This is a really interesting video. My first question would be why this issue wasn’t caught early by the devs. The Id Tech 4 engine at the time was considered absolutely cutting edge stuff, and (as the video identifies) even it had to be constrained to interior environments. Halo 2 was using an iteration off of Halo:CE’s engine, so unlike Doom the engine wasn’t specifically built to do those shadow tricks. Who thought that they could rework an existing engine to do shadows like this, get it to work better than Id Tech 4 at doing outdoor spaces, and then get it optimized enough that not high end computers but X-Boxes could run it? And do all of that on top of actually just making the game itself inside of a market driven timeline?
Laid out like that, it looks like a crazy idea. I wonder if the art style was developer or management pushed, and who allowed it to get far enough that models were made with it in mind.
The exact problem with the released DNF is that it wasn’t a “late 90s game”. The late 90s-early 2000s style of games are right now very popular. There is, and has been a market for them.
The problems with the released DNF is that the producers didn’t have faith in any particular direction and kept having the devs start over again and again to chase trends. In the end, Gearbox got the rights to DNF and cobbled together a game nobody cared about. The released DNF was the most mediocre, trend chasing mid-00s game imaginable with all of the HALO and Call Of Duty game design influence that could be crammed in, while bringing nothing additional of value to the table.
The DNF 2001 Restoration project is already more enjoyable than the released game, proving that early 2000s style of game design is perfectly viable.
It’s a stand alone project building off of the 2001 build’s leak, trying to turn it into a completed game.
The download includes the leaked original content as well if you want to compare. The original content isn’t really playable as anything but novelty, since it’s more like the skeleton of a game than a game. The project has made strides in all aspects to turn half finished, often unpopulated locations into actual game levels. Pigcops are back, Duke’s model is improved, more voice acting included, level design with scripted encounters. Lots of stuff.
I found the first one was hampered by so many forced racing and card games as bottlenecks to progressing. Those would have been fine as optional side activities, but making them so mandatory really killed the pacing when it came to doing some shooting.
The bosses were super underwhelming. You had one giant boss where you were trapped in a small building and shooting up at him. Very uninteresting. The final sequence of the game felt like there was going to be a boss. Narratively the enemy headquarters are built up as being heavily defended, the bad guys are built up to be doing crazy genetic engineering, and the game gives you a last minute BFG. Then you get inside and it’s a bunch of reskinned low level enemies. Felt like the devs ran out of time or something.
In the shooting, the game did give tons of gadgets and options, though I rarely found myself using most of them.
I wish the sequel had built on the promises of the first game, but it basically turned into a generic shooter that cribbed the aesthetic from Borderlands.
Fallout 1 absolutely does it as well. Even the animated dialog the Overseer gives is different, as he gets frustrated with the dumb player character.
One of the more famous Fallout 1 dumb events is that the first super mutant in the game, who is guarding the water chip, will grunt back and forth with the player and then step aside allowing the player to pass by.