Adapt or Perish

"The most awe-inspiring level starts off with you fighting Nanosuits, then moves into a remarkable hovercraft chase over frozen seas [...] after which the level is punctuated by Korean battles against a goliath Hunter, squad combat against aliens, and a fight with another Hunter that puts the closing boss of the original to shame. It's a frenzy of intelligent and original level design, far away from the Far Cry model that Crysis aped." - Will Porter, PC Zone (Sept 08)

'Adapt or Perish' is the first frozen level in Warhead. I was assigned the level because of my experience with aliens in Crysis, and also tasked with testing and aiding the drive to make Alien AI improvements.

While working on the level, I wanted to come up with interesting encounters that differed from Crysis' frozen-level gameplay; enemies being very much limited to Alien Scouts and Troopers.
In order to extend the possibilities, I suggested that North Korean Nanosuit guys would have survived the opening of the Sphere much like Psycho, in his US Nanosuit, had.
From this also came the suggestion to add US Nanosuit squadmates - something that had been prototyped to an extent in Crysis. The Writer loved the idea of injecting yet another human element to the Alien section of the game and Eagle Team were born.

The sporadic battles that North Koreans had with Aliens remedied the oversight in the original Crysis that there was this really awesome AI that was seldom shown off fighting one another in front of players.
It also served as a type of pre-combat idle event for AI to engage in rather than doing less readable or exciting things in that limited environment such as simply patrolling.
Furthermore, it also gave life to the environment as though the world was living even without players being there, and it gave players the strategic option of when (and even if) they wanted to join the fight. It also helped to create and foster an 'it's war' atmosphere.

I also prototyped the use of Alien Hunters in my spare time because I really wanted these huge AT-AT style things coming out of the cold mist as I felt they would add a lot of cinematic value to the experience.
At the start, there were actually four Hunters engaged in various battles with North Korean forces, but eventually this was pared down to two so as to not overdo it. Finally one of these was scripted to die as players approached (people would try to kill this Hunter instead of racing past it) and the other ended up serving as the end of level mini-boss.

As it turned out, this mini-boss encounter made such an impression on players that once we got an extra animator on the project, the creation of a special intro animation was something that I really tried hard to request. With the animation added, I spruced it up by scripting the sound and particle effect accompaniment and even explosion entities which I used to systematically break the trees the Hunter stepped on in real-time. I also added a physics impulse to a jeep thrown into the arena by the Hunter, with the aim that the trail of smoke and fire it left would draw players' eyes upwards if the sound and effects failed to attract them.

One of the biggest headaches was the hovercraft at the start of the level. Initially it was hard to spot, and players would miss it or skip it thinking it non-vital. This would have been fine if it had been a well-communicated choice. The remedy was, therefore, to communicate it and bring it closer to where players started.
As a happy accident, when the hovercraft was moved closer, it became tagged by the binoculars briefly during the real-time opening cut-scene. Furthermore, placing a flare and three North Korean soldiers around it also helped to draw players' attention to that direction. Finally, when the dialogue came in it really helped to add a sense of urgency, with even an extra line urging players to go back and take the hovercraft if they missed it.

The second problem with the hovercraft was that initially, it had a mounted machine gun. During playtesting, players were not able to shoot while driving; whenever an Alien Scout broke out of the ice, players would stop their movement, aim with the gun, kill the Scout and only then continue. Since the idea was to push players through quickly, it was decided that the mounted weapon be removed. This worked miracles - now players could just concentrate on their movement and also wouldn't feel like they were 'supposed' to stop there and deal with all of the enemies thrown at them.
Pushing players forward was also helped by the new Alien Scouts in Warhead. The 'beam' Scout would damage a slowly-moving or immobile vehicle, but wouldn't be able to keep up with fast-moving ones. This meant players were urged to always keep moving.

Another problem was the introduction of the Guardian Trooper. The Guardian would use a shield to defend Troopers in his AI Group, but for a long time players would engage the group head-on without first observing what was going on and therefore wouldn't grasp this.
After discussing it with a couple of Level Designers, someone made the suggestion to somehow break up the road there, so that players would firstly, stop and watch the enemy, and secondly, they would have to leave the straight road and choose either the higher left or right path around, thereby provoking them into more of an ambush position.
Excited by the prospect of improving this section, I ended up spending a weekend creating the bridge section to final art quality, with full AI setup, which proved worthwhile when I saw people taking up the high ground and surveying this Action Bubble rather than stumbling into it.
I also added a vegetation art pass to that section which then extended to the whole map. I wanted a 'Flash Frozen Jungle' look, in reference to Crysis' original codename (Frozen Paradise), instead of the very rocky, empty tundra plains.

Another key area of focus for the level was also that the world should appear to be dynamic, and affected by the Aliens terraforming the environment. This was achieved by adding Alien spikes which would tear through the ground as the Aliens' influence spread. This also served another function; the spikes helped to gently suggest paths for players to take in the larger, more open areas.