The Operative: No One Lives Forever (abbreviated as NOLF) is a first-person shooter video game developed by Monolith Productions and published by Fox Interactive, released for Windows in 2000. The game was ported to the PlayStation 2 and Mac OS X in 2002.
A story-driven game set in the 1960s, No One Lives Forever received critical acclaim for its stylistic representation of the era in the spirit of many spy films and television series of that decade, as well as for its humor. Players control female protagonist Cate Archer, who works for a secret organization that watches over world peace. In addition to a range of firearms, the game contains several gadgets disguised as ordinary female fashion items.
At the time of its release, many reviewers considered No One Lives Forever one of the best first-person shooters since 1998's Half-Life. After receiving several Game of the Year awards in the press, a special Game of the Year Edition was released in 2001, which included an additional mission on a remote island in the South Pacific. The Operative: No One Lives Forever was followed by a sequel, No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way, in 2002, and a spin-off titled Contract J.A.C.K. released in 2003, both developed by Monolith.
A re-release of the game has been hampered by the complicated state of the series' intellectual property (IP) rights, with even parties assumed to be in possession of the IP having publicly admitted not knowing the precise legal situation of the series.
Gameplay
No One Lives Forever is a first-person shooter which includes elements of a stealth game. The player takes on the role of Cate Archer, a fresh agent for the secret organization Unity, sent on various missions. Most, but not all, missions can be solved in multiple ways: using sneaking to avoid danger or by going in with direct gunfire.
A stealthy approach can be taken to evade security cameras, guard dogs and other obstacles. Enemies are aware of noise made by the player, including footsteps and weapon fire, and they also react to footprints in the snow, and dead bodies left lying around. To aid in stealthy approaches, Cate gains access via Unity's "Toy Shop" to a variety of spy gadgetry disguised as female accessories, such as a barrette that can be used for lock picking, sunglasses that include a miniature camera, exploding lipstick, and sleep-inducing perfume.
The game features a wide variety of firearms, ranging from pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles, and a briefcase rocket launcher. Some of the weapons can be loaded with different types of ammunition, including standard full metal jacket bullets, dum dum rounds that expand on impact and cause bleeding damage, and phosphorus-coated tracer bullets that continue to burn upon impact. Silencers and scopes can also be fitted on some weapons.
In various sections of the game, the player can ride a motorcycle, or a snowmobile. Other segments of the game involve boss fights. If the player chooses to be stealthy, they can overhear humorous conversations between non-player characters, such as guards, scientists and civilians.
The missions in the game are littered with "intelligence items": briefcases, envelopes, and manila folders containing textual notes which often provide humorous side-notes and helpful hints to the game. The collection of intelligence items is optional. Special power-ups, called "gear" items, are also available for collection during the game, such as "fuzzy slippers" that reduce noise made by movement, earplugs that reduce damage from explosions, and a fire extinguisher that protects the player from burn damage. These gear items are sometimes located in hard-to-reach areas. At the start of each mission, the player can choose which weapons, gadgets and gear to take with them. Some intelligence and gear items cannot be collected on the first playthrough of the game, as the necessary gadgets to reach them are not unlocked until later in the game. If the player wants to collect these items, they have to revisit the mission with the appropriate equipment.
At the end of each mission, the game displays various statistics, as well as any awards and bonuses earned during the mission. Awards are humorous textual notes given for the player's performance during a mission; these include awards for using a very low or a very high number of bullets, or a "Thanks For Not Getting Hurt Award" for avoiding damage. The player also receives a rank, such as "Trainee" or "Super Spy", which is based on the number of intelligence items obtained during the mission. Achieving a high mission rank increases the player's maximum health, armor and ammo capacity, as well as stealth, the amount of inflicted damage, and the accuracy of their shots.
No One Lives Forever also includes multiplayer gameplay online or over a local area network. There are two multiplayer modes available: standard deathmatch, and "H.A.R.M. vs. UNITY", a capture the flag-like mode where each team attempts to sneak into the enemy team's base, finding and photographing a target item, and returning to their own base with the evidence.
Plot In 1967, the secret international organization Unity, whose purpose is to protect the world from megalomaniacs, discovers over half of their elite agents killed by Dmitrij Volkov, a Russian assassin working for the terrorist organization H.A.R.M. Unity's leaders, Jones and Smith, bring up Cate Archer, a novice and the first female Unity agent, and her mentor Bruno Lawrie to investigate H.A.R.M. Their first mission to Morocco is revealed as a trap set by Volkov, and Bruno is shot while Cate escapes to Unity headquarters. Jones and Smith reveal that Bruno likely was a traitor, helping H.A.R.M. to target their agents, an accusation Cate denies.
Cate is assigned to escort East German biochemist Dr. Otto Schenker to England, but they are ambushed midflight by another H.A.R.M. agent, Magnus Armstrong, who kidnaps Dr. Schenker but allows Cate to live as she is a fellow Scotsman. Back at Unity, Cate is partnered with American Tom Goodman and tasked to recover Dr. Schenker. Their leads take them first to a Hamburg nightclub owned by Igne Wagner, but they narrowly evade another H.A.R.M. attack, revealing Wagner is a H.A.R.M. agent. Cate and Tom then track down a cargo freighter that Unity believe contain chemicals tied to Dr. Schenker's work. They are initially ambushed by Armstrong and other H.A.R.M. agents, resulting in the sinking of the freighter. After escaping, Cate scuba dives to the freighter to obtain the cargo manifest, escaping again from more H.A.R.M. henchmen under Armstrong's and Wagner's orders. The manifest links to a manufacturing firm owned by Baron Archibald Dumas, who claims he has no ties to H.A.R.M. Cate and Tom infiltrate the manufacturing plant. Cate manages to locate the records related to the chemicals being manufactured at the plant before facing off and killing Wagner; while departing, Cate witnesses Tom being shot by Volkov.
Back at Unity headquarters, the recovered documents reveal that Dr. Schenker's work is a biological explosive that can be injected into a target, where it feeds off the body before causing a large explosion. H.A.R.M. begins to use this explosive in public incidents to make demands from the world. Unity has Cate travel to Washington, where she is able to secure Dr. Schenker from H.A.R.M. agents and take him to a secret Unity base. There, Dr. Schenker reveals the antidote for the explosive is stored in H.A.R.M. space station. Cate manages to disguise herself as a member of H.A.R.M. and board the space station, recovering a large sample of the antidote and escaping as the station is destroyed by a meteor shower.
Cate brings the antidote to Unity, and then seeks out the list of infected people. She suspects that Dumas' wife, Baroness Felicity Dumas, is the mastermind given her access to the manufacturing plant, and travels to the Dumas' château in the Swiss Alps. There, she is captured by Armstrong, and the Baroness gloats that Cate has already been infected by Wagner several days earlier. Dismayed by the Baroness' plans, Armstrong decides to defect from H.A.R.M. and helps Cate escape to locate the Baroness' secret lair, where Cate finds more antidote as well as the list of infected people. As she leaves the château via a gondola lift, Volkov appears and the two have a gun duel, which causes an avalanche and sends Volkov over a cliff edge. At the village at the base of the mountain, the Baroness tries to stop Cate, but Cate again wins in a gun fight. The Baroness reveals she also injected herself and only has a short time to live, and Cate rushes through the village to get the civilians to safety before the Baroness explodes.
Jones and Smith congratulate Cate on a job well done. She visits Bruno's grave, but is ambushed by Tom, who reveals he was the true traitor within Unity. Cate subdues Tom and arrests him, but then Smith arrives and shoots Tom before aiming his gun at Cate. Jones arrives, along with Bruno, revealing that Smith was the true traitor within Unity, taking revenge for being pulled off field work by joining H.A.R.M., killing the real Tom years earlier and replacing him with a H.A.R.M. doppelgänger. Smith tries to shoot Cate but she has the upper hand and kills Smith.
In a post-credits scene, it is revealed that Volkov survived the avalanche and reports back to H.A.R.M.'s mysterious Director, a middle-aged drunk man who Cate has seen several times in different countries during the game.
Production Development Work on No One Lives Forever started in 1998, after the release of Monolith Productions' previous game, Shogo: Mobile Armor Division. Craig Hubbard, game designer for Shogo and NOLF expressed that Shogo "(although critically successful) fell embarrassingly short of original design goals", and "it is a grim reminder of the perils of wild optimism and unchecked ambition" exercised by the relatively small development team. The team (which included approximately 18 core members during development of NOLF) was determined not to make the same mistakes again with their next game. Describing the pressure on Monolith, Hubbard said that they "were still trying to live down the stigma" of their 1998 game, Blood II: The Chosen, which had been prematurely released buggy and unpolished, and that the company "had a lot to prove, both to ourselves and the gaming public."
Signing a contract with a publisher was a very difficult task for Monolith. Development had been going on for months, and the project had been approved by different publishers four times, before they were able to actually sign a deal with one. During this long time for finding a publishing partner, No One Lives Forever "mutated constantly in order to please prospective producers and marketing departments. The game actually started off as a mission-based, anime-inspired, paramilitary action thriller intended as a spiritual sequel to Shogo and ended up as a 60s spy adventure in the tradition of Our Man Flint and countless other 60s spy movies and shows." This final theme for the game was settled on through discussions with Fox Interactive, the final publisher of NOLF. (Parts of the initial "paramilitary action thriller" concept evolved into F.E.A.R., another Monolith game, released after the NOLF series, in 2005.) Monolith's producer for the game, Samantha Ryan, said that before the deal was signed, "here was a period where Monolith was two weeks from death. And Jace Hall closed the deal with Fox Interactive that basically saved the company."
After finally signing a contract with Fox (with whom partnership was announced to the public on August 24, 1999), the team was able to draft a mission statement, which stood as a point of reference during every aspect of developing the game.