Descent II || ThinkThank #7

3rd Ascension

In the early 1990s, there seemed to only be one feature developers wanted above all others: the 3rd dimension. Although it would take many more years for those in the console world to embrace 3D platforming and shooting as the anticipated mode of gameplay-- with side-scrolling platformers and top-down RPGs remaining king and queen for nearly a decade longer-- the cutting-edge world of PC gaming was alight with the wild explorations of what developers could push their hardware to accomplish.

Despite the dominant assumption that Id Software's DOOM was created almost as if in a vacuum, and the flurry of 3D games which followed were the result of a sudden realization that such things were possible in DOOM's wake is a bit of an anachronism, failing to take into account the wide range of 3D experimentations which were its direct contemporaries. Alone in the Dark for instance, which famously inspired the iconic cameras of the early Resident Evil games, released its second entry shortly after DOOM's initial release in 1993. This is not to take away from the incredible and much-deserved success of the brilliant DOOM, but instead to give credit where it is due, and to recognize that the developments in 3D technology and conceptualization were not made in isolation.

Hearing this sort of hair-splitting may annoy some folks, who may say something to the effect of, "Yeah but DOOM was a fast-paced, buttery-smooth, pulse-pounding 3D action game, while Alone in the Dark is agonizingly slow and plodding." For those people who refuse to be impressed or acknowledge the value of of lateral development, I present Descent. Released Christmas Eve 1994, one year after the release of DOOM, and following nearly two years of development, Descent was the first in the still-niche genre of "Six Degrees of Freedom" games. It seems that along with the ambition of creating our first explorable 3D worlds, designers hoped to dive into the deep end of three-dimensional navigation by allowing unrestricted movement along all axes and rotations. That first Descent was a hit, with Dan Bennett from PC Gamer saying, "[...] it really is better than Doom." (Annoyingly, Dan Bennett also makes the anachronistic assumption that, because Descent uses 3D graphics, it was created as a response to, rather than contemporaneously with, Id's DOOM).

Apparently it had caused quite the marketing splash upon its arrival onto the scene, as many reviewers of the time made mention of the ubiquity of Descent marketing and shareware promos. PC Magazine's Michael Ryan opens his review by suggesting that if the reader has looked at any other media lately, they'd have heard of Descent by now. It seems that many of the PC public had their eye on Descent, with the shareware distribution of the game's first seven levels providing a substantial boost to audience interest. Most importantly, Descent played well, which in the shareware days meant it also sold well, and for many, Descent was the definitive step-up from the nascent DOOM's 3D explorations.

But What *is* Descent and I thought this was about Descent 2

Well observed, dear reader. The Descent series of games are first-person shooter games in which the player takes command of a sick single-pilot spacecraft as a mining corporation's "Material Defender", sent to various space-mining facilities where robots have gone haywire amidst an infestation of an alien computer virus, to blow up the robots and contain the spread of digital contagion.

During the course of their mission in the first game, the player takes a tour of the solar system, ending at Charon, one of the five moons of Pluto (which sort of makes you wonder if the dwarf planet designation is really fair but whatever, I'm not an astrophysicist). At the end of the first game, the player character's slimy boss suggests that their ship may be infected with the alien virus, so they should stay far from civilization for now. Instead, he says, the player should investigate the space stations which have also gone dark beyond the solar system. In the closing moments, the player character says he will head to the rendezvous at the asteroid belt to get some answers.

First Steps into Descent II

Thus ends Descent, with Descent II beginning immediately afterward when the player character arrives at a resupply station in the asteroid belt. A returning player would have immediately been struck by the atmospheric improvements to Descent as early as five seconds into booting up the game. Where the first opened with a series of still images and text with some bleeping backing tracks, Descent 2 begins with a mix of orchestral theming and industrial metal sounds, accompanied by a cinematic cutscene complete with voice-overs. During the course of the intro, the player learns that their character very much does not want to be a part of this game anymore as he believes he has fulfilled his contractual obligations, but he is counter-cited his mercenary contract which states that, upon completion of his duties, the mercenary remains on retainer for 72 hours. To avoid losing out on his pay from the first game, the player character must start a new adventure.

Which leads to one of my favorite new features: the music. The player is brought to the main menu, where the industrial metal which has been chosen to decorate this entry's soundscape gets its first proper listen. The whole soundtrack is a banger, but the title does a great job of setting the stage. Rather than over-explain, just listen to it real quick-- I know you're on the internet, don't pretend-- its only 38 seconds. Really, I'd suggest listening to the rest of the soundtrack while you read the rest of this ThinkThank. Type-O Negative and Ogre, among others, collaborated to make this wildly 90s soundtrack that still slaps. The overall sound isn't one-note either. The soundtrack moves between heavier, moodier tracks which add a sense of unease to every corner turned, while others are high-octane stress-fests, while still others feel aggressive and oppressive, perfectly accompanying the sense of being lost in the depths of a violent and inhuman machine system. Which you absolutely are!

Descent Level Structure

Each level of Descent takes place in an industrial complex, usually a mine, within an asteroid. Multiple corridors sprawl out from larger chambers, twisting and turning, and shifting the player's perception of "up". The starting location is the "Entrance" to the mine, and the objective of each level is to find the level's Reactor, destroy it, and escape the mine before it collapses on the player. Halting the player's progress throughout a level are locked areas which must be unlocked by finding that region's appropriately colored access card, and malfunctioning mining robots hell-bent on humanity's destruction. To have any hope in later levels of getting out alive, the player must familiarize themselves with the layout of the mine, locating the Exit in advance. In many cases, following the destruction of the Reactor, the player will have so little time to reach the Exit that there is almost no room for error. Given the sprawling nature of the levels, this can pose quite the challenge.

For some reason, the reactors can shoot you. Very rude.

The nature of a space mine means that there is no definitive orientation, so the player must contend with navigating a fully 3D-navigable series of tunnels and chambers. Some have writing on the walls like, "Level 2" or something along those lines, but this isn't always sufficient for keeping your reckoning. Each level does seem to have an overall directional preference, but to navigate the space smoothly and efficiently, the player will need to develop spatial reasoning skills.

To aid in this unfair task, your ship is equipped with an Automap; a 3D wireframe map which can be turned and panned at your leisure. Given the limitations of the time, this wireframe can be a little bit intimidating at first, but after some time moving it around, its not too hard to wrap one's head around. 

Back in 1996, this map felt decidedly futuristic, both in the context of the game's setting but also in the meta of games as a medium. But then again... had this been seen before? So far as anyone's investigations have revealed, adventure game automapping began with A Bard's Tale 3 back in 1988. Perhaps this feature was introduced to Mike Kulas and Matt Toschlog via their second publishing partner, Interplay, who also published the Bard's Tale games.

Its when looking back at Descent from the perspective of a 2020s gamer that you can begin to see the development of video game design concepts not as a singular, linear progression, but instead the result of multiple strains; convergent evolution of games before their full crystallization into categories like "metroidvania". Lets step back briefly to explain.

Influences from 1986-1994

In 1986, Nintendo released two games with the same central design mission: to deliver a Famicom game which translates the defining elements of more resource-heavy adventure rpgs found on personal computers like the MSX and Commodore-64, into action titles which have been streamlined to suit the modest capabilities of home consoles. Both games went on revolutionize the industry, both in what the gaming public believed was possible on a home console, as well as how designers understood design philosophy. Nintendo's R&D4, led by Shigeru Miyamoto, created The Legend of Zelda, while R&D1, led by Gunpei Yokoi, created Metroid. Both games opt for an "item-acquisition" approach to RPG character development, rather than character stat sheets, and both games see a fully explorable world, metered out by the acquisition of some new item or another. But this is where the divergence begins.

The Legend of Zelda sees the player regularly passing through the largely accessible Overworld to access the various entrances to the game's nine labyrinthine dungeons. Metroid, meanwhile, takes less of a "Hub and Spoke" model, and chooses instead to create a world which passes over itself. This feature is really solidified in Super Metroid, but the early bones are present as early as the first game. As the player acquires new upgrades and weapons, earlier areas of the map become recontextualized through new abilities, allowing the player to briefly backtrack before encountering wholly new locations and enemies. Now, hold on to that thought.

DOOM

In 1993, Id software released DOOM, following the development of their successful "Commander Keen" series, which began its life as a Super Mario 3 tech-demo to convince Nintendo to license a PC release. Among so many other things, DOOM solidified the idea of "key hunting" in first person shooter games. The player roams around a sprawling level, halted only by enemies and locked doors which can be opened by finding the appropriate corresponding keycard. In order to fully explore a DOOM level and complete its objectives, the player will need to backtrack several times and come to understand the level as a whole. And herein lies a bit of that convergent evolution I mentioned 378 words ago.

"Masters of DOOM", the behind the scenes book which details DOOM's development, the history of Id software, and the origins of  its designers, Carmack, Romero, and Hall; notes that the developers drew upon their experiences in roleplaying games. Most notably, they reused a campaign they had played which merged technology with demons in a Dungeons and Dragons setting. The video game predecessors which the Id team drew upon were of the PC gaming variety, like Wizardry, an original attempt in the venture of translating tabletop roleplaying to digital. Condensing the arguably limitless potential of the human imagination which powered Dungeons and Dragons, into something which could be rendered by computers with 64 kilobytes of RAM, was understood to be an impossible task. That is, after what I assume was a soul-crushing amount of work went into the attempt to write text parsers which could simulate the real-life tabletop equivalent. Instead, creative work arounds were necessary to deliver an experience which held the spirit of the source material but respected the limitations of the hardware. Thus, new systems were devised for Wizardry, itself drawing upon... never mind, we don't need to endlessly fractalize; Wizardry is the start, okay?

I promise there is a lot more exciting going on here than it looks.

When designing an action-focused dungeon crawl, Id designers Romero and Carmack landed upon the Lock-and-Key method of pacing out gameplay. In order to make such things satisfying, levels were laid out in sprawling, semi-abstract environments which felt interesting to explore. The act of finding a key became synonymous with finding new gameplay-- 'let's see where this will take us!'. Key hunting drove the intentionality of the player, encouraging them to always seek out the next progression point. Map design accommodated this design principle, an action-game solution to a tabletop roleplaying translation problem.

M   e  a nwhile || elihwn a  e   M

In offices over seven hundred miles away in Champaign, Illinois, Parallax Software was developing a similar core-loop structure, using key hunting and map exploration to pace out gameplay, and to great effect. Importantly, at this stage of development, when the game was still alternately titled "Inferno" and "Miner", neither studio was aware of one another's work. Happening upon key-hunting appears to be a case of two developers arriving at the same conclusions, despite different origins. However, a significant difference between Id's DOOM and Parallax's soon-to-be-debut came in the form of player movement. Although whiplash fast, DOOM's protagonist is largely limited to planar coordinate movement-- that is, the Doomguy doesn't contend very much with vertical movement, beyond limited platforming sections. In Descent, at all times, the player may move in any direction they wish within 3D space. They move relatively slower than the Doomguy, but it is far easier to get turned around.

Which brings us back to the Automap. Although A Bard's Tale may have been the first example of the technology in use, it was Nintendo's Super Metroid, the 1994 follow-up to the 1986 classic, which solidified the concept in the eyes of players who had become followers of this emerging 'Metroid-like' genre. A map which showed the player's location in real-time and developed more context and information as players explored new areas. In developing the sequels to their hugely popular Metroid, which likely influenced-- in some part-- the early developments of DOOM and Descent, Nintendo's R&D1 needed a solution to the growing problem of scale that this bigger and better sequel presented. Super Metroid's planet Zebes was huge! With so many places to backtrack and recontextualize after receiving a power-up or new weapon type, players needed a reliable in-game tool for finding their way back to old areas.

It is entirely conjecture on my part, but I believe that Super Metroid's pervasive influence across gaming over the decade that followed its release was responsible-in-part for Descent's decision to use an Automap of the kind seen in Super Metroid. It may be a combination of thematic trappings and convergent evolution at work, but the two share superficial and gameplay similarities which bear at least some merit in exploring. But I won't deal in more conjecture here and will move on.

The Automap and Guidebot

Either through direct transplant from A Bard's Tale 3, inspiration from Super Metroid, or by convergent evolution, Parallax decided to make the job of navigating Descent's sprawling complexes feasible through the introduction of the Automap.

Using wire-frame lines to form 3D shapes and differing colors to define locked doors and unexplored spaces, Descent's 3D take on an Automap is surprisingly intuitive. White for explored areas, Green for doors you have unlocked, Yellow, Blue, and Red for locked doors, Purple for entrances and Robot spawners, and Yellow Areas (not walls) are Energy centers. Once you have moved the complex around in 3D a little bit, the overall layout begins to make sense. A last area is one which is not present by default, but appears if the player finds the "Full Map" upgrade; Blue areas of the map show regions the player has not yet explored, helping them rule out paths and work out which way leads to progress.

But remember, despite my neglect throughout this piece, this is about Descent 2! What did the sequel add to the Automap? Well, besides making the entire thing a far cleaner render, Descent 2 added one of my favorite features in the whole series; The Guidebot. A clever marriage of diegetic and non-diegetic elements, Guidebots are little robots who have not turned maniacal like the other robots of the mines. Each Guidebot is trapped behind a metal grate near(ish) to the beginning of a level. The player can choose to free Guidebot or leave it trapped. Guidebot knows the location of all important items and locations within the mine, you need only just have to ask for its help! Guidebot follows a single instruction at a time, so you can ask it to take you to the nearest Energy field to stock up in preparation for a battle, or ask it to help you find the key to the next area. Guidebot adorably will attempt to assist you in battle, but its single-fire laser isn't strong enough to defeat anything on its own, so despite Guidebot removing some of the legwork in the navigation department, its still up to the player to keep themselves alive.

I love that Guidebot's assistance is totally optional. From the get-go, the player can simply choose not to save it, and even if they do choose to save it as I often do simply because I feel bad that its trapped in a scary little box, the player can choose to suppress its messages and continue on without its assistance. Of course, the player can also choose to instead give Guidebot a custom name and press a key combination to see things from Guidebot's point of view. Besides being nifty, this ability can be incredibly useful to a player who is struggling to find Guidebot after it has run off someplace. The extra vantage point can provide very useful context. And despite Guidebot's mortality, it will dutifully search for you if you have become lost, declaring "Coming Back to Get You." In addition to being helpful in when you get lost, when you are on your last legs, no rockets, no shields, cowering in the dark, terrified that this will be it; like an overly-committed postal worker, Guidebot will find you, come sleet, rain, or raging fireball explosions, and declare, "Coming Back to Get You." Can bring a tear to the eye.

PLEASE DO, BUDDY

Some people question the necessity of Guidebot, and many dub it 'Useless' or 'baby mode', which to me smacks of a conflict in terms, as its hard to reconcile the tool being both useless and so useful that it renders the difficulty of the game harmless. To address the first point, Guidebot cannot collect items for you, nor can Guidebot open secret doors or important gates before you do. Good Guidebot use still requires input from the player, and sometimes Guidebot will be stuck behind an impassable challenge until the player clears the way. Hardly useless, just single-minded. As to the second point... its up to you, I guess.

For many players, even with the Automap, which can be a bit cluttered and difficult to parse for some, the sprawling mine complexes may pose too much of a challenge to make heads or tails of in the thick of battle, or it can simply just be too exhausting. Importantly, its up to the player to gauge for themselves if they want such help, and the fact that a new Guidebot needs to be found for each level means that the player is constantly given agency over their decision for assistance. This is a shocking bit of accessibility in a time before such considerations were ever made. I, for one, think it to be a wonderful addition to the series, and I also believe the creators agree with me. Their subsequent games and eventual spiritual sequel, Overload, retain this feature.

The Gift of Guide

My introduction to the Descent series began with Descent 2, so returning to the series to play the first installment was somewhat of a chore. 2 is a bit of a 'refinement sequel', as opposed to an overhaul or experimentation, so playing the original felt like removing quality of life features in a rougher-textured map-pack. But exploring the original and Descent3 for the sake of continuing education and my ongoing project to appreciate those games which have developed my sense of good design was a lot of fun, and I feel I am a better designer for the effort.

That said, its Descent 2 that I will continue to praise, with its exciting shooting, intuitive all-keyboard controls, and banger of a soundtrack. Most of all to Mas the game designer though, it taught me about spatial thinking. When fully explored, a Descent 2 automap is a simplified model of a level, complete with spawn locations, locked doors, and enemy spawn locations. Turning the game inside out, first as a player and second as a designer helped me understand the logic of metering out gameplay difficulty through gameplay space, and of careful mob placement. The automap reminds me that you can show your hand to the player, and yet the battle still isn't won. The game designer need not be coy and mercurial, on the contrary; some creators invite players to pick their designs apart, turn levels upside down, and reveal their secrets, confident in the knowledge that the challenges that lay ahead in the game will remain just as engaging and exciting.

And what a lesson within a lesson that is! Your players are not your adversaries. You aren't here to be smarter than them, or to rip the rug our from underneath them, or to use them to prove a point. Your role as a designer can be to invite the player into the world you made for them, greeting them through the medium of sharp design and engaging challenges.

Thank You for Your Example

Quite famously, following the heady success of DOOM, John Romero branched away from his co-creators to begin what was to be the most incredible game the world had ever seen, called Daikatana. In the lead up to that games' 2000 release, Romero could have learned a lesson from his contemporaries, could have continued the trend of convergent evolution with them, learning similar lessons from different foundations. But this was where he began his divergent evolution, when he began to believe he was smarter and better than both his colleagues and his players. Gonzo-advertising stated that "John Romero's about to make you his bitch", a gaff which likely cost Romero much of his goodwill at the time, compounded when the games' release was met with a resounding meh. He has since clarified that he didn't really want to make the advertisement, so I won't drag him through the mud over it. John Romero has long since learned his lesson, and has reemerged as a wise voice in the growing industry, exercising restrain and sensibility, and holding his fans in respect.

It turns out, even back in the early 2000s,
people don't really want to be called 'bitches'.

As I become both more educated and more capable as a designer, I think its important to reconnect with the lessons I am learning. In a grounded sense, I've learned about level layouts, managing player expectations, and tricks of maximizing play-space. But on a loftier, career level, I want to be cautious of the ego that comes with becoming more technically capable, and of meeting your first successes. I am far from (if I will ever be) a great success in the vein of Romeros and Carmacks, Toschlogs and Kulas's, but I can still remember to learn the lessons they charted for me, professional Guidebots showing me the way-- and warning me of the dangers that lay ahead.

- mas