Prerelease Facility

Early Model

Very early render of the bottling room from GoldenEye: Decoded probably viewed in the GameGen software running on a SGI workstation. A lot of the geometry is similar to final with the notable exception of the conveyor belt being one long connected belt instead of being split into two belts like final. You can also see beta glass for the laboratory windows. The bottling tanks and doors were likely not yet objects and still part of the background. The various signage seen around the room in the final game had not been made yet.

Most bottling tanks were once stacked in columns as will be seen better in shots below.

Nintendo Power Volume 93

This issue of Nintendo Power from February 1997 gives us a very interesting look at Facility showing many differences from the released game.

The old Rocket Launcher model covers so much of the screen we can't even tell if the door consoles are in place yet. Wall textures are very different in prerelease, with the white texture 02D3 being used. Curiously the final gray texture, 011B, does appear on the corner of the security room. Perhaps the process of swapping textures had just started.

Objects such as the desks, chair, and glass are missing. Hazard stripes had not be added to the window frame yet. We also see the level used Russian Infantry instead of Russian Soldiers. The guards in the security room wore helmets instead of pilotka hats. The guards are in different positions than the final game and also two of them run out of the room upon "seeing" Bond in the released game. I think it's likely that at this stage in development the real Dr. Doak had not yet worked much of his scripting magic on Facility.

We know precisely which texture was used for the walls in prerelease Facility because the developers forgot to replace it in a few places. The GoldenEye developers did not have the luxury of an automatic texture replacement tool and had to manually go through every triangle and do it themselves. Understandably they missed some places including the walls in these screenshots.

Another shot near the security room showing the old white walls. A Scientist stands where none does in the final game.

The bathroom had a very different style in early 1997 with white walls, beige tile ceiling, and rusty steel stall doors. It looks like the no smoking signs had yet to be added. You can also see a gun sticking through the rightmost stall door. In the final game that guard is moved to the stall one over to the left.

One of the tanks was given yellow vertex colors to add a bit of color to a very gray level. There is also a Scientist standing where none does in the final. It seems that in this version of GoldenEye the Scientists did not yet work at their terminals. In fact the terminals don't seem to be there at all. You can just barely see one on the far left of the final screenshot while the prerelease one lacks it.

This interesting screenshot shows how the bottling room tanks were once stacked two high. I wonder if the top row was removed because it was just too tedious to blow them all up. We also see more Scientists standing around. The catwalk in the back had four supports removed. The exit doors appear extremely dark and the level does not have any fog yet.

MundoRare Archive

These screenshots are dated between summer 1996 and early 1997. The fact that we see Russian Soldiers instead of Russian Infantry makes me think these were taken after the screenshots from Nintendo Power. I wonder just how old those Facility screenshots are in the February 1997 issue of Nintendo Power.

Level texturing here looks final. The most notable difference, aside from the old KF7 model, is the lack of fog.

We can see a texture change in the bottling room where the white texture was swapped for darker textures. The supports beneath the catwalks are gone in the final version. There is no glass in the laboratory windows, not even beta glass like in the GameGen picture, so the developers were probably getting ready to place the window objects.

The developers missed a spot beneath the door to the side room where the white texture still exists.

In this shot it appears that the exit conveyor is missing or maybe even a destroyed object. It's very strange.

I wonder if the developers experimented with different configurations for the conveyor belt because players who hadn't seen the GoldenEye movie had trouble figuring out they were supposed to exit the level through the conveyor belt. Was Facility's second exit through the doors added because of this? Just speculating.

This shot of the stacked tanks shows them all intact despite the explosions. I wonder if they had yet to be converted to objects here. We also see the guards wearing pilotkas instead of helmets. It is possible to lure this many pilotka guards into the bottling room in the final game and that may be what happened here because I'm a bit doubtful the sequence with Trevelyan, Ourumov, and the infinitely respawning helmeted guards had been set up yet. Finally there is a Scientist standing in the back. It seems a couple Scientists used to hang out in the bottling room in prerelease.