Fps is a genre that have greatly evolve, for the worst or the better depending on what side you are.
There was obvious improvement, graphics, sound, storytelling, pacing and controls.
But multiple things was lost or leave behind.
It's hard to compare game as they have different philosophy and are not build with the same premise. While this statement hold true for golden eye, for the first time we have two game with relatively the same content. Now we can contrast the different approach and look what are the advantage of one against the other.
Golden eye is interesting because it was a huge milestone in FPS, and its legacy still hold today. It was the first realistic shooter and feature many modern convention. It was the first successful fps with reload, sniping, multiple objective, realistic drop of weapon, precise aiming, leaning around cover, important scripted storytelling, crouching to cover and aim more precisely, huge interactive decor, interactive cinematic, etc... Actually people who played Golden eye first where less impress with the much more linear half life which stole the light for pc gamer (but which bring the seamless experience). Golden eye introduce so many convention fps had to rediscover over the year.
But the main difference are so much more fundamental, it's not just about old design and modern design, it's about what i call Local vs Global smart design:
In local smart design, the player only care about his immediate surrounding, the set he is actually. He progress from local to local set and what he do in one set have little to no impact for the next, You don't need to be linear to be local smart. Half life, Mario galaxy and super mario bros, most platformer game in fact, modern sonic, modern fps.... and Golden eye WII
In global smart design, what you do in the previous set are important for the next and most importantly, the ensemble of set must be seen as a whole. Caring about the immediate surrounding is not enough, the player must create and carry a model of the ensemble. It's not sufficient to be open ended, but you need to think in term of resource. Game like, thief, metroid, zelda nes, mario 64 and banjo kazooie, deus ex, system shock, old fps ... and Golden eye 64 on highest difficulty setting.
Linearity vs open ending is not sufficient to be branded local or global smart. Mechanism like regenerative health or frequent health item drop can turn a game local smart while having to manage health for an entire level turn the game a bit more global. Playstyle like speedrun also tend to make game global smart.
And that's the main difference between the two golden eye.
The modern one is a string of set with obvious spot to realize level objective, it's local smart and the degree of global smart happen only on the highest difficulty setting with non regenerative health, which is weak. Also the game encourage a less stealthy method for more action and big explosion.
The classic one is more open ending in his structure and level has to be "solve" before objective. Actually objective is more "hint about what to do" than an actual clear goal, what need to be done must be discover in the play. In lower difficulty setting there is less objective to do in order to succeed the level but the other objective are still there and you can do them, acting like a reward for exploration and teaching the daring player tips for effectively solving them later on higher setting. They also give life and breath to the game and add a level of realism, it always seem like there more to the level than just the objective. This make the level open ending local smart set. But where the global smartness of the game shine is in the time trial challenge where whole level became a time puzzle. Suddenly everything must make sense. This made the gameplay still fresh compare to modern fps and still ahead in term of design. The open ending nature of level does not hinder the heavily script storytelling nature of the game, quite contrary as you could prepare the field before running into a script objective (protecting Natalya for exemple). The game let you anticipate and prepare the flow of event with your own approach.
The only game that tops that level of global smart into the genre was system shock (but i never played it), thief and deus ex.
Does that make Golden eye 64 a better game than Golden eye WII?? From a designer perspective : YES. From a player perspective, it depends on you, most player won't trade comfort and aesthetics for mere gameplay if the game is good enough, the goal is to have fun and the new version is at least COD fun, there is a lot of shiny things that happen. But I can't Help to think there was a miss opportunity, COD fun could have been the lowest difficulty setting, and they could have kept the multi objective and the global smart exploration part for a higher difficulty setting, instead of having the superficial health system as a throw back of old days.
Global smart seem to be overlook or not desired in mainstream, while we can see a lot of indie going into the global smart way (metroidvania clone for exemple, this is also where all the drama originate in sonic retro fandom). I think the divide is more than just dumbing down but about a whole new way to conceive game which is a lot less involving and more short term experience, a more like "movie" or more precisely a "roller coaster"...
But global smart can be integrate as a layer of "depth" and keeping the main experience local smart. I think old game where pretty smart about this, the endless replay forced them to have layer upon layer of smartness for player to came back. It's obvious that game today are "better design", but it's more about avoiding flaws than keeping the "wow". Old game where a mess of miss and hit, where new game have less the miss but also less of the hit, IMO.
Maybe being conscious of local vs global smart and balancing them is something we must take into account to make the best game possible for a larger audience, maybe the divide between the two direction of gaming should be artificial.
What do you think?
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