Later in Episode Two, when Gordon finally gets behind the wheel of the Hotrod, Alyx suddenly starts jumping in the car next to you, creating a problem for the game designer: what happens if you drive off without her?
“It really depends on the situation,” explains Speyrer. “If she’s close enough she’ll run after you and jump in to catch up. In the worst-case scenario, where we realise the player is being malicious and trying at break the game, we bring her ahead at the transitions. Also if you accidentally leave Alyx behind, and complete the whole map, we feel it would be an undue punishment to have to go back for her, and in that case we bring her forward to join you too. It’s always a trade off, and we consider it a failure of the game if the player gets into a situation where they can’t proceed. We try to make the guarantee that auto saves only are sufficient to play the game.”
For the climactic level, Speyrer discovered that this gameplay freedom was challenging to build because they needed to provide for players whatever tactics they chose. “Some players would use the car exclusively, while others would fall back to the base, and do the whole fight there or even complete the whole level on foot. We originally required a lot of use of the Combine Assault Rifle’s alt-fire as the primary way to dispatch the Hunters, but we found a large population of playtesters didn’t know about it and didn’t use it.”
The sheer size of the final map was also a major problem for the Ep2 team, as players could get disorientated. “We used the radar on the car, the loudspeaker announcements - where the guy tells you where the Striders and Hunters are coming from - and created these key visual landmarks, such as the saw mill. I was very happy with the final battle - we wanted people to feel that they barely snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, with the last wave pushing players right up against the ropes so that they were taking out the final Striders right as they marched up to the base. We didn’t want it to be too difficult, though, and really didn’t want players to be frustrated.”
So, how did the final scene become such an emotionally-charged moment? Marc Laidlaw: “I wrote as good a script as I could, then when we got into the recording studio, Merle Dandridge [Alyx Vance’s voice] took the scene further than was possible on paper. The most powerful bit at the end was her improvisation; I just transcribed it. When we had that, the animator went to work with a level designer, blocking out the movements of the actors in the scene, then slowly getting into the details. Merle’s raw performance could make people choke up - but it only came together at the very end, which always seems to happen...”
And finally - what can we expect in Episode Three? “We don’t know entirely what’s happening in the next episode, but we’re gonna figure it out!” laughed Speyrer. “There are always things we want to do that we can’t because of the constraints of either the story or the arc we’ve laid out for the gameplay - or just time. So we shelve them and carry on. Ideas fly around here quite a bit, so we have this huge laundry list of things to try for the next thing...”
Be sure to check back tomorrow and Wednesday when we crack open Team Fortress 2 and Portal.
Feb 25, 2008
