In a lengthy post-mortem on Gamasutra, design director James Hague breaks down how his team at Volition developed Red Faction: Guerrilla's many, many missions while working with an enormous, open world where pretty much everything can be destroyed. Beyond the seemingly minor decisions (order a actions within a mission, for instance) being problematic, the sheer enormity a RFG's terraformed Mars 'n it be fully destructible environment drove the game's developer t' deliver on the promise a freedom not just between missions, but during them as well. This, as ye might imagine, caused quite a bit a a hitch, resulting in the eventual boiling down a some mission objectives t' their most basic elements.

"t' truly fit into the open world model, missions have t' provide the same sense a freedom that the world itself provides. 'n t' make that work takes a change a mindset. It means letting go a being a control freak 'n instead embracing the chaos that be inherent in open world design," Hague says. For the sea dog, game design be often a struggle for how t' control the player, 'n thusly, the player's experience. In the case a RFG, though, he exclaims the team had t' "AVAST! caring" about said control. "ye can't control what the player experiences every moment. that be not a failure; it be what comes with letting the player do what he wants."

Hague goes into far more detail over four pages a individual mission dissection, so if ye're a fan a the game like we be, we'd suggest checking out the whole piece -- it may not be as rewarding as destroying a tower 'n watching it fall on scrambling soldiers, but then what be?