Perfect Dark - Development

Development

Perfect Dark was developed by Rare and directed by Martin Hollis, who previously led the production of GoldenEye 007. Rare rejected the prospect of working on the GoldenEye sequel Tomorrow Never Dies "without hesitation", as the development team felt they had spent too much time immersed in the James Bond universe. Work on the game began almost immediately after the release of GoldenEye 007. The game's science fiction setting was chosen due to the developers' interest in the genre. The decision to make the central character a woman was part of Hollis' belief that there "should be more games centred on women." To this end, the team created Joanna Dark, influenced by a number of other fictional heroines: Kim Kimberly from Level 9 Computing's text adventure Snowball, the seductive spy Agent X-27 in the 1930s film Dishonored, the eponymous femme fatale of the film Nikita, and FBI agent Dana Scully from The X-Files. The name "Joanna Dark" was taken from the French pronunciation of Joan of Arc as "Jeanne d'Arc".

Ghost in the Shell was a major influence on the character, setting and plot. The name of the in-game company "dataDyne" was inspired by Yoyodyne from The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. The writing of author Philip K. Dick and the film Blade Runner also represented significant influences. Hollis explained that he and designer David Doak "picked a range of locations we thought would be impressive and architectural, on the model of GoldenEye but sci-fi dystopias... The settings came first; the plot was then constructed by Dave to sew them together". The word "Dark" was chosen for its association with the game's bleak focus on killing. Hollis has noted the similarities to Criterion Software's naming of Black: "Game developers just like black, nihilism, dystopian futures, the number zero, infinity, spheres, perfection—all that kind of stuff."

The "double slash" symbol in the game's logo was inspired by the Japanese dakuten mark, and the bad grammar of the phrase "Perfect Dark" alludes in some degree to Hollis' affection for the way the Japanese use English words in their own games. At one time, Nintendo of Japan considered releasing the game there under the title Aka to Kuro (赤と黒?, lit. "Red and Black"). "Perfect Dark" does not translate well into Japanese, and the title "Aka to Kuro" was considered sufficiently edgy. However, it was eventually released as パーフェクト・ダーク (Pāfekuto Dāku), a transliteration of the Western title.

Originally Hollis hoped that the difference between light and dark would be a significant feature of the gameplay, and the title was intended to reflect this focus. A flashlight was implemented by Steve Ellis, who had been responsible for much of the multiplayer mode in GoldenEye, but it was not included in the final game due to the limitations of the N64 hardware (see Game engine section). Hollis remarked that such aims were overambitious: "Even today, you can see game developers struggle to make light and dark foundational from a gameplay perspective. I suspect it will take a few years before significant and pervasive gameplay innovation occurs here." Although not all these intended features were realised, the game does contain more advanced lighting than GoldenEye; lights can be shot out, gunfire illuminates rooms, and the player can use infra-red and night vision goggles.

Martin Hollis was involved with Perfect Dark for the first fourteen months of its three-year development, during which progress was troubled and long delayed. He explained, "each of us was asking for more than the other could give. This situation ended with my departure, and with very deep regret I was unable to see Perfect Dark to completion". David Doak also left at the end of 1998, and Steve Ellis soon after, to form Free Radical Design. What followed by those remaining on the project was a comprehensive re-design of the game, with the story and characters being the main items kept intact. Hollis was impressed by the comprehensive range of multiplayer options in the released version of Perfect Dark, which he described as "a vast array of features I never planned". Doak, however, remarked, "GoldenEye pretty much exhausted the performance of the machine. It was hard to push it further. Perfect Dark had some good ideas but was dog slow."

A feature called "Perfect Head", which appeared in previews of the game but was not included in the final product, was intended to take customisation of multiplayer profiles further. This feature allowed the player to place a photograph of their choice onto their in-game character's face, via a Game Boy Camera combined with the Nintendo 64 Transfer Pak. The images taken would be uploaded to the cartridge and manipulated with a simple image editing program to adjust color and skin tone (as the Game Boy Camera was black and white) and add facial features such as facial hair. This texture could then be saved to either the cartridge or a Controller Pak and then loaded onto a player's character in multiplayer, thus creating a virtual representation of the player. Although Rare officially said that the feature was dropped due to "technical issues", the real reason was revealed to be "sensitive issues" surrounding the ability to attack images of real people.