Well, I just conclusively proved that somebody involved in level design on the gamecube version of Nightfire had no clue what they were doing.
Those of you who have played the gamecube version (maybe versions for other consoles as well) should remember a mission called Chain Reaction. (the sniper map) You may also remember that in the second map a sizable portion of the ground in the main area is made of metal, like it was covering a pit.
Today I was doing a runthrough of the map, and when I got to the roof of the final building and went to go into the windowed building where some of the snipers were, (An optional part for some bonus items and a 007 bonus after gold) I managed to glitch out the game.
You know how in some areas you can press action to do a 3rd person move to cross a ledge? You know how there's one up there? Well, I guess I jumped before doing it, but when I entered it, the camera was further ahead than it usually was, at a smaller angle, and no bond. I could still move ahead with the C stick as per usual, but when I reached the end of the ledge, I found myself below the map looking up. I wasn't falling, but I couldn't get back up. That's when I spotted the pit. The floor was of equal elevation to me, so I walked towards it. I clipped back into the map through the walls, and I promptly died.
So I guess at one point there was a pit you could fall into and die instantly from, but they decided to get rid of it because it hindered gameplay. One problem, they didn't actually get rid of it, just covered it up. It's still there, still taking up space, still being rendered, and it still has the console Nightfire engine equivalent of a trigger_hurt taking up entity space. This is extremely inefficient for a commercial game from such a large company, and it shouldn't have happened. EA, I am dissapointed.
Still a good game, just one more flaw to the list.
tl/dr:
GCN Nightfire has a big inefficient trigger_hurt pit from the beta still in it.
I could completely beleive the console versions used goldsource as well, if it weren't for the fact that the PC version is completely different, more low-res, poorly animated, has worse gameplay, low quality sound, etc. There's really nothing in the console versions Goldsource couldn't handle if you tried to get it to.