Palzoun

by Claudio Scolastici

Premise

This article is about the way 3D shooters improved through time, both on the gameplay and game mechanics level, thanks to the implementation of brand new features.
Some of these features were so critical that they set new standards for the genre, forming an integral and essential part for other 3D shooters to come.
The goal of this analysis is to sum what has been done so far up, in order to find new directions to head towards, so to expand 3D shooters mechanics.
When I say 3D shooters I mean those games where the player controls a character from a first or third person perspective, armed with a certain amount of offensive devices, in a 3D environment, the goal being to go through the game levels cleaning them out of any opposing force.

Games will be mentioned taking into consideration the features they introduced in the genre, without referring to their success or their good or poor quality.

Methodology

Games will be examined taking into consideration 4 main groups of features that typically define 3D shooters:

Character Mobility: does the main character crouch, or jump? Can he climb a ladder? Does the game provide any means for the character to move faster?

Killing Options: does the game allow me to kill in different ways? Can I shoot an enemy with a sniper rifle from a distance, or back-stab him with a knife? Can I electrocute him, or make him step on a landmine? Is there any difference between a leg hit or a head-shot?

Arsenal: how many weapons does the game provide? How many can the character carry with him? Are there any alternate fire modes, or can I equip weapons with different ammo types? Are there any unconventional or exotic devices to effectively kill enemies?

Environment: can I take advantage of the environment? Does the game allow the character to take cover, or hide in the shadows? Can I make an opening into a wall to create an alternate route to the enemy, or block him with a barricade?

The features breakdown into the 4 groups is merely approximate, because the groups inevitably overlap at some points. For example, arsenal variety in a game has an influence on the killing options that game provides (stealth backstabbing vs sniping from a distance).

Since this bias is an inescapable fact, I will do my best to mention only non-ambiguous examples for any group of features.

By making comparisons among games based on the interrelations between the 4 groups, I hope to provide a technique to analyze a complex theoretical construct as the gameplay extension field of a game, that is powerful and easy to read at the same time.

Let’s start!

INTRODUCTION

This section is about the Founding Father of all 3D shooters: Doom. Doom is the game that turned the industry on a dime (especially its sales!). But which game features described Doom?

In the beginning Id created Doom…

The first generation of 3D shooters that turned the industry on a dime has been led by Doom. To tell the truth, gameplay in Doom is cut to the bone: the main character can run horizontally, shoot and open doors. That’s it! He cannot jump, he cannot look up or down (unless you insert the line “m+look” via the command console, an illustrator told me), he cannot climb, and he moves at constant speed. To hit a target you just need to point towards its direction, without the possibility to really aim or split the hairs. Speaking about the arsenal, the player has a bunch of different and specific weapons at his disposal, that constitute a versatile equipment to fit every specific combat situation. This is a proof that a well differentiated and versatile arsenal is a fundamental feature in this genre, coded in its DNA since the very beginning. The game demands also to use an ACTION button to activate switches that open doors or move lifts. This features is an ever-present in these games, too.

If we trace the described features on a bar chart, we can get an image like the following.

The length of each bar represents (approximately) the number of features for each main group (of features) that Doom implements. As you can see, Character Mobility and Killing Options reach minimum values, while the Arsenal level is more than enough.

We can represent the same information in a different way, coding the 4 bars on a 4 axis chart. The polygon that we obtain gives a picture of what I call the “gameplay extension field” of a game: in this case, the gameplay extension field of Doom.

This chart is the yardstick for all other games that will be analyzed through the rest of this article.

CHAPTER 1 CHARACTER MOBILITY

This section is about the techniques game designers adopted over time to improve the realism and efficacy of game controls in the shooters post-Doom. From crouching to jumping, ’till the incredible acrobatic tricks that make games like Bionic Commando so good.

Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive, Dodge. Dodge ball!

The first set of interventions to 3D shooters worked on the character movement and posture systems. Characters can now walk or run, climb ladders, jump or crouch. This way you can quickly evade enemy fire, or gain a vantage point, or hide, or walk a hidden passage. These really basic improvements have been included in the genre so naturally that it’s hard for me to remind when did that happen, and in which games. I just remember that you could jump in Duke Nukem, and crouch in Quake 2. If we now compare Duke Nukem with Doom, we get a chart similar to the following one. The dark polygon is a picture of the gameplay extension field in Doom, while the bright polygon represents the gameplay extension field in Duke Nukem.

As you can see, adding the jump feature (and a thing or two more) Duke Nukem spreads the gameplay of the FPS genre on the axis of Character Mobility. By adding this feature it also triggers a slight increase on the Environment axis, because the ability to jump and climb horizontal surfaces adds some vertical gameplay to the experience.

Fuel me up, please

Increasing the main character dexterity is not the only way to extend his mobility. Since Halo, many games could not but provide players with a certain number of means of transport to quickly cover long distances, and fight, if necessary. The availability of means of transport that are faster than the character’s legs allowed a critical growth of the game levels, and increased their complexity. With regards to this aspect I will mention Far Cry 2, which is set in no less than 50 Km2 (more or less) of hostile territory that the character can go across by feet, swimming, by car, boating (and I strongly suggest to do that at sunset, believe me!). If we add the gameplay extension field polygon of Far Cry 2 to the previous chart, we get the following image.

It’s obvious that the gameplay extension field of Far Cry 2 is wider than Doom’s on all 4 axis; but even if we just take into account the extension on the Mobility axis, there’s a remarkable difference between the two games.

We talked about some conventional ways to increase a character’s mobility, but they are not a complete exploration of the issue. There are in fact games that implement exotic gadgets which not only increase a character’s mobility, but they also achieve this goal in spectacular ways. I refer to the jet-pack in Dark Void (or maybe I should say Tribes), or to Nathan Spencer’s bionic arm, in Bionic Commando. These characters literally fly, therefore it would be a useless effort to chart them: they would easily get out of the page!

William Augustus Grey happily fluttering through the skies in Dark Void.

IN THE NEXT CHAPTER: KILLING OPTIONS. How did the techniques to spread dead evolve through time in the genre? From the free-look option to the complex strategies based on plasmid cocktails in Bioshock, let’s go back over the stages on the path of the perfect mass-murderer.

Stay Tuned!

Disclaimer: all pictures belong to their rightful owners.