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Really? I always felt Half-Life 2 mixed it up a lot..
You go from cat-and-mouse running to the airboat, to fighting zombies in raveholm, to driving hte buggy down the highway battling combine, to fighting through antlions, to fighting WITH antlions, to battling combine with the turrets, to fighting alongside AI allies, to the big strider battle, and then more combine with ai allies, and then finally the end with the blue gravity gun.
I'll also go on record as saying I didn't hate HL2, I had a lot of fun with it. I just don't think it's the second coming like people make it out to be. It's just like Halo 2 in my eyes - another really well done FPS, no more no less.
And I expect people will bitch at this reply because they can't accept that I don't think the ground it walks on is golden.
Short of your opinion that Halo 2 is a good game, I agree with all of the above.
I'll also go on record as saying I didn't hate HL2, I had a lot of fun with it. I just don't think it's the second coming like people make it out to be. It's just like Halo 2 in my eyes - another really well done FPS, no more no less.
And I expect people will bitch at this reply because they can't accept that I don't think the ground it walks on is golden.
You create kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy when you say that people are going to come and yell at you and then follow that up with a totally dickish statement.
Really? I always felt Half-Life 2 mixed it up a lot..
You go from cat-and-mouse running to the airboat, to fighting zombies in raveholm, to driving hte buggy down the highway battling combine, to fighting through antlions, to fighting WITH antlions, to battling combine with the turrets, to fighting alongside AI allies, to the big strider battle, and then more combine with ai allies, and then finally the end with the blue gravity gun.
Yeah, which is largely why I pushed through both games. Lots of neat stuff. But by the end of the sewer crawl at the start, or the hovercraft or buggy sections, or by the end of the prison, I was really worn out of what was currently going on. Ravenholm and the ending part are exceptions to this.
Part of this might be because Valve was so intent on having a continuous, unbroken first-person narrative. If you're not having cutscenes or time transitions, it does just take a while to get to a new locale if you want the world to feel at all realistic.
Insight: Half-Life 2's story is not told in First Person. Half-Life 2's story is told in Second Person.
Quickie English Lesson Review
First Person: "I"
Second Person: "You"
Third Person: "They"
If HL2 was told in First Person, your character would have no name. Its abilities, actions, and choices would all be defined by you: i.e. Vampire The Masqueade: Bloodlines. "My name is Alicia. I am a Brujah Vampire living in Santa Monica. Yesterday, the Prince told me to go into the museum and recover an artifact called the Ankaran Sarcophagus. . ."
On the other hand, if it was told in third person, the character would have a voice. Its abilities, actions, and choices would be defined by the game, through cutscenes and such. "His name is Master Chief, a Spartan Soldier for the UNSC. He has just crash-landed on an alien world. Above, he can see the menacing forms of Covenant Dropships incoming. . ."
HL2 tells the story in second person. The character's abiltiies, actions, and choices are already predetermined, but the game gives him your voice, your perspective. HL2's story is told like this: "Your name is Gordon Freeman. Thirty years ago, you foiled an alien invasion and made a bargain with a mysterious individual in a cheap blue suit. Today, you just woke up on a weird-ass train heading into a city you've never seen before in your life. As you get off the train, you see. . ."
I'll also go on record as saying I didn't hate HL2, I had a lot of fun with it. I just don't think it's the second coming like people make it out to be. It's just like Halo 2 in my eyes - another really well done FPS, no more no less.
And I expect people will bitch at this reply because they can't accept that I don't think the ground it walks on is golden.
You create kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy when you say that people are going to come and yell at you and then follow that up with a totally dickish statement.
Not at all
we had this exact same discussion a few days ago and that's what happened. In fact, this thread is a spin off of the previous thread. I posted basically the same thing I posted above, sans the "people are gonna bitch" line and people bitched. I'm cutting them off at the pass.
I first played Half Life 2 the minute it went up on steam (that day was also my birthday). There is a lot to be said on how epic Half Life 2 was for everyone that year but one thing that I really appreciated was the online delivery. This was my first experience with that kind of system and when you live three hours away from a game store of any kind it just adds to the appreciation.
I usually revisit the game every time I make a hardware update and around August of 2007 I finally got to see the game in wide screen and it was like brand new again. But as far as scenes goes, over the years some are more forgettable than others ( I'm so fucking sick of Ravenholme) but the one thing that always makes the game grand for me is being chased by the helicopter in the sewers. God damn do I love this game.
I remember the "Doom 3 Vs Half-Life 2" debates that bubbled up everywhere, including on this forum. Such strange times.
ProTip: You can get the experience of Doom 3 by playing any FPS game you fancy with the monitor turned off, turning it on again briefly every couple of minutes, and asking a friend or relative to jump out of a cupboard at random intervals.
Well, I'm playing HL2 for the first time right now. My opinion is that it's really good! I think it actually helps that I never played Half-Life: as a result, from my perspective every single scrap of background information is gold. I'm all motivated to Figure Things Out and Understand the Setting, which works well because the setting is portrayed v. well from the moment you... sort of... warp... on to that train.
Major flaw: Highway 17. My escape from City 17 was intense. The characters I met were endearing. The interlude with Eli, Alyx, and Dog felt good. Ravenholme gave me major creeps.
And then this! I hated the stupid go-cart (so much less fun than the water thing), I hated the stupid ant-lions, I hated the stupid Combine and I hated tightwalking on the stupid bridge. The beginning of Nova Prospekt was also sort of bland and uninteresting. It was this long awful lonely trudge with no plot and no purpose. Ick. I just met up with Alyx again, and my God was I pathetically glad to see her. :P
Also -- though I'm not really an FPS person and I'm playing on Easy -- I think there is some merit to the claim that the combat is clunky. Or not visceral. Or something. When I kill something I don't have the sense of satisfaction I get when I kill something in Mass Effect or in Halo 1. Exception: Grav gun + saw blade. Woot!
Oh, and on a positive note, I did get a great sense of nausea killing things in Ravenholme. It was so... wrong... hearing the zombies scream while they burned.
2004...the year of physics, ATI 9800 Pro cards, presidential debates, YTMND.com, and pictures of Gabe Newell demanding two dozen krispy kremes with a plzkthxs.
I remember the "Doom 3 Vs Half-Life 2" debates that bubbled up everywhere, including on this forum. Such strange times.
ProTip: You can get the experience of Doom 3 by playing any FPS game you fancy with the monitor turned off, turning it on again briefly every couple of minutes, and asking a friend or relative to jump out of a cupboard at random intervals.
You must have some ugly friends/relatives.
To be fair, Doom 3 was really fun for the first couple of hours. Then you realized that that was pretty much the whole game and (if you were like me) level-skipped to the last part. Quake 4 had a similar problem where the best part was in the beginning, though I managed to stick with that one better.
I don't understand the people who didn't like it, except maybe to say did you not play these games when they first came out?
I'm going to try to answer your question in as clear a way as possible, without inciting a flame war.
1. I found the story boring. I will admit I played Max Payne first, and that spoiled me for good fps stories.
2. I found the weapons boring. Duke 3d/Shadow Warrior spoiled me for this.
3. I found the combat/movement pretty clumsy.
I will admit that I finished neither of the Half-Life's, but I did play both for several hours. But my basic opinion was this - it was passable in all areas, and looked very pretty, but ultimately there was nothing compelling there to keep me playing.
If you played Max Payne first, then that means you didn't play half Life until 2 years after it came out. I think once again it's worth saying that this is probably a massive contributer to people not liking the half life games. I think this may be in part because of the way half life set a lot of trends that people copied, so it didn't look as original in lieu of what came after it.
You're wrong. Some people didn't like it at release. It's not because of <insert random excuse here>. It's because they didn't like it. Period. You're not going to change their minds, it's just their opinion.
I stated several times that it's just my opinion. Why exactly are we even discussing this if we're not trying to put across our opinions? I have no idea why we're on this forum if not expressing our opinions and providing arguments to back them up.
I remember the "Doom 3 Vs Half-Life 2" debates that bubbled up everywhere, including on this forum. Such strange times.
ProTip: You can get the experience of Doom 3 by playing any FPS game you fancy with the monitor turned off, turning it on again briefly every couple of minutes, and asking a friend or relative to jump out of a cupboard at random intervals.
You must have some ugly friends/relatives.
To be fair, Doom 3 was really fun for the first couple of hours. Then you realized that that was pretty much the whole game and (if you were like me) level-skipped to the last part. Quake 4 had a similar problem where the best part was in the beginning, though I managed to stick with that one better.
There was a part in the middle where it stopped being a shitty survival horror game just serves you with straight up, balls to the wall action. Eventually they take your weapons away and the survival horror bullshit starts up again, but in that brief interval Doom 3 is actually a good game. Honestly if the whole game had been like that, I probably would've enjoyed it more than HL2. It's a shame you missed it.
But HL2 has this weird, almost jovial atmosphere atmosphere in the beginning with everyone conversing with you and not being bothered by your stubborn silence. Everyone is happy to see you and there's the teleporter and it's great, but Gordon is just standing there, cold and unresponsive, killing all their fun. And that moment in the elevator with Alyx when there's that long pause (didn't she ask Gordon a question?) and then she says "A man of few words, huh?" made me want to slap the writers. Stoicism is one thing, but anyone would make some sort of minimal response in that pause. Except for Gordon Freeman, the hollow shell.
For whatever reason, Half-Life 1 had Gordon silent, so Gordon is stuck as an iconic silent protagonist. The moment he opens his mouth, he won't live up to anyone's imaginations. He won't be this awesome, mythological figure anymore. I think Valve's decision to have Gordon continue to be silent is pretty brave, really, and I think it was the right choice.
And whatever you think, "man of few words, huh?" was a fantastic moment. Don't knock it. It was the writers saying "Look, you know this is ridiculous. We both know this is ridiculous. But hey, run with it. It'll be fun." And it was really fun, for me.
Either you like the way Valve has carried off the silent protagonist technique or you don't. I think it's an issue nobody will really be swayed on by discussion. But even if you hate it, you have to admit it is at least a really interesting effect which raises a lot of questions about agency in videogames.
Though, people who say "he has no character because the player becomes him" are as wrong as the people who say "he has no character because he doesn't say anything".
Really the charm of Gordon Freeman is the way he exists entirely in the gaps between what we would normally call characterisation. The little pauses, the way people react as if he'd said something earlier, when he totally didn't. The way, when you think about it, a lone HEV-suited figure bringing down a Combine goddamn gunship really would elicit some measure of awe.
Gordon Freeman is basically the walking incarnation of Father Ted kicking bishop brennan up the arse, or Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks. Sure, technically he's just a Gordon-Freeman-shaped hole, but people react to him so convincingly you come to believe in him as a character, and he takes on a life of his own through his actions and the way he interacts with the world in the narrative. Whoever said that the player inhabits Gordon Freeman is exactly right - he's not the player, but he is possessed by them. It's infuriating for some, but for many of us that's what makes HL2 and the episodes a very unique experience.
And sure, the authorial intent for Gordon is all in the setup of the scene, but the player affects many details of the telling. I don't think Half-Life would be improved by allowing the player any control over the story, because successful or not, the whole point of Half-Life 2 is to be a rollercoaster ride.
In Half Life 2 you look through the eyes of Gordon. You cant affect anything he does. The amount of control you have over him is limited to wandering side to side in the corridor that is the linearity of the game. This is by design.
By having him not speak, and giving you the player movement control and look control during cutscenes, valve is giving the illusion of freedom and choice, when you have none at all.
You have things completely backwards. You affect everything Gordon does. Gordon does absolutely nothing that you, as the player, don't tell him to do. He watches the things that you watch. He listens to the things that you listen to. He feels the things that you feel. As a result of this, Gordon doesn't do things that you cannot do, like respond in words when a character talks to him. You do not look through his eyes. In practice, he is actually looking through your eyes.
You dont affect anything Gordon does other than the arbitrary choice of 'do I shoot all the enemies in this area or just some of them'
Half Life and HL2 especially are the most linear and narrowly scripted games on the market, bar none. The reason Gordon doesnt speak is because if he could he would say 'fuck this' at the first opportunity and do things better. The whole game is a chase sequence.
In Half Life 2 you look through the eyes of Gordon. You cant affect anything he does. The amount of control you have over him is limited to wandering side to side in the corridor that is the linearity of the game. This is by design.
By having him not speak, and giving you the player movement control and look control during cutscenes, valve is giving the illusion of freedom and choice, when you have none at all.
You have things completely backwards. You affect everything Gordon does. Gordon does absolutely nothing that you, as the player, don't tell him to do. He watches the things that you watch. He listens to the things that you listen to. He feels the things that you feel. As a result of this, Gordon doesn't do things that you cannot do, like respond in words when a character talks to him. You do not look through his eyes. In practice, he is actually looking through your eyes.
You dont affect anything Gordon does other than the arbitrary choice of 'do I shoot all the enemies in this area or just some of them'
Half Life and HL2 especially are the most linear and narrowly scripted games on the market, bar none. The reason Gordon doesnt speak is because if he could he would say 'fuck this' at the first opportunity and do things better. The whole game is a chase sequence.
Whoa there, Captain Hyperbole. You're referring to the same genre wherein Call of Duty won't let us open our own doors. ;-)
*** *** ***
Gina Cross: "All right, Gordon. Here you go. MP-5N Submachinegun with underslung M203 grenade launcher. Now, why don't you head to the range and try this bad boy out?"
Gordon Freeman: (picks up the gun and looks at it dubiously) "One question."
Cross: "Sure, what's up?"
Freeman: "Why a machine gun?"
Cross: "Hey, Black Mesa Regulations: everyone needs to be trained in basic firearms use. Besides, this might be the only time in your life you ever get the chance to shoot one of these things. Enjoy it."
Freeman: "Good point." <pulls back the bolt and takes aim>
*** *** ***
Random Scientist: "It's the military! We're saved!"
HECU: "We've got hostiles!" <shoots scientist>
Other Random Scientist: "Wait! Wait! We're not. . . aaaagh!" <dies>
<Freeman glances left and right, notices scientists freaking out. Picks up helmet of his hazard suit and runs for the soldier. Bullets bounce off his HEV suit, one of which cracks the visor, then he brings the crowbar down. Thump. Thump. Thump. We hear screaming, and see some blood spatter on the armor.>
<The scientists look up and see Freeman silently picking up the soldier's gun, then throwing away his new broken Hazard Suit helmet>
Another Random Scientist: "mmm. . . my God! You killed him."
Freeman: ". . . yeah."
ARS: "But that's. . . that's murder!"
Yet Another Random Scientist: "No, Judith, that was self-defense. Looks like the army doesn't want anyone getting out alive."
ARS: "Oh my God. . . what are we going to do?"
<Freeman just starts walking off.>
YARS: "Gordon! Where are you going?"
<Freeman pauses. He shrugs, then keeps walking.>
*** *** ***
<Surface Tension: Barney and Gordon are hiding in an alcove, waiting for the Helicopter to leave. Gordon has a snark in his hand and is teasing it with his finger.>
Barney: "Stop that."
Gordon: "Stop what?"
Barney: "Stop. . . that!" <gesturing> "We're hiding from angry soldiers who are trying to kill us in the middle of a goddamn alien invasion, and you're playing with some. . . some exploding alien. . . rat. . . parrot. . .bug thing!"
Gordon: "It's kind of cute."
Barney: "AAAAAAArrgh."
<long pause>
Barney: "Actually, it is kinda cute."
*** *** ***
<Outside the teleport chamber to Xen>
Barney: "Gordon. . . you excited? Scared at all?"
Freeman: <Shrugs>
Barney: "Seriously, man, not at all? Think about it: you're about to use a piece of alien technology to travel to another dimension and defeat an alien overlord who's invading Earth. That doesn't make you excited or anything?"
Freeman: "Not really."
Barney: ". . . man, you really know how to take the fun out of space travel."
Freeman: "I'm just doing my job." <picks up a shotgun and loads shells>
In Half Life 2 you look through the eyes of Gordon. You cant affect anything he does. The amount of control you have over him is limited to wandering side to side in the corridor that is the linearity of the game. This is by design.
By having him not speak, and giving you the player movement control and look control during cutscenes, valve is giving the illusion of freedom and choice, when you have none at all.
You have things completely backwards. You affect everything Gordon does. Gordon does absolutely nothing that you, as the player, don't tell him to do. He watches the things that you watch. He listens to the things that you listen to. He feels the things that you feel. As a result of this, Gordon doesn't do things that you cannot do, like respond in words when a character talks to him. You do not look through his eyes. In practice, he is actually looking through your eyes.
You dont affect anything Gordon does other than the arbitrary choice of 'do I shoot all the enemies in this area or just some of them'
Half Life and HL2 especially are the most linear and narrowly scripted games on the market, bar none. The reason Gordon doesnt speak is because if he could he would say 'fuck this' at the first opportunity and do things better. The whole game is a chase sequence.
Whoa there, Captain Hyperbole. You're referring to the same genre wherein Call of Duty won't let us open our own doors. ;-)
The 'corridor of linearity' in COD games, especially 4, is wider than Half Lifes. Like I said, HL does a great job of giving the illusion of openess and freedom when it is really a very very linear game.
Im not saying this is a bad thing, because I would completely agree its one of the best games ever made.
Linearity isnt a bad thing. Its only a bad thing when the gameplay is not fun, for Valve they have the talent to make it so it is fun, and in that way the linearity works as a benefit, guiding the player through the world and cutting the crap.
Edit: And it's Lieutenant Hyperbole now.
The_Scarab on
0
IceBurnerIt's cold and there are penguins.Registered Userregular
edited January 2008
I find the HL series entertaining, enjoy the "zen" (xen? bwahaha!) storytelling, think they're good, maybe great, but of course not perfect. In comparing Half-Life's episodes to HL2's, I prefer Half-Life's experience overall. The greater variety of enemies, weapons, and ... (it's very hard for me to describe this) ... something about the Black Mesa episodes, the pacing, and encounters was more pleasing.
Physics and the gravity gun are fun and cool, but I didn't find it engrossing enough to make up for the slightly smaller, slightly nerfed, and far less interesting pool of other weaponry as compared with Half-Life.
I've noted that the wider selection of unusual weapons in Half-Life, OpFor, etc. seems to mean nearly everyone can find an unusual favorite, but with HL2 if someone doesn't have fun with the gravity gun, the rest of the weapons are merely serviceable.
I feel the lesser variety in HL2's opposition and near-absence of mixed enemies and infighting also lessens how well it holds up well against its predecessor. "Leading" hordes of braindead, suicidal allies didn't quite make up for this.
In my experience, "On A Rail" is most described as the least-liked part of Half-Life. HL2 does much to improve on vehicles, but I think it was being tied to a vehicle at all that rubbed players the wrong way; my perception is that the vehicular segments of HL2 are also the least-liked parts.
Episode 1 improved HL2's experience, and my thoughts as to why are that you have one rather decent companion at most times, the encounters are less predictable and spiced up with new behaviours plus a great new enemy, you only ride something long enough to be thrown across a chasm, and the length of the game does not exceed the length of its content's entertainment value--it keeps that "new car smell" throughout.
I think that there are lot of people confusing opinions and ideas in this thread. Personally, I hate every FPS where we have a textured wall, even in multiplayer. Until the day comes where I can open and or break down any wall in the level to get an advantage on an enemy, I will never be truly happy.
Now concerning the silent protagonist idea that a lot of people have beef with, dialog can frankly be a superfluous waste of time in most cases. I get sick and tired of one liners and one reason I watch a lot anime and foreign films is that I can ignore the subtitles and no longer comprehend how stupid these people really are.
I would rather have a silent protagonist and a story that leaves me confused that a one-liner filled anal-fuckfest that spells out everything for me. Fuck, some of the greatest twilight zone episodes had little to no dialog.
Yes it gets annoying in several cutscenes but dammit, if there is nothing practical gain from someone talking and they don't add anything to the atmosphere, WHY HAVE THEM TALK?
Next person who posts with a complaint, name something you would have changed or substituted, give us what you would have done?
Edit:One complaint i do have with HL2 is that we never saw the combine enslave anything else from Xen other than the headcrabs. Are you telling me an alien empire wouldn't have uses for a giant, living, bipedal tank that fired hot plasma from its limbs, something that looked fashioned together in the way transhumans are would have sufficed, or them dudes with the hornet guns and the little alien guys. None of those a-holes were useful?
I just started playing this a week ago. I like it a lot. It is the first FPS game I have really played since the N64. I seem to like it for the reasons other people hate. Interesting debate.
Also, I never played the orginal nor knew anything about it, but was able to piece together what is going on. I should be a detective.
I would have added vo work for Gordon. Plenty of other FPS games pull off the no cutscene but protagonist speaking thing very well. Why not just have Gordon reply when people talk to him instead of hamfisting around it all the time with stupid lines like 'dont talk much do you' Well no actually, I havent spoken at all since I met you. Ever.
It doesnt add to the immersion, in my opinion it breaks it more as you are constantly aware that Gordon does not speak or interact in any way with other characters other than hugging Alyx at the start of Episode 1.
You are just a floating camera with a gun, adding a voice, even enhancing the visual of his arms (like when he puts on the HEV suit in HL2) to show his legs and body like in FEAR or Halo 3 would also be better.
Having Gordon not speak for me doesnt enhance the immersion, it breaks it as it reminds you that you have no control over what he does other than what direction his head is pointing in.
The_Scarab on
0
freakish lightbutterdick jonesand his heavenly asshole machineRegistered Userregular
Personally, I hate every FPS where we have a textured wall, even in multiplayer. Until the day comes where I can open and or break down any wall in the level to get an advantage on an enemy, I will never be truly happy.
I would have added vo work for Gordon. Plenty of other FPS games pull off the no cutscene but protagonist speaking thing very well. Why not just have Gordon reply when people talk to him instead of hamfisting around it all the time with stupid lines like 'dont talk much do you' Well no actually, I havent spoken at all since I met you. Ever.
Well to begin with, they only used that line literally once, in like the entire series to date. It was as Zetetic Elench said, just a little in-joke in a way, saying "yeah we know, but so what, go with it, it'll be fun." I actually lolled at that part because up until that point, until she actually MENTIONED it, I hadn't noticed at all. Because all that time my responses to the situation had been coming through. I was the person giving them.
It doesnt add to the immersion, in my opinion it breaks it more as you are constantly aware that Gordon does not speak or interact in any way with other characters other than hugging Alyx at the start of Episode 1.
[snip]
Having Gordon not speak for me doesnt enhance the immersion, it breaks it as it reminds you that you have no control over what he does other than what direction his head is pointing in.
And this for me is the EXACT opposite. The fact that Gordon never speaks really enhances the atmosphere and sense of involvement for me. Recently playing Crysis one of the most jarring things that took me right out of the game was having the main character speak. Having Gordon speak and utter one-liners and crap would do nothing for me in terms of character development (because Gordon isn't supposed to be a character) and would only serve to destroy my sense of immersion in the game. In my head I find myself constantly responding to what characters are saying, I don't need Gordon to do it for me.
So please just try to understand where we're coming from with this. You feel that this is something that breaks immersion in the game. We feel that having it the other way around would be the real deal breaker. Valve have come to a similar conclusion as well, which is why they've stuck with the constant design decision (this isn't a mistake, they're not trapped into it, they've said time and again it's a conscious effort and design element on their part) to have Gordon as silent protagonist.
I sorta assumed that Gordon was severely broken. Completely traumatized. Nobody ever notices, because he's Gordon Freeman!!! and they're all constantly wrapped up in saving Dad, building the perfect portal, etc., etc., but the dude clearly needs help and I'm constantly screaming at them to CLUE IN, PLEASE. Poor guy.
And whatever you think, "man of few words, huh?" was a fantastic moment. Don't knock it. It was the writers saying "Look, you know this is ridiculous. We both know this is ridiculous. But hey, run with it. It'll be fun." And it was really fun, for me.
Huh, I hadn't thought if it in such a meta way, that makes it better. Unless it is obvious that it's a deadpan joke (i.e. GlaDDOS), I tend to take everything in a game seriously because usually it is, and it's just bad writing that it's so ridiculous (i.e. "To war"). I guess it's the same sort of humor that made them make a crate the first thing you see and interact with.
I played HL a long time ago, am I supposed to remember anyone besides the bald scientist guy?
I played HL a long time ago, am I supposed to remember anyone besides the bald scientist guy?
Don't worry about having to 'remember' characters from HL. Anyone from Black Mesa will be introduced as such regardless (partly for the sake of new players, partly because you wouldn't recognise them anyway for either model differences or just the fact that you never actually saw them yourself).
In Half Life 2 you look through the eyes of Gordon. You cant affect anything he does. The amount of control you have over him is limited to wandering side to side in the corridor that is the linearity of the game. This is by design.
By having him not speak, and giving you the player movement control and look control during cutscenes, valve is giving the illusion of freedom and choice, when you have none at all.
You have things completely backwards. You affect everything Gordon does. Gordon does absolutely nothing that you, as the player, don't tell him to do. He watches the things that you watch. He listens to the things that you listen to. He feels the things that you feel. As a result of this, Gordon doesn't do things that you cannot do, like respond in words when a character talks to him. You do not look through his eyes. In practice, he is actually looking through your eyes.
You dont affect anything Gordon does other than the arbitrary choice of 'do I shoot all the enemies in this area or just some of them'
Half Life and HL2 especially are the most linear and narrowly scripted games on the market, bar none. The reason Gordon doesnt speak is because if he could he would say 'fuck this' at the first opportunity and do things better. The whole game is a chase sequence.
Whoa there, Captain Hyperbole. You're referring to the same genre wherein Call of Duty won't let us open our own doors. ;-)
The 'corridor of linearity' in COD games, especially 4, is wider than Half Lifes. Like I said, HL does a great job of giving the illusion of openess and freedom when it is really a very very linear game.
Im not saying this is a bad thing, because I would completely agree its one of the best games ever made.
Linearity isnt a bad thing. Its only a bad thing when the gameplay is not fun, for Valve they have the talent to make it so it is fun, and in that way the linearity works as a benefit, guiding the player through the world and cutting the crap.
Edit: And it's Lieutenant Hyperbole now.
Can you give some examples of how CoD4 is less linear than the HL series? When I played through it it seemed utterly linear in every way, in pretty much the same way that the HL series is. It seems like the only choices you could make are "do I shoot 10 of these infinitely respawning enemies before moving forward, or 10,000?" But perhaps I'm forgetting something.
Though I agree that it's not really a bad thing, either in CoD4 or in HL, or in Bioshock, or the vast majority of games that have ever been made. Telling a good story without being utterly linear is really hard, and there are very few game developers that have managed to pull it off.
I remember the "Doom 3 Vs Half-Life 2" debates that bubbled up everywhere, including on this forum. Such strange times.
ProTip: You can get the experience of Doom 3 by playing any FPS game you fancy with the monitor turned off, turning it on again briefly every couple of minutes, and asking a friend or relative to jump out of a cupboard at random intervals.
You must have some ugly friends/relatives.
To be fair, Doom 3 was really fun for the first couple of hours. Then you realized that that was pretty much the whole game and (if you were like me) level-skipped to the last part. Quake 4 had a similar problem where the best part was in the beginning, though I managed to stick with that one better.
There was a part in the middle where it stopped being a shitty survival horror game just serves you with straight up, balls to the wall action. Eventually they take your weapons away and the survival horror bullshit starts up again, but in that brief interval Doom 3 is actually a good game. Honestly if the whole game had been like that, I probably would've enjoyed it more than HL2. It's a shame you missed it.
If you want your Doom 3 to have action, just play in Nightmare mode. I was genuinely surprised - it felt like a completely different game.
You start out with the Soul Cube and permanent stamina, like in Hell. But every 5 seconds, it takes away 5 of your health (to 25). So basically, the entire game is one breakneck sprint trying to kill enemies as fast as you can to charge the Soul Cube and use it to take out another enemy to get you to 100 for the short sprint to the next bunch of enemies.
Completely nonstop action.
Anyway, on the topic of HL2, I was one of the weird ones. I absolutely adored the original Half Life, and have beaten it multiple times. However, I never got HL2 until the Orange Box came out and I plowed through everything (well, except Ep 2. I'm in the middle of it right now). I had a huge grin when I started up HL2, because it felt so good. I, admittedly, haven't toyed around with too many modern FPS (and I generally dislike dual analog controls, so I largely skipped the console ones although I have played some), but I can't agree with a lot of the complaints that have been made. The health/armor system didn't feel antiquated, and I never found myself backtracking - the point of the game is to play it, and there's nothing wrong about running forward with 60 health and no armor. I do agree with the weapons commentary, but what bothered me more was the lack of ammunition that you can carry. Yes, I know, realism in how much you can carry, blah blah. The alternate firing of the combine rifle was awesome, but you could only hold three. The crossbow is an awesome weapon, but only 10 rounds. The shotgun was great, but held so little ammo that I always found myself overlooking it because it ran out too quickly. Only 3 rockets total at a time. I suppose it was needed to make the strider battles more stressful, but even bumping to 5 wouldn't have hurt that too much - just made less trips to the eternally spawning ammo depots. More variety in weapons would certainly be appreciated, but it's not a deal breaker. But I mean - they mounted a gauss gun on the frigging car, why can't they give you a handheld one?
I liked the characters a lot as well, although I found myself to be anal about not wanting my sidekicks to die. As far as the storytelling was concerned, Gordon doesn't need voice acting, and yes, he talks. You can pick it up from the context that he doesn't talk much, but you're welcome to fill in the gaps yourself. More than once, I had reactions to what people said in my head, and then the characters responded exactly to what the voice in my head uttered. It's a far more rewarding method of storytelling than just watching a cutscene. I also concur on the whole moral ambiguity thing, and wish that it had been explored further. Perhaps later. Regardless, there was something just awesome about how everyone in this world treated you like a sort of legend, and the grin on my face when Barney tossed me the crowbar for the first time must have been enormous.
I do find some of the lack of continuity between the first and second to be jarring (others have already mentioned the lack of the grunt vortigaunts, for example). I'm hoping for them to return at some point in the future.
As for the game itself, Ravenholm seems to be over-revered, and I found it to kinda be the divider between the good and the poor. Everything up until then was gold. The flight from the helecopters, yes, even the portion on the hovercraft, was fantastic. Ravenholm was alright, but went on for too long, really. The mines were complete and total meh, and highway 17 was too drawn out and too boring. Nova Prospekt on, though, and particularly the end, were fantastic.
Episode 1 was just too many zombies, not enough variety, really. As mentioned, still in the middle of episode 2, but loving it.
But yeah. By far one of the better FPS that I'd played in years. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Why is being linear such a bad thing these days? I'm generally curious.
This is a very good question. I don't have a problem with the gameplay being essentially chapter-points in a story.
Different directions in game choices. Some people would prefer the full sandbox "everything is destroyable" direction - it truly does add to the gameplay, but it makes the sort of scripted events that Half-Life thrives off of nigh on impossible, because it becomes so much harder to predict how and where the player will be.
Basically, it's a design tradeoff, and one I generally appreciate in this case.
1) It's the sense of mystique that makes G-man such an interesting character. That is hardly a discredited technique. Kurtz, Heart of Darkness.
you're kidding, right? the only reason kurtz had any relevance or meaning to the story is that the protagonist (marlow) was in a position to reflect on this madman. what is it that corrupted him? what was so attractive about his madness? do you become terrified or enlightened by it all? conrad wrote the story well enough that through marlow the answers to these questions are clear, and we too learn something from kurtz. without marlow, we would learn nothing.
this is why stories need characters. written character under the author's control, not ours. again, protagonists are the funnel through which writers give their meanings. a protagonist's choices sometimes go against the choices that we would make because sometimes they have to - unless a character has some personal momentum and drive that's different to our own, we can't find ourselves in relation to them. we can't see them as another and judge the way that they are interacting with the world in order to come to conclusions about ourselves and other people - instead we get a cheap tool of observation, a 'spectator mode' where there's no central subject to spectate, immersive detail which has no relevance because the central character's emotional and mental position is completely arbitrary.
i'm not being stubborn here. i'm a storyteller, i take pride in it, i've had some small amount of success. i'm interested in the stories of games, and i'm interested in why they fail - and they often do. this one fails for me in a severe way - i want to figure out why.
i look for meaning when i am told a story, i ask myself what the author is saying to me. in half-life 2 the designers seem to be saying "create your own meaning". that's not what stories are about. i could walk down the street and give the world my own meaning. stories exist to say something, to have a subtext, so that the teller can share some meaning with the audience. that's impossible when the character at the core of the experience is completely arbitrary and left to the whim of the audience
edit: no, i didn't read the death of the author and get confused. if anything, barthe's theories work against hl2 because he was into the idea of a story having the entirety of its meaning embedded in the text itself and not anywhere off the page - not with the author, and certainly not with the reader. stanley fish he ain't. anyway i haven't studied death of the author in a few years, but it's interesting to consider - you'd still have more luck arguing in favour of hl2 from a reader response perspective, if you want a hint
G-man does have a certain special interplay with the player-character, more than any other character in the game.
However the lack of characterization causes it to remain a facile relationship based upon the player's frustration with the G-man's omnipotence. He is still nothing more than Deus Ex Machina at this point.
Well for one thing, Half Life 2 is a game, not a straight up story.
Second is the fact that you are meant to be taking the role of protagonist in the story, and as such imposing a character on him is something the developers made the choice not to do. And I honestly believe that has worked exceedingly well, as opposed to say, having me play Gordon but at the same time imposing this alternate persona on him, having him say things that I'm not interested in saying purely for the sake of giving him a seperate character to the player in this game.
Third is that as a result of the intent to make YOU (the player) the character as opposed to Gordon himself, you can't really call it a failing of storytelling. It's a way of making the storytelling more personal to the player in the kind of way only interactive entertainment can achieve.
EDIT: At least that's my take on it. I don't NEED Gordon to be a character for the game to successfully convey and give meaning to its story, because I am playing out that role.
Posts
You go from cat-and-mouse running to the airboat, to fighting zombies in raveholm, to driving hte buggy down the highway battling combine, to fighting through antlions, to fighting WITH antlions, to battling combine with the turrets, to fighting alongside AI allies, to the big strider battle, and then more combine with ai allies, and then finally the end with the blue gravity gun.
Short of your opinion that Halo 2 is a good game, I agree with all of the above.
You create kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy when you say that people are going to come and yell at you and then follow that up with a totally dickish statement.
Yeah, which is largely why I pushed through both games. Lots of neat stuff. But by the end of the sewer crawl at the start, or the hovercraft or buggy sections, or by the end of the prison, I was really worn out of what was currently going on. Ravenholm and the ending part are exceptions to this.
Part of this might be because Valve was so intent on having a continuous, unbroken first-person narrative. If you're not having cutscenes or time transitions, it does just take a while to get to a new locale if you want the world to feel at all realistic.
Quickie English Lesson Review
First Person: "I"
Second Person: "You"
Third Person: "They"
If HL2 was told in First Person, your character would have no name. Its abilities, actions, and choices would all be defined by you: i.e. Vampire The Masqueade: Bloodlines. "My name is Alicia. I am a Brujah Vampire living in Santa Monica. Yesterday, the Prince told me to go into the museum and recover an artifact called the Ankaran Sarcophagus. . ."
On the other hand, if it was told in third person, the character would have a voice. Its abilities, actions, and choices would be defined by the game, through cutscenes and such. "His name is Master Chief, a Spartan Soldier for the UNSC. He has just crash-landed on an alien world. Above, he can see the menacing forms of Covenant Dropships incoming. . ."
HL2 tells the story in second person. The character's abiltiies, actions, and choices are already predetermined, but the game gives him your voice, your perspective. HL2's story is told like this: "Your name is Gordon Freeman. Thirty years ago, you foiled an alien invasion and made a bargain with a mysterious individual in a cheap blue suit. Today, you just woke up on a weird-ass train heading into a city you've never seen before in your life. As you get off the train, you see. . ."
I hope this makes sense. Maybe it doesn't.
Not at all
we had this exact same discussion a few days ago and that's what happened. In fact, this thread is a spin off of the previous thread. I posted basically the same thing I posted above, sans the "people are gonna bitch" line and people bitched. I'm cutting them off at the pass.
I usually revisit the game every time I make a hardware update and around August of 2007 I finally got to see the game in wide screen and it was like brand new again. But as far as scenes goes, over the years some are more forgettable than others ( I'm so fucking sick of Ravenholme) but the one thing that always makes the game grand for me is being chased by the helicopter in the sewers. God damn do I love this game.
ProTip: You can get the experience of Doom 3 by playing any FPS game you fancy with the monitor turned off, turning it on again briefly every couple of minutes, and asking a friend or relative to jump out of a cupboard at random intervals.
For my part, I was referring to the perspective, visually, but I did say "first-person narrative", so fair enough.
Major flaw: Highway 17. My escape from City 17 was intense. The characters I met were endearing. The interlude with Eli, Alyx, and Dog felt good. Ravenholme gave me major creeps.
And then this! I hated the stupid go-cart (so much less fun than the water thing), I hated the stupid ant-lions, I hated the stupid Combine and I hated tightwalking on the stupid bridge. The beginning of Nova Prospekt was also sort of bland and uninteresting. It was this long awful lonely trudge with no plot and no purpose. Ick. I just met up with Alyx again, and my God was I pathetically glad to see her. :P
Also -- though I'm not really an FPS person and I'm playing on Easy -- I think there is some merit to the claim that the combat is clunky. Or not visceral. Or something. When I kill something I don't have the sense of satisfaction I get when I kill something in Mass Effect or in Halo 1. Exception: Grav gun + saw blade. Woot!
Oh, and on a positive note, I did get a great sense of nausea killing things in Ravenholme. It was so... wrong... hearing the zombies scream while they burned.
A simpler time.
You must have some ugly friends/relatives.
To be fair, Doom 3 was really fun for the first couple of hours. Then you realized that that was pretty much the whole game and (if you were like me) level-skipped to the last part. Quake 4 had a similar problem where the best part was in the beginning, though I managed to stick with that one better.
What's your point? MP came out in 2001, HL came out in november 1998, 2 years ish earlier..
I stated several times that it's just my opinion. Why exactly are we even discussing this if we're not trying to put across our opinions? I have no idea why we're on this forum if not expressing our opinions and providing arguments to back them up.
For whatever reason, Half-Life 1 had Gordon silent, so Gordon is stuck as an iconic silent protagonist. The moment he opens his mouth, he won't live up to anyone's imaginations. He won't be this awesome, mythological figure anymore. I think Valve's decision to have Gordon continue to be silent is pretty brave, really, and I think it was the right choice.
And whatever you think, "man of few words, huh?" was a fantastic moment. Don't knock it. It was the writers saying "Look, you know this is ridiculous. We both know this is ridiculous. But hey, run with it. It'll be fun." And it was really fun, for me.
Either you like the way Valve has carried off the silent protagonist technique or you don't. I think it's an issue nobody will really be swayed on by discussion. But even if you hate it, you have to admit it is at least a really interesting effect which raises a lot of questions about agency in videogames.
Though, people who say "he has no character because the player becomes him" are as wrong as the people who say "he has no character because he doesn't say anything".
Really the charm of Gordon Freeman is the way he exists entirely in the gaps between what we would normally call characterisation. The little pauses, the way people react as if he'd said something earlier, when he totally didn't. The way, when you think about it, a lone HEV-suited figure bringing down a Combine goddamn gunship really would elicit some measure of awe.
Gordon Freeman is basically the walking incarnation of Father Ted kicking bishop brennan up the arse, or Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks. Sure, technically he's just a Gordon-Freeman-shaped hole, but people react to him so convincingly you come to believe in him as a character, and he takes on a life of his own through his actions and the way he interacts with the world in the narrative. Whoever said that the player inhabits Gordon Freeman is exactly right - he's not the player, but he is possessed by them. It's infuriating for some, but for many of us that's what makes HL2 and the episodes a very unique experience.
And sure, the authorial intent for Gordon is all in the setup of the scene, but the player affects many details of the telling. I don't think Half-Life would be improved by allowing the player any control over the story, because successful or not, the whole point of Half-Life 2 is to be a rollercoaster ride.
You dont affect anything Gordon does other than the arbitrary choice of 'do I shoot all the enemies in this area or just some of them'
Half Life and HL2 especially are the most linear and narrowly scripted games on the market, bar none. The reason Gordon doesnt speak is because if he could he would say 'fuck this' at the first opportunity and do things better. The whole game is a chase sequence.
Whoa there, Captain Hyperbole. You're referring to the same genre wherein Call of Duty won't let us open our own doors. ;-)
Like the part where you get chased by the copper in Ep2... that was sexy as hell.
*** *** ***
Gina Cross: "All right, Gordon. Here you go. MP-5N Submachinegun with underslung M203 grenade launcher. Now, why don't you head to the range and try this bad boy out?"
Gordon Freeman: (picks up the gun and looks at it dubiously) "One question."
Cross: "Sure, what's up?"
Freeman: "Why a machine gun?"
Cross: "Hey, Black Mesa Regulations: everyone needs to be trained in basic firearms use. Besides, this might be the only time in your life you ever get the chance to shoot one of these things. Enjoy it."
Freeman: "Good point." <pulls back the bolt and takes aim>
*** *** ***
Random Scientist: "It's the military! We're saved!"
HECU: "We've got hostiles!" <shoots scientist>
Other Random Scientist: "Wait! Wait! We're not. . . aaaagh!" <dies>
<Freeman glances left and right, notices scientists freaking out. Picks up helmet of his hazard suit and runs for the soldier. Bullets bounce off his HEV suit, one of which cracks the visor, then he brings the crowbar down. Thump. Thump. Thump. We hear screaming, and see some blood spatter on the armor.>
<The scientists look up and see Freeman silently picking up the soldier's gun, then throwing away his new broken Hazard Suit helmet>
Another Random Scientist: "mmm. . . my God! You killed him."
Freeman: ". . . yeah."
ARS: "But that's. . . that's murder!"
Yet Another Random Scientist: "No, Judith, that was self-defense. Looks like the army doesn't want anyone getting out alive."
ARS: "Oh my God. . . what are we going to do?"
<Freeman just starts walking off.>
YARS: "Gordon! Where are you going?"
<Freeman pauses. He shrugs, then keeps walking.>
*** *** ***
<Surface Tension: Barney and Gordon are hiding in an alcove, waiting for the Helicopter to leave. Gordon has a snark in his hand and is teasing it with his finger.>
Barney: "Stop that."
Gordon: "Stop what?"
Barney: "Stop. . . that!" <gesturing> "We're hiding from angry soldiers who are trying to kill us in the middle of a goddamn alien invasion, and you're playing with some. . . some exploding alien. . . rat. . . parrot. . .bug thing!"
Gordon: "It's kind of cute."
Barney: "AAAAAAArrgh."
<long pause>
Barney: "Actually, it is kinda cute."
*** *** ***
<Outside the teleport chamber to Xen>
Barney: "Gordon. . . you excited? Scared at all?"
Freeman: <Shrugs>
Barney: "Seriously, man, not at all? Think about it: you're about to use a piece of alien technology to travel to another dimension and defeat an alien overlord who's invading Earth. That doesn't make you excited or anything?"
Freeman: "Not really."
Barney: ". . . man, you really know how to take the fun out of space travel."
Freeman: "I'm just doing my job." <picks up a shotgun and loads shells>
The 'corridor of linearity' in COD games, especially 4, is wider than Half Lifes. Like I said, HL does a great job of giving the illusion of openess and freedom when it is really a very very linear game.
Im not saying this is a bad thing, because I would completely agree its one of the best games ever made.
Linearity isnt a bad thing. Its only a bad thing when the gameplay is not fun, for Valve they have the talent to make it so it is fun, and in that way the linearity works as a benefit, guiding the player through the world and cutting the crap.
Edit: And it's Lieutenant Hyperbole now.
Physics and the gravity gun are fun and cool, but I didn't find it engrossing enough to make up for the slightly smaller, slightly nerfed, and far less interesting pool of other weaponry as compared with Half-Life.
I've noted that the wider selection of unusual weapons in Half-Life, OpFor, etc. seems to mean nearly everyone can find an unusual favorite, but with HL2 if someone doesn't have fun with the gravity gun, the rest of the weapons are merely serviceable.
I feel the lesser variety in HL2's opposition and near-absence of mixed enemies and infighting also lessens how well it holds up well against its predecessor. "Leading" hordes of braindead, suicidal allies didn't quite make up for this.
In my experience, "On A Rail" is most described as the least-liked part of Half-Life. HL2 does much to improve on vehicles, but I think it was being tied to a vehicle at all that rubbed players the wrong way; my perception is that the vehicular segments of HL2 are also the least-liked parts.
Episode 1 improved HL2's experience, and my thoughts as to why are that you have one rather decent companion at most times, the encounters are less predictable and spiced up with new behaviours plus a great new enemy, you only ride something long enough to be thrown across a chasm, and the length of the game does not exceed the length of its content's entertainment value--it keeps that "new car smell" throughout.
PSN: theIceBurner, IceBurnerEU, IceBurner-JP | X-Link Kai: TheIceBurner
Dragon's Dogma: 192 Warrior Linty | 80 Strider Alicia | 32 Mage Terra
Now concerning the silent protagonist idea that a lot of people have beef with, dialog can frankly be a superfluous waste of time in most cases. I get sick and tired of one liners and one reason I watch a lot anime and foreign films is that I can ignore the subtitles and no longer comprehend how stupid these people really are.
I would rather have a silent protagonist and a story that leaves me confused that a one-liner filled anal-fuckfest that spells out everything for me. Fuck, some of the greatest twilight zone episodes had little to no dialog.
Yes it gets annoying in several cutscenes but dammit, if there is nothing practical gain from someone talking and they don't add anything to the atmosphere, WHY HAVE THEM TALK?
Next person who posts with a complaint, name something you would have changed or substituted, give us what you would have done?
Edit:One complaint i do have with HL2 is that we never saw the combine enslave anything else from Xen other than the headcrabs. Are you telling me an alien empire wouldn't have uses for a giant, living, bipedal tank that fired hot plasma from its limbs, something that looked fashioned together in the way transhumans are would have sufficed, or them dudes with the hornet guns and the little alien guys. None of those a-holes were useful?
Also, I never played the orginal nor knew anything about it, but was able to piece together what is going on. I should be a detective.
It doesnt add to the immersion, in my opinion it breaks it more as you are constantly aware that Gordon does not speak or interact in any way with other characters other than hugging Alyx at the start of Episode 1.
You are just a floating camera with a gun, adding a voice, even enhancing the visual of his arms (like when he puts on the HEV suit in HL2) to show his legs and body like in FEAR or Halo 3 would also be better.
Having Gordon not speak for me doesnt enhance the immersion, it breaks it as it reminds you that you have no control over what he does other than what direction his head is pointing in.
Did you play Red Faction?
Well to begin with, they only used that line literally once, in like the entire series to date. It was as Zetetic Elench said, just a little in-joke in a way, saying "yeah we know, but so what, go with it, it'll be fun." I actually lolled at that part because up until that point, until she actually MENTIONED it, I hadn't noticed at all. Because all that time my responses to the situation had been coming through. I was the person giving them.
And this for me is the EXACT opposite. The fact that Gordon never speaks really enhances the atmosphere and sense of involvement for me. Recently playing Crysis one of the most jarring things that took me right out of the game was having the main character speak. Having Gordon speak and utter one-liners and crap would do nothing for me in terms of character development (because Gordon isn't supposed to be a character) and would only serve to destroy my sense of immersion in the game. In my head I find myself constantly responding to what characters are saying, I don't need Gordon to do it for me.
So please just try to understand where we're coming from with this. You feel that this is something that breaks immersion in the game. We feel that having it the other way around would be the real deal breaker. Valve have come to a similar conclusion as well, which is why they've stuck with the constant design decision (this isn't a mistake, they're not trapped into it, they've said time and again it's a conscious effort and design element on their part) to have Gordon as silent protagonist.
I played HL a long time ago, am I supposed to remember anyone besides the bald scientist guy?
Don't worry about having to 'remember' characters from HL. Anyone from Black Mesa will be introduced as such regardless (partly for the sake of new players, partly because you wouldn't recognise them anyway for either model differences or just the fact that you never actually saw them yourself).
Can you give some examples of how CoD4 is less linear than the HL series? When I played through it it seemed utterly linear in every way, in pretty much the same way that the HL series is. It seems like the only choices you could make are "do I shoot 10 of these infinitely respawning enemies before moving forward, or 10,000?" But perhaps I'm forgetting something.
Though I agree that it's not really a bad thing, either in CoD4 or in HL, or in Bioshock, or the vast majority of games that have ever been made. Telling a good story without being utterly linear is really hard, and there are very few game developers that have managed to pull it off.
If you want your Doom 3 to have action, just play in Nightmare mode. I was genuinely surprised - it felt like a completely different game.
Completely nonstop action.
Anyway, on the topic of HL2, I was one of the weird ones. I absolutely adored the original Half Life, and have beaten it multiple times. However, I never got HL2 until the Orange Box came out and I plowed through everything (well, except Ep 2. I'm in the middle of it right now). I had a huge grin when I started up HL2, because it felt so good. I, admittedly, haven't toyed around with too many modern FPS (and I generally dislike dual analog controls, so I largely skipped the console ones although I have played some), but I can't agree with a lot of the complaints that have been made. The health/armor system didn't feel antiquated, and I never found myself backtracking - the point of the game is to play it, and there's nothing wrong about running forward with 60 health and no armor. I do agree with the weapons commentary, but what bothered me more was the lack of ammunition that you can carry. Yes, I know, realism in how much you can carry, blah blah. The alternate firing of the combine rifle was awesome, but you could only hold three. The crossbow is an awesome weapon, but only 10 rounds. The shotgun was great, but held so little ammo that I always found myself overlooking it because it ran out too quickly. Only 3 rockets total at a time. I suppose it was needed to make the strider battles more stressful, but even bumping to 5 wouldn't have hurt that too much - just made less trips to the eternally spawning ammo depots. More variety in weapons would certainly be appreciated, but it's not a deal breaker. But I mean - they mounted a gauss gun on the frigging car, why can't they give you a handheld one?
I liked the characters a lot as well, although I found myself to be anal about not wanting my sidekicks to die. As far as the storytelling was concerned, Gordon doesn't need voice acting, and yes, he talks. You can pick it up from the context that he doesn't talk much, but you're welcome to fill in the gaps yourself. More than once, I had reactions to what people said in my head, and then the characters responded exactly to what the voice in my head uttered. It's a far more rewarding method of storytelling than just watching a cutscene. I also concur on the whole moral ambiguity thing, and wish that it had been explored further. Perhaps later. Regardless, there was something just awesome about how everyone in this world treated you like a sort of legend, and the grin on my face when Barney tossed me the crowbar for the first time must have been enormous.
I do find some of the lack of continuity between the first and second to be jarring (others have already mentioned the lack of the grunt vortigaunts, for example). I'm hoping for them to return at some point in the future.
As for the game itself, Ravenholm seems to be over-revered, and I found it to kinda be the divider between the good and the poor. Everything up until then was gold. The flight from the helecopters, yes, even the portion on the hovercraft, was fantastic. Ravenholm was alright, but went on for too long, really. The mines were complete and total meh, and highway 17 was too drawn out and too boring. Nova Prospekt on, though, and particularly the end, were fantastic.
Episode 1 was just too many zombies, not enough variety, really. As mentioned, still in the middle of episode 2, but loving it.
But yeah. By far one of the better FPS that I'd played in years. And there's nothing wrong with that.
This is a very good question. I don't have a problem with the gameplay being essentially chapter-points in a story.
Different directions in game choices. Some people would prefer the full sandbox "everything is destroyable" direction - it truly does add to the gameplay, but it makes the sort of scripted events that Half-Life thrives off of nigh on impossible, because it becomes so much harder to predict how and where the player will be.
Basically, it's a design tradeoff, and one I generally appreciate in this case.
you're kidding, right? the only reason kurtz had any relevance or meaning to the story is that the protagonist (marlow) was in a position to reflect on this madman. what is it that corrupted him? what was so attractive about his madness? do you become terrified or enlightened by it all? conrad wrote the story well enough that through marlow the answers to these questions are clear, and we too learn something from kurtz. without marlow, we would learn nothing.
this is why stories need characters. written character under the author's control, not ours. again, protagonists are the funnel through which writers give their meanings. a protagonist's choices sometimes go against the choices that we would make because sometimes they have to - unless a character has some personal momentum and drive that's different to our own, we can't find ourselves in relation to them. we can't see them as another and judge the way that they are interacting with the world in order to come to conclusions about ourselves and other people - instead we get a cheap tool of observation, a 'spectator mode' where there's no central subject to spectate, immersive detail which has no relevance because the central character's emotional and mental position is completely arbitrary.
i'm not being stubborn here. i'm a storyteller, i take pride in it, i've had some small amount of success. i'm interested in the stories of games, and i'm interested in why they fail - and they often do. this one fails for me in a severe way - i want to figure out why.
i look for meaning when i am told a story, i ask myself what the author is saying to me. in half-life 2 the designers seem to be saying "create your own meaning". that's not what stories are about. i could walk down the street and give the world my own meaning. stories exist to say something, to have a subtext, so that the teller can share some meaning with the audience. that's impossible when the character at the core of the experience is completely arbitrary and left to the whim of the audience
edit: no, i didn't read the death of the author and get confused. if anything, barthe's theories work against hl2 because he was into the idea of a story having the entirety of its meaning embedded in the text itself and not anywhere off the page - not with the author, and certainly not with the reader. stanley fish he ain't. anyway i haven't studied death of the author in a few years, but it's interesting to consider - you'd still have more luck arguing in favour of hl2 from a reader response perspective, if you want a hint
However the lack of characterization causes it to remain a facile relationship based upon the player's frustration with the G-man's omnipotence. He is still nothing more than Deus Ex Machina at this point.
Well for one thing, Half Life 2 is a game, not a straight up story.
Second is the fact that you are meant to be taking the role of protagonist in the story, and as such imposing a character on him is something the developers made the choice not to do. And I honestly believe that has worked exceedingly well, as opposed to say, having me play Gordon but at the same time imposing this alternate persona on him, having him say things that I'm not interested in saying purely for the sake of giving him a seperate character to the player in this game.
Third is that as a result of the intent to make YOU (the player) the character as opposed to Gordon himself, you can't really call it a failing of storytelling. It's a way of making the storytelling more personal to the player in the kind of way only interactive entertainment can achieve.
EDIT: At least that's my take on it. I don't NEED Gordon to be a character for the game to successfully convey and give meaning to its story, because I am playing out that role.