The Operative: No One Lives Forever (abbreviated as NOLF) is a first-person shooter video game developed by Monolith Productions and published by Fox Interactive, released for Windows in 2000. The game was ported later to the PlayStation 2 and Mac OS X in 2002.
A story-driven game set in the 1960s, No One Lives Forever received critical acclaim for its stylistic representation of the era in the spirit of many spy films and television series of that decade, as well as for its humor. Players control female protagonist Cate Archer, who works for a secret organization that watches over world peace. In addition to a range of firearms, the game contains several gadgets disguised as ordinary female fashion items.
At the time of its release, many reviewers considered No One Lives Forever one of the best first-person shooters since 1998's Half-Life. After receiving several Game of the Year awards in the press, a special Game of the Year Edition was released in 2001, which included an additional mission on a remote island in the South Pacific. The Operative: No One Lives Forever was followed by a sequel, No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way, in 2002, and a spin-off titled Contract J.A.C.K. released in 2003, both developed by Monolith.
A re-release of the game has been hampered by the complicated state of the series' intellectual property (IP) rights, with even parties assumed to be in possession of the IP having publicly admitted not knowing the precise legal situation of the series.
Gameplay
thumb|left|In No One Lives Forever, protagonist Cate Archer is sent on a variety of missions, including protecting a U.S. ambassador from assassins in [[Marrakesh, Morocco.|alt=Screenshot from a first-person perspective, showing the player's character on a mission, looking out from a window, at a hotel across the street in Morocco. An assassin can be seen on a rooftop, getting ready to assassinate a person.]]
No One Lives Forever is a first-person shooter which includes elements of a stealth game. The player takes on the role of Cate Archer, a fresh agent for the secret organization Unity, sent on various missions. Most, but not all, missions can be solved in multiple ways: using sneaking to avoid danger or by going in with direct gunfire.
A stealthy approach can be taken to evade security cameras, guard dogs and other obstacles. Enemies are aware of noise made by the player, including footsteps and weapon fire, and they also react to footprints in the snow, and dead bodies left lying around.
In various sections of the game, the player can ride a motorcycle, or a snowmobile.
thumb|Gadgets are often disguised as ordinary female fashion items, such as these lipstick explosive devices.|alt=An image of three objects that look like lipsticks, each with a small round base. The lipsticks are marked with the letter 'p', 't', and 'i', respectively.
At the end of each mission, the game displays various statistics, as well as any awards and bonuses earned during the mission. Awards are humorous textual notes given for the player's performance during a mission; these include awards for using a very low or a very high number of bullets, or a "Thanks For Not Getting Hurt Award" for avoiding damage. The player also receives a rank, such as "Trainee" or "Super Spy", which is based on the number of intelligence items obtained during the mission. Achieving a high mission rank increases the player's maximum health, armor and ammo capacity, as well as stealth, the amount of inflicted damage, and the accuracy of their shots.
No One Lives Forever also includes multiplayer gameplay online or over a local area network. There are two multiplayer modes available: standard deathmatch, and "H.A.R.M. vs. UNITY", a capture the flag-like mode where each team attempts to sneak into the enemy team's base, finding and photographing a target item, and returning to their own base with the evidence. Craig Hubbard, game designer for Shogo and NOLF expressed that Shogo "(although critically successful) fell embarrassingly short of original design goals", and "it is a grim reminder of the perils of wild optimism and unchecked ambition" exercised by the relatively small development team.
Signing a contract with a publisher was a very difficult task for Monolith. Development had been going on for months, and the project had been approved by different publishers four times, before they were able to actually sign a deal with one. (Parts of the initial "paramilitary action thriller" concept evolved into F.E.A.R., another Monolith game, released after the NOLF series, in 2005.) Monolith's producer for the game, Samantha Ryan, said that before the deal was signed, "here was a period where Monolith was two weeks from death. And Jace Hall closed the deal with Fox Interactive that basically saved the company."
After finally signing a contract with Fox (with whom partnership was announced to the public on August 24, 1999), the team was able to draft a mission statement, which stood as a point of reference during every aspect of developing the game. While at this time – as described in the mission statement above – the game was already set out to be a spy-themed shooter set in the 1960s, the version that was previewed to the press at this time had many differences to the finished product, with regard to characters, plot and setting. The game's protagonist was originally set out to be a male character called Adam Church who worked for MI0, "Her Majesty's Most Secret Service". However, many of the final gameplay and story elements are known to have been present in this earlier iteration of the game: the H.A.R.M. organization; the defection of an East German biophysicist for information about a top-secret Soviet weapons program; the presence of humor in the game; some locations, such as the sunken cargo freighter; the use of gadgets, such as the rocket-launching briefcase; etc.
By at least July 1999, Monolith has decided to introduce many major changes to the game; the main reason being that the gaming press unexpectedly started comparing the game to James Bond games, like GoldenEye 007 (1997). As Hubbard said, before switching to a female protagonist, he had been "struggling with trying to distinguish him from all the other male superspies from the era—extraordinarily handsome, intelligent, knowledgeable, resourceful, and so on. But a woman with those same characteristics immediately stood out because of the social climate of the time. No matter how qualified she might be, she'd have to overcome some serious barriers just to get a chance to prove herself. And if things didn't go flawlessly on a mission, she'd catch more heat than she deserved."
The female protagonist "went through numerous concept sketches, costume designs, hairstyles, names, and even nationalities." According to Hubbard, it was a challenge to find a look for her that was not only evocative of era, "but also worked as a 3D model." This was a marketing decision made by the publisher, Fox Interactive, which used its feature film casting department to look for an appropriate model internationally. Archer's voice was provided by American voice actress Kit Harris, who also did the voice of the Inge Wagner character. Originally, Harris recorded the Scottish protagonist's voice in a stronger Scottish accent. This was changed after a Scottish producer of the game felt that the particular accent used was too lower class, and an inappropriate choice; Harris re-recorded her lines with a "British bent" instead. Both the face and the voice of the character were changed in the game's sequel, where she was voiced by Jen Taylor. However, there were still things that the team didn't have enough time to implement. Like the single-player story in the game, this gameplay mode was also going to incorporate humor; for example, in one map, a goal of each team was to find a special watermelon for a mayor in a Moroccan marketplace. While this mode was publicly discussed even in July 2000, The different objectives were changed to a general goal for both teams in all maps: photographing the other team's intelligence item. However, a number of remnants stemming from the earlier gameplay design can be seen in some of the released maps, such as the office of the aforementioned mayor seen in the Morocco map. Fully realized co-operative multiplayer was, however, a feature of No One Lives Forever 2.
Technology
No One Lives Forever utilizes the LithTech game engine, which was originally developed by Monolith, and later by its subsidiary, LithTech, Inc. (later known as Touchdown Entertainment). The game is based on LithTech 2.5 (the first game to use this version), with many custom additions and modifications to support the game's design, such as support for vehicles. According to the game's creators, characters in NOLF were built from more polygons than any other PC action game at the time, with Cate Archer's model having approximately 1,700 polygons. After advancing AI technology in their subsequent games, Monolith likened the way NOLFs AIs pop randomly in and out of cover to a shooting gallery.