I recently spoke with Vincent Adinolfi, an indie designer working on a game called Heartworm. It’s low-poly 3D survival horror, so when he brought up influences like Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and even Dino Crisis, that was to be expected. But then he mentioned Valve’s classic 1998 FPS. “I’ve tried to take cues from games like Half-Life in the way that Valve uses environment design to naturally develop the narrative,” he says. It’s not the first time I’ve heard developers namecheck Half-Life while making games very different to it. Its effect on the way games tell stories transcends genres. Which is surprising given how few other 1990s shooters even had stories.
John Carmack of id famously said stories are as irrelevant to games as they are to porn, which explains Quake. Sure, adventure games and RPGs might need plots, but what does an FPS have to gain? When Half-Life proved even a game about shooting zombies could be improved with a memorable story, it made the point for everyone. And it did it without cutscenes or a single paragraph of text. Mainly, it did it through Black Mesa.
INTENSIVE SCARES
Half-Life’s writer Marc Laidlaw once explained on his blog that Half-Life was initially planned to be a nonlinear game. That all changed because, as he put it, “All narrative forms of drama, but especially horror, rely on pacing and rhythm. In horror timing is crucial. You have to set up your traps just so, and wait until your victim is precisely in position.”
Denne historien er fra May 2020-utgaven av PC Gamer.
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Denne historien er fra May 2020-utgaven av PC Gamer.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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BITING BACK
The tooth is out there in adventure TEETH OF GLASS
SMOKE ALARM
THE INVISIBLE SMOKE FACTORY is back in a Flash
MECH ME OVER
Move over Mario, here's mech-based platforming in ARMORED SHELL NIGHTJAR
"I like Pillars of Eternity better than Baldur's Gate III"
PILLARS OF ETERNITY deserves a bigger space in the CRPG pantheon
"A harrowing dark fantasy about hapless, bright-eyed children"
Spelunking into hell with MADE IN ABYSS: BINARY STAR FALLING INTO DARKNESS
THE IMMORTAL LOCK
A massive, meaty game in a single horrific Quake map.
NEW MANOEUVRES
Building a dedicated sim racing space in an average family house
OVERWATCH 2
Save me space girl.
REET GOOD TIME
THANK GOODNESS YOU'RE HERE is a riotous recreation of Yorkshire
THE PLUCKY SQUIRE
How many games let you make friends with a MtG card?