explore and figure out the best way to get past those guards or those turrets without being spotted. Would someone really NOT have noticed a vent shaft leading from the outside directly into the top secret lab? Probably not! But with low fidelity visuals, everything took on a characterization of the real world, and the mind took care of the rest. It really did allow me to personalize the experience I was given.

There are more games that I found just as exciting that I didn’t mention here, even older SNES and genesis games. But this article focuses more on first person shooters of what I could consider the golden era of shooters: from about 1997 / 1998, to 2001 / 2002. Games that might have looked simple by today standards, but really gave me incredible immersion and made my mind fill in all the blanks about the experience. I'm a shooter fan at heart, so I'll talk about what I know and love.

It’s all about the gameplay and the experience after all, right? They always say to “keep things simple” and “less is more”. The problem is “how little” and “how simple”, because we’re no longer living in the 90s, expectations have changed and people won’t stand for cubes on the screen anymore.

Up next I’m going to focus on more modern games that really hit home; games with more modern visuals!

Canned scenes and backgrounds

What is it about canned scenes that make them so fascinating to me? What is a canned scene anyways? Well, I would describe it as: a non interactive 3D or 2.5D composition of objects inaccessible to the player or camera and usually only seen from a limited perspective.

When I think about some of the canned scenes I've come across over the years, I always felt that they really added a lot to the life of the world by giving the area some, or a lot, of story and background. A cave behind a window in Doom, or a building in the distance in Stalker, or even a room full of gore behind a barricaded door in FEAR, all of these make you wonder just what happened, or what's really there. Of course it's easy to get there with cheat codes, but when you get there, the experience is lost; the carefully crafted illusion fall apart.

Is there some driving force that makes us want to get to, or into, a place that we're not suppose to be? Maybe its our need to solve a mystery or explore the unknown that's created in these small instances, and also an easy way to give life to the world at the same time.

Stalker, old and new

A few months ago CSG worlds released a free version of Stalker from 2004, and seeing how I have played though the original (Or should I say the production version) many times, I jumped on the opportunity to see how one of my favorite games of recent times looked many years ago. I have looked at all the old screenshots, but seeing it in motion was even better. Some of the things that interested me were what changed, what didn't, and what the community thought.

First off what I saw right away in the 2004 release (I'll refer to it as ST04) was the size of the levels and how much bigger they were. I know for one like big levels, or bigger level, but I think this is one case where less is definitely more. In the retail version of Stalker (STSoC) the levels seem like the perfect size for the first couple of playthroughs; there is enough there to keep you entertained given the amount of different types of AI, anomalies, walking speed, etc. ST04’s levels were too big some of them, like Dark Valley, Yantar, and the reactor. They were trying to go for an open world type game, I think, and I liken Stalker more to a game like Crysis in this case. It had that open world feeling, but smaller doses worked better in the end. STSoC ended up being much more cohesive with smaller levels that were better distilled for action and exploration, or the fact that they were much less confusing and better on memory as well.
A couple of examples:

1. Garbage, it had a lot of extra tunnels and routes under the factory. Sure they could have put rats in there, but aside from that, and a few items, there really wasn’t anything to do except move forward or backwards. Stalker isn’t known for disabling traps and security systems to gain access to an area. Not to mention ST04’s garbage was a LOT longer too, and with all the back and forth story elements, I’m glad it was cut down in size.
2. Agroprom and the Bar / Wildlands, both split into two levels. I find this interesting more from an “Oooh! This is how these two levels connect!!” perspective  Of course it’s more memory friendly, and easier to script / debug.
3. Underground labs were simplified and made more linear. Now this might sound like an issue, but I find it quite refreshing. The world provides enough variety for open-worldness, and the labs give me just the opposite: a nice linear adventure.
4. Yantar ended up being MUCH different, and while I can’t comment on how ST04’s version would have ended up, I LOVE the final version. ST04’s version looks like it may have been one of the first levels in the game, remnants of 2001 when the project began. It LOOKED like it was heading more towards the style of The Warehouses in STSoc, but I’m glad it didn’t 
5. Power station. While very cool that I can walk around the entire Chernobyl power station on foot, verbatim… aside from fighting off wild animals and getting irradiated, there didn’t seem to be much to do in ST04.

Of course the art changed too, for the better. Strangely enough some of the levels that never made it into the final release looked to be furthest in development, and the most interesting story wise.

Next, some of the things that stayed the same interest me on a more personal level. I guess it gives me some insight into the minds of the developers in some way. Aside from the obvious like monsters and weapons, a lot of the levels stayed the same… except they were more condensed. I find this interesting because it seems like Stalker was going to be much more straight forward action. 4 years later it turns into this choose your own adventure type game using a lot of the same assets.

Finally what really caught my attention was the community’s reaction to this. A lot of people seemed to think that ST04’s atmosphere was much better than STSoC. Huh?! First off ST04 doesn’t have much of a developed atmosphere or mood because there is no music, no sounds, none of the cool ambience and weather effects that they put into STSoC. One of the best things about Stalker, in my mind, is the incredible atmosphere. It feels so real at times that it makes me want to jump into the game world and experience it in person. That’s saying something considering everyone lives in a deadly, radiation ridden dystopian wasteland. ST04, on the other hand, felt empty, dead, and boring… a testament to how incomplete it really was at the time.

Stalker isn't the only game I've had the privilege of playing both the final retail version and an earlier version. Doom comes to mind, as do all the games I've worked on. But it's one of the more modern games, and one that I really enjoy. If someone released an early version of Deus Ex, or System Shock 2, I would be playing those in a heart beat... and posting about it too ;)