When Monolith brought us the original No One Lives Forever (NOLF), they were in large part attempting to live down Blood 2. Possibly, they face a tougher challenge as they try to live up to (and exceed) NOLF with NOLF2: A Spy in HARM's Way. To find out what's what we sought out a Q&A with those up their necks in Cate Archer's latest adventure. We cover multiple topics and get answers from Monolith's Nathan Grigg (Composer), Samantha Ryan (Producer), Craig Hubbard (Lead Designer), Kevin Stephens (Director of Engineering), David Longo (Art Director), John Mulkey (Lead Level Designer), and Wes Saulsberry (Art Lead). Read on and discover the fate of the goat, the flexibility of the Jupiter engine, mod creation, tighter cutscenes, and much, much more. Thanks for your time guys!

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NOLF2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way Q&A

Conducted by Omni

Musical

Has the theme music been changed at all? Instead of the distinctive “No one lives for-EVER!” will the lyrics be more focused on the “A Spy in HARM’s Way” subtitle? (Can you give us a sneak peek at what the lyrics might be?)

Nathan Grigg, Composer: NOLF2's theme is actually instrumental (with occasional vocal sounds used instrumentally), but I don't think the lyrics will be missed. Instead of serving as a medium-tempo backdrop to a theme, the approach to the arrangement as a whole is much more animated. In a very short period of time, the listener is propelled through a series of whimsical transitions and stylistic shifts: psychedelic sitar music to bossa nova brass stabs to surf rock to bebop to swing - all stemming from a few catchy thematic motifs. The melodies from the theme are also arranged and varied in a lot of the music during game play as a way of unifying a

soundtrack that is otherwise very stylistically diverse. The diversity itself is key to NOLF2's score, since Cate Archer travels the globe and meets some very colorful characters along the way.

Music is probably the most underrated aspect of game design, even though it often receives the harshest criticism (or none at all). How much input do you have toward the overall design to ensure the music and action combine in a pleasing manner?

Craig Hubbard, Lead Game Designer: I've always been heavily involved in the musical direction of any game I've worked on. It's such a crucial aspect of a player's experience in an action/adventure game. Music is a means of establishing locale, creating moods, and setting expectations. It can make the difference between feeling like you're walking around in a textured geometrical mesh and exploring a pastoral Japanese village. It's also a big part of a title's personality.

Will the music come as MP3s?

Samantha Ryan, Producer: This decision is up to the marketing folks. All music created for the game is in Direct Music format, which isn’t suitable to be used as stand-alone MP3’s.

Technical

What will NOLF2’s minimum system requirements be?

Samantha Ryan: Users will need a Geforce 1 card or equivalent Hardware T & L card to experience the game.

The new LitchTech Jupiter engine, is it more powerful than you’d hoped? Have the level designers gotten a handle on it?

John Mulkey, Lead Level Designer: There has been a bit of a learning curve associated with using the Jupiter engine. The engine is fundamentally different from the previous versions of LithTech that we have used, so we have had to adopt a completely new mind set when it comes to the way we create levels for the game. The main shift has been the new rendering and occlusion system that allows us to push a ton more polygons but which forces us to approach level creation differently than in the past.

Was the Jupiter engine chosen over other graphic engines? Why not use Q3TA or Unreal? (Are these a little passé now?)

Kevin Stephens, Director of Engineering: We've always worked closely with LithTech on the development of technology so we've never seriously considered using other engines. Since Jupiter is a next-generation graphics engine comparing it to the three year old Q3TA engine is really not fair (to Q3TA :). Although the new Unreal rendering technology is comparable to the Jupiter rendering technology we are much more comfortable working within the LithTech paradigm from both a programming and content creation standpoint. In addition, the Jupiter game systems were built on top of the extremely flexible NOLF game systems so we felt that using the Jupiter engine gave us a competitive advantage.

How well will NOLF2 lend itself to mod creation?

Samantha Ryan: We are still in discussions with our publisher about how to handle releasing the tools and source for the mod community. However, mod users already familiar with LithTech’s proprietary DEdit and ModelEdit tools should find them somewhat familiar, although to create the very high level of detail found in NOLF2 will likely take more effort than simply creating an old low detail NOLF1 level.

Why doesn’t every game come with a built-in screenshot feature?

Kevin Stephens: Some things are best-left unseen...Seriously though, it isn't a very hard feature to implement so this really is a good question. In fact, having this feature saves time during development since publishers often requests numerous screenshots for PR and Marketing. My guess would be that most games have the feature enabled during development, but disable it when the game ships (not sure why though). In case you're wondering NOLF 2 will ship with the screenshot feature tied once again to the F8 key.

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Creative

What kind of characters can we expect in NOLF2 beside the usual assortment of HARM goons? (I’m thinking of boss characters.)

Samantha Ryan: At this point, the only boss character we are revealing is Isako, the Ninja girl. She can be seen speaking with Cate in some of the more recent screenshots.

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How long did you spend on character development?

David Longo, Art Director: We begin work on the characters begins during pre-production and finish when we go gold. When we ship, several people will have

contributed to bringing our 40+ characters to life. Early on, over the course of a couple months, most of the concept work for all the main characters was done while we explored new features for NOLF2 like phoneme lip-synching, facial expressions and texture shaders. After investigating the risks and determining the time cost per character and getting a solid schedule, we go into full production mode. During this phase we do the modeling, texturing, setting up for animation, motion capture, animation clean up, texture facial variations, accessory attachments, cinematic animation tweaking and polish.

The story of the original game was ranked above average by just about every critical editorial. Will we be saying the same thing about NOLF2?

Samantha Ryan: Creating an engrossing, original story was an important goal for both NOLF and NOLF2. We hope that editors and the public appreciate our efforts, but we'll leave it up to them to decide.

How many people are working on the script? (Can you give us an example – a snippet – of a HARM goon small talk?)

Samantha Ryan: Craig Hubbard, our Lead Game Designer and the person who wrote the original NOLF script, is spearheading the creation of the NOLF2 script. We usually have brainstorming sessions early in the development cycle where people throw all sorts of outrageous ideas into the ring. Craig then sorts through them all and evolves them into a cohesive script. We'd rather not reveal any specific conversations at the moment, but we can say that the German thug from the original NOLF who discusses the causal relationship between Beer and Criminality is back with another deeply philosophical discussion.

Some pointed at lengthy cutscenes as one of NOLF’s problems. Will the direction and dialogue be tighter to make them a little shorter?

Craig Hubbard: Yes. There were several reasons why NOLF's cutscenes ended up so long. First, I wasn't working in traditional screenplay format, so I didn't have a sense of how what I'd written would translate to screen time. Exacerbating the problem was the fact that I didn't finish the cutscenes until near the end of the project, so there wasn't really time to go back and edit them when I realized how long some of them were.

NOLF 2's cutscenes are tighter, leaner, and less expository than NOLF's. There are also fewer of them.

Will the goat return?

Samantha Ryan: Goats are so yesterday. As soon as they unionized, it was all over. We intend to exploit other mammals in NOLF2.

Is there anything you’ve cut out of the game because it was too silly?

Craig Hubbard: The sillier an idea is, the more likely it is to end up in the game.

The inspirations for NOLF, do they remain the same for NOLF2?

Samantha Ryan: The inspirations for NOLF2 are actually broader. Some of our best inspirations came very late during the development of NOLF1 so we were unable to take full advantage of them. This includes gems such as Danger Diabolik and Modesty Blaise.

Has it been difficult to balance the features you want to implement with what is technologically possible?

Wes Saulsberry, Art Lead: In the past it's been difficult to let go of a feature due to technological reasons. Fortunately for NOLF2 our engineers took the opportunity to rewrite the LithTech code into what is now called the Jupiter engine, which has a very competitive feature set.

However a broader feature set does not necessarily make for an easier development cycle. On NOLF2, it's been difficult to find more time for artists and level designers to create content in the manner that the new features require. For example, we are always asking for more polygons. This time we can have ten times the polygons of NOLF. That means we have much more content to build, texture, and light. Even a texture utilizing environment map bump mapping requires another two bitmaps to paint. All this adds up to a lot of time.

To sum up, it's been more difficult to balance the features we want with what is chronologically possible.

Gameplay

NOLF’s multiplayer never caught on in a big way. Tell us about how the co-operative play that is being planned. (What kind of objectives? Levels?)

Samantha Ryan: At this point, we are not giving out details about our cooperative play.

Was there any consideration made about moving from the first-person view to the Max Payne-ish 3^rd Person view? (Would it even work?)

Samantha Ryan: It wasn’t something we considered for NOLF2. However, creating a 3^rd person game set within the NOLF universe would certainly be possible. The gameplay mechanics would not be identical as what makes a first person game fun isn’t exactly what makes a 3^rd person game fun.

General

Do you have much time to think about projects in development by other companies, in terms of how they compete for your market? (Or have you got enough to worry about without thinking about other people’s games?)

Craig Hubbard: Obviously, it's in our professional interest to know what we're up against, so we're always very aware of what our competitors are working on. In fact, we create a detailed competitive analysis for any title we work on. Of course, I'm also an avid gamer, so I usually tend to keep up on other companies' games simply because I'm looking forward to playing them.

You know I have to ask this question even though I know the answer will be one of those “we have no plans at this time” or “we cannot confirm nor deny these plans” even though the gaming public can make the correct assumption and three months from now an official announcement will be made: Will NOLF 2 be ported to the console world?

Samantha Ryan: I’ll take the liberty to cut and paste your excellent suggestion here: “We have no plans at this time.”

Is it harder to be original or to live up to expectations that have developed from past success?

Craig Hubbard: The pressure on NOLF was probably worse. We were still trying to live down the stigma of Blood 2. We had a lot to prove, both to ourselves and the gaming public. This time we just have to make a fun game that capitalizes on NOLF's strengths without reiterating its weaknesses. Besides, it's much easier to stay motivated when people are looking forward to your product.

Any plans for a Cate Archer action figure? C’mon, they’d sell like hot cakes!

Samantha Ryan: This sort of decision would be up to our publisher.

For NOLF2 to make any sense, should I have played the original?

Samantha Ryan: NOLF2 has been designed to function as a stand-alone title. Sure, there are references to past history and recurring characters, but we have approached the NOLF franchise in much the same way the movie industry has approached creating multiple movies with the same main characters. You do not need to have enjoyed the original to appreciate the sequels.

What mistakes did you make with NOLF and how have you learned from them?

Samantha Ryan: There is a great post-mortem of NOLF on gamasutra.com at: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20010608/hubbard_01.htm.

Thanks for your time everybody!

(June 20, 2002)

Our NOLF2: A Spy in HARM's Way Preview

Our Review of No One Lives Forever