[Note: The following is the continuation and conclusion of author Sam Shahrani's article. The first half is available here.]
Doom
created a sensation in the gaming community and popular media, but it
was far from being the only title pushing the boundaries of
technological innovation. In March of 1994, Looking Glass released System Shock, a science fiction title built on a modified version of the engine used in the Ultima Underworld
titles. The gameplay of system shock is that of a first-person shooter
merged with an RPG and an adventure game, much like that of Ultima Underworld, but with an enhanced role playing system. Indeed, much of the success of a System Shock
player centers on the ability to make wise choices when literally
upgrading and modifying the player’s avatar. Since the player is a
hacker that has been turned into a high-tech cyborg, the player has a
number of abilities and skills that can quite literally be upgraded, as
well as allow the player to interface with a virtual reality cyberspace
set inside the game, a sort of world within the world. The antagonist
of the game, an amoral female artificial intelligence known as SHODAN,
routinely taunts the player from displays and interfaces, as well as
sending cyborgs, mutants and robots to attack the player. The game is
not a fast paced title, with designers choosing instead to emphasis
story and character development, as well as providing a complex mystery
for players to unravel. This type of gameplay is a marked contrast to
that of Doom and Wolfenstein 3D, which emphasized a faster paced, higher-body count approach to immersion.
System Shock’s engine had many graphical features in common with Doom,
but was designed to create a much more detailed environment, as well as
for a slower pace. A purely singleplayer game with no multiplayer
capability, the emphasis in System Shock was not on “run and
gun”, but instead on slowly unraveling the mystery of what had
transpired on the Citadel Station space research and mining facility.
The engine supported almost all of the features present in Doom, many of which had been present in the earlier Ultima titles. System Shock
supported higher resolutions than most other games, allowing up to
640x480 resolution, which was necessary for the full amount of detail
included in many of the textures to be completely visible. These
abilities came at a price, however, as many computers couldn’t run such
a complex game at a reasonable speed. Conversely, Doom was
engineered to run very quickly on as wide a number of systems as
possible. Since the engines were designed for games with two completely
different approaches to interactivity, comparing the two on merits of
mere speed is unfair, and any comparison must take into account the
different approaches to gaming.
The creepy, almost oppressive atmosphere of System Shock
was enhanced by the utter lack of non-player characters to speak with.
All humans encountered in the course of the game are corpses, whose
bodies can be rifled through. Many of the bodies contain data discs
with audio or text messages that provide the player with clues as to
what happened on the station, as well as information on how to defeat
SHODAN. The original release of the game provided these logs and
messages as merely text, but a later CD release of the game added an
extensive amount of audio to the title, heightening the immersion and
fear factor of the title significantly. Ambient audio combined with the
vocal performance were an integral part of the game, providing clues as
to hidden enemies, as well as allowing SHODAN to harass the player as
they moved throughout the station.
The level design in System Shock
emphasized giving the player choices and rewards for thorough
exploration of the station. The levels varied between the computerized
corridors of Citadel Station to hydroponics bays filled with mutant
creatures and plants run amok, orange tentacles creeping across the
walls and integrating with the digital systems. In certain cases, the
player actually had to jack into a representation of cyberspace in
order to achieve goals such as unsealing doors or repairing systems.
The need for the player to balance choices, as well as having to
actually interact with computer and security systems in the game were
innovative features in the genre, and significantly increased the
direct influence that players could have on the game world besides
merely butchering enemies and throwing switches.
System Shock’s
design choice to eschew non-player characters in favor of using logs
and messages left before their death is an interesting choice from a
game design standpoint. In a postmortem on System Shock 2, Irrational Games developer Johnathan Chey notes that System Shock
made this decision primarily because the computer technology of 1994
“was simply inadequate to support believable and enjoyable interactions
with them” (Grossman, 12). While the decision was made out of
necessity, it served to greatly improve the feeling and immersion of
the title, and was a decision that was carried through in the August
11th, 1999 release of System Shock 2 by Irrational Games and Looking Glass.
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
System Shock 2 used technology limitations as storytelling devices,
creating one of the most memorable gameplay experiences.
|
While System Shock and Doom took a grim and serious tone towards their gameplay, other titles such as Apogee’s 1994 Rise of the Triad
took a somewhat more light-hearted approach to the violence that was
such an integral part of FPS titles. With a design team led by former
id software member Tom Hall, Rise of the Triad, or RotT, used a modified version of the Wolfenstein 3D engine. Since Apogee had been the distributor of Wolf3D, they had the rights to use the engine; Doom was made and distributed by id software itself, meaning that Apogee would have had to license the Doom engine if they wanted to use it in a product, a costly proposition.
RotT featured several innovations for the Wolf3D engine,
including adding the ability to move vertically. The game added a
number of both humorous and deadly methods of interaction for the
player, including “jump pads” that could launch players and enemies
high into the sky, razor sharp spinning blades that could eviscerate
unwitting gamers, weapons that could leave bullet marks on walls and
the introduction of explosive deaths for all enemies. In RotT,
when an enemy character was hit with a rocket they would frequently be
reduced to a shower of digital meat, completely obliterated, seeming to
fly out towards any nearby player. This shower of exploded body parts
included an eye, bloody skull and, occasionally, a severed arm with its
middle finger upraised. This was a graphical advancement over Doom,
which simply showed a shredded pile of an enemy after a rocket hit
them. While a small addition, it made for some truly amusing kills in
multiplayer, called Comm-Batt.
RotT’s
deathmatch also introduced a variety of inventive new ways of
dispatching enemies, including homing missiles, heat seeking missiles,
flame wall bombs, fire jets, floor and ceiling spikes, and weapons such
as the Excalibat, a cursed Louisville slugger. These weapons and
innovations allowed players, who were frequently in the same room or
near one another on a Local Area Network, to truly embarrass their
opponents as they beat them, as well as pulling off impressive feats of
acrobatics.
Other technical innovations included walls that could move inwards and crush players (a feature not present in Doom,
where walls, ceilings and floors could only move vertically), poison
gas that required a gas mask to evade, fireproof jackets to ward off
flame-based weaponry, and enemies that could steal a players weapons
and also feign death. While seemingly superficial additions, these
ideas were innovative and forced RotT players to be more aware of their surroundings.
While Apogee was busy with RotT, Volition software was busy with their space-combat FPS, Descent. Released on March 17, 1995, Descent was the first PC game to feature a full three dimensional environment as well as fully three-dimensional enemies.
The engine was not completely three dimensional, as it still used
sprites for doors, pilots to rescue and item pickups, but was a
significant improvement compared to Doom.
In Descent the
player flew an upgradeable space-fighter through narrow twisting
corridors of a robot-infested mining colony. The goal was to clear out
the robots in a given mine and then locate the reactor for that mine
and destroy it. After destroying the reactor, the player had a set
amount of time to reach an emergency escape door before the reactor
went super-critical and destroyed the mine.
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
Descent’s totally 3D freedom brought flight simulators indoors.
|
Descent’s level design was intriguing because it blended the narrow corridors of Doom with the spacecraft-based combat of the earlier Wing Commander and X-Wing games. The 1993 release of LucasArts’ X-Wing featured three dimensional ships like Descent, but X-Wing was set in deep space, and the ships were simple colored polygons, similar in nature to the walls of Hovertank 3D. LucasArt’s 1994 sequel to X-Wing, Tie Fighter,
would add polygon shading but few other graphical enhancements. Again,
faithful to the Star Wars movies, all combat took place in deep space.
Descent on
the other hand, featured fully three dimensional ships with texture
maps applied to them, allowing a greater level of detail. The various
colors helped players to quickly identify the types of enemy robots
they were engaging, even from a distance. Descent also took place exclusively inside the mines, though 1999’s Descent 3 would add the ability to leave the mines and do battle outside using its Fusion rendering engine.
Since the environment of Descent
was fully three dimensional, that meant shafts could connect at unusual
angles, requiring players to look up, down and to both sides when
moving through the levels. Making it to the escape hatches after
destroying a reactor either required extraordinary luck, or carefully
pre-planning a route of escape before trying to detonate the reactor.
It also meant that level design could be challenging, since the 3D
engine had very specific requirements about how levels could be
constructed.
Descent was also an innovator in its lighting. Where Doom’s
lighting was relatively static, Descent had a dynamic lighting system
that enabled the use of flares to light areas, as well as laser blasts
and explosions. The dynamic lighting also allowed more gradations of
light in the mines, which gave a more natural and realistic appearance
to in-game lights.