What goes up, must come down


…and the bigger they are…

Following on the heels of a post I found rather peak, peak enough that I strongly considered just going out on a high note and saying hang the sense of doing the rest of the god damn runthrough of Goldeneye 64, cause there’s no way I’m going to top that, I took a moment of pause, collected my thoughts, and reminded myself I can’t just write on the days I think I’m going to write the best thing ever, cause then I would never ever write again. So, with a renewed sense of flippant confidence, I push on from the iconic interiors of The Facility, and finish what is considered the “finale” of the first, three part mission of Goldeneye, that being the daring escape staged on The Runway.

….ahem. Well…daring may be an extraordinarily charitable explication of what ends up actually occurring.

It was always going to be an impossible task to follow the Facility, an appropriate mirroring of my own efforts of writing about the contrast between the two levels at the current moment, so The Runway is kind of the spot of ginger to the delicious sashimi that the Facility represents: a nice little palette cleanser to get you ready for even more.. Where the Facility was intricate, well paced, and meticulously designed, the Runway is absolutely none of that, and really just kind of a fucking road when you get right down to it. There is truly nothing fancy about this level, though when one then reflects upon the difference, the stark variation in design quality ends up just giving even more credit to the already overwhelming amount of attractive capital the Facility is owed for all of its cleverly polished industrial whimsies.

The player does have to make one quick stop to a little office to the left, immediately after exiting the Facility itself, to grab the key to start the getaway plane at the end of the runway, but I’m guessing Rare threw this in here just to create the illusion of a mission structure in creating a modicum of variation, just to help you forget that the premise of this level is basically running down a fucking road for 30 seconds. On double 00 agent this can be brutal, as there is literally no cover to speak of, and with heavy gun emplacements lining each side of said Runway, you’ll get Swiss cheesed in the blink of an eye.

This level is a great example of development compromise: ambition stifled by reality, as anyone who’s seen the film knows that this particular section in the movie is over the top ridiculous, as it involves not only an entire squad of Russian soldiers running after Bond, but motorcyclists also giving chase to intercept Bond, as he sprints after a plane being piloted by another enemy soldier, who he pulls out in a saving throw effort to board the plane to fly away to safety. After some aggressive struggling, the motorcyclist is shot, the pilot laid out on the ground, the plane starts to get away from Bond, who then grabs the now available motorcycle, goes full gas towards the end of the runway, which he then drives the motorcycle off, to then skydive to catch the now falling plane, which is headed straight for the ground at a 90 degree angle. At the last minute, Bond is able to catch it in midair, climb aboard, and pull up just in time. Cue theme song.

What a great idea for a level, you might think. Well, you’d be fucking wrong, cause absolutely none of that happens in the Runway level of Goldeneye 64.

For anyone who at least has some minor working knowledge of tech limitations or the slightest bit of insight into game development, this makes absolute sense as to why the Runway level in Goldeneye was never, ever going to be like the film. Both the hardware limitations of the N64, and the mechanical restrictions of the Goldeneye engine are just basically fundamentally incapable of rendering and running anything resembling such a grandiose virtual recreation of such epic showmanship.

The game already chugs and drops framerate with just a few guys on screen in small corridors; having a whole squad shooting and running after Bond in an open area? Get ready to enjoy Goldeneye: Flipbook edition, as you’d be lucky if the game was running at a lightning fast 1 fps with just the extra inclusion of enemy soldiers….and we haven’t even factored in the hypothetical moving vehicles yet. Motorcycles? In my Goldeneye? While it is true you can pilot a vehicle in Goldeneye (the tank), it controls…well, predictably….like a tank. With its limited speeds and movement, Rare was able to get away having it in the game, which makes sense they pulled it off, as there is another scene much later in the film where Bond wrecklessly drives a tank through downtown St.Petersburg, and it is such a big set piece for the film, the exclusion would have likely helped damage the experience by a considerable margin.

I have a headache just thinking about how a motorcycle would function in such a small area, let alone how the engine would even be able to process such an event, especially with everything else going on. Even games that do allow players to operate motorcycles, GTA being an obvious go to example, they control like dogshit and are nefarious deathtraps, so translating that to the N64 in a first person shooter just kind of boggles the mind. Rare does end up kind of figuring this out years later, as Perfect Dark does have the hoverbikes that players can ride, but again, a hoverbike is not a motorcycle, and the stark sci-fi fantastical differentiation of control standard is likely why they were able to pull off such a feat. Again, considering this was well before modern day shooters QoL (quality of life) standards, Goldeneye lacks a run button, so if they did have the plane moving, it would be almost hilariously anti-climactic, as it would be moving so slow, a crawling baby would be able to catch up with it. Also, having the plan drive off the ledge at the end and having the player jump after it, falling in midair to catch it?

No….just no.

So yeah, the entire conceit of Bond’s grand getaway in the movie Goldeneye 100,000,000,000,000% doesn’t work in the game, for every technical reason you can fathom. I’m guessing when the lads from Rare were watching the film together to take notes on what they could and could not do, they had a hearty chuckle when watching this scene thinking to themselves we’re game developers for fucks sake, not wizards. Which then leaves the player with not much else to do but the only thing Rare could use from that scene, which was a Runway…that you run down..away…from some enemies…which looks a lot like just walking down a road…sometimes there’s bullets.

Just close your eyes and pretend you’re on that motorcycle while making vroom vroom sounds with your mouth: it will be just like you’re in the movie.

~Pashford