Reflect on the Nintendo 64 era and one game that will probably come to mind is Rare’s GoldenEye 007. It was considered to be a revolutionary take on the first-person genre in more ways than one.
In fact, even the developer and publisher Valve Corporation took inspiration from Bond’s 64-bit outing at the time. As explained by AI and Games: prior to the release of Half-Life, the team at Valve supposedly tried out Rare’s title and were so impressed by the sophisticated level of AI, they decided to rework the AI in their own game.
David Doak – one of the many talented people who worked on this Rare project – even commented about this during an interview with GamesRadar:
“My favourite moment was meeting the original Valve guys at ECTS, a UK trade show, in 1998 and them joking that GoldenEye had forced them to redo a bunch of stuff on Half-Life. They went on to do all right.”
To find out more about the secrets of GoldenEye’s AI, view the video below:
[source kotaku.com.au]
Comments 48
Easily one of the most timeless and influential games of all time.
I NEVER played GoldenEye. Only ever got to hire an N64 and I got Mario and PilotWings when I did, but I remember everyone talking about this game, I knew it had to be something special.
@MartyFlan and wasn't expansion pack a must as well for this game?
Play as Oddjob and you are dead to me
@Alucard83 No, expansion pack wasn't even announced at that time.
@Racthet916 a great game and very influential indeed! I think it has aged a bit though, but considering it 20+ years old, that’s not a knock against it!
@Alucard83 Only two games required the expansion pack. Majora's Mask and DK 64. Two other games recommended it and those were Starcraft and Perfect Dark.
In total 73 games supported the expansion pack.
Shame that Valve doesn't seem interested in making games anymore. I guess Epic is following the same path.
Would be nice if more developers focused on pushing the boundaries with AI in games, especially with today's hardware. The graphics are good enough already. The only thing left for them to improve on is allowing players to completely destroy environments.
Half-life 3 would have never met the expectations that were laid onto it. Especially after so much time had passed.
The game would have ruined Value had they released it when planned and it flopped. After a while not releasing that game made more sense as a business than releasing it.
@geox30 Yup. Valve and Epic have both figured out easier ways to generate cash with the least amount of expense to them. Valve obviously has Steam and Epic has the Unreal Engine and now their own storefront. And Fortnite which I can't wait to see go away.
If you made a First person shooter and goldeneye didn’t influence you then you are doing life wrong.
You probably would also play as odd job.
You are a wrong un.
So in summary I’m not surprised a very good FPS was influenced by the king of FPSs
I can't even begin to describe how many times I played GoldenEye as a kid. I always seemed to find something new, and back then the internet wasn't part of my life so every aspect of that game felt surreal to me. I kind of miss not being ignorant of the internet these days.
I know it will never happen, but Valve should release Half-Life, Portal and Left4Dead on the Switch.
@mist same goes for elvis on perfect dark xD
Think im one of the few people that actually preferred perfect dark over golden eye
@geox30 they didnt even finish UT4, they abandoned it once fortnite became popular, the games stuck in pre-alpha :/
Hope they do return to it one day, had great ut99 vibes
@Razer You don't know that lmao. What are you even talking about?
Sooo.... Valve made changes to Half Life AFTER playing Golden Eye, a RARE game.... Rare also made Banjo-Kazooie .... Banjo is the THIRD dlc of Smash Brothers Ultimate....
HALF LIFE 3 CONFIRMED
Wish the powers that be would stop messing around with the rights and re-release it! At the moment nobody's making any money from it, when I'm sure a lot of people would be happy to pay to play it again. Here's hoping it'll be on the inevitable N64 Classic Mini.
The story of Half-Life is an interesting one. Valve had the entire game finished and ready ship, but Gabe Newell wasn't especially happy with it. So as an experiment, he asked his team to take all the best moments from the entire game and put them all into a single level. When that proved to be a huge success, he said, "Now go make the rest of the game with that same amount of show-case moments in each level."
@Alucard83 not sure about that
@Shigeru just rewatched youtube and someone is saying in the video the expansion pack for 007 enabled high colour. I'm sure it's not needed, but the little extra you could get out of it. I knew somewhere i've seen information about the expansion pack what it does. There is a video with some games tested with the expansion pack... it's called Secrets of the N64 Expansion Pack
@Sinister PD was basically just a demo without the expansion pack though.
@Big_Gamer Yeah only about a third of the game was playable without the pack. In Starcraft 64 you needed the pack for the Broodwar missions and multiplayer.
Half-Life and Goldeneye, along with Doom, Halo, and COD4:MW are the most important FPS made.
Can we please get half life 1 and 2 running at 60fps on Switch? That would be an instant purchase!
I remember renting this game first weekend it was available. At that time there were no reviews for it and essentially little hype for the game. I remember seeing a short article about it in Gamepro and took a chance. My brother even looked at the game and said that it was going to be bad.
Then we popped it in and played the first level. Wow, it was like seeing Doom for the first time on PC.
I bought an N64 with Mario 64 and Goldeneye and was totally blown away by both games. Doubt I’ll ever get that feeling of something so special and revolutionary in gaming ever again...
I recall hearing a story of a developer attempting to make a 3D platformer in the mid-1990s. Then Super Mario 64 released and forced that developer to restart development of their game.
Similarly, Google was working on a smartphone back in the mid-2000s that was initially designed to resemble a Blackberry. Then Apple unveiled the iPhone and forced Google to reboot their entire smart device initiative into what we now know as Android.
@westman98 yeah the google story is true. I remember reading an article of one of the google devs saying they knew they had to start again as soon as Steve jobs presented the first iPhone keynote...
@Trajan Uh... Catacomb 3D? Wolfenstein 3D? Maze War? Deus Ex? Build Engine? And plenty of others that are more important than (lol) Call of Duty. Hell, Faceball 2000 was more pioneering than MW.
I love the AI in GoldenEye, it still puts modern shooters to shame.
The enemies are always doing something unexpected, there’s often a guard where there isn’t usually, they’re always changing tactics and lobbing grenades instead of using their guns and they often run around from somewhere else to catch you in a pincer. Utterly brilliant.
The ai in this game is perfect, really still a lot of shooters in this dat and age can learn from this
Does ‘jokingly’ not mean that it’d be funny if they had but that is not in fact what happened?
@gutsy oh yeah because the game must be in development... so what must i have been thinking?
Nope you're right, Value must be making the game as we speak......
.....
....
@gutsy oh no... wait... even better... the reason they didn't make it is because they hate money... right? They must do... the age old "they must hate money" hassle... oh those guys... so silly... they can't possibly have heads of marketing who earn more in a year than you do in 5 years telling them that releasing a game this anticipated would go wrong no matter how objectively good the game could have ever been...
Nope... they hate money...
@Sinister You forgot to mention Perfect Dark. You can't even play the Campaign without it.
@mattesdude It’s aged for sure, but it’s still a masterpiece in its own right - spent so long with it, fantastic game... I love the first Timesplitters also, which is (as far as I know) made by the same people from Rare (and it shows massively), but it’s a fair bit cleaner because it’s on the later system (PS2)... but obviously a different theme.
You can’t unsee Brosnan’s deformed mouth once you notice.
(of course that’s his hand holding the gun, but still...)
@Razer You don't know me, thank God.
You decided to pick your special knuckles up off the floor and type out "the game would have ruined Valve" which is hyperbolic at best. Derr.
At worst it wouldn't have been as profitable as the par for their current business model. It'd still make good dosh and please countless fans soured by their restructuring.
Image blocked your avatar. Very hard to look at.
@Trajan i actually agree with that statement. Most of those games shaped my entertainment of the shooter genre.
ORANGE BOX FOR SWITCH CONFIRMED!!!
(I so wish they would)
AI on female "black ops" on Half Life 1 was pretty impressive.
@dimi I like to read your post but just stop after the word female
@dimi Hey dude not cool editing your comment like that. Now no one will laugh from my splendor.
@Mycroft Don't let it worry you too much. How many people have access to record of an old system? Also, when playing old PC Games on modern PC's they are running alot faster, with higher resolutions and added bells, so they aren't an accurate take either.
In 1997 my £1200 Pentium 120mhz PC was running the likes of Quake at 240p, 20fps and less. This is how most PC gamers played it with perhaps only the elite few with PC's £2000 and over experiencing something better.
@Alucard83 that's a lie. You've been lied to. Don't spread misinformation.
@geox30 Except they are. Valve are revealing the next Half Life game as soon as next month. It releases this year and will be a large AAA game built exclusively for VR in order to push VR gaming forward the same way Valve pushed 3D gaming before.
It's a prequel to Half Life 2 and will feature groundbreaking physics interactions.
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