ABSTRACT
This chapter lays out the history of shooter design leading up to Half-Life. For most of that history, shooters used a style of design much closer to the modern arena style than to cover shooters. That is, the player and enemies were frequently thrown into a large room, and the enemies would slowly converge upon the player's position. Half-Life and its multiplayer incarnations are, for the most part, not arena shooters. Still, the single-player campaign shows some of its Quake lineage through the arena theme. Half-Life is a transitional game. The designers had just invented modern cover, and so the distinction between cover and arena situations is sometimes a little murky. Usually, though, the player's experience of arena set pieces is much different from the cover set pieces, however they may appear.
