Intro
Welcome to the first in a series of development diaries straight from the
team here at Crystal Dynamics! We’re hard at work putting the finish touches on
Project: Snowblind, a frenetic first person shooter which puts players in the
boots of a bio-enhanced, super-soldier, smack-dab in the middle of a war for
humanity’s future. We’re pretty excited about some of the surprises and
innovations we’ve cooked up for you. I’m Zak McClendon, one of the designers on
the project, and I’ll be taking you through some of the great stuff we’ve got on
tap for the player’s awesome arsenal.
All About the Weapons
It’s impossible to overstate how important weapons are for a first person
shooter, so we knew right from the start that the player’s arsenal was going to
be one of the major focuses of Project: Snowblind. Not only did we want to put
the player in the middle of an epic warzone, with dozens of live combatants, but
we wanted to give them just as many tools and tactics they could use to tackle
these battles in any way they wanted.
By the end of the game, super soldier Nathan Frost is practically a one-man
army, with dozens of different weapons and abilities – offensive, defensive,
stealthy, you name it. Designing and balancing all of these was a monumental
challenge, but the big pay off came when we saw the testers tackling battles and
situations in ways we never dreamed of initially.
Pushing the Envelope
One of the great advantages of Project: Snowblind’s near-future setting of
Hong Kong 2065 is it let us straddle the line between the realistic and the
fantastic in the weapon design. We knew that we wanted to give the player
weapons with functions and attacks they’d never seen before, but we also didn’t
want to alienate the more traditional FPS player. So our first design goal was
to meet those baseline expectations with the ol’ genre favorites like the
shotgun, rocket launcher and carbine.
Thankfully, we didn’t stop there. Every weapon in the game has its own
alternate fire; unlike many games, our alt fires are a lot more than just souped-up
versions of a weapon’s primary fire. A great example is the shotgun. The primary
fire is your standard, room-clearing boomstick. The alt fire, however, shoots
out a half dozen “sticky bombs,” which adhere to terrain, vehicles and, yes,
enemies. Taking down an enemy soldier with a close range shotgun blast is
satisfying, but popping him with a load of sticky bombs and seeing him run back
to his cohorts and then detonate the lot of them is even more gratifying.
They’re on a set timer, so you can even use them to trap an area when you see
another squad trying to rush your position. This was the goal for all the
alternate firing modes – to give the player vastly new mechanics and strategic
possibilities. You’re essentially equipped with two primary weapons at all
times!
While we started out with familiar, real-world weapons, like that shotgun, as
a base, we also wanted to gradually push the game toward the fantastic and
introduce more futuristic weapons. One of the earliest ones you’ll get is the
HERF Gun, a short-range electrical weapon capable of taking out humans in
seconds and wreaking total havoc on electronic enemies, like bots and automated
security systems. While its initial fire is fairly short-range, the HERF’s
electrical arc is can jump between targets, chaining together a half-dozen,
tightly packed enemies at a time. Even better, you can also link it through
objects in the world, meaning clever players can use it to fire through closed
doors or from behind cover.
Like most of the weapons, these are nuances we hope a player will discover
for themselves as they play through Project: Snowblind. We wanted to make sure
that every weapon and ability had this kind of layered functionality, so that
player’s would be constantly discovering new tactics. The alternate fire for the
HERF follows the same model – it has a totally different strategic purpose. Alt
firing the HERF Gun will shoot out an Electric Mine, which will automatically
fire off bolts of electricity at any enemy that strays near.
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