/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.3498331]

Do you believe Half-Life was a bad influence on FPS? Yes it did have solid gameplay and good story-telling through the interactions in the game itself without much intervention even though there were bullet-sponge enemies. At the same time, it did pave the way for more story-telling in FPS and TPS that were seen as mandatory instead of log-clips or the game actually stopping you from what you were doing..

[Anonymous No.3498345]

>>3498331
Quake's enemies like the Death Knights and Ogres were way more bullet-spongey than anything in Half-Life. On Half-Life's normal difficulty no enemy's health is high enough to warrant being called a bullet sponge as a valid complaint.

[Anonymous No.3498376]

>>3498331
No, it was bound to happen regardless. There were story driven games way before Half-Life.

I put the old "you good, they bad, kill" formula down to either storage limitations (floppies vs CDs), budget constraints or a studio just focusing on the tech side of the game. Even Doom and Quake had stories though. I quite enjoy HL for being something refreshing and different from the standard at the time. (also don't get the HL2 is bad meme, same deal there /notretro)

[Anonymous No.3498382]

>>3498331
No it was pretty good and had a fantastic modding scene. The doombabies on /vr/ will shit on it though despite it being before their time.

[Anonymous No.3498442]

Half Life 2 did, but it's not retro.

[Anonymous No.3498452]

>>3498382
>doombabies
Nice projection kid. I love doom and half life. I need to replay half-life and download some mods.

[Anonymous No.3498515]

>>3498345
I played on hard and enemies took an average of 30 assault rifle shots with headshots not being a thing. Atleast in Quake (although I could be wrong) enemies would die faster from headshots. Even if that weren't true you could still gib enemies.

>>3498376
>it was bound to happen regardless
In some ways yes. The 5th gen was where games started to incorporate more cinematic events. but I mean for the genre itself I believe this was the stepping stone. Even System Shock 2 and Deus Ex tried to incorporate story-telling into their games I mean they're RPGs but that's besides the point. which came out after Half-Life Could it have been that Half-Life popularized the idea of this or that it was the beginning of the emphasis of story-telling in FPS? Even Heretic and System Shock 1 weren't like this, or any Duke Nukem/ Doom clone.

[Anonymous No.3498569]

>>3498515
See, all those games still had stories, some just had the story pushed back into the scenery (Doom, Duke3d), others were more character/dialogue driven (Deus Ex/System Shock 2) but the stories were always there.

When CD readers became more popular in PCs I feel that's when the shift started, you could now fit full voiced dialogue and prerendered video, better textures/details, bigger environments, etc. You'd be able to tell a better story than you used to. Developers no longer had to rely on the scenery and the blurb on the back for story-telling.

That said Half-Life could've shown developers what they could do, so maybe it had a hand at least, I don't think it was the sole influence though.

[Anonymous No.3498591]

>bullet sponge enemies
Bullet sponges are enemies that requore no tactics bit pouring ammo at them. Half-Life's enemies demand use of different weapons.

[Anonymous No.3498608]

>>3498331
no, i don't think it was a good or bad influence, in fact i don't think it it was an influence on fps games at all. i thought it was pretty bland at the time. the plot is basically the same concept as doom (science gone wrong, big evil monsters come through portal, random guy has to stop them), the story-telling is done really poorly through pointless exposition, the combat and shooting is pretty standard for that era, the puzzles were pretty lame, the tech also is thoroughly average (it was another quake engine-based game of which there were many many others)

however, i do think it was an influence on survival horror games, which were just starting to really come into 3d at that time, and it paved the way for many of them to do interesting things with puzzle solving from a first person perspective, and to experiment with more action-oriented combat elements

[Anonymous No.3498615]

It pushed FPS a lot more towards a cinematic/dramatic style of storytelling. Half-Life 2 is more to blame for the ongoing vogue in that, but it's not like it got the idea from nowhere.

Apart from that HL1 had pretty minimal influence on the genre as a whole.

[Anonymous No.3498634]

>>3498591

Nigga you can use the shotgun on a majority of them without any trouble.

[Anonymous No.3498762]

>>3498608
Tech average? Someone hasn't played the game with A3D 2.0 sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAOcdfCN-RU

[Anonymous No.3498853]

>>3498634
Yeah and then bitch about them being "bullet sponges"

[Anonymous No.3498884]

>>3498331
Its kinda hard for me to tell. Talking about story-telling, I like the way HL did it, throu gameplay, no cinematics.
I dont really like cinematics in FPS, I feel that they separate you from gameplay too much. Yeah, they might be skippable, something imposible for above, but sill.
I also like FPS in which story is not even important in comparison to action.
You dont need to know whats going on to nail ogres in Quake. You go from A to B, killing everything that tries to stop you. Thats nice in its simplicity.

[Anonymous No.3498897]

>>3498376
>also don't get the HL2 is bad meme
I think is because it hasn't aged really well.

[Anonymous No.3499012]

Can someone tell me why I have no HUD after skipping to after the resonance cascade?
I already tried giving myself the HEV suit with "give_item suit" but it did nothing so it's probably an incorrect command.

[Anonymous No.3499035]

>>3499012
Maybe you need to enable cheats before using the command?

[Anonymous No.3499087]

>>3499012
give item_suit is what you need.

[Anonymous No.3499093]

>>3499087
Yeah except it did nothing
>>3499012
Yes

[Anonymous No.3499098]

>>3498515
>although I may be wrong
... and you are, faggot.

Quake doesn't have any kind of locational damage.

[Anonymous No.3499176]

>>3498897
Why? It looks just as great as it did in 04, and plays just as boring.

[Anonymous No.3499181]

>>3498331
Do you have to make this thread every few weeks?

[Anonymous No.3499228]

>>3499093
sv_cheats 1

You'll need to put it after the target in your shortcut, otherwise you can't activate it in game. Also, sv_gravity 800000 and walk down an incline.

[Anonymous No.3499281]

>>3498331

Believe the hype. The game changed PC gaming. Anything else is bait.

[Anonymous No.3499318]

>>3498376
Back in the days of Doom it just wasn't in the vogue for games to be heavily story-based if they weren't either RPG's or adventure games.

Back then if you wanted a game with a story you'd play games in those genres. It rarely occurred to anyone to even want a story in an action game, beyond some kind of animated intro to half-assedly explain the premise.

[Anonymous No.3499460]

>>3498376
The half-life series is REALLY good if you want a comfy game that isn't constantly spitting random shit at you just to compensate for it's bad design like most contemporary games do.

[Anonymous No.3499472]

Like everything good, it had its share of shitty copycats. The same thing happened with Doom, Halo, GTA III, etc. It doesn't make the original any worse.

[Anonymous No.3499481]

>>3498515
All enemies in Quake and Doom take a specific amount of shots to kill with any weapon, distance is not a factor for most of the weapons so you can snipe with shotguns if you must. Not sure how enemies in Half-Life work, but you can spare ammo in Quake by counting how many shots it takes to kill an enemy then use that count for the upcoming same enemies.

>Grunts and Rottwheilers take two hits to kill with Axe, Shotgun and Super Nail Gun while everything else minus regular Nail gun are one hit to kill

use these pages, do some subtraction math and use that information when playing Quake. It will make you a better player if you apply the same concept to any other game, I guarantee it.

http://quake.wikia.com/wiki/Monsters_(Q1)
http://quake.wikia.com/wiki/Weapons_(Q1)

[Anonymous No.3499560]

>>3498515
>headshots not being a thing
Headshots are a thing in Half-Life. They do a multiplier of damage, not instant kill. Can't remember the value but it's something like 1.5x or 2x.

[Anonymous No.3499574]

>>3499560
You're probably right. Must've been the rng of the bullets that makes it a bit more difficult and inefficient.

[Anonymous No.3499582]

>>3499318
>It rarely occurred to anyone to even want a story in an action game
Nonsense. Compared to today's games it may seem laughable, but various genres including FPSes were experimenting with cutscenes and story beats all over the place. And it's not like HL1 was the first game to attempt it, either. SiN came out first, and even when you compare Quake 2 to Quake 1 you can see how much more cinematic Quake 2 is.

>>3498376
This guy is correct. HL1 was of course influential, but that was simply the direction games were heading. People wanted more cinematic games, it was something people fantasized about all the time, the idea of a game "like being in a movie." Of course in hindsight we can see the negative impact of this trend and what happens when you attempt it at the expense of interactivity, but it's always been something people dreamed about.

[Anonymous No.3499596]

>>3498345
Quake gave you more rockets than you knew what to do with though

[Anonymous No.3499987]

>>3498884

Half life was so influential it was insane. Before half life a lot of FPS where unrealistic mazes. They made no sense architecture wise. half life had a setting that made sense, and even the platforming made sense, like the room flooded with electricity.

Half pioneered in game story telling. Watching a scientist get pulled through a vent, spending a whole level to prepare to burn those tentacles, etc. It was epic.

Dont even get me started on multiplayer. Sure Half Life didnt invent team fortress but it perfect it. Counter strike. lots of other mods.

You see the influence of Half in almost every FPS these days, even the Doom game. The only other FPS as influential as Half Life are Wolfenstein 3d, doom, and Deus Ex

[Anonymous No.3499993]

>>3499318

Half Life didnt really have a strong story.

It was more about how events unfolded in real time. It made actual gameplay like a movie.

[Anonymous No.3500179]

>>3499987
GoldenEye did most of the things Half Life gets credited for first. And it sold 8.5 million copies.

[Anonymous No.3500330]

>>3498331
Yes. I enjoyed it, but it started the whole cinematic thing (make the players feel like they're in an action movie, not a video game level) and popularised unneccasary realism which the games that were influenced by HL turned up to eleven.

[Anonymous No.3500521]

HL was solid. The degeneration into story-driven cinematic shitfests was bound to happen anyway, due to improvements in tech and general saturation with Doom/Quake clones. Also Strife was a story driven FPS before HL.

[Anonymous No.3500656]

>>3500330
>make the players feel like they're in an action movie, not a video game level
HL had amazing level design. What sets it apart from other FPS games is that all the story telling was done in-game without the need for cinematic sequences that took control away from you. the entire intro sequence was spent in a railway ride which set you up for what kind of workplace you will be performing your duties in, but then aliens invaded the place after an accident you were directly involved in.

[Anonymous No.3500935]

>>3500179

Goldeneye was nowhere near Half Life. Goldeneyes big accomplishment was being a good console shooter. Perhaps the first. It wasnt a good shooter for a PC or impressive outside of consoles for the time.

[Anonymous No.3500942]

Everyone knows Halo is the point where FPS games irrevocably went down the path to ruin.

[Anonymous No.3500960]

>>3500942

I actually never saw the big deal with Halo.

It wasnt a bad game, but it didnt really introduce anything new. It had good graphics, AI, and solid gameplay, but so do lots of games.

My only theory is it was console peasants first time really playing a PC style FPS and it blew their minds. PC gamers had Halo type games since a decade before Halo. Our response to Halo was meh.

[Anonymous No.3501049]

>>3500960
Even Marathon was a Doom clone of Halo.

[Anonymous No.3501060]

>>3500960
Halo was okay. Retards latch on to it as the death of FPS but Call of Duty influenced the genre more and was originally a PC franchise.

[Anonymous No.3501907]

>>3499181
Does he make it the exact same every time?

[Anonymous No.3501953]

>>3498331
No the audience constantly buying the garbage devs put out was the bad influence.

[Anonymous No.3501964]

>>3501060
Halo was going to be like a super duper uber Tribes on skooma for PC and Mac but instead it got severely watered down to what the Call of Duty series has now become.

[Anonymous No.3501983]

>>3501964
It was going to be an RTS originally if I remember correctly. Besides Bungie couldn't top Tribes in the first place.

[Anonymous No.3501985]

The only bad thing Half-Life set up was where you see some guy behind a glass wall. You can't interact, just watch as something bad happens to them.
Otherwise, pretty god-tier game for its time.

[Anonymous No.3502042]

>>3501983
Yea I just read about that factoid but they started tinkering around with TPS and FPS elements too. I think there were hybrid RTSs at that time too like Battlezone 98 if I remember correctly. I agree it might not have topped Tribes (considering the lack of jet-packs) but I'm sure everyone would have played it anyways.

[Anonymous No.3502310]

>>3500935
I love how valve fats respond to Half Life not being that influential as b-b-but goldeneye s-sucked...

pathetic

Goldeneye's big accomplishment was being the first non-Quake or Doom clone that actually had high sales. Not Half-Life. You can say GE sucked but that's irrelevant to cold hard sales fact.

[Anonymous No.3502353]

>>3498376
flawless post
>>3499460
close second

[Anonymous No.3502358]

>>3501060
>>3500960
Both Call of Duty 1 and Halo 1 are absolutely fantastic games from top to bottom

it was their sequels where things went to shit

[Anonymous No.3502398]

>>3502358
Halo 1's single player is extremely repetitive though.

[Anonymous No.3502460]

>>3500330
Half-life had a heavier focus on story for an action game, but I have to disagree with it "starting the cinematic trend". There is nothing remotely cinematic about the game.

[Anonymous No.3502953]

>>3502398
It can be, but I've only ever played the game through on Co op, like 5 or 6 times with different people. I think it's fun, pacing and level transitions make sense. It was also the first console fps where the controls felt really fluid to me, it was pick up and play with no getting used to. I don't think I'd play through single player alone, aside from like 3 or 4 levels.

Halo had a very cinematic driven story, but originally it wasn't too distracting, now I can't sit through the cut scenes. I think that had a bigger influence on modern fps games, if nothing else it demonstrated that it was possible.

Same thing with half life, it was influential because one of the devices they used for story development was scripted in game events, and if nothing else it showed what was capable. Halo used that idea as well, with the lead up to the introduction of the flood.

It was all milestones, but if they didn't pull them off eventually somebody else would have. It's not like cut scenes had never been used in video games before then.

[Anonymous No.3502972]

>tfw zen

[Anonymous No.3502993]

>>3502953
>one of the devices they used for story development was scripted in game events

already done by goldeneye

half life invented nothing except continuous level transitions

[Anonymous No.3503009]

>>3502993
This isn't what is meant, HL was the first game to use scripted sequences (read not just dialog) where NPCs and objects would perform actions sometimes regardless of the players ability to intersect or even try to change.

source: ex HL1 single player map maker

[Anonymous No.3503010]

>>3502993
Didn't Soul Reaver do that to a large extent as well?

[Anonymous No.3503037]

>>3502398

Halo 1 uses repetition to pretty good effect. It's mostly reused mapping stuff -- the last three levels in the game are effectively three previous levels chopped up and reworked, and every floor of the Library looks exactly the fucking same -- but there's a pretty broad variety of encounters and weapons without any one strategy being too overwhelmingly good. I agree with >>3502953 that where it really shines is co-op, but Halo 1 has some pretty good levels. Two Betrayals, which taken at face value is literally just Assault on the Control Room but backwards, is a totally different experience to play through, both visually, in terms of difficulty and the types of encounters you face, in terms of the weapons and vehicles you should be using, and ultimately in terms of how it makes you feel. I'd class its "repetition" more as a clever use of resources than just boohoo same thing. I mean, retro FPS are visually repetitive as fuck, or had a small number of textures creatively reused to create different effects, depending on how you look at it.

[Anonymous No.3503042]

>>3502972

I like Zen. I wish that kind of third act screwball was more common in FPS. It's an interesting way to break up monotony once the player has gotten good at the game. It reminds me of the alien ship levels in the first Marathon.

[Anonymous No.3503067]

>>3503009
>HL was the first game to use scripted sequences (read not just dialog) where NPCs and objects would perform actions sometimes regardless of the players ability to intersect or even try to change.

This is a nebulous definition. All scripts in Half-Life are triggered by players being in a particular proximity. The difference between scripted "sequences" and dialog is also merely abstract.

The Control level in Goldeneye involves an escort quest and a countdown event in the Goldeneye Control Room that is essentially no different than the kinds of scripted sequences found in Half-Life.

[Anonymous No.3503118]

>>3503067

The lab experiement that goes wrong - 100 different scripts running for lighting, phyics, dialog, character animations -- all to make it work.

This is just one level and there are heaps more that a much smaller.

No FPS game before Half Life had these advanced mechanics and a way of integrating a player with the action. It was literally a game changer.

[Anonymous No.3503235]

Hl1 was a decent game, I remember being impressed with the AI back in the day. It was a little more immersive than what was out at the time (arguable though) I think the big draw was the mystery, you were always wondering what was going on and where you stood. It was a okay game


Half-life real innovation though was bundling multiplayer games that had little to do with the core game. If not for tfc, and later counterstrike i think half-life would have died off and not been the major game it was. Those bundled games were what made it a value, you had something to play after you got bored of hl

I personally bought half-life originally for tfc - I played the single player and liked it, but tfc was the selling point.

Later counterstrike got bundled ( funny they sold a pack that came with Cs, opposing forces, halflife, tfc. And you actually got two CD keys since halflife and Cs were both valid for counterstrike... Friends would split the cost and each get a key)

The rest is history, counterstrike was popular enough that valve was able to force steam on us, source engine was demo'd with cs:s and despite steam sucking so much, valve killing cs 1.5 and the entire competitive community (hard to practice when updates are sporadic and one gun becomes crazy op, and another becomes useless) we were forced on steam. Hl2 required steam, so folks not into cs were still required to sign up. (Real dick move, lot of people were still on 56k at the time...)

Funny valve did the same with teamfortress, fortress forever was almost done when valve pushed out tf2 and killed that project. :(

No one seems to remember the pretty awful history or valve and steam and how their popularity was 100% based on the hard work of others (tfc, cs, portal, and now DotA)

Not saying valve was a leech, they did alot of work on the games they acquired , but other than half life and left4dead ( wasn't that acquired too?) They haven't done much. Even portal was a student project....

[Anonymous No.3503261]

>>3503118
>No FPS game before Half Life had these advanced mechanics and a way of integrating a player with the action. It was literally a game changer.

You can stop with the hyperbolic bullshit. Yes, Half-Life took the quantity of scripting to the next level, but Goldeneye had many elements of it, albeit in significantly reduced amounts.

Another significant event I remember, the hostage scenario / bomb / laser cutting part at the end of the Train level in Goldeneye.

[Anonymous No.3503386]

>>3499987
>Before half life a lot of FPS where unrealistic mazes. They made no sense architecture wise.
Quake 2 had coherent architecture and style. Half-Life was not only later, it even used some Q2 code

>Counter strike.
half-life was a very good base for mods but valve didn't make counter-strike. they only later bought it out.

>>3499582
>HL1 was of course influential, but that was simply the direction games were heading. People wanted more cinematic games, it was something people fantasized about all the time, the idea of a game "like being in a movie."
that's bullshit
what half-life did was make the game more immersive than something you just sit and watch (i.e. a movie)
it didn't make a game more cinematic, on the contrary, it specifically did not include standard cinematics

[Anonymous No.3503553]

>>3498331

Looking back the true revolutionary fps was not a shooter at all.

Thief already had levels that architecturally made sense and conveyed story with their surroundings and sound.


But Unreal 1 and FPS were impressive, I loved the constant soundtrack and the sheer power of the unreal engine, but something about half life felt right.

The levels progressed with logic, there was no unnecessary music just great ambient, and the story was cryptic because nobody explained anything, I think there is a lot to be said about games that do almost 0 exposition, makes you mind create great stuff. Recently look at From games like souls or shadow tower\KF.


Actually I played Hexen 2 ( which was fucking great) before half life and games were already taking that path way before half life.

[Anonymous No.3503562]

>>3499987
Unreal did all of that before Half-Life.
It was arguably better gameplaywise too.

[Anonymous No.3503576]

>>3502993
System Shock had scripted ingame events in 1994

[Anonymous No.3503587]

>>3503562
I don't think it's arguable. It's a fact.

[Anonymous No.3503595]

>>3503587
Both Unreal and HL had good scripted scenes.

HL however seemed like a lot of love was poured into it and felt more raw and survival horror.

[Anonymous No.3503608]

>>3503576
System Shock isn't a pure FPS

arguably not an FPS even, but a FRPG

[Anonymous No.3503610]

>>3503595
>HL however seemed like a lot of love was poured into it and felt more raw and survival horror.
Seems like a lot of buzzwords to me. Half-Life's AI was a lot more simplistic and easier to deal with and the weapons were all unsatisfying. Enemies in Unreal can predict shots, dodge, shoot while running, feign death, and jump from place to place.

[Anonymous No.3503613]

>>3503595
They're both tech demos, but HL feels more complete, more nuanced. It transitions itself more better, but unreal feels like you're jumping from level to level and for the most part it shows

[Anonymous No.3503614]

>>3503608
System Shock =/= System Shock 2
SS1 is a pure FPS with no RPG elements

[Anonymous No.3503617]

>>3503610

I know it sounds buzzwordy sorry.

Falls down to taste. Half Life had a lot of cool no enemy segments as well. I mean who in the fucking hell not loved fps in that era?

As I said above even Hexen 2 was trying really weird shit, I love both Unreal and HL on both measure for different reasons. I dont think any is superior since both went on to be influential.

[Anonymous No.3503619]

>>3503613
A bunch of unreal levels were cut from the game. The na pali expansion uses some of the assets from the beta.

[Anonymous No.3503623]

>>3503617
Fair enough. People shit on Half-Life for first person platforming segments but I honestly had no problems with them. FPS nowadays completely ignore the advantages of 3D and verticality.

[Anonymous No.3503637]

>>3503623


Exactly and those solitude moments with puzzles and platforming if well made, are very good to break up the tiredness of the combat sections. In fact it turns the game into a more believable world and makes it more a simulation, games these days completely ignore that aspect.

Bioshock for example became so fucking tedious after a while it hurts, when compared to SS2 it really hurts.


Seriously Thief came out at the same time as Half Life and the way it handled puzzles and verticality is still something to behold.

[Anonymous No.3503670]

>>3500179
>>3500521
>>3503553
Strife.

Outlaws.

Jedi Knight.

Future Shock.

Sin.

System Shock 2.

All these came earlier except SS2 which was obviously well into development when Half Life was released. If half life wasn't a competitor, other such games would have sold a bit more. Maybe Lucasarts would have even released a sequel to Outlaws? Maybe they would have created their own pro-cinematic engine with both that and Dark Forces 3 to make use of it. Sin and System Shock 2 would obviously have done better. If id tech suffered a bit from less funding, Lithtech might have established itself more. Future shock could have been re-released with voice acting alongside a new game with a shared engine.

[Anonymous No.3503672]

>>3503614
>SS1 is a pure FPS with no RPG elements

[Anonymous No.3503683]

>>3503672
That doesn't change a single thing I said. People erroneously call it an RPG due to System Shock 2's RPG elements but there is no character progression system apart from weapons and items. You might as well call Wolfenstein and Doom an RPG if you think System Shock is one.

[Anonymous No.3503701]

>>3498608
>the puzzles were pretty lame
alright I'll let the other stuff fly but fuck you for this
the puzzles and environmental challenges turned this from a good game into a great game

[Anonymous No.3503751]

>>3503683
>That doesn't change a single thing I said. People erroneously call it

Yes anon, I will certainly take your word over the developers themselves.

[Anonymous No.3503778]

>>3503751
Strife was also labelled an RPG, showing that press people can have a very low threshold for qualifying something as such.

[Anonymous No.3503787]

>>3503778
You're reading it backwards you fucking idiot.

The developers are criticizing people (just like you) that called SS1 an action shooter instead of an RPG (as they intended).

[Anonymous No.3503798]

>>3503751
They also called the game an "immersive sim" back in the day. It's simply not an RPG in any shape or form.

[Anonymous No.3503807]

>>3503798
>They also called the game an "immersive sim" back in the day

You can twist it any way you want, but the developers never EVER called it an action shooter.

[Anonymous No.3503817]

>>3503807
FPS hadn't even been established as a genre at the time. I wouldn't call it a Doom clone but it is not an RPG.

[Anonymous No.3503824]

>>3503817
The developers.

Themselves.

Said.

It was.

An RPG.

Your willful ignorance of this fact is borderline autistic.

[Anonymous No.3503834]

>>3503683
>call it an RPG due to System Shock 2
I distinctly remember reviews calling it an RPG when it came out. It was praised for having a progression system without numerical attributes.

[Anonymous No.3503841]

>>3503386
>what half-life did was make the game more immersive than something you just sit and watch (i.e. a movie)
>it didn't make a game more cinematic, on the contrary, it specifically did not include standard cinematics
I agree with this, and it's something that games have been losing

[Anonymous No.3503842]

>>3503787
Not being a doom clone doesn't contradict being an FPS. Future shock feels very unlike a "doom clone", but it's absolutely an FPS, vehicular parts aside. What they are clearly admitting is that System Shock 2 adds a smattering of RPG elements on top of the SS1 formula.

[Anonymous No.3503859]

>>3503842
>Not being a doom clone doesn't contradict being an FPS

Except the whole part where they said, and I quote "Shock was at heart ... not an action shooter"

>What they are clearly admitting is that System Shock 2 adds a smattering of RPG elements on top of the SS1 formula.

Except the whole part where they wrote "not only embracing the sense of role-playing that Shock PROVIDED, but EXPANDING on it" (capitalization for emphasis).

[Anonymous No.3503864]

>>3503824
The devs can call it a first person action space platformer for all I care. There are no RPG elements, no real choices or consequences, no progression system apart from items or anything that generally defines RPGs. Nobody calls Heretic an RPG.

[Anonymous No.3503872]

>>3503864
>The devs can call it a first person action space platformer for all I care. There are no RPG elements

Enjoy your headspace canon

[Anonymous No.3503917]

>>3503859
Fuck your hearts. Doom, and its successors, may have been AT HEART have been tech demos, but will you likewise dismiss the way they fit among FPSes?

If developers aims did not translate smoothly into the product, you cannot override what it actually is by swinging around the ambitions of some of the developers. Battlecruiser 3000 AD was, in the vision of the developer, the most monumentally proper game ever, but that doesn't change the fact that it was lousy.

[Anonymous No.3503970]

>>3503917
This, it's pointless to talk about what a game would have been, what matters is what a game ended up being.
Potential is good and all, but potential without actuation is worthless wanking.

[Anonymous No.3503978]

>>3503970
>what a game would have been, what matters is what a game ended up being.

The developers were discussing SS1 retrospectively in the SS2 document.

Maybe you just don't know what an RPG is.

[Anonymous No.3503989]

>>3503978
RPG is one of my favorite genre together with FG, so yeah, I know what an RPG is.
Besides, that isn't the point of the discussion.

[Anonymous No.3503991]

>>3503970
It ended up being a first person shooter

[Anonymous No.3504027]

>>3503978
RPG is a genre of tabletop games that generally translates very messily to computers, although it tends to get warped a bit less than when translated onto consoles.

[Anonymous No.3504189]

>>3503386
>>3503841
You guys seem to be confused. Calling a game cinematic != saying the game has a lot of cutscenes to sit and watch. Saying that HL is notable for being a cinematic FPS compared to others at the time should not be controversial in the slightest. The whole feeling of "you are playing through a distaster/action movie unfolding around you" was a huge part of its appeal. No idea why you're arguing about it.

[Anonymous No.3504289]

>>3503235
That's way after hl became popular enough to get mods like cs in the first place.

[Anonymous No.3504302]

>>3503670
That does NOT mean that half life didn't poison FPS genre. If other games were more influential, we would have had different kinds of high-story FPSes, maybe lots and lots of different types.

[Anonymous No.3504318]

>>3503553
Yeah, hl is more a confluence of God ideas rather than new ideas. I've been replaying it recently and here are some stuff I've noticed:

The radio chatter clueing you in to possible ambushes but not the source
The minimalist HUD
The sound design -there are some pretty unusual sounds for things but you immediately know what they mean
I find myself constantly swapping between weapons instead of sticking with one
Trip mines were in duke but they're still awesome especially with the ai
The uniformity of everything in the world, nothing looks out of place unless it's zen.
Hazards are communicated really well to the player - radiation, electricity etc
The quakelike movement feels just right
Ai companions who are controllable but aren't annoying
You very rarely have to sit there listening to anything scripted after the intro

[Anonymous No.3504343]

>>3504318
Yeah it gives you control and its very survival horror, no music just ambient. I agree with the movement its precise and fluid like in Thief, Unreal is a bit more slippery.

Its simply a game philosophy that never came back but was pretty prevalent in the 90s. Explore, survive. Try to simulate something instead of constantly remind you you are in a videogame, quests markers and other unnecessary BS these days annoys me to no end and its fucking refreshing to play these old games, even action games were more pure just look at Severance.

I think its the first game where scripted environmental hazards really put me on the edge and Thief does not do that because its stealth. Unreal did a bit but not to the extent of HL.

[Anonymous No.3504461]

>>3503672
>quoting wikipedia definition

Topkek, just fucking kill yourself already.

[Anonymous No.3504484]

>>3503235
Having played tfc for so long from 99-07 at that point, I was so excited for tf2. God what a huge let down that was. I still remember Fortress Forever was in development since like 04(?) and they'd release snippets and such about the game, hype for it was pretty high since what looked like was going to be tf2 at the time ended up being DoD. Then valve came out of nowhere and announced the release date, the FF devs ended up rushing an unfinished release to get out ahead of it and it ended up mediocre with a tiny player base.

[Anonymous No.3504490]

>>3504484
I remember FF vs tf2 arguments. I never was into TFC though so I didn't really get into it.

[Anonymous No.3505391]

With System Shock you have to understand the historical context.

Prior to SS1, the two "big" first person games were Doom and Ultima Underworld.

Ultima was part of a historically "RPG" series and had RPG like stats. For all intents and purposes it was an RPG, and arguably it was the first FPRPG in the modern sense.

In terms of UI and gameplay System Shock was far closer to Ultima than Doom, so people compared it to Ultima. It was also marketed as an RPG, basically the sci-fi answer to Ultima Underworld.

Thus, people thought of it as an RPG at the time. Whether it's properly an RPG is something that can be debated, but the line between what is or isn't is always rather muddy.

[Anonymous No.3505396]

>>3504461
That was uncalled for, go away jerk

[Anonymous No.3505489]

>>3503672
>System Shock 1
>role-playing game
It's a first-person metroidvania at most. It has no stats or skills, only item upgrades and weapon ammo type sort of stuff.

[Anonymous No.3505492]

>>3505489
And that you play a role in a game

[Anonymous No.3505515]

>>3505492
Classic piece of bait, yes.

Let me go play the role of Gordon Freeman in Half-Life.

Role-playing ecksdee

[Anonymous No.3505516]

>>3505489
Metroid isn't an action game either. It's an adventure game.

Look at Contra if you want action. The further point is that System Shock ain't an action game.

[Anonymous No.3505517]

>>3505516
I'm pretty sure I remember mowing down tons of enemies with a 100 round magazine AK-styled LMG.

[Anonymous No.3505571]

>>3505391
>and arguably it was the first FPRPG in the modern sense.
Well, what else did you have at the time, I seem to recall there were a few FPRPGs on PC-88 or something, but there wasn't anything quite like Ultima Underworld back then, then again, I'm only 28 so I'm probably missing out on a lot of stuff.

[Anonymous No.3505575]

Fact: Anyone who thinks System Shock 1 is not an FPS or even at least an Action game in some sense has not played the game and is either a troll doing his best to bait or some dumb hipster that has never played the game and is basing his perception of the System Shock series entirely on the 2nd game and just likes to pretend he's played and is experienced with the first.

Just because the default control scheme isn't Doom's does not mean the game is not a functional FPS/Adventure game. But the fact that it doesn't have skills, stats, levelling or any of that definitely means it's not an RPG.

[Anonymous No.3505589]

>>3505575
>Anyone who thinks System Shock 1 is not an FPS or even at least an Action game in some sense has not played the game

So according to you, the developers of System Shock didn't play their own game >>3503751

[Anonymous No.3505598]

>>3499318
>It rarely occurred to anyone to even want a story in an action game

What you're telling me with this is "I wasn't aware of the scene in the 90s but I want to romanticize over what I believe it was anyway".
Carmack saying that "Story in a game is like story in a porno" doesn't represent what gamers wanted at the time, but everyone on 4chan seems to think it does because they weren't there and romanticize shit that happened before they started gaming in the late 90s/early 00s where tech stopped being a barrier for making an immersive game and action games that put more emphasis on storyline started taking hold. The reason this stuff broke ground is because people wanted it, but developers weren't quite up to achieving it just yet.

[Anonymous No.3505695]

>>3505589
The fact that all you can do is bring up a design document when the game was more similar to UU rather than the finished product is more telling than any post in the thread.

[Anonymous No.3505725]

If you're looking for the turning point that led to COD et al, that would be Halo. The Halo series was 5000% more popular than Half Life, only nerds played Half Life.

[Anonymous No.3505775]

>>3505695
Listen, retard.

The design document was for Junction Point (aka System Shock 2), so there's no "when the game was". It was written well after the original System Shock was a "finished product".

Fuck off with your mental gymnastics.

[Anonymous No.3505785]

>>3504461
It's accurate tho. Fuck off sperg.

[Anonymous No.3505789]

>>3505725
Bullshit, HL sold almost twice as the first Halo.

[Anonymous No.3505815]

>>3500960
Halo was the first "Big" title to do what eventually became modern console FPS controls. I kinda doubt Halo was the game that invented those controls, but prior to that FPS games on console mostly had terrible control schemes.

So yeah, it's probably the fact that console gamers got their first FPS title that didn't control like hot garbage.

[Anonymous No.3505862]

>>3505789

do you have the figures to back that up?

[Anonymous No.3505975]

>>3505815

Halo didnt invent anything.

It was just the controllers now allowed for FPS. If we want to give a game credit for letting FPS working on console that goes to Goldeneye. Even the regen health and limited weapons wasnt invented by Halo. Nor were vehicles.

Halo was a solid game, good graphics, sound, controls, AI, etc. However, there was nothing original about it or unique. It is just when it came out the graphics were similar to what could have been on PC, and it was a game that truly was like a real FPS, which were almost unknown on consoles.

And for all you fags blaming HL for COD, we can blame HL for the original good call of duties, before they were a yearly serious and they were awesome games. We can blame Halo for the bad COD where it became same game being released year after year.

[Anonymous No.3506002]

>>3505975
Sorry to shatter your rose tinted glasses, but Goldeneye also controlled like hot garbage.

[Anonymous No.3506090]

>>3506002
Didn't stop it from outselling Halo 1 though

[Anonymous No.3506260]

>>3506002

it was good for the time.

Halo doesnt even get credit for making FPS popular on consoles. Literally there is nothing notable about Halo other than it was popular. Like I said it wasnt a bad game, it was actually good, but there was NOTHING special about it. It isnt even a footnote in video game history.

[Anonymous No.3506270]

>>3506002
>he cant into c button strafe / look
Damn nigga u suck at games

[Anonymous No.3506273]

>>3506260
Are you fucking with me?
Halo was the shit nigga
>link cable 2 xboxes
>local 8 player
Awh yisss

[Anonymous No.3506298]

>>3506273
People born after 1990 aren't permitted to post here

[Anonymous No.3506396]

>>3505975
>>3506260
Halo is really, really obviously notable for popularizing three things:
>regenerating health (or shield, in this case)
>2-weapon system
>the triad of regular shooting, quick grenade button, and quick melee button

I'm sure there are various games that did all of these things first, but it shouldn't be controversial in the slightest that Halo made this combo popular and shaped how modern FPSes played after it.

>>3506002
GE plays fine with 1.2 controls, no idea why people complain about it. No one asking you to win a Quake tournament with them.

[Anonymous No.3506475]

>>3506298
Kill yourself my man

[Anonymous No.3506610]

>>3506273

*yawn*

PC players actually doing LAN since early 90s. Not impressed kid.

[Anonymous No.3506625]

>>3506396

Halo was popular. That doesnt make it good. As agreed all these things already existed.

Again, Halo was just popular because console fags never really played a real FPS. All they had was Goldeneye.

Halo was a worthy PC FPS, but nothing special other than having good graphics for the time. It just blew console players away because they never played a good FPS. PC gamers were "meh" we have had games like this for 10 years.

Controls are still shit compared to mouse and keyboard. The 2 weapons was to make up for lack of scroll wheel. Regen health is for newbs. Halo is the definition of making a game with mass appeal, mostly stealing good ideas, and giving it to new audience.

[Anonymous No.3506679]

HL was the Halo of PC FPS, appealing to a new gaming generation that cared more about style over substance.

[Anonymous No.3506703]

>>3506679
Yeah I agree. I mean the low skill ceiling in half life and its multiplayer mods were so absurdly low it was insulting. Did you know that when bhop was discovered in HL/cs/tfc (old carryover skill from Quake) that you had to actually press jump every split second your feet hit the ground instead of just holding down the spacebar and wiggling your mouse? You're right, making bhop accessible only to people who learned the timing of the jumps rather than holding down a single button to blaze through a map means they were trying to make it accessible to everyone in the new gaming generation. Style over substance my ass. Kiss my dick faggot.

[Anonymous No.3506709]

>>3506679
That implies the FPS genre ever had substance in the first place. Doom is anything but mechanically deep.

[Anonymous No.3506769]

>>3506679
I don't know about you but Half-Life's arsenal (as well as other 98-99 shooters) already superseded the shooters before it. The enemies also have their own unique AI in a way not seen in the previous generation of shooters. There was clearly substance in Half-Life and it's nobody's fault but your own that you can't see past its 10 minute train intro because you have an agenda to hate it because it spawned a generation of sloppy copy cats.

[Anonymous No.3506783]

>>3506625
Stay mad, doombabby. You know fine well FPSs were shallow as fuck for an entire decade

[Anonymous No.3506871]

>>3506783

Calm down kid. Nobody is mad except you that Halo isnt that great. We just think it is cute you peasants think Halo is a big deal.

[Anonymous No.3506893]

>>3506769
I disagree with some of this. There was already a good amount of weapon variety and FPS games with alt fire before '98. The enemy AI in Unreal is still impressive to this day though.

[Anonymous No.3507141]

>>3505975
>Even the regen health wasnt invented by Halo.
Was there a fps game before that had that?

[Anonymous No.3507263]

>>3506625
>Halo was just popular because console fags never really played a real FPS. All they had was Goldeneye.

Goldeneye is a more complex game than Quake, even though the skill ceiling is lower due to no jumping.

[Anonymous No.3507415]

>>3507263
I've played a lot of Goldeneye and not nearly as much Quake and although I like Goldeneye more I fail to see how it is more "complex". What do you mean by this?

You recognize the skill ceiling is higher in Quake and I agree one big reason is the jumping mechanics. But the main difference is that Quake is 1000x as fast-paced. I've played vs really good players in both and while GoldenEye can get fast with good strafing, movement in Quake is in another dimension entirely.

Unless your definition of "complex" is based on story, variety of environments, settings or something else unrelated to actual gameplay I really don't agree with you despite being a big Goldeneye fan.

[Anonymous No.3507446]

>>3507415
Yeah the speed and the jumping is definitely why Quake has a higher skill ceiling (though, arguably, the whole reason you can go fast in the first place is due to jumping).

But Goldeneye has things that Quake doesn't have like targeted aiming (e.g. headshots), ability to set traps (mines), a much larger and diverse array of weapons, and the ability to lean around walls left/right. Of course the single player is also a lot more complicated since it has shit like stealth and missions that aren't just based around killing shit.

Maybe more complex is the wrong word, but Goldeneye simply has a larger quantity of mechanics built into it than Quake.

[Anonymous No.3507486]

>>3507446
Too bad Goldeneye was marred by crappy console controls and 5-10FPS gameplay.

Proof that even back then, making FPS for anything but the PC was a bad idea.

[Anonymous No.3507512]

>>3499993
It had a strong PLOT I would say - its story is essentially exactly the same as Dooms but the progression and way it's exposed is far beyond even most modern games.

[Anonymous No.3507587]

>>3507486
>Too bad Goldeneye was marred by crappy console controls

Mustards can stop beating this horse to death. They were fine for Goldeneye.

>5-10FPS gameplay.

Hyperbole, it was more like 15-20 FPS. Not that PCs ran Quake a whole lot better.

[Anonymous No.3507650]

>>3505789
It's closer to 25% more, but yes HL was and is more popular than Halo.

[Anonymous No.3507663]

>>3503261
>Roach and insect AI
>Enemies hold conversations and have routines outside of killing you
>Being able to feed and befriend certain enemies for alternate tactics
>Being able to play mostly pacifist
Goldeneye is very good. But you would be amazed at how detailed the original half life is if you read about it. The Roach thing, while amusing, is just one of many examples. They come and feed on corpses and gibs and eventually get rid of them completely if you hang around enough. They scurry when lights come on and hide under objects, they actively avoid you and seek out freshly killed enemies. It's really insane how detailed the game is. Goldeneye's combat is relatively straightforward, Half Life is the first game that really felt like it had an intelligent AI that forced you to use a variety of tactics.

[Anonymous No.3507693]

>>3507663
>Half Life is the first game that really felt like it had an intelligent AI that forced you to use a variety of tactics.

Just fuck off already with the gimmicky cockroach AI. Half-Life didn't invent shit. At most it was an incremental improvement.

Turok 2 (released before Half-Life) had enemies who displayed cowardice if you had more powerful weapons than them, enemies that would play hide and seek with you behind crates, and its own enemy allegiance system.

Goldeneye's AI, despite having some limitations, did do interesting things for its time, like sensing gun noise properly and attempting to evade gunfire by rolling out of the way. Occasionally they even try to wait back to ambush you (they don't always blindly follow you every you go). What's more, if they're wearing a hat you can cleanly shoot it off, not to mention Goldeneye was the first FPS where enemies have different reactions depending where you shoot them on the body.

The hilarious thing is that even though mustards make fun of console players (and rightly so) for thinking Halo was totally revolutionary, the irony is that console players can genuinly make fun of mustards for thinking Half-Life was totally revolutionary.

[Anonymous No.3507728]

>>3507693
>Missing the point the post
It's about the whole package anon. No one has said that half life was revolutionary or the first game with these things. They've simply been pointing out a lot of little things that come together really well and make half life great.

[Anonymous No.3507803]

>>3507728
>No one has said that half life was revolutionary or the first game with these things

>literally responded to a post that quoted another post as saying half life was the first game

[Anonymous No.3508687]

>>3505589
That doesn't count. Developing the game is a comparable interaction with the game to playing it. They wouldn't even have to play a game to judge it. So they must have made up their mind before playing it.

Or they just do actually think it's an FPS, and one of them is simply saying that it isn't to present it as OMG-totally-contrarry-to-how-shallow-it-should-seem.

[Anonymous No.3509291]

>>3507803
No other game had them in a seamless package like that. It was the first game to really bring it all together as an experience.

[Anonymous No.3510113]

>>3498331
HL and particularly Op4 death match with bros back in the day was some of the most fun we have had as a group in a game , it still comes up once in while in conversation and its been literally years

[Anonymous No.3510534]

>>3498331
It made FPS's linear, with very little of the exploration that was a hallmark of Doom, Quake, and others.

[Anonymous No.3510543]

>>3503010
Yep, and arguably did it far, far better than Half Life.

[Anonymous No.3510925]

>>3507693

Blood also had enemies who would cower, duck, and hide behind cover when under fire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYXNUnbP68k#t=4m15s

[Anonymous No.3511551]

>>3498897
In terms of physics and facial animations it's aged wonderfully. The graphics aged but then retroactively improved by being based on good models and textures as opposed to postprocessing out the ass.

The guns that aren't the revolver feel like they shoot frozen peas, though, and the overall structure is remarkably bare-bones. Which is actually a good thing for some of what it does, the bridge sequence simply couldn't have been made with post-2007 game design trends, but still.

[Anonymous No.3511657]

>>3511551
when you mean the bridge sequence, do you mean the lack of activity or explosions?

[Anonymous No.3513007]

>>3511657
He probably means being allowed to fall off and fail I guess. Compare it to Bioshock Infinite when you left the statue and walked up a ramp with a rope that you couldn't fall off of and Booker would say dumb shit about heights.

[Anonymous No.3513068]

>>3505571
Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, Lands of Lore etc.

There were tons of first person RPG's, but I wouldn't call them "FRPG in the modern sense" because the movement was limited to 90 degree turns and moving in steps, instead of the free movement introduced by UUW.

[Anonymous No.3513082]

>>3505598
I've been gaming since the 80s homo

I said rarely because I wouldn't be as arrogant as to claim NO ONE ever wanted it but you act like there was some huge lobby of players demanding a Sonic game with a deep story or something.

In reality most people have very limited imagination outside of what they have already seen and tend to just want more of what they're familiar with.

[Anonymous No.3513117]

>>3513007
I didn't even think of that, but yeah probably.

The bridge's atmosphere wouldn't have worked with a heavy HUD or modern railroading (as in "you have 10 seconds to return to the combat zone"), or with loads of tacked-on mechanics. I'm not even sure the atmosphere would've been attempted in the first place.

[Anonymous No.3513210]

>>3499582
quake 2 does have an interesting backstory, I like to interpret it as the strogg being another force in the armies of Quake, Armagon was clearly a strogg and Shrubby couldn't be Quake since he continued to attack after we killed that thing and appoint new generals in the rogue expansion