a lot of the cool one-off stuff in half-life relies on the level designer actually having the tools to do it, and it will happen naturally when they do.
putting weird unique stuff in levels is one of the most fun parts of making them, and you can't really pull it off in a compartmentalized team
I'm reminded of Nordom in Planescape: Torment, a party member players can easily miss because he's hidden in the middle of an entirely optional dungeon that you can only access if you grab a specific item (and also the whole business with Vhailor potentially forcing you to leave someone behind)
I'm always torn on this when working on my games. I wish little one-offs were quicker to do, but they often take hours if not days, and those are days spent not doing core things that every player will experience.
this really feels like the opposite of what most games do these days ..
you get a list of a million pointless objectives, which are all the same thing dressed up a little different. and I hate that
it's quite souldestroying to design something and then have it assumed that it should either be instantiated across the game dozens of times or removed
Comments
putting weird unique stuff in levels is one of the most fun parts of making them, and you can't really pull it off in a compartmentalized team
but for those that DO see it, it feels rare or special for them, they dug deeper and were rewarded with something strange
you get a list of a million pointless objectives, which are all the same thing dressed up a little different. and I hate that