CoLdOwN

So thanks to a little article from about 7 years ago: https://www.pcgamesn.com/no-one-lives-forever-s-cutting-room-floor-revealed we know that many things were cut, not fully implemented or polished in NOLF 1. But what it doesn't tell you is that A Man of Influence has got to be the most cut, unfinished and/or unpolished mission of them all, mostly because of scene 1. Not only does it have the strictest stealth requirements of any mission in the game, but there are quite a few things that are cut, unfinished or even unclear. This mission also got the most changes in the PS2 version. Some things were made more clear or streamlined, but not the cut or unfinished stuff I'm mentioning here. The Avoid Detection Objective: About a year before that article, I made a topic asking how to achieve the "Avoid Detection" objective that remains unchecked even after the whole mission is completed. It's worth noting that an old walkthrough said that, while there does not appear to be any consequences for not achieving it, it can be achieved by having a score of Detected = 0 at the end of the whole mission. But I have tried this and it doesn't work, even with the Detected, Disturbances Caused and Bodies Found stats all at 0 (a perfect stealth score). While this objective might be intended more so as a mission parameter as called in NOLF 2, usually in NOLF 1 even objectives like that get checked off at the end of the whole mission if you achieved them. Hidden or Broken Objectives: Also in that topic, I mentioned that there's a hidden objective to "leave everything as you found it". After you find the evidence linking the Baron to Harm in his office, press the remote again so that the evidence recedes back into the floor, and then close all the other things you opened to get into the office (the metal grate, stairs and bookcase). This completed objective will appear in your objectives list, along with a new objective: "Turn the alarm system back on". However this objective can't be completed, because the lever in the security office that you used to turn the alarm system off can't be used to turn it back on. This must have been cut or unfinished. Maybe because they thought it would be too tedious or hard to get back to the front desk with the alarm system back on and a guard now in the men's restroom (he goes there after putting out a fire you create for a distraction). Even closing the metal grate of the office is a bit tedious. While neither of these objectives are required to complete the mission or get all the intelligence items, they are related to the overall narrative of not letting Harm or the Baron find out about your mission. Maybe they were also supposed to be related to the Avoid Detection objective, and maybe the intelligence item you get at the end (from Tom?) was meant to be given to you only if you complete those extra objectives, but since they were cut or not finished it's just given to you anyway. The Unusable Elevator and Courtyard: The NOLF Wiki mentions this one but I'll leave my own comments about it here. In Dumas Private Office (or the area leading to it), there's a door that leads to an elevator, but the elevator doesn't work. By glitch clipping or cheating, you can see that the elevator would have gone down to an area that connects to the courtyard outside the conference room with the scientists. From the conference room you can see the door to that area and a camera above it. Both the door and camera work, though the camera stays on even after you turn off the alarm system and can still spot you. The courtyard is a neat little area and maybe it was going to have a purpose, but there's nothing to do there and there's no way back inside without glitching or cheating. The Receptionist in the Restroom: Now for the big one. This is something I recently discovered. At the beginning of the mission, Cate slips laxatives into the receptionist's drink which causes her to run off to the woman's restroom (the door is locked and you can hear sounds coming from the restroom at certain spots). Cate says that should keep her busy for about 10 minutes, but there's no 10 minute limit or anything similar for this level. Normally this isn't unusual for a game since there's no timer to explicitly indicate that it's a timed mission. But I discovered that there's actually a trigger for the door to unlock and the receptionist to walk back to the front desk, which causes you to fail the mission and receive a "You took too long" message! The thing is, to trigger it you have to glitch clip or cheat to get into the locked restroom and use sleep (not stun) gas on the receptionist (she really is in there). Shortly after she wakes up and regains her bearings, the door will unlock and she will walk back to the front desk, as long as you don't frighten her to duck for cover (such as by shooting) or use sleep gas on her again (which makes her search and patrol like a guard after she wakes up again, despite her being friendly and not able to "find" you). So that got me wondering if the receptionist would eventually finish up and walk back to the front desk on her own after a certain amount of time, which would mean there's a time limit for this level. You can tell how much time the game says you spent in a mission by pulling up the mission stats and looking at "time spent in mission". Nothing happened after an hour went by, so I tried an hour + 10 minutes but still nothing. So then I left the game on for awhile so that I had spent over 5 hours total in the mission, and still nothing. Even the same sounds were still coming from the restroom after all that time. This leads me to conclude that originally or at some point, it was planned for the receptionist to return to the front desk after a certain amount of time, but it was cut or never fully implemented. Maybe because they thought it would be too hard or undesirable to put a short time limit on this mission, and there's not much point in putting a long one (like an hour or more). Or maybe because of other complications, like the ways you could stop her from returning, or whether you should fail the mission if she sees you somewhere other than the front desk on her way back, and players not even being aware of her returning (without a timer or being in the same area at the time). Another reason I wondered about that was because there are a few hand clocks on the wall in this mission that actually work. Well the minute hand does, but the hour hand doesn't and just stays on the 2. The minute hand starts on the 10 so the time on the clock looks like 1:50 (despite the opening scene of the mission stating that the time is 8:30 am). So after 10 minutes goes by it looks like 2:00, and after an hour goes by it looks like 1:50 again. But I guess it's just for show and there's no significance behind it.

In Rendezvous in Hamburg Scene 1, the club Das Einsame Valkyrie has a bouncer that claims the club is full despite hardly any people being in it, usually 1 or 2 per room other than Cate (who went in despite it being full). But what adds to this and is more eyebrow raising is that there's an intelligence item that claims the club has a fire hazard limit of 2 persons per 20 square feet. Now the NOLF wiki suggests that this is an excuse for or poking fun at the game's old and limited engine. But coincidentally it's like an early form of social distancing. 20 square feet is about 4.5 feet horizontally and vertically. Surprisingly, that's exactly in the middle of the 3 feet minimum recommended by the World Health Organization and the more cautious 6 feet recommendation from some countries. While that limit would allow 2 people to be closer than 4.5 feet, a 3rd person would have to be farther than that from at least one of them. The plot of NOLF 1 has some surprising pandemic similarities, even with the Covid-19 pandemic. It involves finding an "antidote" to stop people from being "infected" so they don't die (explode) and kill others near them. As Dr. Schenker described, the infection is undetectable (at least at first), feeds on organic material and spreads more in densely populated areas. Sound familiar? Ironically Cate gets infected when she's in the club, and she doesn't show symptoms of being infected (burping) until nearly 10 days later. 10 days is also how long it can take for people to show symptoms of Covid-19 or test positive for it (even up to 14 days). Of course the difference with NOLF 1 is that it's a bio-weapon used to infect people in a selective, controlled manner to cause an explosion, and it's the explosion that spreads on its own. But still, there are quite a few surprising parallels if you think about it.

Yeah I think keeping the traditional weapon quickslots is good. I still use the default quickslots when I play. But what you might be able to do is make new versions of the P38 and Luger in different weapon slots, and change the default quickslots of the original P38 and Luger to them. All the other quickslots could still be the same. Otherwise you could make new versions of those pistols in different weapon slots without changing the quickslots, but then by default the quickslots would still be for the version that can come without the silencer. Why does damage need to be changed at all? I assume the difficulty is set to normal (although will there be a way to change it?) On normal enemies don't do crazy damage (except for the rare explosives if they land close to you) and a lot of their shots miss you. Machine guns can hurt more from prolonged exposure but you're not supposed to let them hit you that much. Fire/Poison is fine as is. I think fire does damage faster but poison lasts longer and makes aim less accurate. If Arrow/Spears do health-eating damage and it lasts longer, enemies might die in one hit even if not hit on the head. So that might be overpowered. That's what explosive arrows or other explosives are for. I don't think the Revolver needs a scope either. It wasn't supposed to have one (did Revolvers even have scopes back then?) and it would make the last boss fights easier than intended. Scopes are what sniper rifles and the crossbow are for.

Forgetting or not being aware of the original intent would indeed mean the writers made a mistake. I doubt they lost any sleep over it either. But all these years later and seemingly no one had pointed it out yet, I thought I would and see what others think, and if anyone else had noticed. At first I didn't pay much attention to the story either, but at some point I did and I've played through these games a lot. It was a long time ago when I first noticed though.

No one may have brought this up before. It's a subtle detail that is easily overlooked, but it's a seemingly inconsistent detail in continuity between Nolf 1 and Nolf 2. In Nolf 1, Cate is confined in a cell but convinces Armstrong to let her out and fight her. After Cate beats him, she says "I owe you." and Armstrong replies "That you do. Don't forget it either." Cate even asks "one more favor" of him by convincing him to tell her where the Baroness keeps the List of Names. The game is clearly saying that Cate owes Armstrong, not to mention the fact that Armstrong had also previously spared her life 3 times. Fast forward to Nolf 2, when Cate asks Armstrong to help her infiltrate Harm's India branch. He hesitates, saying he pretty much washed his hands of international intrigue. But Cate replies "You owe me." and Armstrong replies "Ah, don't start." but then he gives in and helps her out. Nolf 2 completely flips the script by saying it's Armstrong that owes Cate. Why? Because she gave him a reason to leave Harm and didn't have him arrested? It still doesn't make sense to flip the script like that. Even if we were to weigh the things they've done for each other at that point, it seems Armstrong had done more for Cate than she had for him, so she should've still been the one owing him. Or at best, they'd be even. Maybe the developers made a mistake in one of those cutscenes? It doesn't seem like the sort of thing that'd be done on purpose as a joke. You'd have to realize what was said and by who in Nolf 1, and it's likely to just cause confusion since you still wouldn't know why it's inconsistent.

Not ported no, but to answer the topic creator's question, people have emulated it. But the PS2 version is generally considered inferior due to the lack of quicksaves, gear selection at start, multiplayer, mods, other missing features and performance issues. What someone should really do instead is extract those 3 levels (and maybe the music) and get them to work on the PC version. Along with that game's version of A Man of Influence Scene 3 (which is Scene 5 in that version) for the secret underground shooting area, and the pen dart weapon that was added. Better yet, if a mod could add them to the singleplayer missions at the proper time, rather than having to load them like a standalone custom level. This came up years ago and is long overdue, but the files on the PS2 disc are in .irx format.

So the player that enemies notice first should still get attacked, at least if they shoot first. It works like that in NOLF 2's co-op too, the difference is just that enemies may also go after other players they notice without them having to shoot first. But part of the issue may also be that NOLF 1 doesn't have as good a stealth system as NOLF 2. Once enemies hear a gunshot, they instantly know where the player (or host) is and it's hard to make them lose track of you at that point. If they try chasing you but you put some distance between them and remain out of their line of sight long enough, they can sometimes lose track of you, but that doesn't work if they just stay in one spot and wait for you to come to them. Some enemies' vision are even linked to other enemies, meaning if one sees you or gets shot without dying, they all instantly know where you are even if there wasn't any loud gunshots. Oh yes that's true too, but that's actually not what I was referring to. I was referring to the mission objectives that show up when you press the view objectives button during a level (by default it's the letter O key). Some also show up on screen at the start of the level, or when you complete an objective or get a new one. I was wondering if these objectives still show up on screen and/or if the view objectives button still works in multiplayer? Because they're especially important in some missions. For example in Berlin by Night Scene 1, it's not the mission briefing, but the objectives that tell you when or where to find a contact, answer a telephone, what room to ring and door to knock on, and when the game will let you "bribe" the guard to let you in the compound. Without being able to see the objectives, one player would probably need to already know this stuff or look it up. But other times the objectives are pretty obvious or straightforward like in your example of Unexpected Turbulence. The objectives tell you to head to the cockpit specifically, but it's already clear that you're supposed to investigate. Yeah that's more reasonable, because the Luger normally isn't as good as the P38 or Revolver, and the Delisle (or Hampton Carbine) is normally only good as a stealth weapon. But the Delisle actually shoots faster than the Corrector, so letting the Delisle fire the Corrector's explosive ammo may actually make the Corrector obsolete. Especially if you let the even faster shooting and better scoped Dragunov (or Geldmacher) fire explosive ammo. I think that if anything, just having the Delisle and Dragunov ammo be interchangeable and keeping the Corrector's ammo separate makes more sense. That way the Corrector still has a purpose and the other sniper rifles don't become overpowered. That alone will let the Deslisle use Phosphorous rounds, and it'd still have its purpose of stealth over the faster shooting Dragunov. But this also means any enemy with a Luger will deal poison damage, doesn't it? Or is there a way to apply it only to players' Lugers? There's a considerable amount of enemies with Lugers in some missions, though it wouldn't be as big a deal as every enemy with an AK-47 dealing phosphorous damage. The Antitoxin item does make you immune to poison damage (though not it's aiming impairment), but it's rare since it's another item that is meant to be equipped before the start of a mission. So you'd have to cheat for it to have it in most levels where it'd be of any use. I also realized that if you make the P38 and Luger have a silencer by default, wouldn't that mean the enemies with those guns would have silencers too? Again unless you can apply it only to players' guns. The enemies normally don't use silencers because unlike the player, they're supposed to make noise when spotting and shooting you. It's possible that some nearby enemies who would normally hear their gunshots wouldn't because of the silencers.

Ah yes I didn't think of that as a possibility, but I like that better. That's how it works in deathmatch, Contract Jack and a certain NOLF 1 trailer. I wasn't suggesting that the barrette never resulted in a 1-hit-kill from behind, just that I seemed to remember it not always working or sometimes only after the poison takes effect, like maybe on a guard leaning on a wall. But after testing it again it did result in an instant kill in all my tests, so maybe I had just missed the head when it didn't work. But still prefer that idea of keeping fisty cuffs the default weapon and letting them do damage from the front. I don't think the default ammo should be changed for weapons that enemies have, and if you nerf special ammo damage then it'd also be nerfed for players using it. Will there be a way to change the difficulty? Because enemies do much less damage on lower difficulties than they do on higher difficulties. Honestly most weapons don't need a default ammo change either if any. Machine guns and the Geldmacher can kill enemies pretty fast or deal lots of damage to you with just standard ammo. Weapons like the P38, Crossbow, and Hampton Carbine aren't meant to be as powerful in combat because they are quiet (or have a silencer) and meant more for stealth. Besides the P38 and Crossbow can still use special ammo to be more potent in combat. Bandages are rare because they don't heal you in this game, they make you immune to dumdum round damage. Once you find them, they become an option to equip before you start a mission in singleplayer. Normally there's no way to heal health within a mission other than when you beat a boss. You don't even heal when getting to the next level of a mission. Though in multiplayer you heal when starting a new level, and as you said you can adjust the settings to have armor also give health. Also, other than on the Low Earth Orbit mission, the majority of enemies actually don't have special ammo, but the ones that do usually have dumdum or phosphorous rounds. Later missions have a few enemies that have poison or explosives, but it's just a few other than some bosses and minibosses. But there are many enemies with an AK-47. If you change the default ammo to phosphorous for the AK-47, any enemy with an AK-47 would have phosphorous rounds, including Volkov and a miniboss. The AK-47 already eats away at armor and subsequently health with just standard ammo. The Fire Extinguisher doesn't even stop all phosphorous damage, it can still stack up and eat away at health. I don't think any enemies have a crossbow though, just the scuba speargun in one mission. There's also some enemies that have a Luger or Parabellum. Defaulting it to poison ammo would make all enemies with one deal poison damage, unless you can do it only for the silenced Parabellum. When you say normal FMJ bullets for everything else except the Bacalov Corrector, surely the Lipstick Explosives, Grenade Launcher, Briefcase and Laser Guns would also still be using their own special ammo and not FMJ bullets right? Other than maybe the standard Laser Gun if you don't want it to ignore armor, because all enemies on the Low Earth Orbit mission have a standard Laser Gun. But again only a few enemies in the game have a grenade launcher or explosives. I don't think any have a Bacalov Corrector, Briefcase or Super Automatic Laser Weapon. Ah I didn't know that you didn't figure out how to start players with more than one weapon, but that includes the default weapon plus a weapon that you choose players to start with right? But still, yes you'd have to cheat for certain gadgets or gear on certain missions anyway. That'd also mean that on every new level, you'd lose all your weapons other than the default and the one chosen for players to start with right? That might explain why you'd want the default weapon to be able to do damage from the front. But weapons, gadgets, armor and ammo boxes lying around on levels do respawn right? Though probably not weapons and ammo dropped by enemies. Having different lighters to play the mission briefing audio files is creative. But what about the current in-game mission objectives and when they update? I mean the ones that are viewable when you press the view objectives button, but many also appear on screen when you first get them. They serve as more clear guidance for missions than mission briefings, especially for new players or players who don't remember the mission. Some even serve as parameters like avoiding detection, not letting an alarm sound or not killing anyone. Some missions might still be straightforward, but others might not be without seeing the objectives. Are you saying you may also use lighters for playing background music? It wouldn't be ideal for triggering music normally triggered by NPCs, but it could still be played as background music. As for getting enemies to target other players more often than the host, isn't that what players going in first and shooting first is for? That's generally how you can control who risks taking more damage in co-op anyway. Or do the enemies still go after the host even if the host never shot at them? Or if the host never even got in the enemy's line of sight?

I don't think music was intended for deathmatches. It wasn't just intended as background music, it was intended to emphasize the casual, sneaky, tense and action moments in singleplayer, based on enemy state and sometimes distance from you. That wouldn't exactly translate well for real players in deathmatches. At best it might give an indication of if there's another player within a certain distance of you, but that could be considered cheap or undesirable. Remember that co-op wasn't an intended mode for multiplayer either, just deathmatch and Harm vs Unity. You could still argue that they should've let you play purely background music, but it was the first NOLF game and in the year 2000. Also they did include a co-op mode in the sequel. I know the first game has many preferred aspects over the second, but the developers and publisher at the time were probably hoping that people would move on to the second game. Without poison and no fisty cuffs? Even with poison I've had the Barrette not result in a 1-hit kill from behind, or only after the poison takes effect. Yes while aiming at the head. I noticed it happening when a guard was leaning on a wall. Maybe it can miss sometimes in certain situations. Without poison it also wouldn't do as much damage from the front, possibly not much at all. So it wouldn't be as useful in combat since you'd take more damage before killing someone, especially on higher difficulties. It'd also be worse than fisty cups for the Armstrong fight, because it doesn't attack as fast and deals the same damage to him. Why not just start players with a poison barrette and fisty cuffs so they can keep both the poison and non-poison option? I mean this is NOLF 1 we're talking about right? Weapons shouldn't be removed or nerfed if you can help it. With keeping the poison barrette, you should also keep fisty cups as the default weapon because of one of the boss fights. For some of the bosses you weren't meant to have poison or special ammo when fighting them and it depletes their health instantly, but the poison barrette would really only be a problem for the last boss fight. Inge Wagner and Armstrong aren't affected by poison and special ammo damage, you can't get close enough to Volkov to hit him with the barrette, and the Baroness normally gets defeated in 3 hits anyway (you actually can get dumdum rounds while fighting her, which defeat her in 1 shot). That leaves Tom, who gets defeated in 1 hit from the poison barrette. For these fights other than Inge Wagner's, the game removes all but the default fisty cuffs, and a revolver with standard ammunition in the last 2. Players attacking civilians is a whole other issue not just isolated to the poison barrette. That's actually another thing that keeping fisty cuffs may help with (at least as an option if not the default weapon), because the chance of fisty cups accidentally killing civilians is very low, even lower than a non-poison barrette. It requires hitting them on the head while they're standing up. But I'd think it'd be rather obvious to players that they shouldn't be swinging their barrette at or near civilians. I'd be more concerned with players shooting civilians on accident, which includes special bullets like poison. Even more so with players accidentally hitting them with an explosive weapon, maybe due to underestimating its blast range, misinterpreting a lipstick explosive's throwing arc, or having it bounce the wrong way. But unless you want to remove all these kinds of weapons or remove the game over trigger for killing civilians (or unclassify them as civilians), it's just part of the game that players have to deal with. The poison barrette is no exception and shouldn't get singled out. But maybe it's possible to remove explosive weapons and barrette poison only for levels that involve killing enemies near civilians. No need for levels with just out of the way civilians, contacts or Unity agents, or for levels that don't involve killing enemies.

Ah this is the level with the Armstrong fight. Not surprising. You may have gotten past it or moved on at this point, but I'll provide some solutions anyway. It just so happens that about 2 years ago I made a post about ways to beat and even trivialize this fight here: The relevant part is "The Armstrong fight may seem tough, but there are some tricks and ways to make it easier. First, this fight is much easier on lower difficulties not just because he'll do less damage, but because he'll have less health too. Armstrong is actually the only one whose health is affected by the difficulty chosen. Also, while he's close enough to you he won't try to throw explosives, so if you can jump on top of something like a bed, wooden board or even his head (possible while he slams the floor or by jumping off something else) and stay close enough to him, he will keep trying to punch you but will keep missing. Meanwhile you can keep hitting him until he's beaten. There's also the simple technique of hitting him once or twice, then backing away and waiting for him to try to punch you, and then moving in to hit him once or twice again and repeat. If he's about to slam the floor then jump, and if he's about to throw explosives then run to minimize the damage you take. That's probably the real way to do it." But it's also not surprising if you got stuck on the part after that. Your weapons and gear were taken from you, but to complete the level you have to get past some guards and a lock on a door that must be welded off. Luckily your gear is being kept in a room that you can get to without having to get past many guards. Go through the double doors and into the building. You will get to a fork in the hallway that goes left and right (there's also a coin around here that you can pick up to distract guards). Go left which leads to a balcony outside. Avoid being spotted by the searchlight and guard on the other side (or don't, but other guards may also get alerted) and jump across the balcony to the big window opening in the wall. You'll have to jump from a spot that can reach it. In this next room your gear and a weapon are on a table, but there's also a guard there. If you haven't been spotted yet, you can sneak up and karate chop him on the head to kill him. Otherwise just run over to the table, pick up the weapon and shoot him. Other guards may also come to the door and shoot you through the fence if they hear gunshots. Make sure you pick up all your gadgets, and you can unlock the fenced door from this side. You should be able to get through the rest of the level at this point, but at the end the way to the next level is hidden. When you beat Armstrong he tells you that it's behind a woodpile. There's also a few more secret passages in later levels.