Quest to Nowhere

When Valve released Lost Coast for Half-Life 2 they included a surprising little feature to the game, a developers commentary. As you walked through the level there were text boxes which let you hear someone on the Valve development team talk about certain aspects about the Lost Coast level. Most of them were about the High Dynamic Range lighting effects that were being added to the Source game engine, but regardless it was a nice little treat that really let gamers get some understanding into the their thought process in development.

Now with the release of the Orange Box Valve decided to include the feature again for Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal. Having only done the ones in TF2 and Portal I can really only talk about them, but they are more then enough.

For those of you that have played Portal you understand how good the game was, but playing through it again with the commentary made me appreciate what Valve had done in Portal even more. Not just in how the writing is, or the technology, but the actual thought that went into the development of the game.

The team talks about how the levels of the game were designed to teach players to use the gun, and to do so in a very meticulously thought out way. They talk about how some puzzles were designed to convey one aspect of how the portal gun could be used, or how to achieve a single maneuver. Which creates probably the perfect learning curve, that would let any experienced or casual player have all the tools and skills necessary come the end of the game.

Seeing the amount of thought that went into such simple aspects of Portal, and to have them talk about how changing just simple aspects of some puzzles really changed them in a drastic fashion for how the player goes about solving the puzzle, really made me appreciate and love Portal on a level I had never really considered I would for a game.

You see a lot of this same talk in the TF2 commentary, although their commentary mainly focuses around the aesthetic of the game, and how to balance all the classes, and yet make them each unique and distinct in play style and appearance.

Now the whole point of this piece is this, I think more games need in-game commentaries. Games have been including separate video commentaries (usually with Special Editions of the game,) for a little while now. BioShock had one, and it was interesting to see and hear the developers talk about the game, but it seemed more like a Q&A session then a commentary. Much like DVD commentaries for movies and TV shows, there is something about experiencing what the creators are talking about as they are talking about it. I think it’s that you get to see what they are talking about in its actual context, and doesn’t require you to have to think back on it where you aren’t likely to remember all the little details associated with what they are discussing.

I would love to see more developers do these in-game commentaries, because I think not only will it be useful for those up in coming game developers, but I think it will help gamers in general better understand the amount of thought actually goes into the games they play, and it might just help them appreciate them a little more. Like it did with me.