Tipping the Scale

Scale has always been a strange technical issue in video games. You're limited by the size of the character, and the camera angle, and the hardware. In old NES games like Zelda 2, Link was the same size on the world map as an entire village. Once he was actually in the village, the buildings were bigger, yet the inside dimensions never seemed to match the outside, like that magical car from Harry Potter that could seat seven comfortably in the back seat while appearing to be a standard size from the outside. Later (much later), Final Fantasy VIII graced the PS1, and towns were finally getting a sense of scale. Sure, Squall still appeared to be as tall as the buildings while outside the city limits, but at least they weren't the same dimensions anymore. I just think it was the hardware. The one game I can think of in that entire console generation that had an entire world set to scale was Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. If you wanted to walk somewhere, it took you as long as it would in real life. It was improved even farther in Oblivion, and we now had a living, breathing world that resembled our own, if our own world had goblins lurking behind the registers at Wal-Mart.

Come to think of it, first-person-perspecitve games were always in scale. But the scope of the levels was always so constrained. Remember the first TimeSplitters that debuted with the PS2? The one where you didn't even have to look up or down, a la Doom? The levels, especially compared to sprawling RPG's like anything Square produced, were miniscule. Luckily, technology and game budgets nowadays are so out of control that even low-impact games can have a sense of scale and verisimilitude. Unless its Nintendo, then you're still doomed to be stuck with the kawaii big head, little feet, Pep Boys look. Hope you sprites have been working out your neck muscles! You're going to need them.

R.I.P. 3D Realms

3D Realms is gone... and Duke Nukem Forever may actually never be released now instead of just probably never being released. 3D Realms, along with iD Software (John Carmack and the other guys who made DOOM) invented shareware and pretty much single-handedly crafted the PC game market as we know it. Also, they made Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, Prey, and one of my personal favorites as a kid, Blake Stone, a.k.a. Wolfenstein in space. Is this another case of the "recession-proof" video game industry being impacted by the recession? Or was 3d Realms merely demolished by its own practical joke-like existence? "When's this new game coming out, it seems like it's been delayed for years." "Probably right after Duke Nukem Forever HAHAHAHA!" Jerks.

The sad part is that 3D Realms was still planning on bringing DNF out... If you got all 200 achievement points in the recently revitalized Duke Nukem 3D game that was released on XBLA, you unlocked two screenshots for the game, proving that it was still in production after first being announced about 12 years ago. DNF is going to be the coolest vaporware since that hamster game that was announced for the Sega 32X. Remember that? No? Do you even remember the system? It had DOOM and Virtua Fighter on it, and it was cool. So was Duke Nukem. Sigh...