The Operative No One Lives Forever - Fast-paced, story-driven first-person shooter

Summary

The Operative No One Lives Forever™ is to be a fast-paced, story-driven first-person shooter that delivers over-the-top action, outrageous villains, and wry humor in the tradition of the great 1960's Bond films. You play Cate Archer an undercover operative for MI-Zero. Your mission is to arrange for the defection of a prominent East German biophysicist that goes by the name of Otto Dentz. However things go wrong when a terrorist group known as the HARM abducts Dentz during a flight to England.

15 single player missions spanning across 60 levels, which wraps around an original and engaging story of espionage featuring

• a sexy and sophisticated female operative
• unique situations worthy of any super spy skydive from a plummeting airliner, fight off killer sharks and explore twisted jungles
• ride motorcycles and snowmobiles through vast, realistic landscapes and environments rich with texture and detail
• choose your weapons carefully: an AK 47 assault rifle and a 9mm silenced automatic or an M79 grenade launcher and a silent but deadly crossbow with sniper scope; over 30 unique and ingenious spy weapons and gadgetry, including a missile launching briefcase, robotic pheromone poodle, exploding lipstick, lock pick barrette and lethal acid perfume
• stunningly expansive outdoor environments and richly detailed animation blending
• hours of riveting gameplay in diverse and exotic locales around the world, such as Morocco, England, Germany, the American Northwest, the French Alps, and even a secret Russian space station
• 20 over the top characters and outrageous villains with wry humor and witty dialogue
• use stealth to take down the enemy from a distance or charge in with guns blazing
• smart enemies move and react with striking realism

Watch them seek cover, respond to suspicious sounds or launch coordinated attacks; multiplay for up to 16 players. Take your chances in an all or nothing Good vs. Evil multiplayer game or go head to head in deathmatch mode. Choose from over 30 different characters.

Your Mission: Assume the role of Cate Archer, a beautiful but deadly Operative working for UNITY - a super secret organization fighting to free the world from the clutches of H.A.R.M. From tense subterfuge to in-your-face combat, No One Lives Forever™ ups the ante for plot-driven, 1960's-influenced spy action with killer weapons, vivid international locales and deadly arch villains. Equipped with an arsenal of powerful weapons and ingenious gadgets, you must unravel a mystery that will lead you halfway around the world in a desperate search for answers. Try not to blow your cover, or your cool. Key Features include: 15 single player missions spanning across 60 levels, which wraps around an original and engaging story of espionage featuring a sexy and sophisticated female operative Over 30 unique and ingenious spy weapons and gadgetry, including a missile-launching briefcase, Robotic pheromone poodle, exploding lipstick, lock-pick barrette and lethal acid perfume Stunningly expansive outdoor environments and richly detailed animation blending Hours of riveting gameplay in diverse and exotic locales around the world, such as Morocco, England, Germany, the American Northwest, the French Alps and even a secret Russian space station 20 over-the-top characters and outrageous villains with wry humor and witty dialogue Multiplay for up to 16 players. Online gamers can take their chances in an all-or-nothing Good versus Evil Multiplayer game or go head-to-head in Deathmatch mode.

Overview

The Operative: No One Lives Forever™, or NOLF, is a first-person shooter/espionage game set in the 1960s. Inspired by the James Bond series of films but taking the light hearted approach of Austin Powers, the game has highly charming appeal in its universe and overall artistic direction. The game was published by Fox Interactive and developed by Monolith Productions using the Lithtech 2.0: Talon graphics engine. No One Lives Forever™ was released on November 9, 2000.

The game features numerous locales from Soviet Russia, East Germany, and the Swiss Alps. There is also a trip beyond the atmosphere, underwater, and, of course, an evil villain's lair inspired by a Bond flick. Many more locations are left to the player to discover. One aspect of the game which really set it apart from other shooters is that you played as Cate Archer, a female protagonist. Other aspects which set it apart were its high quality gameplay, brilliant story, and terrific dialog and voice acting.

Plot

Just like a spy flick from the '60s and '70s, the game has you battling international evil villains and their henchman while working for an organization called UNITY. The sole reason for UNITY's existence is to maintain global peace and harmony — even at the cost of an agent's life. The main evil organization you battle against is called H.A.R.M. who has taken the world ransom with the threat of bio-chemical warfare. It is a race against time as Cate Archer, on her very first assignment, must discover the people behind H.A.R.M. and bring them to justice while saving the world.

Cate's gender plays a significant role in the game. She is UNITY's first female operative and frequently has her abilities and decisions questioned and mocked by both allies and enemies alike. However, Cate is strong-willed and does not take such comments lightly. She readily stands up for herself, often with humorous results.

Why It Rocks

• The game is based on various spy films and television series from the 1960s.
• Good voice acting.
• Humorous story that is clearly making fun of the James Bond books and films.
• Plenty of fun weapons to use. The player also has access to a variety of attachments and ammunition types.
• You have access to all kinds of spy gadgets such as Acid Perfume and a Briefcase Rocket Launcher.
• Solid stealth mechanics that are not based entirely on line of sight.
• Being stealthy is up to the player's discretion in most levels.
• Humorous characters and dialogue.
• You can find many intelligence items scattered throughout the levels, which are pretty funny to read.
• Many different locations, including the Middle East, East and West Germany, some tropical islands and even outer space.
• The Space Station levels are clearly inspired by Moonraker.
• The underwater and vehicle sections are actually enjoyable.
• Good enemy AI.

Bad Qualities

• You cannot buy this game legally today because of copyright issues involving the license.
• You cannot pick up bodies to hide them. They can only be removed using the body remover and the Super Atomic Laser Weapon (which you will not get until later), though the fade bodies gameplay option can be used to remedy this.
• Cate Archer appears to be modeled better than all of the other characters in the game.
• No health pickups (you do not get to heal yourself without cheats or outside specific points through the majority of the game), but most damage is usually stopped by body armor.
• There are a few levels that require a stealthy approach, these generally are not bad.

Main Characters

Cate Archer

Cate Archer is the epitome of what every woman in the 60’s would like to be; she is extremely competent, intelligent and goddamn attractive. Cate was born in Scotland in late March 1942; her mother never really recovered from labor and passed away three weeks later. Cate's father gradually fell into drunkenness and started losing his health until the day he put a pistol to his head and pulled the trigger, in 1954. From then on, Cate went from an orphanage to various foster homes, but her strong personality made it that she would never last anywhere for long. Eventually she turned to thievery, mainly to be able to provide for herself but also because she was just really good at it. In 1958 her life took an unexpected turn, however, as she attempted to steal from Bruno Lawrie. What she did not know was that Lawrie was a UNITY agent and that the watch she had stolen had a built-in tracking device. When she got home, he was waiting for her. Luckily for Cate, he admired her talent and fearlessness and decided to give her an opportunity. Nine years passed and she is now a covert operative for UNITY awaiting for her first real assignment.

Bruno Lawrie

Once a British super-spy, Bruno Lawrie’s reckless lifestyle and passing of time took their toll. After having found Cate, however, he began teaching her the tricks of the trade, and found himself a form of redemption. Cate regards Bruno as her mentor and perhaps even as a substitute father figure.

Tom Goodman

Tom Goodman is a good-natured American agent. He has been in the employ of UNITY for over 10 years.

Sergeant Magnus Armstrong

Born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1925, Magnus Armstrong is a Scottish Demolition Expert with a knack for fist fighting. He was expelled from several schools until the day his parents finally sent him to a military academy. After having served in the War, Armstrong eventually got himself in H.A.R.M.'s way.

Mr. Smith & Mr. Jones

Smith and Jones run the operations of UNITY. They oversee the whole organization and delegate assignments to field operatives. They were once field operatives as well and are therefore very experienced in all spy-related activities. Smith is the typical gentleman who expects nothing but perfection from himself as well as his agents — he sees any type of mistake as being a complete failure. Jones is more flexible — he also does not take failure lightly but is a bit more understanding to his agents.

Inge Wagner

Inge Wagner is a German nightclub proprietor living in Bremen. She is very distantly related to Richard Wagner and was highly pressured as a child to become an opera singer. Unfortunately for her, she was just plain and simply terrible. Nonetheless, her parents’ obsession with having her daughter becoming a world-class opera singer made them encourage her so eagerly that all that ridiculous adulation eventually made her into a self-centered, neurotic diva. It is rumored that she eventually turned into crime in order to make money to compensate for the complete absence of work offers in the opera-singing department.

Dimitrij Volkov

Dimitrij Volkov was born in Kamchatka in 1921 and by the age of eight he had already distinguished himself as an academic prodigy and master chess player. On the downside, he also gained some notoriety for having developed a couple of torture techniques on his neighbors' pets. As he grew older, this darker side of his personality took over and he deliberately chose to pursue a criminal lifestyle solely because he found it to be interesting that and he could do whatever experiments he wanted on pretty much anyone he wanted. Recent reports link Volkov to an organization calling itself H.A.R.M.

Weapons

Cate Archer uses a varied arsenal during her UNITY missions. Experiment with different weapons in different situations. Silenced weapons will prove much more effective in your effort to remain stealthy and submachineguns are vital to mowing down multiple opponents.

UNITY equips Cate with a few weapons before each mission - others you can find during the mission, either found lying on the ground or on a dead guard's body. After acquiring a weapon for the first time, it will appear in your mission selection. Further, you can go back and attempt previous missions with the new weaponry.

Shepherd Arms P38 9mm

This 9mm semi-automatic pistol was used extensively by Allied covert operatives during the War. It is easily concealable and very reliable. It has a 10 round magazine and can be fitted with a silencer.

The Shepherd Arms is the best of the pistols. It has a decent clip size and, best of all, can be fitted with a silencer to enable stealth kills. The Shepherd is an easy weapon to fall back on, but one you must avoid in tougher combat situations. If stealth is not key to mission success, consider any available automatic weapon - which has a larger clip and a faster firing rate. Trying to fight off multiple guards with the Shepherd is extremely difficult.

Petri .38 Airweight Revolver

Agent Archer's signature weapon is a small, lightweight .38 caliber five-shot revolver. While admittedly a bit slow on the reload, it can readily accommodate a variety of ammunition types. It is also easy to conceal.

Definitely not the pistol for stealth missions, the Petri is quite loud, but packs a punch - most guards can be downed in a single shot. Get comfortable with the weapon, as some of Cate's final big battles use the revolver. Its clip size is small, so the Petri is not the weapon of choice unless you are forced to use it. Avoid the revolver in stealth situations or battles against multiple opponents.

Braun 9mm Parabellum

An antique 9mm automatic pistol that, although sometimes unreliable, is nonetheless favored by spies and villains of all nationalities.

You will find this weapon on the cargo freighter sailors. It is similar to the revolver - the Braun is loud, but powerful - but has a larger clip size. You can fall back on the Braun if the mission does not require stealth, though you will likely find submachineguns (if available) much more useful in eliminating guards quickly.

Sportsman EX Crossbow

High powered hunting crossbow. Quiet and deadly.

One of the best stealth weapons, the crossbow can be outfitted with a scope (if found during the missions) for even better accuracy. Eschew any pistol in stealth missions and use the crossbow - it is more powerful and quieter. Accuracy can be a problem, however; attempt to approach targets silently (by crouching, walking, or wearing fuzzy slippers) and attack with the crossbow at close range.

Hampton MPL 9mm SMG

A vicious little 9mm sub machinegun. Elegantly simple and hardy.

You will fall back on this submachinegun frequently. Its high rate of fire and decent accuracy comes in handy during missions where you will face many enemies at once. Later in the game, you can locate a silencer to give the Hampton moderate stealth ability. As with most submachineguns, fire in short, controlled bursts, so you do not waste too much ammunition - a fast rate of fire means it is easy to waste ammunition if you are inaccurate.

Gordon 9mm SMG

This popular 9mm sub machinegun came into limited use at the end of the War and continues to be a favorite among clandestine organizations. It uses a 30 round side-loaded magazine.

The Gordon submachinegun is another excellent weapon to fall back on if you are up against multiple opponents. It is quite loud, however, so do not expect to remain quiet. Like the Hampton, fire it in controlled bursts, so you are not wasting ammunition. You can even attack targets at long range; just wait until the crosshairs tighten before firing. It will not be entirely accurate, though it is possible to score hits and a killing blow.

M79 Grenade Launcher

Standard issue U.S. Army 40mm grenade launcher. Rugged and reliable.

The grenade launcher is excellent in clearing out a room. Sneak up to a room containing multiple enemies. Fire the grenade at the feet of a guard (hopefully in conversation with another) and cause an explosion large enough to either annihilate or cause heavy damage to all the room's inhabitants. Watch out for guards holding their own grenade launchers. The weapon is extremely deadly and, if you are not careful, it is difficult to avoid the live grenades - and it does not take much to blow Cate apart!

AK-47 Assault Rifle

A standard Eastern Bloc military issue assault rifle renowned for its simple design and rugged construction. It is reliable and easy to maintain. It uses a 30 round magazine.

The only downside to the AK-47 assault rifle is that it uses different ammunition than the pistols and other submachineguns - which means it is easy to run dry, forcing you to switch to another weapon. Consider holding a back up machinegun to use when the AK-47's reserves empty. Late in the game, you can find an AK scope, which turns the weapon into a workable long-range assault gun. You will be inaccurate, though, so do not expect to knock off enemies from long range with just a few AK shots. It is best used in close quarters to mow down several enemies within a few seconds.

Hampton Carbine

Bolt action .45 caliber sniper rifle with integral suppressor. The Hampton carbine is one of the world's only truly silent firearms.

You will use the carbine in the first mission, and it is the quietest sniper weapon - extremely useful in stealth missions or in any mission where you wish to remain undetected. It is not as powerful as the Geldmacher SVD, but its extremely effective during stealth situations. It also takes awhile to reload, so do not expect the carbine to be useful as a sidearm (not in sniper mode); it is best to use pistols or submachineguns for those situations.

Morris Model 14 Spear Gun

A spear gun. Popular with SCUBA divers.

Basically an underwater crossbow, the spear gun boasts a powerful shot, but a long reload time. You will face divers using their own spear guns. To avoid the shot, dodge quickly from side to side during your own spear gun's reload time. Any bolt into the enemy's torso or head area will be an instant kill. Plus, the enemies will not dodge the shot as you might. Fire upon sight and do not give the enemy diver time to get his own shot off.

Geldmacher SVD

A renowned Eastern Bloc sniper rifle that has earned a reputation as one of the world's most fearsome firearms. It is accurate and deadly even at extreme ranges.

The Geldmacher is the most powerful sniper weapon - but it is also the loudest and carries a long reload time. It is useful in missions where stealth is not required. Locate a good vantage point and pull out the Geldmacher to take out enemies in the area. It is so loud though that it is likely other enemies in the area will charge your position. Be sure to carry a back-up weapon, such as a pistol or submachinegun (with sufficient ammo, naturally) to defend yourself against those rushing attackers.

Bacalov Corrector

A specialized single shot weapon that fires powerful high explosive rounds. The corrector is rarely carried as a primary sidearm due to its somewhat lengthy reload, but it makes an effective complement to a semi-automatic pistol or assault rifle.

You could think of the Bacalov as a pistol. Thus, it is the most powerful pistol, though it is the loudest and carries the longest reload time. You can use it in scoped mode, though, for a more accurate shot. In the single-player game, it is tough to use the Bacalov. It surely will not help you remain undetected, and it is slow reload time causes problems if there are many enemies in the area. But in multiplayer games, sneaking up on someone with the Bacalov can be a rewarding experience.

Briefcase

A handsome ally briefcase that transforms into a handheld missile launcher.

You will not find much ammunition for this powerful projectile weapon, so be careful with its use. It is best to fire the missile launcher briefcase into a room with multiple enemies, much like the grenade launcher. Its explosive shell can cause heavy damage to several enemies at once (that is, if it does not kill them instantly). It is also a powerful weapon in multiplayer; though be careful, as the reload time is slow, and it runs out of ammunition very quickly. Have a back-up weapon ready to finish off your opponent.

Laser Gun

A regulation H.A.R.M. space weapon based on the concept of an intense, tightly focused beam of light produced by the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation.

Think of the laser gun as a pistol - it is best used against solo targets, as it fires too slowly to be effective against multiple opponents. You will find the super atomic laser weapon during the Low Earth Orbit mission. This weapon is more powerful than the laser gun you are permitted to use in later missions.

Impact Explosive

A deadly explosive disguised as women's lipstick. This device detonates on impact when thrown.

Cate carries special lipstick that not only gets her ready for a night on the town, but is also useful in causing a nice sized explosion. The impact explosive blows up on impact, so it is tough to use. Sneak up to an enemy and toss the impact explosive at his feet. Ready a weapon in case the enemy survives the blast - and prepare for his buddies to arrive because explosions are not quiet!

Proximity Explosive

A deadly explosive disguised as women's lipstick. This device is triggered by a tiny radar sensor when a target comes within range.

The proximity explosive can be especially fun because you can lure multiple guards to their doom. Place proximity explosives at a choke point, such as a doorway or along the sides of a hallway, and create some noise. All the guards ahead of you will charge through the doorway or down the hallway to intercept your advance. A well-placed proximity explosive will cause quite an explosion - and a messy hallway.

Timed Explosive

A deadly explosive disguised as women's lipstick. This device has a five second fuse.

The timed explosive explodes five seconds after release. Thus, use the timed explosive around corners. Sneak up and spot enemies in a room or around the corner and toss the timed explosive around to cause damage or annihilate them completely. The timed explosive is difficult to use though because it is hard to gauge the bounces - do not expect to be very accurate.

Sleeping Gas

This attractive perfume bottle dispenses powerful sleeping gas capable of incapacitating an adult moose, let along the standard garden variety hoodlum.

The perfume weapons are the antithesis of the explosives - the perfume bottles are best used in stealth situations. Sneak up behind a guard and unleash a burst of sleeping gas. If you wish the body to remain undetected, sprinkle some body removal powder on it. When using the sleeping gas, be sure to back off quickly, or you may be too close to the gas.

Stun Gas

This attractive perfume bottle dispenses stun gas that will daze and disorient anyone caught within the range of its influence. Side effects include temporary blindness and aural hallucinations.

Similar to sleeping gas, stun gas can blind your enemy. You can even use stun gas in multiplayer games to heavily disorient an opponent (it causes the screen to turn bright white). While the enemy is disoriented, follow up with a barrette poison knife or a silencer kill.

Acid Gas

This attractive perfume bottle dispenses deadly corrosive gas that burns living tissue.

Fill a room with acid gas and watch the guards choke to death. You can also use it in multiplayer games to good effect. Approach an area where multiple opponents are facing off in battle. Run through and unleash some acid gas, then finish off the fleeing (and choking) opponents with a submachinegun.

Gadgets

Along with her wide array of weaponry, Cate Archer carries several handy gadgets to assist in those tricky situations. This section describes Cate's arsenal of gadgetry and suggestions for their use.

Belt Buckle

So many gamers forget to look up when they’re playing first-person shooters. If you get stuck during the game, look up for ledges or other places that you can climb to. When you find something, pull out Cate’s fashionable belt buckle — also known as a zipcord in the game — and fire its hook at the appropriate spot. When the hook is secure, use the buckle to pull yourself up.

What appears to be a stylish belt buckle is actually a short range zipcord capable of latching onto certain appropriate hooks and snags. It relies upon a powerful microwinch to lift its operator. Can be useful for getting to hard to reach places.

The belt buckle, also referred to as the zipcord, attaches to distinctive hooks during the single-player mission. If you are stuck and cannot find any new areas to explore, it is likely that you are missing a new route that lies upward. Scan the ceiling above and near you and look for the small, square white and orange hook. Pull out the belt buckle and line up the crosshairs with the hook. Once it turns blue, fire the zipcord, and you will automatically be pulled toward the hook. Drop yourself down on a nearby ledge to complete the move to the new route.

Barrette

It keeps the hair out of Cate’s eyes and it’s a lockpick. You can also attach a poison capsule to it and use it to take out a guard.

A fashionable plastic barrette with a retractable lockpick. Can also be fitted with a poison capsule and used as a weapon.

Cate's beautiful barrette has two uses: it is a lockpick and small, poison-tipped blade. Padlocks (not combination locks) with keyholes can be opened with the barrette lockpick. Just line up the crosshairs and use the barrette until the lock opens. These locks can also be shot with a pistol and opened, though using the barrette retains stealth. Switch to the barrette's poison blade if you want to terminate an enemy with stealth but are out of pistol (with silencer) ammunition.

Body Remover

Sprinkle some of this powder on a dead body and watch it dissolve into ether.

Body remover powder is extremely useful in remaining undetected, especially from pesky cameras! After dispatching an enemy, sprinkle some body powder on the body, and it evaporates. You must work quickly if there is a camera nearby. Take body remover powder on missions where there are lots of cameras, and stealth is key. Do not use the powder if you think the body will remain undetected (such as if there are no enemies or cameras nearby).

Camera Disabler

Killed a guard but you’re out of body remover? Tired of sneaking past cameras? Attach this device to a camera and it will feed looping footage of an undisturbed scene to whoever is in the security room.

A nifty device that, when mounted on a security camera, creates looping footage of the scene from the camera's perspective.

Another way to avoid a camera spotting an enemy corpse (or you for that matter) is to use the camera disabler. Avoid the camera by crouching underneath it or standing away from its lens (and being careful to avoid its movements). Approach with the camera disabler in hand and adjust the crosshairs to line up with the security camera. Place the disabler and move around the area freely.

Lighter

Cate can use the lighter to illuminate dark areas. She can also switch to welder mode and break open locks with it.

An elegant lighter that can be modified with a miniaturized welder.

During the course of the single-player game, you will use the lighter to lighten a dark hallway, burn some trash in a wastebasket, and switch to its welder mode to break open combination locks.

Code Breaker

If you come across a locked door that has a keypad next to it, use the code breaker to open the door. Attach it to the keypad and it will cycle through every possible number combination until it hits the right one.

Attaches to a 10 button keypad and runs through number combinations in order to decipher security codes.

Code breakers are only used if you locate one of the distinctive keypads during the single-player game. These keypads often lock nearby doors or activate consoles. Attach the code breaker and wait until it cracks the code. Once it is finished, do not leave the area without picking up the code breaker - you may need it again later!

Coin

It may be low tech, but it gets the job done. Toss the coin in the direction you want a guard to go and he will investigate the noise.

Coins are an excellent way to lure enemy guards away from other guards and cameras and into an ambush. This helps you remain undetected and firmly in stealth mode. Toss the coin near the enemy guard, but also near where you want the enemy guard to walk. Hide nearby, then take out the guard with a silenced weapon or the poison barrette blade.

Fuzzy Slippers

They may look silly, but they will make your footsteps silent.

Lipstick

When Cate’s done making her lips look perfect, she can toss this at a few guards and really make an impact. An explosive impact, that is.

Perfume

You do not want Cate to catch a whiff of this scent, but you want the bad guys to. Comes in acid gas and stun gas varieties.

Robot Poodle

Do not forget about the guards’ dogs. Use the robot poodle to lure them away so that you can slip by.

Self-propelled canine robot that releases a powerful pheromone spray proven to bewitch dogs. The device automatically detects canines within its sensor range and seeks them out.

You will not use the robot poodle often during the single-player game, but it is fun to watch. Target a guard dog and let the robot poodle go; it will swerve its way in front of the guard dog and cause the guard dog to fall instantly in love. Now, you can walk past without danger of being detected.

Sunglasses

They keep the sun out of Cate’s eyes and they house a mini spy camera. They’re even upgradeable: during the course of the game, they gain infrared and mine-detecting capabilities.

These perfectly ordinary-looking sunglasses have been fitted with a zoomable spy camera. They can be modified to support a mine detector and an infrared spectrograph.

Over the course of the game, Cate's sunglasses gain several new abilities. First, you will use the sunglasses to take snapshots (mostly of ledgers, which translate to intelligence items). Next, the sunglasses gain infrared ability and can spot lasers that Cate's normal eyesight cannot see. Finally, the sunglasses gain the ability to detect mines. Switch them on upon entering a mine field and maneuver around the now-visible mines.

Combat Strategies

Sometimes stealth is not an option or simply undesirable. Cate will participate in many firefights during her missions in No One Lives Forever - so you must be well prepared for a fight! This section describes essential combat strategies and survival techniques to defeat H.A.R.M. enemies (as well as multiplayer opponents) with ease.

• Reload! There are few things worse in No One Lives Forever than coming around a corner to face a group of thugs and finding you have only three bullets in your current magazine. While you are reloading, your enemies are whittling away at your health. The solution is to reload at every opportunity. If there aren’t any enemies around, reload. It is in your best interest to enter any conflict as fully prepared and powerful as possible. Keep your weapons fully loaded at all times and reload after every combat before moving on.
• Go for head shots! As morbid as it sounds, enemies die much faster with a head shot than from a shot to the arm or chest. It may not be possible if there are multiple enemies around you; however, from a distance, go for head shots for quicker kills and greater ammunition consumption.
• Pistols are good against solo enemies but do not possess the clip size necessary to hold off an aggressive attack from multiple guards. Switch to submachineguns when you expect to face an attack from many enemies.
• Look for cover because your enemies will! Enemies in No One Lives Forever will duck behind tables, pillars, and crates and present difficult targets. Do the same! Do not expose yourself to an easy shot. Look for nearby cover and duck behind the object. Peek out and take a few shots at the enemy, then resume your covered position.
• Weapons in No One Lives Forever require reloading - at which point, you cannot fire! Retreat into a new hallway or behind an object to give Cate a chance to reload without taking damage from an enemy.
• If you happen upon armor, do not grab it immediately. Check your current armor level. If you are almost full, consider ignoring the armor and moving on. That way, if you take additional damage, you can return to the armor and grab it! This way, you do not waste a perfectly good armor power-up when your health is high.
• If you are not concerned with stealth, consider causing a racket near a chokepoint, such as a doorway or a narrow hallway. Hide behind some cover but within sight of the chokepoint. When the enemies come running, pick them off with an automatic weapon. You have just cleared out several enemies and, likely, not taken a single hit of damage. Keep in mind that this action could sound alarms, triggering enemies to your presence - which, sometimes, can be exactly what you want!
• Experiment with the different types of ammunition and do not forget they exist! You can find phosphorous rounds, high-explosive rounds, dum dum rounds, cyanide rounds, and the standard full metal jacket rounds. Remember that you have them and switch ammo types during the game to see which works best against the current enemy target.

Stealth Strategies

There are many ways to remain undetected; you may have to combine gadgets, select particular weapons, or find objects to hide behind. This section includes tips on remaining undetected and avoiding combat situations.

• Listen to conversations between enemy guards and do not interrupt them! Not only are most enemy conversations hilarious, but once the conversation ends, the guards often walk off giving you an easier opportunity to sneak by undetected. If you attempt to sneak by during the conversation, you may be detected even if the guards are distracted by dialogue. Wait until the conversation ends, and you may find one guard walking off and the other turned in another direction.
• Use gadget and weapon combinations to defeat certain guards and still remain undetected by the masses. For instance, lure a guard away with a coin, then spray him with the sleeping gas perfume. Or, spray a guard with the stun gas then knife him with the barrette's poison blade. Try to remain undetected even by this guard - if he sees you, he will shout, and others may hear him and sound an alarm or come running with weapons loaded.
• At long range, use a silenced weapon and go for a head shot. If it is clean, the guard will slump to the ground, and any nearby guards will come running to check on their comrade. Follow up the first shot by terminating the guards that run over to check. You must use a silenced weapon (carbine is optimal) because if it is too loud, the other guards will not check on their comrade - they will check into sounding the alarm!
• Carefully observe the movement of security cameras and move only when the camera is facing the other direction. If you hear the distinctive spin of the camera's focusing lens, that means it has spotted you, and you best get out of view quickly.
• When entering a new area, take time to make note of cover objects, such as crates and pillars as well as escape routes. You may have missed a guard, and he may come around the corner when you least expect it. If you have paid attention to your surroundings, you can quickly duck behind cover and avoid detection.
• You can locate the fuzzy slippers late in the game. Bring them along on stealth missions to reduce the sound of Cate's movement.
• One of the easiest ways to get detected is by leaving a dead body for a camera to see. Lure guards away from cameras before killing them. Or, if that is impossible, kill the guard using a stealth weapon when the camera is moving in the opposite direction. Quickly switch to the body removal powder and use it on the corpse.
• Eschew standard firearms for the crossbow or spear gun. Both are very powerful and silent - which will serve you better in a mission that requires stealth.
• Crouching It is easy to forget the value of crouching. You do not move quite as quickly while crouched, but it is a great way to move without being seen. If there is a counter, wall, or crates to hide behind, crouching allows you to keep moving forward toward your goal without being detected.
• Though most gamers play always running, slow down to a walk or crouch when entering a new area. The guards in No One Lives Forever are quite alert and will investigate any sound - or if it is too loud, they assume the sound is danger and come running to you or the nearest alarm.
• If you notice guards near an alarm switch, kill the guard closest to the alarm first, then terminate the other. If you kill the guard that is further away first, the closer guard will simply run to the alarm and activate it before you have a chance to react.
• Be Observant! That is part of a spy’s job, after all. You are paid to find things that are well hidden, so use your eyes and ears. Look around you for intelligence items, doors that might lead to new places, and concealed cameras that could blow your cover. Listen for the footsteps of guards, the opening and closing of doors, and the movement of cameras. By paying attention, you can save yourself a lot of headaches.

Missions

Intelligence Items

Collect intelligence items to receive bonuses, such as bonuses to health, damage, and accuracy, after each mission. The intelligence items also include any possible alternate locations.

• 1. The Assignment
  • Scene 1
  • Scene 2
  • Scene 3
• 2. Misfortune in Morocco
  • Scene 1
  • Scene 2
  • Scene 3
  • Scene 4
• 3. Requiem for a Spy
• 4. Berlin by Night
  • Scene 1
  • Scene 2
  • Scene 3
• 5. Unexpected Turbulence
  • Scene 1
  • Scene 2
• 6. Care to Explain?
• 7. Rendezvous in Hamburg
  • Scene 1
  • Scene 2
• 8. Visit to Santa's Workshop
• 9. A Tenuous Lead
  • Scene 1
  • Scene 2
  • Scene 3
  • Scene 4
  • Scene 5
• 10. H.A.R.M.'s Promise
• 11. The Dive
  • Scene 1
  • Scene 2
  • Scene 3
• 12. If Our Demands Are Not Met
• 13. A Man of Influence
  • Scene 1
  • Scene 2
  • Scene 3
• 14. Further Investigation Required
• 15. Safecracker
  • Scene 1
  • Scene 2
  • Scene 3
  • Scene 4
  • Scene 5
  • Scene 6
• 16. An Ounce of Hope, a Pound of Despair
• 17. Rescue Attempt
  • Scene 1
  • Scene 2
  • Scene 3
• 18. A Stern Warning
• 19. Trouble in the Tropics
  • Scene 1
  • Scene 2
  • Scene 3
  • Scene 4
• 20. Low Earth Orbit
  • Scene 1
  • Scene 2
• 21. Good Luck and God Speed
• 22. Alpine Intrigue
  • Scene 1
  • Scene 2
  • Scene 3
  • Scene 4
• 23. The Indomitable Cate Archer
  • Scene 1
  • Scene 2
  • Scene 3
  • Scene 4
• 24. A Very Large Explosion
  • Scene 1
  • Scene 2
• 25. Such Is the Nature of Revenge
  • Scene 1
  • Scene 2

Cheats

God Mode

mpimyourfather

Infinite Ammo

mpwegotdeathstar

All Weapons & Full Ammo

mpkingoftehmonstars

Complete Mission

mpmaphole

Full Health

mpdrdentz

Full Armor

mpwonderbra

Add All Armor Options

mpyoulooklikeyouneedamonkey

All Weapon Upgrades

mpgoattech

3rd Person View

mpasscam

Spawn Snowtruck

mprosebud

Show Game Build

mpbuild

Exit Game

mpmilked

Paintball Mode

mpflowerpower

Extra Blood Mode

mpexorbitantamounts

Trivia

• The game is directed by Craig Hubbard who also wrote the brilliantly hilarious dialogues in the game, left uncredited.
• At some points in the game, Archer have to answer her superiors or interrogate her versaries with dialogue options. Picking the right choices will reward player with extra intelligence item which will reflect on your end of the level score.
• Eavesdropping on enemy conversations can result in hilarious anecdotes and hearing forced accents. While not required to listen 'till the end, sometimes letting the enemies finish talking about their daily life allows you to have a better entrance or evade detection once they split ways.
• At a few points listening to the civilians talk may give you extra information to use it when talking to others that reward you an intelligence item. Once civilians scared by gunfight or intimidated by the gun you are carrying, they will not react to you ever again however.
• On the menu screen, Archer can be seen wearing sunglasses and holding a Shepherd Arms 9mm. In the actual game, however, Archer can only hold a weapon or a gadget, but not both.
• NOLF1 had a rocky phase of introduction to the game world. When developers tried to describe the game, game journalists replied by asking if it is just like James Bond 007 series and if there is a rivalry which developers sorta denied.
• One of the settings within the game would cause bodies to fade after they had been killed. Archer did not have the ability to move bodies in NOLF1.
• Game only rewards you with increased armor or health when you found all the intelligence items on the previous mission and kept a high grade on completion.
• Player can receive different awards from UNITY at the end of level for self preservation and stealth. Rewarded possible achievements are; not getting shot once, avoiding getting hurt or detected and so on.
• At the start of each mission, the player can select which weapons and gadgets they wish to use. Some missions required gadgets that were not available when first played. Upon repeat playing of the missions, the player could select the needed gadget they unlocked and explore additional areas and intelligence items within the mission.
• The most distinct features the game was having many different ammunition types for most of the each weapon. Different bullet types although fictitious, allowed player to gauge their power and change approach on the fly.
• Another feature is boasting a large arsenal of modern firearms. While some weapons them have alternative names instead of real world ones, their model work is true to their real world counterparts.
• Besides small modifications to weapons such as a scope or suppressor, Archer can also find addon equipment that grant passive benefits for her garment in the missions and unlock them for later use in the equipment screen before mission start.
• Enemies only react to Archer's footsteps while completely disregard other thugs walking around loudly. This can be theorized as Archer's high heels are loud enough to take their attention. However when wearing a disguise such as spacesuit in the missions which apparently have flat treads, enemies still react to your footsteps.
• Having a limited voice cast shows itself on enemy reacts to noise or sight and when engaging in. Only few different voices can be heard saying the exact same line of phrases at triggered occurances on the same pitch and pace.

Review by Brad Cook

Secret agent Cate Archer is on a vital mission for the international organization U.N.I.T.Y. Her goal: foil the plans of a group known as H.A.R.M., who, like any self-respecting evil organization, wants to rule the world. As she sneaks through the hallways of an enemy hide-out, she comes across a pair of guards.

H.A.R.M. agents can pop up anywhere. Watch out.

No One Lives Forever is beautiful in Mac OS X

Knowing that it is better to slip past them than attack and alert other guards to her presence, she hugs the wall. As she holds her breath and moves past them in the shadows, she overhears one of them saying that the Edsel was never truly appreciated in its time.

Welcome to the tongue-in-cheek world of No One Lives Forever™: Game of the Year Edition, the latest high-octane game from MacPlay. Part “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” and part James Bond, with liberal dashes of Austin Powers and Get Smart thrown in for good measure, this first-person shooter features 60 single-player levels, 10 multi-player levels, 30 weapons and gadgets, and 20 over-the-top characters.

The Game of the Year (GOTY) Edition also sports some groovy extras, including: a new, four-level mission set in the heart of a volcano; a bonus CD full of far-out 60s music; and the official Prima Strategy Guide for the game. In addition, the GOTY Edition features a level editor that allows you to create your own missions to share with your friends.

Best of all, “the combination of Mac OS X and the advanced Lithtech game engine makes NOLF one of the must-have games of 2002,” says MacPlay president Mark Cottam. “This game is beautiful in Mac OS X.”

Explosive graphics in exotic locale

It is Like a Movie

“Growing up, I was a huge fan of James Bond and the 60s — and 70s-style spy novels. No One Lives Forever™ is so engaging that you actually feel like you are part of the action. In fact, it is the one game I have been waiting to play on the Macintosh.” Mark Cottam explains.

Like many of the great secret agents of yore, Cate Archer has a wide variety of gadgets at her disposal, such as a barrette that’s really a lockpick or a cigarette lighter that doubles as a welder. All the gadgets in the game serve an important purpose because stealth is often just as important as — or even more important than — duking it out with the bad guys. Those gadgets really come in handy when Archer needs to infiltrate a building, obtain important information, and leave without alerting all the guards to her presence.

There is no escape from danger — even under water.

Of course, No One Lives Forever is not just a series of mindless exercises in avoiding or shooting guards. The game features a rich story that owes a lot of inspiration to its roots in the spy thriller genre. A movie-like video at the beginning of the game sets the stage for the action: Someone is killing off U.N.I.T.Y’s agents, and it is up to Archer and fellow spy Bruno Lawrie to get to the bottom of the mystery. As you play, a short video that advances the story — known as a cutscene — appears each time you complete a level.

A Web of Intrigue

After a brief training exercise that is designed to familiarize you with the basics of gameplay, such as sneaking around and firing your weapons with precision, it is time for your first mission. You travel to Morocco to protect the American ambassador to West Germany, Morris Munroe, from the H.A.R.M. agents who want to kill him.

Unfortunately, Munroe is almost blind and deaf, so he will not know when danger is near. Thus the stage is set for action mixed with a bit of levity. After returning from Morocco, you are sent to Berlin, where the storyline deepens and the bad guys get tougher. It is important to remember that the members of H.A.R.M. are not the kind of mindless drones you have encountered in previous first-person shooters. They can detect you even if you are trying to sneak past them, and they have the presence of mind to activate the alarm if they see you.

You also need to watch out for the security cameras you will frequently encounter: not only can they detect your presence, but if they pan across a dead guard, you will find your cover blown faster than you can say 007.

No One Lives Forever also departs from other first-person shooters in the variety of ways you interact with the environment. Thanks to the advanced capabilities of the Lithtech engine, at different times in the game you will find yourself riding a motorcycle or even falling through the air without a parachute.

You will run into all kinds of characters.

It is All There

When you complete the single-player game, there are several multi-player levels in which you can take on up to 16 friends over the Internet or a LAN (local area network). Thanks to the GameSpy technology used in the game, your friends can use Macintosh or Windows computers as you duke it out in one of four deathmatch or six capture the flag levels.

In a deathmatch, every player is on their own. It is frag (kill) or be fragged. In capture the flag, each player chooses a team — in this case, U.N.I.T.Y. or H.A.R.M. — and protects their team’s flag while trying to steal the other team’s flag.

Assorted vehicles are available throughout the game

Whether you prefer single or multi-player action, though, Mac OS X will help you get the most out of your experience, thanks to such advanced features as memory protection, multitasking, and OpenGL, a technology at the heart of the OS that enables lifelike 3D graphics.

“No One Lives Forever brings out the best in gaming under Mac OS X,” says Cottam. “Top performance, delicious graphics, a great storyline with outrageous characters and multiplayer action to die for. It is all there.”

Review by Craig Hubbard

Introduction

When we started No One Lives Forever, the team had just come off Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, which (although critically successful) fell embarrassingly short of our original design goals. In fact, the only thing that saved Shogo from complete disaster was the realization, some six months before we were supposed to ship, that there was no way to make the game great in that amount of time. So, we concentrated on making it fun.

Ambition undermined Shogo. The intended scope of the project was so grand, particularly for such a tiny team, that we were overwhelmed just trying to get everything into the game. As a result, we did not have time to polish any of it. The final product is barely more than a prototype of the game we were trying to make, even after we cut characters, settings, story elements, and whatever else we could jettison without breaking the game. It was simply too late to shore up all the deficiencies by the time we realized how many there were. I'm certainly proud of Shogo as an accomplishment, but as a game it is a grim reminder of the perils of wild optimism and unchecked ambition.

We felt it was better to release a comparatively humble game
that got all the details right than an ambitious one
that fell short in numerous area.

We were determined not to repeat those mistakes on our next project. Half-Life confirmed our growing conviction that presentation is more important than innovation: although that game is often hailed as having revolutionized the first person action genre, it does not do anything spectacularly new. What makes it so influential is that it does everything so well. The pacing is sublime, the situations inventive, the AI incredible, and the overall level of polish unprecedented. It is a game made up of unforgettable moments.

Polish, therefore, was our chief mandate. We felt it was better to release a comparatively humble game that got all the details right than an ambitious one that fell short in numerous areas. To a great degree, we succeeded, for although No One Lives Forever was to undergo a great deal of turmoil in the coming months, we never let it get out of control the way we had with Shogo. As a result, we managed to ship a product that actually surpassed the goals we set for it. That is not to say we did not make plenty of mistakes or that the game is as polished as we had hoped, merely that it was a monumental improvement over previous efforts.

What Went Right

1. Mission statement

Once the contract for No One Lives Forever was finally signed-an extremely trying process I'll elaborate on shortly-our vision of the finished product was well-defined. We drafted a clear, concise mission statement to make sure we wouldn't lose sight of our goals. This vision guided us through the entire development cycle, serving as a focus whenever the scope of the project began to blur. It was our intention that every feature, task, and ounce of effort would ultimately either support the vision or end up on the cutting room floor.

Our primary aim was to make the player feel
like the hero of a 60s action/adventure/espionage movie.

Our primary aim was to make the player feel like the hero of a 60s action/adventure/espionage movie. We came up with a list of the characteristics we felt were necessary to achieve our objective. The game must have a strong narrative, with twists and turns in the spirit of Charade or Where Eagles Dare. It must feature a fiercely competent hero and an assortment of despicable villains. The hero must have access to an impressive arsenal of weapons and gadgets worthy of Our Man Flint, Danger: Diabolik, or Get Smart. There must be memorable, death-defying situations, opportunities for stealth as well as all-out action, and a variety of exotic locales to explore. Finally, every aspect of the presentation must convincingly evoke the era.

The mission statement was a constant reminder of our original design goals. By sticking to these goals, we were generally able to avoid squandering time on peripheral and extraneous features and content.

2. Flexible systems

In order to streamline the development process, we designed flexible game systems that allowed artists and designers to get content into the game as quickly as possible without the involvement of an engineer. In NOLF, adding a fully functional new weapon is a matter of updating some text files. There is no compiling or programming involved. The same applies to many aspects of the game, from adjusting player movement speeds to adding new surface types with unique footstep sounds and weapon impact special effects.

Likewise, our event and object handling systems give level designers the freedom to create relatively elaborate situations without relying on special engineering. For example, the airliner, sinking freighter, and disintegrating space station sequences in NOLF were primarily developed by level designers and artists. The relatively small amount of engineering support was focused on polish and bug fixes rather than facilitating things like buckling the hull of the freighter, pummeling the space station umbilicus with meteors, tearing off the tail section of the airliner, and dropping the player from 30,000 feet with enemy paratroopers in pursuit.

Our world editor not only lets us create, texture, and light geometry, but also includes a keyframing system, an interface for setting surface types and rendering properties on textures, and a hierarchical node tree that lets us arrange and manage every component of a world the same way you organize files in Windows. Our proprietary model tool lets us adjust animation speeds, add and position model attachments such as a hat on a character or a silencer on a weapon, and even send messages from a specific keyframe in an animation. Footstep sounds are perfectly synched to animations instead of triggered arbitrarily in code. Likewise, events and camera moves during in-game cinematics are frequently controlled by the animations themselves, which both helps to keep everything synchronized and also allows for precise, deliberate pacing.

There were certainly disadvantages to this degree of flexibility, particularly in terms of the complexity of certain systems and the sometimes unwieldy interface for interacting with them, but the payoff more than justified the expense.

3. Team cohesion

Although we were well into the project before we were fully staffed, we ended up with an amazingly cohesive team, which kept morale stable and productivity high even during the darkest moments of the project. In the course of the interviewing process, we learned to focus as much on how someone would fit the team as we did on the person's skill level or experience. We discovered the hard way how vital it is that everybody have the ability to communicate effectively and weather criticism without taking it personally. Strong technical aptitude is meaningless if you cannot cooperate with your peers.

No One Lives Forever team

When you are planning a project, it is easy to underestimate the importance of good teamwork. Perhaps it is because many people think in terms of what needs to be done without considering how it is going to get done and by whom. Needless to say, there are numerous ways to solve a given problem, and some solutions are guaranteed to create new problems for someone else on the team. If your team is not united in its purpose and naturally inclined to collaborate, such misunderstandings may happen frequently and produce unnecessary tension.

Frankly, the strength of our team was more a matter of luck than anything else, but it was a huge factor both in the success of NOLF from a development perspective as well as the overall quality of the game.

4. Good scheduling

It is a common myth that game development is more an art than a science and therefore cannot be scheduled effectively. Numerous developers adopt a “when it is done” attitude or advocate a strictly organic design process. Sadly, very few companies have such luxuries. For most of us, going a month over schedule means digging into our own pockets to fund additional development time, which can rapidly put a company out of business. Just read the gaming news headlines for lists of casualties.

Therefore, unless you have obscene funding (yes, I'm jealous) or a corporate death wish, effective scheduling is vitally important. Monolith learned these lessons the hard way on Blood, Shogo, and various other titles. Certainly any long-term project can run into unforeseen complications, but the development of NOLF proved to us that it is both feasible and desirable to build a realistic schedule and stick to it.The scheduling wasn't perfect, due to some oversights in planning for demos and so on, but it was tremendously beneficial in steering us away from the sorts of catastrophic mistakes we had made in the past.

5. Realistic expectations

We did not have any illusions about what NOLF would be. Given our budget, team size, and development cycle, the best we could hope to do was to create a fun, engaging 60s espionage game that would make up in presentation what it lacked in innovation. It is simply naïve to think you can compete directly with a production like Terminator 2 when you have the budget of Reservoir Dogs. The key is to focus on your strengths and not overextend yourself.

The best we could hope to do was to create
a fun, engaging 60s espionage game that would
make up in presentation what it lacked in innovation.

In retrospect, we were definitely still too ambitious with NOLF in many ways, but it was such an immeasurable improvement over previous projects that it is hard to complain. The favorable reviews and various awards certainly seem to indicate that we're moving in the right direction.

What Went Wrong

1. Signing the deal

We were months into development before we had a signed contract for No One Lives Forever, although various publishers had green lighted the project no fewer than four times before then. During this interval, the project mutated constantly in order to please prospective producers and marketing departments. The game actually started off as a mission-based, anime-inspired, paramilitary action thriller intended as a spiritual sequel to Shogo and ended up as a 60s spy adventure in the tradition of Our Man Flint and countless other 60s spy movies and shows. The schedule fluctuated between a minimum of six months and a maximum of twenty-four, the intended feature set scaling accordingly.

Needless to say, it took us a while to get a handle on exactly what we were making, which tended to be a bit disquieting. Really, though, you cannot take it personally. You just have to adapt and survive, which is precisely what we did. Each time the schedule changed, we came up with an entirely new proposal instead of trying to cram a 20 month game into 11 months. It just so happened that when the roulette wheel finally clicked to a stop, we were planning to make a 60s spy adventure game. As I mentioned, we were then able to draft a mission statement and stick to it, but we bled away many precious weeks prior to that point.

The schedule fluctuated between a minimum of six months
and a maximum of twenty-four, the intended feature set scaling accordingly.

2. Fleshing out the team

It wasn't until some time after we had a signed contract until we had a stable team. Almost every aspect of the project was affected. We lost a product manager, two engineers (although, thankfully, one came back to the fold), and three 3D artists. Level designers came and went.

Part of the problem owed to our publisher woes. On two separate occasions, what was effectively the cancellation of the project resulted in our not being able to hire people we were planning to bring aboard. Without funding for the game lined up, it made no sense to bring on new employees.

Another source of instability for the team was the desire to provide stability for Monolith as a whole. In the aftermath of Shogo and Blood 2 — which led to the restructuring of the company, the liquidation of our publishing efforts, and the resignations of a number of people either burned out by grueling development cycles or disillusioned by the problems that led to them-we had three projects entering development but only a handful of people experienced with LithTech, so we redistributed this modest wealth of experience to maximize our efficiency. In the full course of time, both Monolith and the NOLF team were better off, but it was a demoralizing, debilitating process, from which the team took months to fully recover.

One additional complication was the difficulty of hiring level designers who were not only talented enough for the job, but also capable of becoming valuable members of the team. In some cases, we hired amateur designers who were used to making levels for finished games and therefore found it difficult to put up with unfinished tools, missing features, placeholder content, and all the other compromises professional level designers have to contend with on a daily basis. In other cases, we hired professionals whose attitudes, productivity, and quality were anything but.

3. Inefficient pre-production

Given the prolonged uncertainty at the beginning of the project, it is not especially surprising that pre-production was neither as thorough nor as productive as it could have been. We had certainly done a tremendous amount of research, but not enough of it was focused on things that would benefit the project directly.

Most notably, planning for the game environments was too broad and unfocused to provide the foundation we had hoped for. As a result, level designers often started working on a setting with plenty of reference material but without the proper direction. A folder packed with miscellaneous images is not especially useful compared to a handful of carefully selected references organized and agreed upon by everyone who will be involved in creating the area.

Another complication was that every time the schedule expanded or contracted, which it did on a regular basis those first few months, the feature list changed along with it. Unfortunately, most of the expansion happened late in the process-when the project jumped from 11 months to 18-which meant we had to add features at the last minute in order to fill out the development cycle. Under the circumstances, it was impossible to spec everything out fully before we signed the contract, effectively committing us to features we hadn't fully investigated.

It is easy to dive headlong into development the moment a contract is signed. The excitement of starting something new and the urgency you feel when you look at the schedule encourage you to get started right away. It is only months later when you are slaving to finish up all the partially implemented features and redo unacceptable levels for the third time that you realize that effort spent in pre-production pays for itself many times over during the final weeks of the project.

4. Waiting on technology

Although our technology goals for No One Lives Forever were relatively modest, they were all so organic to gameplay that the delays we encountered in finishing them prevented us from tackling certain aspects of the game until far too late in the project. Probably the chief culprits were the terrain system, the animation system, and the vehicles, which all proved to be more challenging than we'd expected because, as I mentioned, they weren't investigated thoroughly enough before we agreed to them.

Ultimately, we were able to complete each of these features at least to our satisfaction, but the fact that they all took so long meant we did not have time to take the fullest possible advantage of them. In retrospect, it was a mistake to sign up for so much technology centered on gameplay for a project of this scope.

5. Cinematic overload

This point is admittedly a bit self indulgent, but I'm the one writing the post mortem, after all. Anyway, if there is one aspect of the game about which I remain ambivalent, it is the in-game cinematics. I'm generally pleased with the understated camerawork and shot composition, and there are definitely scenes I'm proud of, but overall there is plenty of room for improvement. The problems fell into a couple of distinct categories:

Technical difficulties. Implementing in-game cutscenes in NOLF proved to be a frustrating, time-consuming ordeal, especially considering how many of them there were. As a result, I generally had to go with the easiest solution rather than the most desirable one. Due to time constraints, I also had to sacrifice many of the cutaways I'd hoped to do to keep the briefings interesting. To make matters worse, we'd done the motion capture based on the original script, so with the cutaways excised, I had a very limited pool of applicable animations to draw from.

The bottom line is that rudimentary cinematic techniques that filmmakers rely on and take for granted can be a massive headache for game developers. A movie director can say, “Hey, Joe, can you pick up the gun, check to see if it is loaded, and then go over and peek through the shades?” For a game developer, just getting a character to pick up the gun convincingly can be a technical nightmare. Any time a character interacts with an object, the environment, or another character, you are likely to spend a lot of time simply trying to make it look natural. When time is in short supply, complicated blocking that adds life to a scene get simplified.

Implementing in-game cutscenes in NOLF
proved to be a frustrating, time-consuming ordeal, especially considering
how many of them there were.

Conceptual flaws. The biggest problem was a conceptual blunder on my part. Instead of relying on my understanding of scene structure and exposition in film, I fell into the trap of thinking of game cinematics as stylistically unique, partly because games run so much longer than films and partly because the player, by stepping into the role of the hero, would seem to require more information than an audience watching the story unfold. The most obvious byproduct of this oversight was that I deviated from standard screenplay format, which made it impossible to gauge the duration of a given scene. In filmmaking, a page translates to roughly a minute of screen time. The NOLF script was far more dense than a screenplay, which made it easy to underestimate the how long a scene would run.

If you have played NOLF, you might be surprised to learn that my screenwriting problem has always tended to be divulging too little information. I favor tight pacing, defining character by action rather than dialogue, and subtlety over obviousness. When I was writing this script, probably because I was inventing my own format, I fell into novelistic conversational rhythms. The problem is that what flows on the page tends to drag on screen.

Unfortunately, by the time I recognized the mistake, it was way too late to do anything about it.

Applying the Lessons

Historically, Monolith has always been brilliant at making mistakes. We've already done most of the boneheaded things that tend to sink development studios. Fortunately, we've also been exceedingly lucky when it comes to surviving these mistakes. Perhaps part of the reason is that we're eager to learn from them so that we do not repeat them. In the five years I've worked here, Monolith has matured from a disorganized but enthusiastic young company to a focused, professional business.

Already, the experiences of NOLF have led to significant improvements to our scheduling, preplanning, team structure, and development process. We're more careful than ever before about what we're willing to commit to. We're even more tightly focused on quality and polish.

The expense of developing a game continues to rise dramatically. Meanwhile, the market is not expanding fast enough to offset these costs. Unless you are financially independent enough to do whatever suits your fancy, the only viable solution if you want to stay in business is to find smarter, more efficient ways to create a competitive product.

Mitzi Martin

Mitzi Martin on a promotional tour for The Operative No One Lives Forever.

Mitzi Martin is an actress and model. Her likeness was used to create Cate Archer in The Operative: No One Lives Forever. Prior to the games release, Mitzi Martin assisted with a publicity tour.

As an actress, Martin can be found in such films as Dude, Where's My Car? (2000), S1m0ne (2002), The Island (2005) and more.
Mitzi Martin was featured in the book One Woman 100 Faces where she is the canvas for make up artist Francesca Tolot. It includes many photos of their work together for over twenty years.

Mitzi Martin on IMDB
Mitzi Martin on Wikipedia
Mitzi Martin fan page on Facebook
Mitzi Martin on Instagram