Part 28: Commentary Corner - Mission 7

Mission 7 Extra Stuff!

So Mission 7 is a bit of a relic of a more stealth-oriented mission design, as you can tell from the get-go. We've already been over how odd it is that somebody smuggled a Personal Ion Cannon out of the Nod chateau that is suspiciously missing its Railgun. Still, the Laser Rifle is no slouch and with its dead accuracy and instant hits, you can rack up headshots like nobody's business from a really respectable range.

With its bright red look, the laser rifle fits in with the supervillain style Nod ended up with. Initially, as with many weapons, it was going to be gunmetal. Right up to release, they were still showing weapons slightly different than what we got:


They made it more of a mini-Obelisk with a bright red crystal for where the laser comes from. Something interesting to note is how the sniper rifle and laser rifle both have those vents/holes near the front, they're pretty distinctive. This helped fans immediately spot when some new game began showing off assets that had, very obviously, been cobbled together using Renegade assets. Such as the "Vulcan" pistol some fan helpfully scribbled on:


For reference, the release version Renegade sniper rifle:


Let's have a closer look at the game in question. They were charging $19.95 for beta access. Sounds like an interesting MMOFPS!


A great excuse. Anyhow. Let's get back to talking about the sniper rifle in Renegade, and look at design variations.



The pronounced muzzle brake on the sniper rifle was kept for the to-be-seen Ramjet Rifle which you can't get in singleplayer. The pictures posted earlier of a more "busy" scope image was from the era of the orange-screen sniper rifle... despite the fact the sniper overlay is quite green. Here's an old video of Logan running around Mission 4 that I should've posted then but ended up talking about Sakura's boss fight logic instead. He uses the orange-screen fancy-scope rifle, and the famed tailgun sequence is included.

(you should watch this)

Lots of nice stuff to see in this video (sorry, it's German guy talking over the original narration), including older looks for the infantry and older animations for the player. The first-person weapon bob animation is actually in the game files from what I remember, so are a couple "dramatic run" animations. This video also gives a good look at some of the older powerup style, the old HUD, and the combat shotgun you can see in some of the early promo shots. (I wouldn't be surprised if they made all the animations first for a shotgun, then moved them to the grenade launcher later in development)

Take a look at the lower-left as Logan targets things, there's a little "what you are targeting" indicator that are actually still in the game files. The ones for mounted targets are a bit different, too. Have a look:


There are also icons for weapons, including the old remote C4 and new remote C4, and the old look for the laser rifle. Note that these are DDS so they could use a normal alpha map, but are against a green background like old C&C sprites:


And bits for the radar, damage indicators, etc.:


Here's an interesting shot of Logan, post-Supervillain style, without the Tailgun, but he still has that orange sniper rifle in addition to a somewhat different looking chaingun. Remember when I quipped that the beach-assault thing was pretty great as a demonstration level? Well, shit, it really does show up a lot in media throughout Renegade's development. Compare it to a shot of Logan again, pre-Supervillain, with the Tailgun, but without the extra boxes on the ass of his character model:



It can be a little interesting to see what assets got changed between shots and versions since the game had a pretty lengthy development; the ground is much lower resolution in the first (newer) shot, and the same old ugly plane was kept straight to the final game.

Here's a late-term picture of Gunner using that same chaingun, and then the player using the "orange" sniper rifle but with the optics changing towards its final form while a Nod officer uses the newer chaingun:


Neat! And since it ties into the "cow" escape moment, an old version of the Nod cargo truck:



There's actually a little bit more to say about Mission 7 itself, but instead, have a bizarro world version this mission done out as one long cutscene/advertisement. Complete with sabotaging the war room computer, and featuring a (goofy) German narration again.