The Operative: No One Lives Forever - Design - Influences and Humor

Influences and Humor

"...the game is essentially an attempt to make players feel like the hero of a '60s spy movie. The situations, villains, weapons, gadgets, story, dialogue, and scope are inspired by sources as diverse as Our Man Flint, various Bond films, Where Eagles Dare, Charade, The Avengers, Man from U.N.C.L.E., Mission: Impossible, Get Smart, Danger: Diabolik, Modesty Blaise, and countless other shows, films, and novels from the era, as well as numerous historical references. That said, we've certainly attempted to give NOLF a personality of its own by tweaking the cliches rather than merely rehashing them."

In terms of video games, Monolith drew inspiration from a number of stealth/action games, such as Metal Gear Solid (1998), Tenchu: Stealth Assassins (1998), Syphon Filter (1999), and GoldenEye 007 (1997), because the team was "interested in a blend of stealth and action rather than focusing on one or the other exclusively." The original release of the 1981 stealth game Castle Wolfenstein was also cited as being influential.

Thematically, influences behind The Operative: No One Lives Forever were primarily 1960s spy-themed films, novels, television shows, as well as historical references. When it was decided that NOLF was going to be a 1960s spy game, lead designer Craig Hubbard started immersing himself in the subject matter, in order to "develop some fluency" in it. As he explained, he "was a big fan of early Bond films, but didn't know a lot about the whole spy craze. So I watched the Derek Flint movies, Modesty Blaise, Matt Helm, Danger: Diabolik, Avengers – anything I could get my hands on." Other influences included books, such as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, TV shows like The Saint, The Pink Panther films, commando movies, such as The Guns of Navarone, as well as "lots of historical references, encompassing everything from books and documentaries on the spy trade to fashion catalogs and interior-design books." The basis for the biological explosives plot was the 1967 film Casino Royale. According to Hubbard, "the idea was to create a game that would make you feel like a superspy, so we tried to come up with situations, characters, and settings to support that goal." During the course of the game, the player can hear explicit popular culture references, including the TV series The Prisoner and The Fugitive, the Matt Helm films The Silencers and The Ambushers, and exotica musician Les Baxter. Other conversations allude to major events of the time, such as the studio years of The Beatles, and the commercial failure of the Edsel automobile.

Humor plays an important role in No One Lives Forever. As Hubbard explained, the game's intention is "to make you laugh, but not at the expense of providing a broader, more satisfying emotional experience than a spoof generally allows, so that even if you don't chuckle once, you can still have plenty of fun playing the game. At heart, NOLF is an action/adventure/espionage game with a healthy dose of levity." Humor is presented mainly via visual gags, overheard conversations, textual intelligence items, and cutscenes. The humor includes "situational humor, and even a dash of absurdity and bathroom humor for good measure. Some of it is subtle, some of it isn't." The name of UNITY, H.A.R.M., and other fictional organizations mentioned in the game follow the spy genre formula of using contrived acronyms for organizations (see List of fictional espionage organizations). What H.A.R.M. actually stands for is never revealed, and speculation about its true meaning is used as a running gag in the game and its sequel.

Regarding comparisons between the game and the Austin Powers film series, Hubbard pointed out on several occasions that, unlike Austin Powers, No One Lives Forever is not a parody of the spy genre. Contrasting the source of the humor in the two series, Hubbard noted that while the game is "campy and silly, the underlying premise borders on apocalyptic. That dichotomy in tone results in a very different style of humor from a parody, where everything is in good fun and nobody, including the characters, takes anything very seriously."