Ostensibly, most levels in FPS games aim to recreate something even if the link is extremely tenuous (see Doom's hangar levels) However depending on the kind of game/mod you're working on, it may or may not be important to convince the player that the environment you say they're in actually lives up to what you've created. Doom's levels were fairly abstract and naturally at the time there wasn't a whole lot you could do to detail a room to sell an idea. Quake by it's nature couldn't really support that either, whilst it's 3D engine allowed towering multi-layer rooms you'd struggle to actually fill them with things that form an actual purpose (not really a problem for Quake, given the world it's set in) Duke Nukem 3D was one of the first FPS games to actually try and sell it's environments - you had fire hydrants, toilets, vending machines, chairs - not just fluff to fill up a level but specifically there to say "this is a place people could inhabit" There had to be concessions made for gameplay (and that's a balance I'll try and talk about in a different post) but the world-building was there.
Half-life stands as one of the greatest examples of this, for many reasons but for this post I'll be talking about Xen specifically. The entire game, you're sold the idea that Black Mesa has been engaging in top-secret, high-level research into things not of this world. Even at the beginning of the game you get a dubious nod to this with the crystal pushed into the Anti-Mass Spectrometer and how the administrator "went to some lengths to get it" As the game progresses and you start to put together the pieces of the puzzle, including where the Lambda labs fit into all of this, you start to build up a picture of what exactly they were doing over there. And then you arrive at the Lambda labs, and you see all of this huge machinery that has to be powering something, that there has to be some kind of purpose to it. You reach the very end of the complex, where you're greeted by scientists who quickly and undramatic-ally reveal the truth and confirm your suspicions - the alien world, Xen, that is part of this invasion has already been visited frequently by man. HEV suit holders line the walls, guns and ammunition depots lay to the side, and suddenly you realize why this glorified radiation suit has so many combat features and why being trained on how to use an sub-machine gun with a grenade launcher was relevant to the Hazard course that scientists have to go through (Ostensibly a game mechanic, but than the game's narrative actually gives it a purpose in the story as well) And then you see the colossal device used to move between dimensions - to call it a teleporter would be a gross disservice. It looks like it rips holes in the fabric of reality, which is what it does.
All of this rambling has a purpose, trust me - there's a reason people tout Half-life as one of the masters of show and don't tell, and the Lambda Labs is one of the key marks of this idea. Doom's teleport to hell was a flat red pad with a pentagram on it. Story isn't important to that game. Half-life's story is important, so the machine to move between space and time is at least as big as a warehouse - and that's the part you can see. You've pretty much walked through the mechanical intestines of this device. The build-up to the machine and the pay-off is fantastic. And then the trip to Xen is no less important. It's a down-turn in game quality for some, but they missed the entire point of the location. It's a trick that nobody would ever be willing to do again - Valve knew that to sell the idea of a place beyond worlds that was nothing we'd ever seen before, it would have to be unfit for human navigation. The long jump module didn't just exist to enable pointless jumping puzzles, it existed to show that this was an alien environment, that human movement wasn't considered in it's construction.
If you want to sell a location and story to the players, you need to back that up with gameplay and level design. Valve knew this when making the end portion of Half-life (and did an admirable job at the end of HL2 with the Citadel, but I think Xen's criticism made them hesitant to go further with gameplay changes) Does your game have a plot, a theme or even just a simple objective? Place the hints, tiny ones at the start, and build them up as you go along. Info dumps are the worst kinds of exposition (a necessary evil in some cases) but building the environment as you go along is important. Even stuff like shipping crates should be used if you're building the main headquarters of a criminal organization. What would they need to run this operation? Can I show the players they've been dabbling in drug-trade on the side as a way to finance their plot to blow up the moon? If you want the player to teleport vast distances or even into different realities, Valve's example shows as a shining example of the moment.
For another good example, a Half-life mod called Paranoia features you as a Spetsnaz agent sent against a terrorist attack on an old industrial facility. The plot thickens and you're sent into the bowels of the facility, through an old abandoned section of the base. The walls are caked in rust and dirt, and you feel the air is rancid even through your monitor as you explore the horrors that have occurred in there. When you return from your trip and speak to a scientist, she explains that she just quickly wants to run you through some radiological tests in case you breathed any contaminated substances whilst you were down there. It's a little moment that would mean nothing if not for how they constructed the place, and a little icy trickle of fear can be felt for your character because the environment sold the idea that the lab probably was full of contaminated air and that radiation was spreading through your body as you stood there listening.
For a negative example, a similar concept in the Blue Shift add-on for Half-life. A scientist has an idea to escape Black Mesa - use an old teleporter in an dis-used part of the base. Cool, sounds like a great concept! Except the elevator to this place is hidden behind a single sheet of plaster in a corridor about a minute away from the surface. There's a single door between you and this old teleport device, and then you get in and the apparently dis-used place still has power and there's people around. The Teleporter device is not even a quarter of the size of the Lambda lab's machine - there's no staging depots, no HEV suits, no weapons or ammunition apart from a shotgun in a security office, nothing to suggest that this room is where people leap across fucking dimensions. It takes a fraction of the time to charge up and send you to Xen, and it's powered by a battery a tad larger than a car battery. And this is supposed to be the old teleport system? and of course, your character has zero problems moving around Xen despite not wearing a HEV suit and being clad in a security vest, a blue shirt and a black tie. Why is this important? Because they didn't put effort into selling the idea to you, the trip to Xen was treated as mundanely as a trip to the shop to grab toilet roll. There was no investment in the trip, so it's hard to feel engaged in your activities as you run around fighting aliens in another level set. Opposing Force was guilty of the same - you climb onto a short tram ride that's right near the surface, crawl through a ceiling vent and then arrive in the bowels of the Lambda facility, near the huge teleport system itself just as Freeman jumps through. It's convoluted and damages the impact of the original moment. This is why it's important to build things up, and try and sell the themes you're portraying.
If you want story to play any part in the thing you're creating, you need to convince the player that the people in that world can use the things you're building, for the purpose you're stating. I'm not talking macro-level detail here, but simply re-enforcing the ideas and themes your story is putting across. I've played a lot of mods that take place in research facilities but actually are quite literally long corridors that exist for no reason but to pad out the play time. Is this a facility, or another BSP corridor with lots of decorative meshes put everywhere to convince me this is hi-tech?
Half-life stands as one of the greatest examples of this, for many reasons but for this post I'll be talking about Xen specifically. The entire game, you're sold the idea that Black Mesa has been engaging in top-secret, high-level research into things not of this world. Even at the beginning of the game you get a dubious nod to this with the crystal pushed into the Anti-Mass Spectrometer and how the administrator "went to some lengths to get it" As the game progresses and you start to put together the pieces of the puzzle, including where the Lambda labs fit into all of this, you start to build up a picture of what exactly they were doing over there. And then you arrive at the Lambda labs, and you see all of this huge machinery that has to be powering something, that there has to be some kind of purpose to it. You reach the very end of the complex, where you're greeted by scientists who quickly and undramatic-ally reveal the truth and confirm your suspicions - the alien world, Xen, that is part of this invasion has already been visited frequently by man. HEV suit holders line the walls, guns and ammunition depots lay to the side, and suddenly you realize why this glorified radiation suit has so many combat features and why being trained on how to use an sub-machine gun with a grenade launcher was relevant to the Hazard course that scientists have to go through (Ostensibly a game mechanic, but than the game's narrative actually gives it a purpose in the story as well) And then you see the colossal device used to move between dimensions - to call it a teleporter would be a gross disservice. It looks like it rips holes in the fabric of reality, which is what it does.
All of this rambling has a purpose, trust me - there's a reason people tout Half-life as one of the masters of show and don't tell, and the Lambda Labs is one of the key marks of this idea. Doom's teleport to hell was a flat red pad with a pentagram on it. Story isn't important to that game. Half-life's story is important, so the machine to move between space and time is at least as big as a warehouse - and that's the part you can see. You've pretty much walked through the mechanical intestines of this device. The build-up to the machine and the pay-off is fantastic. And then the trip to Xen is no less important. It's a down-turn in game quality for some, but they missed the entire point of the location. It's a trick that nobody would ever be willing to do again - Valve knew that to sell the idea of a place beyond worlds that was nothing we'd ever seen before, it would have to be unfit for human navigation. The long jump module didn't just exist to enable pointless jumping puzzles, it existed to show that this was an alien environment, that human movement wasn't considered in it's construction.
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| Todesangt 2 does a decent job of selling it's locations to you. |
For another good example, a Half-life mod called Paranoia features you as a Spetsnaz agent sent against a terrorist attack on an old industrial facility. The plot thickens and you're sent into the bowels of the facility, through an old abandoned section of the base. The walls are caked in rust and dirt, and you feel the air is rancid even through your monitor as you explore the horrors that have occurred in there. When you return from your trip and speak to a scientist, she explains that she just quickly wants to run you through some radiological tests in case you breathed any contaminated substances whilst you were down there. It's a little moment that would mean nothing if not for how they constructed the place, and a little icy trickle of fear can be felt for your character because the environment sold the idea that the lab probably was full of contaminated air and that radiation was spreading through your body as you stood there listening.
For a negative example, a similar concept in the Blue Shift add-on for Half-life. A scientist has an idea to escape Black Mesa - use an old teleporter in an dis-used part of the base. Cool, sounds like a great concept! Except the elevator to this place is hidden behind a single sheet of plaster in a corridor about a minute away from the surface. There's a single door between you and this old teleport device, and then you get in and the apparently dis-used place still has power and there's people around. The Teleporter device is not even a quarter of the size of the Lambda lab's machine - there's no staging depots, no HEV suits, no weapons or ammunition apart from a shotgun in a security office, nothing to suggest that this room is where people leap across fucking dimensions. It takes a fraction of the time to charge up and send you to Xen, and it's powered by a battery a tad larger than a car battery. And this is supposed to be the old teleport system? and of course, your character has zero problems moving around Xen despite not wearing a HEV suit and being clad in a security vest, a blue shirt and a black tie. Why is this important? Because they didn't put effort into selling the idea to you, the trip to Xen was treated as mundanely as a trip to the shop to grab toilet roll. There was no investment in the trip, so it's hard to feel engaged in your activities as you run around fighting aliens in another level set. Opposing Force was guilty of the same - you climb onto a short tram ride that's right near the surface, crawl through a ceiling vent and then arrive in the bowels of the Lambda facility, near the huge teleport system itself just as Freeman jumps through. It's convoluted and damages the impact of the original moment. This is why it's important to build things up, and try and sell the themes you're portraying.
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| Freeman's entire journey was reduced to a short vent crawl in Opposing Force |
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