Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: Turnsky on August 21, 2006, 02:23:24 am
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okay, after much thought, particularly on the glut of WW2 based games out there, i've come to the conclusion that Game companies, Barring Bungie, valve, and a handful of other developers, are neglecting imaginative settings in favor of "Real World*" settings, case in point with the battlefield, call of duty, and the medal of honor series of games.
My feeling of this is that while other developers try (and maybe fail) at making a story or setting set in the future, alternate history or whatnot, the ones that make real war based games don't even try at all, and rip it straight out of a history book, and just concentrate on trying to get the "Feel" right. The Thing is, War is War, and it wouldn't matter if you're toting about a BFG, or a M1 Garand, if you get an Epic feeling into it, it might make all the difference between people seeing "a cool war game" or "yet ANOTHER WW2 game"
i mean, Killzone's early missions got it right, so why can't other developers?
It begins to feel the same after a while when you feel as though you're fighting the entire war all by yourself, and games shouldn't do that, really.
on another note, World War 2 wasn't the only war on this planet, and there's always alternate histories to play around with (see Iron Storm)
Hell, World War 2 set in the crimson skies universe would be a hoot.
alls i'm saying is, there's more out there to draw inspiration from than just a history textbook. :nod:
*Real world, meaning about as real as a reality television show.
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Quite so!
As you say, it's very easy (well, more straightforward) to refer to the hundreds of texts on events past and model the game on them using photos, news reels, props and even trips to the area - the result is a very real feeling but generally unoriginal game.
That said, is originality necessary for enjoyment?
I enjoyed Medal of Honor, I really did. It might have been based on real world events that have already happened but that made it no less fun to play. If anything the joy of WW2 based games is that you probably learnt about the events in a history class in school or heard the stories from a relative or something.. these events have a very real presence in the world.
On the other hand, a world like Halos etc. takes a lot more effort to create convincingly. You're not just creating a game - you're creating a world for that game. It's like writing a book for the purposes of making a movie - you have to feed a lot more information into it to get a wholesome outcome. That said, when you do get an outcome it can be much much more rewarding. Considering a graphics engine can display quite literally anything a games company is capable of doing with it, there's a lot of potential there.
However the risk of alienating the user by creating a world that they can't identify with is a danger - and a game that doesn't suceed will not only go down as a bad game but an unaccessable game.
On the subject of (in war games) being a lone rambo type charachter - I think a lot of that is down to game engines of the period. Untill now we simply haven't had enough power to create a good looking world with a lot of NPCs (on both sides) inhabiting it. To act convincingly these NPCs need code to make them work for/against the player and for/against themselves as well depending on your own actions and theirs. That's a lot more work than simply coding an enemy that only fights the player, or a scripted sequence between NPCs. More and more though (Call of Duty etc.) we're seeing squads of soldiers going against eachother in a more realistic fashion.
Who knows, perhaps some day soon we'll see a WW2 game that's so definitive that it totally dominates the genre for some time to come - and other games developers will be forced to put their efforts elsewhere as they simply cannot match its WW2 presence.
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Quite so!
As you say, it's very easy (well, more straightforward) to refer to the hundreds of texts on events past and model the game on them using photos, news reels, props and even trips to the area - the result is a very real feeling but generally unoriginal game.
That said, is originality necessary for enjoyment?
I enjoyed Medal of Honor, I really did. It might have been based on real world events that have already happened but that made it no less fun to play. If anything the joy of WW2 based games is that you probably learnt about the events in a history class in school or heard the stories from a relative or something.. these events have a very real presence in the world.
On the other hand, a world like Halos etc. takes a lot more effort to create convincingly. You're not just creating a game - you're creating a world for that game. It's like writing a book for the purposes of making a movie - you have to feed a lot more information into it to get a wholesome outcome. That said, when you do get an outcome it can be much much more rewarding. Considering a graphics engine can display quite literally anything a games company is capable of doing with it, there's a lot of potential there.
However the risk of alienating the user by creating a world that they can't identify with is a danger - and a game that doesn't suceed will not only go down as a bad game but an unaccessable game.
On the subject of (in war games) being a lone rambo type charachter - I think a lot of that is down to game engines of the period. Untill now we simply haven't had enough power to create a good looking world with a lot of NPCs (on both sides) inhabiting it. To act convincingly these NPCs need code to make them work for/against the player and for/against themselves as well depending on your own actions and theirs. That's a lot more work than simply coding an enemy that only fights the player, or a scripted sequence between NPCs. More and more though (Call of Duty etc.) we're seeing squads of soldiers going against eachother in a more realistic fashion.
Who knows, perhaps some day soon we'll see a WW2 game that's so definitive that it totally dominates the genre for some time to come - and other games developers will be forced to put their efforts elsewhere as they simply cannot match its WW2 presence.
true enough, look at wolfenstein though, it doesn't take -that- much of a stretch to add a definitive twist to the tale, sometimes all you need to do to make a game 'feel' original is to add a unique element to it.
and yes, whilst we didn't have the technology previously, it didn't stop the first call of duty (which had all the provision to have large scale squad combat) from using 'lone wolf' tactics in the latter british missions.
Quake 4 woulda benefited greatly from larger use of squad combat, although it was cool in its own right, Halo, etc, etc.
back to originality, here's an example, Take one WW2 game, Add zombies, and voila!, something somewhat different. not a teriffic example, mind you, but it gets my point across. The trick would be executing it right, of course.
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I thought Wolfenstein was one of the most boring and dull games I've ever had the misfortune to play.
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I thought Wolfenstein was one of the most boring and dull games I've ever had the misfortune to play.
maybe so, Aldo, but it -was- set in WW2, but yet it used various elements that set it apart from the other WW2 games that came later on.
i was merely using it as an example.
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I thought Wolfenstein was one of the most boring and dull games I've ever had the misfortune to play.
maybe so, Aldo, but it -was- set in WW2, but yet it used various elements that set it apart from the other WW2 games that came later on.
i was merely using it as an example.
Set it apart by being ****, though. RTCW was, as far as I'm concerned, nothing more than a mish-mash of tepid cliches that made it wholly unremarkable. I think we need to look for genuine innovation - and I don't think Nazi Zombies achieves that any more than, say, Nazi Aliens or Alien Zombies (like the Flood, who are a good example of screwing up a great concept.... we have swarms of drones, very exciting, and then suddenly end up with... space zombies).
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You do have a point though Turnsky.. what's to stop us placing you (the player) as a member of a squad in the British invasion force at Normandy. Your squad gets separated and lost in the northern French farmland. You come across a small deserted town and are promptly attacked by zombies/nazis etc. and uncover a vast Nazi effort to genetically improve humans etc.
Heck, you could forward this to modern day. As part of a secret group of amateur paranormal entheusiasts in America you get sent into (what turns out to be) an Area 51 type installation (think something like where Stargate is based or something). You sneak inside via stealth etc. and slowly uncover a twisty conspiracy to rival an X-Files story. All the weapons are based on the real thing etc. but you're shown just a little inventivness in the process.
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You do have a point though Turnsky.. what's to stop us placing you (the player) as a member of a squad in the British invasion force at Normandy. Your squad gets separated and lost in the northern French farmland. You come across a small deserted town and are promptly attacked by zombies/nazis etc. and uncover a vast Nazi effort to genetically improve humans etc.
Heck, you could forward this to modern day. As part of a secret group of amateur paranormal entheusiasts in America you get sent into (what turns out to be) an Area 51 type installation (think something like where Stargate is based or something). You sneak inside via stealth etc. and slowly uncover a twisty conspiracy to rival an X-Files story. All the weapons are based on the real thing etc. but you're shown just a little inventivness in the process.
precisely, hell you could have such events not to have anything to DO with nazis, just having them caught in the middle of something ancient and insidious, there's so many ways one could add a different twist to what's turning out to be an increasingly bland genre of gaming.
like, you could add something downright lovecraftian to the mix, or even go the route of doom, and so forth, and as you said, the area 51 type dealie (there was such a game, "area 51", main character was voiced by David Duchovony, ironically enough), i personally wish the talented developers would step off the bandwagon for once and do something that's even a little bit different.
Even adding something as creepy and psychological like from "FEAR" would work, too, especially if you had squad mates among you, just to see their fear to add further depth to the whole thing.
Aldo, i was using it as an -example-, i thought it was bland, too. Grey matter Development failed in the execution of what could've been rather fun, but since they were also following a bit of a legacy by way of Wolf3d, as with comedy, or a concept of something, it's all in the execution.
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Aldo, i was using it as an -example-, i thought it was bland, too. Grey matter Development failed in the execution of what could've been rather fun, but since they were also following a bit of a legacy by way of Wolf3d, as with comedy, or a concept of something, it's all in the execution.
Yeah, but it's indicative of the whole problem of 'originality'. Conspiracy-in-secret-base isn't original, really; original is leading a batallion of genetically modified vegetable soldiers across a blamange battlefield to fight an interplanetary was against an army of dinosaurs. We're still defining originality as a series of cultural 'touchpoint' mix-and-matches rather than genuinely new ideas; grabbing settings that exist and giving them a 'twist' rather than creating all new settings. That's my criticism of originality; generally speaking, it's not.
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Aldo, i was using it as an -example-, i thought it was bland, too. Grey matter Development failed in the execution of what could've been rather fun, but since they were also following a bit of a legacy by way of Wolf3d, as with comedy, or a concept of something, it's all in the execution.
Yeah, but it's indicative of the whole problem of 'originality'. Conspiracy-in-secret-base isn't original, really; original is leading a batallion of genetically modified vegetable soldiers across a blamange battlefield to fight an interplanetary was against an army of dinosaurs. We're still defining originality as a series of cultural 'touchpoint' mix-and-matches rather than genuinely new ideas; grabbing settings that exist and giving them a 'twist' rather than creating all new settings. That's my criticism of originality; generally speaking, it's not.
a fair cop.
maybe adding "element X" to the mix might not be the right way to go, we've seen 'ubersoldier' blah blah blah, Timeshift looks interesting, and so on, i mean, the problem is, that since developers don't seem to be willing to produce anything other than what's currently on the bandwagon, and while nazi zombie pirate ninjas might be the ultimate of clichè's, and conspiracies, etc, it'd still be different than what we've seen currently on the shelves, while i'd LOVE to see something truely original (Bioshock FTW), a Twist in the tale, while not completely original, would be refreshing enough for some people to not see just one more WW2 game.
Heck, you could take the splinter cell concept and apply it to a WW2 game, and it'd be different. not original, but different, you see my point, here?.
i think we can mostly blame the big publishers for these kinds of things (activision, EA), as they seem to only want a quick moneyspinner to satisfy the crowd, and not to satisfy original, creative thinking that makes games that are unique in their own right.
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Aldo, i was using it as an -example-, i thought it was bland, too. Grey matter Development failed in the execution of what could've been rather fun, but since they were also following a bit of a legacy by way of Wolf3d, as with comedy, or a concept of something, it's all in the execution.
Yeah, but it's indicative of the whole problem of 'originality'. Conspiracy-in-secret-base isn't original, really; original is leading a batallion of genetically modified vegetable soldiers across a blamange battlefield to fight an interplanetary was against an army of dinosaurs. We're still defining originality as a series of cultural 'touchpoint' mix-and-matches rather than genuinely new ideas; grabbing settings that exist and giving them a 'twist' rather than creating all new settings. That's my criticism of originality; generally speaking, it's not.
a fair cop.
maybe adding "element X" to the mix might not be the right way to go, we've seen 'ubersoldier' blah blah blah, Timeshift looks interesting, and so on, i mean, the problem is, that since developers don't seem to be willing to produce anything other than what's currently on the bandwagon, and while nazi zombie pirate ninjas might be the ultimate of clichè's, and conspiracies, etc, it'd still be different than what we've seen currently on the shelves, while i'd LOVE to see something truely original (Bioshock FTW), a Twist in the tale, while not completely original, would be refreshing enough for some people to not see just one more WW2 game.
Heck, you could take the splinter cell concept and apply it to a WW2 game, and it'd be different. not original, but different, you see my point, here?.
i think we can mostly blame the big publishers for these kinds of things (activision, EA), as they seem to only want a quick moneyspinner to satisfy the crowd, and not to satisfy original, creative thinking that makes games that are unique in their own right.
Bioshock is exactly the type of thing we need/want, indeed. I think sometimes developers do have original ideas, then step back and run away from them, sometimes. Like, take the world seen in HL2, but rather than a linear and rather straight shooter-with-zombies, spin it to be a tale of surviving within the shadows of a dystopia formenting a rebellion.
Of course, let's not forget the likes of Spore or Electroplankton, I guess.
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Bioshock is exactly the type of thing we need/want, indeed. I think sometimes developers do have original ideas, then step back and run away from them, sometimes. Like, take the world seen in HL2, but rather than a linear and rather straight shooter-with-zombies, spin it to be a tale of surviving within the shadows of a dystopia formenting a rebellion.
Of course, let's not forget the likes of Spore or Electroplankton, I guess.
Hl2's a good example of originality, particularly the new episodic content, i think it's a good way to go for such a thing, since they can release one chunk, guage the fan reaction, tweak it to suit, and so on, i haven't forgotten spore, either.
herin lies the issue, though, while these are original, there isn't enough originality out there, i mean, a while ago, we all saw psychonauts (at least you guys did, i have yet to lay eyes on it), touted as truely original, and yet, we haven't heard a peep out of their developers since.
Interplay, in its heyday was host to some really unique games, Giants, Fallout, baldur's gate, Freespace, while not really, really, original since xwing was about, it was refreshing and different enough in scale to be a sleeper hit, just didn't sell all that well.
of course, when you do original, you gotta do it right, there's been a great many of "different" games out there that got a lukewarm reception from the gaming community, or after releasting a unique, refreshing game, the developer goes bust trying to release another title (see Troika development, whom, after releasing Arcanum, developed Vampire: bloodlines, and soon went bust).
also, you don't see enough of a follow-through of what could've been a really good franchise, Take Freelancer, Starlancer, and even crimson skies, for instance, both really nice concepts, but wasn't given a chance to really follow through with a 'proper' sequel (i don't count "CS: high road to revenge" a sequel) to fix whatever flaws it would've had in its first iteration (with the lancers, it was more of an issue of ship scale, and since the devs went bust/assimilated by MS, no more from them), etc.
the Star-Trek: Bridge commander was another good concept with fairly 'meh' execution, just not followed through correctly.
all this talk about devs has reminded me of something i've thought about in the past, since "Halo 3" is gonna be Bungie's final in that franchise, what are they gonna do after that?.. keep going with that franchise?, or Resurrect the "Oni" franchise from gaming limbo?, etc
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herin lies the issue, though, while these are original, there isn't enough originality out there, i mean, a while ago, we all saw psychonauts (at least you guys did, i have yet to lay eyes on it), touted as truely original, and yet, we haven't heard a peep out of their developers since.
I've a theory behind that. Just because something is heralded as original, doesn't always mean it's welcome. Originality and "fun to play" do not necessarily come packaged with eachother - an original game can still be ****e - even if the basis is good.
I'll be honest, I don't think Half Life 2 has pushed the boundaries as much as it could. Look at the original of the series - Half Life. You saw all sorts of... well... everything really. There were bunkers, bases, train lines, science labs, reactors, military installations, rocket launch pads and the rest. And on top of all that they had an underlying storyline linking this massive linear yet well formulated setting together. As you travelled through Black Mesa you could look back and actually think "bloody hell, that was ages ago" - and actually feel physically distanced from where you've been already. Half Life 2 lacks an element of that variety for me as you spend most of your time in City 17 and the Citadel. Ravens Holm was a great break in this as you were suddenly out of the delapidated and (mostly) identical city and in a mostly destroyed, boarded up town. It was a noticable change in variety as you used to get in Half Life.
For me, Half Life is still very much a benchmark for immersion. From the word "go" you are Gordon Freeman. You're shoved into that charachter and there you stay for the whole damn time... seeing what Gordon sees and going through the motions. It's you that causes the resonance cascade - and when the confusion kicks off you already know your place in the world as a scientist in a secret facility that suddenly opened a door to another realm.
Half Life 2 (and so many other games) make the mistake of not explaining who you are and immersing yourself in the storyline before letting you go. I spent a good portion of HL2 thinking "I know who I am.. but what the hell is this place and how did things come to be this way?". I get that part of the storyline sees you torn out of Black Mesa and placed in holding for further use by G-Man etc. (apparently) but there felt like little real involvement in the process.
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HL2 was artistically emotive, but emotive of things we've already seen; name any post-apocalyptic movie or book and you 'see' (depending on context) the same scenes.
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i've been under the general opinion for the longest time that Valve tried to cover very sloppy storytelling with the whole "you know as much as gordon knows" pitch.
the game had gaping plot holes the likes of which i've never seen before, oh SURE you could LOOK at the various noteboards, etc. For example, i was able to ascertain that anywhere between 10-15 or so years are missing between HL1 and HL2, which fails to explain absolutely everything beyond the 7-hour war and ****.
Aldo, Setting has nothing to do with originality, you name it, it's been thought of before, i'd wager,
There's Post-Apoc
Pre-apoc
Steampunk
Cyberpunk
Fantasy
Future
Modern
Historical
all-of-the-above.
the list goes on, really. What matters most, is that one makes the best use of that setting, and create your own version of it. and thus making something really original.
of course, City 17 in its own right is your typical beat-up old soviet era city, buildings falling apart from years of neglect, and so on, so you have a point there.
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Aldo, Setting has nothing to do with originality, you name it, it's been thought of before, i'd wager,
Even blancmange world?
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Aldo, Setting has nothing to do with originality, you name it, it's been thought of before, i'd wager,
Even blancmange world?
there is loco-roco, your character is some kinda jelly-blob thing, so close enough.
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Aldo, Setting has nothing to do with originality, you name it, it's been thought of before, i'd wager,
Even blancmange world?
there is loco-roco, your character is some kinda jelly-blob thing, so close enough.
I'll take that as a 'no', then :p
But I'm still seeing a complete lack of truly original ideas being put forward, at the same time. Even Bioshock is itself seemingly part of a 'haunted house' style scenario as in SShock. I'm beginning to think the narrative shortcomings of gaming prevent true originality, actually.
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But I'm still seeing a complete lack of truly original ideas being put forward, at the same time. Even Bioshock is itself seemingly part of a 'haunted house' style scenario as in SShock. I'm beginning to think the narrative shortcomings of gaming prevent true originality, actually.
Find me an original film in the last few years then? The plethora of horror movies we've seen released that all follow the cliched haunted house/girl posessed/mad children type thing has been done to death... so much so infact that I now find new horror movies to be boring and predictable rather than even slightly frightening or amusing.
Perhaps we should work out what kind of originality we'd like to see. Would a simple twist on an old formula surfice, or do we demand complete originality in all aspects of a game? Black and White was supposed to be original but looking at it, it's very similar to your usual RTS; build up a base, gather resources, send your units (creature) out to fight and power up the uber-killing stuff (miracles). Again, Homeworld was deemed original and considering its controls it was - but its core RTS gameplay followed the same premise as above.
F.E.A.R? Half Life? Far Cry? All with original elements but ultimately you can follow them back to something older.
What then is a truly original game? How original does it have to be to be deemed "innovative"? Do you have to achieve a certain level of originality to have a good game, or can you be entirely unoriginal but put a slight twist on an old story?
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Wasn't Being John Malkovitch considered quite original? (as something that jumps to mind)
All i'm saying is, let's not confuse a cosmetic, minor change or transient novelty with actual real originality and uniqueness.
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All i'm saying is, let's not confuse a cosmetic, minor change or transient novelty with actual real originality and uniqueness.
I've not seen BJM so.. if you say so!
To reply to the quoted bit though.. I suppose so. You could take an existing game model and replace it with Nazis, zombies, ghosts, pirates, cyber-goths, mutated civilians or whatever... that doesn't really make it original.
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i've been under the general opinion for the longest time that Valve tried to cover very sloppy storytelling with the whole "you know as much as gordon knows" pitch.
the game had gaping plot holes the likes of which i've never seen before, oh SURE you could LOOK at the various noteboards, etc. For example, i was able to ascertain that anywhere between 10-15 or so years are missing between HL1 and HL2, which fails to explain absolutely everything beyond the 7-hour war and ****.
Do you really need to know what happened after the 7 Hour War?
Okay, rather, you do know what happened after the 7 Hour War: City 17, all over the world. Oppression and forced assimilation. Earth adapted by alien overlords into something different. And instead of being simply told that Earth is now post-(alien)-apocalypse, you get to be shown it, in dilapadated buildings, inhuman guardians, constant surveillance, Breencast propaganda, frightened uniformed citizens, newspeak jargon, military units patrolling streets, block raids, dried-out seas, polluted canals, wrecked cars, highways in disrepair, monstrous wildlife, hideous zombies, alien materials and technology...
Like KOTOR2, I really appreciated the opportunity to work things out for myself, instead of being spoon-fed a story like pretty much every other game out there. Even if the story is fairly well-written, or at least constructed decently, it's so much more rewarding to figure it out on your own than to just be told it by somebody else.
Not that it was anything but fluff. The story of mankind's rebellion against oppressors from the stars doesn't have any holes in it whatsoever.
Regardless: what's the obsession with originality? I'd rather have a good game. Sometimes, unoriginality is exactly what is desired, as a Freespace 2 which decided to veer off into the realm of a non-linear trading game would have been extremely rubbish. Likewise a Thief 2 that was a criminal-syndicate management game or a Half-life 2 that was a quirky puzzle game that involved bombarding heavy metals with ionised neutrinos, or something.
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Do you really need to know what happened after the 7 Hour War?
Okay, rather, you do know what happened after the 7 Hour War: City 17, all over the world. Oppression and forced assimilation. Earth adapted by alien overlords into something different...
There are ways we could have seen that though. Ways we could have been filled in on the gap. I can give it to you in about 15 seconds of additional intro sequence. Here we go;
G-Man shows up, gives you your spiel about being needed for services again...
Out of the void... a television (like the ones found in City 17 showing broadcasts from Breen etc.) moves forwards towards the player. Very much like Baz Luhrmann's intro to Romeo and Juliet.... news broadcasts of the events. Bad cuts to wide-spread panic and the invasion actually happening. Cut to the take over and riots as some try to resist... and then the news broadcaster is suddenly a Combine representative... and then Breen, telling the population that everything will be alright and that they should welcome their new overlords. Perhaps shots of different locations across the globe showing obvious combine influence. Lets not forget that although Half Life is not specifically based anywhere (no real world location) - it's still based within the real world to a certain level so Paris, London and New York still exist - and will no doubt have been levelled or assimilated into the Combine.
The television fades and G-Man shows up again. "The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world... so wake up, Mr Freeman. Wake up and smell the ashes...".
Begin.
There you go. You - the player - knows what happened after you left. You know where you are in the world, who the enemy is and why everyone is the way they are. You know how everything fits together and from there the information provided only fleshes out the existing detail.
Half Life 2, improved by me.
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I'm sorry, but that's boring. Point Insertion becomes a rampantly unnecessary exercise in repetition. The entire universe is laid out, dissected, and all sense of discovery is lost.
Do we really need to see newcasts and montages of an alien invasion? Can we not just figure it out from what we see and hear? From Quisling Breen and his pseudo-scientific social-evolutionism, from dire warnings to not drink the water because they put something in it to make you forget, from citizens so far gone that they think being allowed to wait for a husband that was abducted and hauled off to places unknown is a favour, and that brutal raids on blocks is a common occurence. Surely it's obvious that Earth has been conquered by aliens.
Being led gently by the hand into HL2 so that you're not shocked or confused or surprised by anything robs you of any emotional impact HL2's dioramas and scripted sequences might have had. Brutal imagery of a totalitarian world government is explained away by the expectation of Alien Invasion; of course that policeman is hitting the civilian with a riot prod, he's a pawn of the Alien Invaders! Pre-knowledge of aliens distracts from the central concept of HL2: man's inhumanity to man.
Ultimately an intro that explains the 7 Hour War is detail that points in the wrong direction. HL2 isn't about aliens invading Earth - that's what HL1 was about. HL2 is about humans taking their world back. We don't need to hear about how aliens took control, and it should only be a matter for idle curiousity. I can't see how it could possibly make or break HL2.
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We need to know what happened, Blaise. It doesn't cut it to throw a player into a story and go "The world has gone to hell, fix it".
It kills immersion - immersion is the feeling of "you are there, this is your world, these are your people, be their savior". Instead we got "you're Gordon. for some reason you're famous. The world is bad, go kill humans while saving other humans."
Think of it this way; in the beginning of Half Life 2, before you got to...oh, about the part where you actually see the Zen psychic alien things, could you honestly tell intelligent aliens actually invaded Earth? Like, the entire story of Half Life 2 could basically be "An evil human dictator took over the world, he released a bunch of genetically engineered animals, the entire place went to hell". Honestly - there is not enough backstory to go against that. There is no storytelling in the game, it's simply go from point A to B to C and kill gasmasked humans.
Sorry for the ramble, my head hurts a bit and I'm having some trouble forming my thoughts properly. Hope that came out right.
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Edit: UT beat me to it.. but still;
I didn't feel emotionally impacted by HL2 though. For the most part I felt disconnected and frustrated. Sure there's an alien invasion - that much is clear. But everything else took a lot more deduction and in some cases there's been a lot of assumption made just to make things work. A number of others have also had this problem - that although the game engine is great, the graphics good and so on, the storyline began badly and didn't properly introduce you to the world you were to enter.
Once you got well into the storyline and met the likes of Ely and Alyx, you had a good grasp of what your current tasks were and why they were necessary. But an awful lot remained uncommented on. When you left Half Life, it was accepted that you stopped that element of the invasion. You were then hauled out of "the world" by G-Man and put to work for him.
So once you enter HL2, you're completely disoriented. Of course Gordon would be if he was in that situation, but in the world of computer gaming it doesn't help to leave your player wondering exactly what he's fighting for. Perhaps a slightly more revealing composition of dialogue from G-Man could have entirely changed all this. Something basically pointing at "this has happened, but wasn't intended. Fix it." but also hinting at the Combine being an adverse force, it not being according to his plans and you being the most capable man around. Something like this already exists, but it's a bit too well encrypted for the start of a game.
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Think of it this way; in the beginning of Half Life 2, before you got to...oh, about the part where you actually see the Zen psychic alien things, could you honestly tell intelligent aliens actually invaded Earth? Like, the entire story of Half Life 2 could basically be "An evil human dictator took over the world, he released a bunch of genetically engineered animals, the entire place went to hell". Honestly - there is not enough backstory to go against that. There is no storytelling in the game, it's simply go from point A to B to C and kill gasmasked humans.
But you do have a backstory: Half-life 1. You know that Breen's not just a crazy dictator because, aside from the constant references to the Combine as a higher, interplanetary power, you remember from HL1 that aliens invaded and screwed up the world.
Also, and this is something I've not understood before, I don't understand the relevance of the backstory to the actual story of HL2 and I don't see how its absence turns "evading the Combine while fleeing through the city canals" or "busting open Nova Prospekt with a horde of ant lions" into soulless "A-B-C shoot bad guys".
Why do you need a blow-by-blow account of the HL1-HL2 gap? Why do you need to be told what should be obvious?
"this has happened, but wasn't intended. Fix it."
Who said G-Man had a plan? :confused:
I didn't think that things were messed up when the Combine were around after I killed the Nihilanth in HL1; I thought "ah, there's a third player in all of this." I can't say I felt disconnected and frustrated, more intrigued and excited that I was going to get to use my brain in a linear FPS.
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But you do have a backstory: Half-life 1. You know that Breen's not just a crazy dictator because, aside from the constant references to the Combine as a higher, interplanetary power, you remember from HL1 that aliens invaded and screwed up the world.
Yes, but the game relies too heavily on assumptions. For instance, as far as I know, Breen IS a crazy dictator - there was no mention in Half Life 1 of the world being taken over and him being installed in an interimn government - I had to go online to find that out. And these "constant references" to the Combine - from the references, I could have easily guessed that the Combine was a giant corporation. The point is that the game explains none of this.
Also, and this is something I've not understood before, I don't understand the relevance of the backstory to the actual story of HL2 and I don't see how its absence turns "evading the Combine while fleeing through the city canals" or "busting open Nova Prospekt with a horde of ant lions" into soulless "A-B-C shoot bad guys".
It doesn't have a direct influence, but it tells you why you're doing things. It tells you who you're fighting. How many games have you played where they simply put a gun in your hand and told you to kill, and you didn't really care? Half Life 2 fell squarely into that trap. About a fourth of the way in, I just didn't really care what happened to the universe; I was just finishing it because I knew everyone would be talking about it. The lack of a backstory/any good binding of the main story makes the immersian almost nill. Sure, it has great graphical immersion, and that's what everyone always means when they say that Half Life 2 had great immersion, but they dont include the fact that the storyline immersion was almost nonexistent. You were Gordon Freeman, but what the hell were you doing and why were you doing it?
Why do you need a blow-by-blow account of the HL1-HL2 gap? Why do you need to be told what should be obvious?
We don't need a blow by blow, but we do need SOMETHING. All we want is basically "Aliens took over the Earth. Breen is in charge of their forces here. He's bad, because he tortures people, drives them to XXX, do XXX, etc go kill him."
All we got was "Breen is bad. Kill him."
It's not "obvious" - the entire backstory and whole reason for the resistence is clouded and not very immersive.
Who said G-Man had a plan? :confused:
Who said he didn't? Once again, zero explanation. Although that part might be slightly excused.
I didn't think that things were messed up when the Combine were around after I killed the Nihilanth in HL1; I thought "ah, there's a third player in all of this." I can't say I felt disconnected and frustrated, more intrigued and excited that I was going to get to use my brain in a linear FPS.
That's HL1, not 2 you're referring to, right?
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Ok, here's a good example. Imagine Freespace 2. You knew why you were fighting, right? There's a rebellion, you're severed from Earth, you've got the tatters of a civilization and an unstable new alliance. You're fighting to protect the sanctity of that alliance and secure unity for the galaxy.
If Freespace 2 had been Half Life 2, this is the storyline; "Welcome! There's a rebellion, go stop it!"
Not very immersive, non? While Freespace 2 used backstory, context, and depth to create a believable and interesting universe, Half Life 2 relied solely on graphics to pull people in, and the story was left blowing in the wind, with no details and no depth.
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well, on the concept of originality, let's take two games of a very simular genre.
Silent Hill & Resident Evil.
Both Survival horrors, both can be scary at times.
SH is Scarier, whilst RE is more action-y, the execution of both is different, dispite having roots that harken back to the days of alone in the dark.
whilst the concept itself is not absolutely original, the execution, and implimentation is somewhat original, but on the first iteration of the franchise, the others are just raising the bar in that specific styling within the survival horror genre.
Let's take a look at another game that was touted as original
Giants: Citizen Kabuto, at its core it's a 3rd person shooter with a dash of RTS, but the styling, comedy, and voice acting ("*GASP* TIIIIMMMYYYY!!!"), made it stand out from the rest.
Homeworld?.. the same, its basic concept harkens back to C&C, and before that, Dune, and before that, i dunno, however, what made homeworld stand out, is the 'absolute' 3d space, 3d models, music, and story.
True originality vs originality within a genre, two different things, BOTH need the right execution to stand out.
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All HL2 really needed to do, IMO, was let you read the various newspapers you found lying about in deserted houses and whatnot. That's all; if they're going to take the players' voice, assume that he/she wouldn't ask questions, and that no-one would see fit to explain the last xx years to them (in itself understandable), then they need to give the player the tools they'd have in 'reality' to find this info out. The concept - player knows as much or little as the character and is hence as confused - isn't too bad of a one, but I became increasingly aware playing that I was only continuing for the sake of the 'big reveal' (which never came), pushing linearly forward without taking too much joy. What could have been a far more immersive experience with just a little storytelling - even of an anecdotal nature - became a rather IMO disjointed series of triapses through increasingly meaningless locations. 'Look, i'm in Nova Prospekt'; what's Nova Prospekt and why should I care?
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It's kind of a sad commentary that I learned more about Half-Life 2's story by reading the strategy guide then I did by playing the game...
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Right now there is too much focus on FPS's being "realistic" instead of just fun.
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(I'm skipping the HL2 bit of this, you guys know what I think anyway..)
Right now there is too much focus on FPS's being "realistic" instead of just fun.
Can we have a game that's both realistic and fun though? I think so. Things like bullet physics add to the gameplay as well as being realistic. That said, games like Serious Sam do have their place in the world, it's still an FPS but it takes all notions of realism and chucks them out of the window.
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(I'm skipping the HL2 bit of this, you guys know what I think anyway..)
Right now there is too much focus on FPS's being "realistic" instead of just fun.
Can we have a game that's both realistic and fun though? I think so. Things like bullet physics add to the gameplay as well as being realistic. That said, games like Serious Sam do have their place in the world, it's still an FPS but it takes all notions of realism and chucks them out of the window.
I bet....take HL2, treble the fire rate of the SMG, and put one in each hand. That'd be fun and not unrealistic. Too much.
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(I'm skipping the HL2 bit of this, you guys know what I think anyway..)
Right now there is too much focus on FPS's being "realistic" instead of just fun.
Can we have a game that's both realistic and fun though? I think so. Things like bullet physics add to the gameplay as well as being realistic. That said, games like Serious Sam do have their place in the world, it's still an FPS but it takes all notions of realism and chucks them out of the window.
One of the things I miss from the days of Duke 3D was the jibbing (followed by an interesting remark), or finding secrets with pop culture references (like the "Terminated" one in Freeway, or the "that's one DOOMed space marine" in the prison level)..........
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(I'm skipping the HL2 bit of this, you guys know what I think anyway..)
Right now there is too much focus on FPS's being "realistic" instead of just fun.
Can we have a game that's both realistic and fun though? I think so. Things like bullet physics add to the gameplay as well as being realistic. That said, games like Serious Sam do have their place in the world, it's still an FPS but it takes all notions of realism and chucks them out of the window.
One of the things I miss from the days of Duke 3D was the jibbing (followed by an interesting remark), or finding secrets with pop culture references (like the "Terminated" one in Freeway, or the "that's one DOOMed space marine" in the prison level)..........
ah, corny one liners, slight amusement, but hardly anything that's original, unless the setting, or the game calls for it, such things can ruin the immersion, Alyx's "Zombine" comment in HL2 EP1 was rather amusing, even though you could tell that she was trying.
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Yes, but the game relies too heavily on assumptions. For instance, as far as I know, Breen IS a crazy dictator - there was no mention in Half Life 1 of the world being taken over and him being installed in an interimn government - I had to go online to find that out. And these "constant references" to the Combine - from the references, I could have easily guessed that the Combine was a giant corporation. The point is that the game explains none of this.
But it does. There are thousands of non-verbal clues. Alien technology - flying scanners, towering citadels, inhuman-looking APCs, synths - synths! Organic robots! - assymetric constructions of an unearthly blue-steel hue. These things are far, far different to what we saw of humanity in HL1, even if 10 years have passed. Some outside influence has done something to mankind... certainly no corporation.
And Breen's Breencasts, where he is constantly subject to 'benefactors', who created City 17, who turned on the reproductive suppression field, who are attempting to evolve humanity into a higher state of being, make it clear he is a puppet of greater powers. Never mind Breen talking to a giant alien slug monster at the start of the game.
You were Gordon Freeman, but what the hell were you doing and why were you doing it?
You were helping the Resistance because Breen and the Combine wanted you dead. You know this. You know what the Combine are trying to do, who the Resistance is and why they feel obligated to stop the menace they unleashed on Earth. That the details weren't spelled out doesn't change the fact that they're there.
That's HL1, not 2 you're referring to, right?
What?
I felt like that in HL2. Intrigued, not confused beyond enjoyment. There was a mystery to solve and, as I said before, I would get to unravel it instead of the developers untangling it for me and saying "HA! Shock twist, everything explained, didn't see that coming, did you?!"
Ok, here's a good example. Imagine Freespace 2. You knew why you were fighting, right? There's a rebellion, you're severed from Earth, you've got the tatters of a civilization and an unstable new alliance. You're fighting to protect the sanctity of that alliance and secure unity for the galaxy.
If Freespace 2 had been Half Life 2, this is the storyline; "Welcome! There's a rebellion, go stop it!"
Not very immersive, non? While Freespace 2 used backstory, context, and depth to create a believable and interesting universe, Half Life 2 relied solely on graphics to pull people in, and the story was left blowing in the wind, with no details and no depth.
Let's be fair. It's not like that. A more appropriate analogy would be:
Having played FS1, you know that 32 years ago, Terrans and Vasudans were brought to the verge of extinction by the Shivans, but in the end rallied and defeated them. However, Earth and Vasuda Prime are lost. Now you start the game in, let's say, Capella, dumped in the game with no idea what's going on right now.
You see posters urging citizens to 'stay strong in the midst of civil war' and decrying Admiral Aken Bosch as a traitor to humanity. Military vessels gather and prepare for war around you. People you bump into mutter darkly about the war and the 'NTF dogs', or moan generally in a nihilistic manner. A group of Vasudans, in amongst all the Terran ships, mourn the loss of relatives and cry "Why do they hate us? What did we ever do to them?" GTVA propaganda announces that Bosch's Neo-Terra is not a true replacement for the exile from Earth and that the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance will someday find a way home. A pair of soldiers proudly boast of the latest developments in armanents. Finally, you reach your destination: a local GTVA military outpost. The base commander welcomes you aboard and you are assigned your first mission against the rebs.
The sad thing is, I think HL2 took a rather original approach to storytelling, integrating the story into the actually game instead of just constantly unloading plot fluff in manuals, command briefings and dialogues like most other games out there. That's life, I guess.
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HL2 took the approach of putting you with the same level of knowledge as someone in that situation....and then robbing you of any ability to glean information by yourself, whilst simultaneously removing 99% of the exposition.
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I've already explained how you can find out all the backstory in game, by yourself. Repetition of a statement does not make it become more true.
The original Half-life had a similar level of exposition, but nobody complains that they didn't understand what Black Mesa was all about, or what the Xen experiments were.
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Why did the combine want 'you' dead?
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You were helping the Resistance because Breen and the Combine wanted you dead. You know this. You know what the Combine are trying to do, who the Resistance is and why they feel obligated to stop the menace they unleashed on Earth. That the details weren't spelled out doesn't change the fact that they're there.
I'm too lazy to go through your whole post and respond to everything, but here's a good part;
Like aldo_14 said - why did Breen and the Combine want you dead? We didn't know what the Combine was trying to do - I only found out that they were draining the oceans and the like by going online and finding it out from a third party. Who is the Resistance? Are they survivors? Where did they come from? All we know is that they live in shacks and the old Black Mesa complex. Are they Black Mesa employees?
The fact that the details weren't spelled out doesn't mean that they're necessarily find-able in the game.
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I'd also point out that you don't know who the resistance is. You're introduced to these folks, and they're like "Hey, we're from Black Mesa! Remember us?" and I'm sitting here going "Riiight...so you must be cookiecutter scientist #20, and you must be cookiecutter scientist #50. Whom I was never given a name for and barely interacted with at all."
Introductions and knowing someone, particularly as the game purports you know these people, are two different things. And I still don't know them.
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Why did the combine want 'you' dead?
Because you're Gordon Freeman. You stopped the Xen invasion singlehandedly. You've been lionised by the Resistance as the greatest hero to ever walk the Earth. The Vortigaunts call you ' the One Free Man, the Opener of the Way' - a statement of defiance if I ever saw one. You're pals with Dr. Kleiner and Eli Vance, big cheeses in the Resistance. You killed the Nihilanth, the Breen-figure for Half-life 1 who also enslaved his race (Vortigaunts) and turned them into equivalents of the 'transhuman Overwatch' (Alien Grunts), and it's likely you'll do the same for Breen and his Overwatch.
Some of this you know from HL1. Some of this you pick up during your flight from City 17. Some of this you pick up because Resistance leaders are all chatty with you and say "It's me, Barney, from Black Mesa!"
I only found out that they were draining the oceans and the like by going online and finding it out from a third party.
I kinda saw the destruction and devastation and assimilation all around me. Like those vast, empty sandbanks around a dried up dock, or historic buildings being covered up by blue-steel Combine material.
Who is the Resistance? Are they survivors? Where did they come from? All we know is that they live in shacks and the old Black Mesa complex. Are they Black Mesa employees?
You know who they are. The leaders tell you themselves or handily say "Hey Dr. Kleiner, look who I found!" and give away their character traits in little conversations with each other. The standard Resistance member is an average person who escaped City 17 through the underground railroad (what you traipsed along for the entirety of Route Kanal) or someone who picked up a gun to fight post-Nova Prospekt. They're people who want to, you know, resist.
This is all right there, in the game. I mean, if you had to look it up on a website, then where did the website get it from? They didn't just make it up, that's for sure. It's all there, you just didn't put two and two together.
Seriously, there are better ways to attack my position. Valve did originally plan an extended intro sequence, showing the transformation of Earth from pristine to polluted through something like high-speed photography, and it had a lot more content on the train, including alien attacks. Eli Vance would sit you down at one point and talk you through a slideshow explaining the portal storms, the 7 Hour War and Breen's surrender. These were cut, and I agree with the decision (because I like it how it is) but it'd be a better line of attack than simply denying that HL2 shows you all the backstory you could ever possibly need.
And again, if it's okay for HL1, what's the problem with doing it again in HL2?
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Indeed, the whole idea of the game was that you were taken away from reality, and shoved back into it a decade or two down the line. You have utterly no idea what's going on. Why would you? You've been in suspended animation [or whatever happens in the G-Man's void], so why would you have any idea what has been going on in the world when you weren't part of it?
Having a big, glowy cutscene at the beginning setting the scene, telling you all about the Portal Storms and soforth would be nice, there's no doubt about that. The gamer in me is really disappointed that there wasn't some world-class montage of the invasion. But then, you get into the game, and rather than a single cutscene at the beginning shoving the information down your throat, it's spread out across the entire game. Personally, I like that little bit of extra immersion, that you have to find out what happened pretty much on your own, so when you do eventually happen across that newspaper on the wall in Eli's Lab about the 7-hour War, or take a minute to listen and finally comprehend an entire Breen-cast, you get both information as well as a nice sense of accomplishment that you managed to find out what happened. As Blaise said, everything anyone knows about HL2 is from ingame, where else would they get it?
Sheesh, you demand originality but then decry it when it is finally delivered.
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As Blaise said, everything anyone knows about HL2 is from ingame, where else would they get it?
The dev team, for starters. The strat guide (which as I observed before explains things not in the game). Random Valve employees.
Oh, and Ep1 too. Since you asked.
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i've always seen HL2 as a failure in proper storytelling, have you ever notice, that there's hardly any dissention in the rebel ranks, Gordon's been projected to near mythic status, which is ironic, really..
Seeing as the whole mess the world's in is ALL HIS FAULT.. :P (purely a victim of circumstances, of course)
as various people has stated before, if you were able to read news clippings, ask a 'question' since, let's face it, gordon never 'speaks', but if you think about it, neither does the main character in most RPG's (see. KOTOR), Valve seemed to let you interact with pratically everything in the enviroment, except the people and faces that seem so determined to let you save them from the combine.
what HL2 really needed, was character interaction, and various pieces of information gathering, hell, even a short recap from the G-man during the first part of it woulda sufficed, in his own, mysterious ways, he should've shown you the immediate aftermath of black mesa, it's ultimate fate, a timeline was never given, so you don't know WHEN the 7 hour war started, what happened during that, and how long after that war, is when you arrive back on the scene.
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what HL2 really needed, was character interaction, and various pieces of information gathering, hell, even a short recap from the G-man during the first part of it woulda sufficed, in his own, mysterious ways, he should've shown you the immediate aftermath of black mesa, it's ultimate fate, a timeline was never given, so you don't know WHEN the 7 hour war started, what happened during that, and how long after that war, is when you arrive back on the scene.
You have a point in asking for more character interaction, which was obviously beefed up quite a bit with Episode 1. But the whole point on the game is that you have no idea what's going on. They made a choice to opt for 'full' imersion in that you only know as much as Gordon does, which is effectively nil, and it's just unfortunate that Gordon happens to be the strong, silent type. Anyway, if they told you everything, finding things out for yourself wouldn't have the same impact as they do as it stands.
Personally, I would have liked to have seen some of the things they cut stay in, like the expansion on the opening train-ride they talked about in the Ep1 commentary. Ah well, 'sall good anyway.
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But the whole point on the game is that you have no idea what's going on. They made a choice to opt for 'full' imersion in that you only know as much as Gordon does, which is effectively nil.
yes, at the beginning, at the end, you still don't know all that much, keeping the player 'in the dark' for the story because that's how the character would feel is no excuse for sloppy storytelling, there was plenty of opportunity to 'fill in the gaps' during the course of the game, two bullitin boards and a photo of alyx as a child is like chucking a couple of spitwads into the grand canyon.
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Why did the combine want 'you' dead?
Because you're Gordon Freeman. You stopped the Xen invasion singlehandedly. You've been lionised by the Resistance as the greatest hero to ever walk the Earth. The Vortigaunts call you ' the One Free Man, the Opener of the Way' - a statement of defiance if I ever saw one. You're pals with Dr. Kleiner and Eli Vance, big cheeses in the Resistance. You killed the Nihilanth, the Breen-figure for Half-life 1 who also enslaved his race (Vortigaunts) and turned them into equivalents of the 'transhuman Overwatch' (Alien Grunts), and it's likely you'll do the same for Breen and his Overwatch.
Some of this you know from HL1. Some of this you pick up during your flight from City 17. Some of this you pick up because Resistance leaders are all chatty with you and say "It's me, Barney, from Black Mesa!"
Why would the resistance give a **** - even if they knew - about an alien whose death quite possibly pre-empted the combine invasion?
Anyways, tell me what definitive facts there are about the world HL2 is set in; the location, the scenario, the enemy? Stuff you could discover in a realistic manner by just reading an old newspaper, for example. What is Nova Prospekt, as another example?
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You know, most of the aforementioned arguments about "figuring out the story for yourself" could be made about Far Cry, or heck, even the original Doom, but I never see anyone claiming that those games had deep plots. :p
After playing some other games from that time period such as Chronicles of Riddick and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, I now see just how bad HL2 really was, and for a lot more reasons than only the thin story. I came closer to giving up that game halfway through than anything else I've played in recent memory, and only mustered the will to complete it because of the time I had already put into it. (the last few levels are actually pretty good, but you need to have incredible patience to get that far)
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The dev team, for starters. The strat guide (which as I observed before explains things not in the game). Random Valve employees.
Oh, and Ep1 too. Since you asked.
I somehow managed to figure it out without the dev team, or strat guide, and a lot of other people did as well. Now, I didn't get everything on the first playthrough - the conversation trinkets in Eli's lab, the complete significance of the dried ocean, the Vortigaunts' cryptic lines - but it is all there, as I've repeatedly demonstrated. Valve have given out hints as to the full depths of the plot, but you can't say that all of the story for HL2 comes from their press releases.
Valve seemed to let you interact with pratically everything in the enviroment, except the people and faces that seem so determined to let you save them from the combine
You can press 'E' at people, which gets them to throw out a couple of lines. The Vortigaunts are particularly revealing in their own way. So you can, to an extent, talk to the people you're saving (just not in a meaningful way).
sloppy storytelling
It's not sloppy; to the contrary, it's well integrated into the game itself.
That's what I like most about HL2. In most games, the story is something that's tacked on to the game. You make an isometric tactical real-time game and throw something about dead gods and their mortal offspring on afterwards. Or you make an arcadey space fighter game with WW2 physics and make up some random **** about a visionary admiral, a civil war and an ancient alien race of xenophobes.
In HL2, however, the story is integrated into the game. Because they're not unloading a text dump onto you at the beginning of the game (something, sadly, that most of you would have preferred), the art and design choices have to be made carefully. Textures and models and speech have to tell you the story because they've integrated it so heavily into the game. This is a step towards having *real* stories in games, stories which are actually written and constructed rather than ripped off of sub-standard sci-fi&fantasy by unwashed game developers. Stories which are told in a more exciting and dynamic way than FS2's command brief dumps, stories which take advantage of a game's unique multimedia opportunities, stories which aren't relegated to Star-Trek-Encyclopaedia fluff stuck in the manual.
Why would the resistance give a **** - even if they knew - about an alien whose death quite possibly pre-empted the combine invasion?
:wtf:
Because, as I've explained already, the Nihilanth was a tyrant ruler of his people, the Vortigaunts. Gordon, a heroic warrior, battled his way through his army and killed him. They believe he will do the same for Breen and his Combine. They know all this because the Resistance is led by three friends of Gordon, friends who were all there at Black Mesa when Gordon stopped the Xen invasion: Barney Calhoun, who says "Hey, it's me, Barney, from Black Mesa!" and starred in Blue Shift; Dr. Kleiner, who was your sponsor for recruitment by Black Mesa as seen in the form in the HL1 manual and clearly recognises you ("Great Scott! Gordon Freeman, is that you?"); and Eli Vance, who reminds you himself that he was the generic black scientist in HL1 who sent you up to the surface to get help all the way back in Unforeseen Consequences. More so than that, however, the Vortigaunts approach you with a semi-mystical reverence, and since they're big members of the Resistance, they have undoubtedly spread the word.
The Vortigaunts know a hell of a lot for creepy aliens (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Half-Life_2)
Anyways, tell me what definitive facts there are about the world HL2 is set in; the location, the scenario, the enemy? Stuff you could discover in a realistic manner by just reading an old newspaper, for example. What is Nova Prospekt, as another example?
Okay, fine.
HL2 is set in City 17 (see the welcoming Breencast), which is clearly one of several cities (aside from being 17 of presumably 17+ cities, two citizens discussing Breen mention a City 14). City 17 is presumably set somewhere in Eastern Europe or Russia, given the Soviet-era architecture and the signs in the Cyrillic alphabet. The city is being transformed by the introduction of alien Combine technology - doors are held shut by strange Combine locks, and certain areas (particularly those important to the Combine, such as the Overwatch Nexus and Nova Prospekt) are being replaced with Combine architecture, specifically those blue-steel walls. During the war, large Combine barricades advance through the city, turning the buildings into base materials (stone and rubble), possibly for Combine use elsewhere. The city is under the thumb of a police state, with Civil Protection troops all over the place, Striders walking the streets, Combine APCs scattered throughout the city, and block raids a common occurence (all seen during Point Insertion). Although the city has a canal system, it is no longer functional, being mostly without water and full of debris. It is used by the Resistance as a means to smuggle people out of the city (Route Kanal) to their headquarters, the abandoned dam. Trains, some with new Combine engines, are used by the Combine to ferry people from city to city as well as to Nova Prospekt and (I assume) other Combine outposts (Point Insertion, Entanglement).
Combine rule is centred in the Citadel, at the heart of City 17. Breen has established his adminstration in City 17 and rules from an office decorated with luxuries like carpets, a nice desk, a globe etc. which contrasts sharply with the homes of average citizens in City 17 (Point Insertion). The Citadel is made entirely out of Combine materials and serves as both HQ and factory, mass producing Striders and gunships as well as other synths and housing many, many Combine troops. Security is tight, with only authorised personnel carrying weapons - others are confiscated by Combine technology (Our Benefactors).
The world outside the cities is harsh and hostile. Xen wildlife, specifically headcrabs and ant lions, roam the countryside and appear to have settled in well (Highway 17, Sandtraps), although the Combine keep them away from their positions with snipers (snipers shooting zombies at the mine entrance to Ravenholm, "We don't go to Ravenholm...") and thumpers (on the approach to Nova Prospekt, Sandtraps). Zombies are particularly common in Ravenholm, a small village close to the hydroelectric dam and on the outskirts of City 17, which appears to have been headcrab-bombed into submission by the Combine ("We don't go to Ravenholm..."), possibly because of contact with the Resistance (Alyx mentions that they don't visit Ravenholm "any more", Black Mesa East).
The Combine, or Universal Union, appear to be an amalgamation of multiple species (as their name implies) and are intent on transforming subject worlds into being more amenable to their rulers (drying oceans in Highway 17, integration of Combine technology throughout City 17). Humanity is their latest acquisition and they are changing it, evolving it to make a better subject species (Breen talks about the Combine guards Freeman fights as the "transhuman forces of the Combine Overwatch" in Nova Prospekt, meaning that not only are the human Combine modified humans, but that they are a part of a larger whole. More evidence of Combine 'transhumans' comes in the video feed in Nova Prospekt of a soldier with his armour off - bald, oddly-hued, with implants - and the Stalker seen briefly in Our Benefactors). The Combine have granted humanity several technological benefits - small hovering robots (Scanners and Manhacks), new weapons (Overwatch Pulse Rifle) and organic machines (Striders, Gunships and other synths) as well as generally upgrading existing technology (the Combine helicopter that chases you throughout Water Hazard). It's possible that the Combine rulers (the slugs seen in Point Insertion and Dark Energy) are dependent on their empire and their advanced technology to survive, given that they use a respirator and appear to be in harness and incapable of defending themselves physically.
The Combine tries to portray itself as a benevolent ruler rather than a brutal regime; Dr. Breen, a human, is appointed the Administrator of the planet by the Combine in order to put a human face on the tyranny (Eli's newspaper cuttings) and in his Breencasts he refers to the Combine as "benefactors" (Point Insertion, amongst others) who are attempting to uplift humanity into a better state. Instinct is decried as backward and primitive; dissension is characterised as irrational, as "magical thinking" (Water Hazard). In Our Benefactors, Breen appeals to Freeman himself, asking him not to throw everything away by plunging the world into war with the Combine again, and accusing him of destroying things without having anything to replace them (Our Benefactors). Breen uses rationalism and science as rhetorical tools to get humanity to cooperate with the Combine. Blatant intimidation and coercion works as well; people are beaten up in the streets and taken away to Nova Prospekt by Civil Protection (Point Insertion). Citizens are enticed into enlisting with CP with a better quality of life (citizens getting food packs in Point Insertion say that they're tempted to join CP for more food). Also worth noting is the use of medical jargon to cover up the brutal reality of Combine oppression, as heard over the Combine radio. Lone troopers will often cry out "Outbreak! Outbreak! Outbreak!", for example.
The scenario: Following the end of HL1, the Vortigaunts invading Earth are freed from the Nihilanth's control and stop fighting, instead choosing to make a stand on this "miserable rock" (their words) against the Combine. They oppose the Combine for the same reason they opposed the Nihilanth - both the 'lesser master' (Nihilanth) and the 'greater master' (Combine) wish to enslave and subjugate (see the Vortigaunt sweeper in Point Insertion). The 'Portal Storms' (presumably what you saw at Black Mesa) continue for an extended period of time across the world and then the 7 Hour War begins. It ends in Combine victory, the destruction of the UN Building in New York and Dr. Breen being appointed interim administrator (all cuttings from Eli's board). Survivors from Black Mesa (specifically Barney, Kleiner and Eli) begin plotting to overthrow the regime, being disgusted as they are with former Black Mesa Administrator Breen's betrayal (Alyx says not to get her father started on Breen during Point Insertion). The world begins its transformation into what you see in HL2.
G-Man dumps you into City 17 and you are picked up by Barney before you run into trouble. Barney is working undercover with CP at the security post at the train station; arguably, he's keeping an eye out for you, since neither he nor Kleiner nor Eli nor Vance seem particularly shocked or surprised to see you reappear after so long (Alyx says "Funny you showing up on this day in particular," in Red Letter Day which suggests that she was expecting Gordon to pop up at some point - she's more intrigued by Gordon arriving on the day of the teleport than Gordon returning from limbo in the first place). It could be that the Resistance hired you from G-Man or his employers (see G-Man talking to Colonel Cubbage in Highway 17), or the Vortigaunts detected your imminent arrival, or just a strong belief that you'd return some day. Gordon is drafted into the teleport experiment (part of the Resistance's effort to smuggle more people out of City 17 and into the arms of the Resistance) but it goes wrong, the Combine realise that the Resistance's hero, the Opener of the Way, has arrived in City 17 (the chase in Point Insertion just being a 'Sector Miscount') and the game begins. I won't summarise the plot because you know what it is and it consists mostly of chasing after Eli Vance, so there you go.
Nova Prospekt: The name suggests "new prospect" or "new perspective" and smacks of 1984-Soviet-newspeak, much like the Breencasts. The architecture is clearly an old Soviet-era prison, with watchtowers and prison cells, communal showers, laundries, mass dining rooms, all with observation posts and balconies. It's apparently divided into two: a mostly unused older section (Nova Prospekt) and a newer, Combine-assimilated section (Entanglement) where most of the prisoners are stored in transportable metal cocoons. A train depot provides easy access, both for citizens redirected to Nova Prospekt from City 17 (Point Insertion) and (presumably) for outgoing citizens. It's somewhat implied that citizens undergo forced transformation into Combine troops or Stalkers at Nova Prospekt (the camera with the unclothed soldier on a surgery(?) bed, Barney and Alyx's constant hushed references to Nova Prospekt: "He was about to board the train to Nova Prospekt!" in Point Insertion, and "It used to be a prison... but it's something much worse than that now," "We don't go to Ravenholm..."). The connection has some tenuosity to it, and I didn't really like how Nova Prospekt turned out, since it didn't seem all that terrible and the Nova Prospekt chapter seemed rather pointless, but there's something in it.
blargh
There's your Half-life 2 story, and I didn't pull it out of a strategy guide or from a Valve interview - it's all in the game. It's right there. You just have to put it together.
You know, most of the aforementioned arguments about "figuring out the story for yourself" could be made about Far Cry, or heck, even the original Doom, but I never see anyone claiming that those games had deep plots.
Do what I just did for HL2 for Doom and Doom 2, then try saying that again. I don't think those little episode blurbs really compare.
I would also like someone to point out why what was okay in Half-life 1 was a mortal affront in Half-life 2. They both took the same approach, you had to figure out the backstory for both games through playing them, so why was all that business with the Xen border world, the expeditions, the abduction and experimentation, the Xen factories, the Black Mesa facility and all that so easy to figure out, but alien oppression, transhumanism, Breen's collaborating, Black Mesa East and the Resistance so very difficult to figure out, given that neither game had a handy backstory summed up in a little easy-to-understand intro sequence?
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You realise 99% of that is guesswork?
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Now with added 1% tosh
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You realise 99% of that is guesswork?
You realise I referred continuously to the game?
There's no guessing involved. These are conclusions drawn from what's presented in the game.
Would you mind pointing out how these conclusions are so outrageous as to constitute mere speculation? Or are you intent on remaining wilfully obtuse?
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I'm only going to be as obtuse as the game.
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Now with 14.7% obtuse, 85.3% Scottish
All new Aldo MK II ! :lol:
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This is reading like the evolution thread. (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,39227.0.html) I post evidence, you tell me I'm wrong. I post more evidence, you refuse to believe me. I write an essay, you dismiss it out of hand. Incongruity, eh?
I was hoping for a discussion on original storytelling, as per the thread. I guess I'm not going to get it. :(
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Do what I just did for HL2 for Doom and Doom 2, then try saying that again. I don't think those little episode blurbs really compare.
I think that is actually possible, but I have a life. :p Just search around for Doom fan fiction in google though. If you have the time and patience, it's not that hard to make up something that sounds believable and is based on the things seen in the game (various kinds of monsters, pentagrams, names of levels, etc.). I agree with aldo that most of what you said sounds credible, but is educated guesswork based off game events that could be interpreted in quite different ways. All I saw in the game was the standard sci-fi FPS material that was meaningless without any background or context, which the game failed to provide. Sure, I could use my imagination to make sense of it all, but that could be done in practically any game. I read the wikipedia article on HL2 after completing it and found that the "true" story was actually rather different than what I had guessed as I played the game.
Although I don't think even a good story could have saved this game. The worst part wasn't the story at all but the horrendously linear and repetitive level design that was devoid of any details. It reminded me of how maps in games looked about six years ago. Valve needs to take a good look at SCCT and see how things should be done in this respect.
I'm not against this approach of hiding things from the player so that he might speculate about them, as FS2 did it wonderfully, but I think in HL2's case it's being used as a substitute for a real plot instead of complementing one.
And again, if it's okay for HL1, what's the problem with doing it again in HL2?
Because the standards have changed since then. We've come to expect more from games than we used to, and some other games do manage to deliver.
I actually think even HL1 was slightly overrated though. It was an excellent game for its time (far better than HL2), but it came out only a few months apart from Unreal and System Shock 2, which IMO both matched or surpassed it in different ways.
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This is reading like the evolution thread. (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,39227.0.html) I post evidence, you tell me I'm wrong. I post more evidence, you refuse to believe me. I write an essay, you dismiss it out of hand. Incongruity, eh?
I was hoping for a discussion on original storytelling, as per the thread. I guess I'm not going to get it. :(
The whole point is that you're posting 'evidence', not story. We have evidence for the Shivans in FS1/2; that doesn't mean we have any sort of story about them for FS3 (esque) purposes.
As a random example; "Following the end of HL1, the Vortigaunts invading Earth are freed from the Nihilanth's control and stop fighting, instead choosing to make a stand on this "miserable rock" (their words) against the Combine." is a complete guess.
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I think that is actually possible, but I have a life. :p
Hmmph. Less of that, please. Ta.
educated guesswork based off game events that could be interpreted in quite different ways
Interpret it differently, then. Take all the evidence, take everything that you see and hear, and spin a different story (one that doesn't involve elaborate hoaxes or "It was all a dream!"). What did you think the backstory was originally?
FS2 did it wonderfully
Because it was left incomplete, not because it was constructed that way. It wasn't wonderful. It was interrupted.
Because the standards have changed since then. We've come to expect more from games than we used to, and some other games do manage to deliver.
Rose-tinted spectacles? Bad form.
The whole point is that you're posting 'evidence', not story. We have evidence for the Shivans in FS1/2; that doesn't mean we have any sort of story about them for FS3 (esque) purposes.
I don't understand this analogy. I post the backstory shown in HL2, through verbal and non-verbal means. Speculation about HL3, or G-Man's nature, or more details about the Combine like their origin and their intergalactic peers, or whatever FS3 equates to, is something else entirely, and does consist entirely of guesswork.
But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the Combine in HL2, the state of Earth in HL2, the Resistance in HL2 and how this connects to HL1.
As a random example; "Following the end of HL1, the Vortigaunts invading Earth are freed from the Nihilanth's control and stop fighting, instead choosing to make a stand on this "miserable rock" (their words) against the Combine." is a complete guess.
[/quote]
No.
The Vortigaunts say "While our own lay scattered at your feet, you severed the vortal cord that bound the Nihilanth to life, and to us," "That sharp spur of hope has not dulled to this day. For once the lesser master lay defeated, we knew the greater must also fall in time." Gordon stopping the Xen invasion by killing the Nihilanth freed the Vortigaunts from enslavement.
At the end of HL1, we know that the Vortigaunts and Xen aliens have taken control of Black Mesa. There are Vortigaunts on Earth at the end of HL1.
"We have endured these chafing bonds for eons, yet a single moment of further servitude seems intolerable!" and "We take our stand beside you, here, upon this miserable rock," indicate the will of the Vortigaunts to resist the Combine, and in concert with humanity. We know the Combine will enslave the Vortigaunts because we see an enslaved Vortigaunt, with collar, sweeping in Point Insertion.
I don't know what else you could possibly require. It's cryptic, yes, but you have the context to break the code. You have Half-life 1, and its events, its depiction of Xen and Earth. You have Half-life 2, and its events, its depiction of the new Earth, the Resistance and the Combine. If induction from observed evidence towards conclusions (a la science) isn't enough for you, if you require an explicit explanation of what should already be obvious, well... I'll just be very, very disappointed.
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Hmmph. Less of that, please. Ta.
I'll admit that was a cheap shot, but you practically wrote a small book there. :D
Interpret it differently, then. Take all the evidence, take everything that you see and hear, and spin a different story (one that doesn't involve elaborate hoaxes or "It was all a dream!"). What did you think the backstory was originally?
Well, for example, the combine troops seemed to me just your standard enemy security force. I only found out that they're supposed to be part of an alien race after I read that article.
On a side note, why didn't Kleiner teleport someone into Breen's office directly and get rid of him? IIRC the teleporter malfunctions and you get sent there for a moment, so it's apparently possible.
Because it was left incomplete, not because it was constructed that way. It wasn't wonderful. It was interrupted.
My point is that it had a lot of fully explained details that actually got me interested in the plot, enough to get me to speculate about the more obscure events. With HL2, the depth of the story as it was presented to me was about the same as that of Far Cry, so I wasn't about to carefully look for clues and try to "discover" some possibly deeper plot on my own.
Rose-tinted spectacles? Bad form.
What are you trying to say? Obviously I'm going to judge it in comparison to other games of its time. Pong would hardly be a revolutionary game if it came out today. :p
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Interpret it differently, then. Take all the evidence, take everything that you see and hear, and spin a different story (one that doesn't involve elaborate hoaxes or "It was all a dream!"). What did you think the backstory was originally?
You have the misfortune of asking someone who has made an art form out of doing this for things that do not allow him nearly so much freedom. Several alternate interpretations follow.
Earth won the 7 Hour War by nuking the hell out of the invaders. (Much like the original Black Mesa was nuked; play Opposing Force! You do not visit the original Black Mesa in HL2, people! It's Black Mesa East or something similar.) Unfortunately it provided a few unscrupulous people with the power to take over the world via adapting the surviving scraps of alien technology. Nobody had the firepower left to stop them following expending their NBC arsenals on the 7 Hour War. The troopers you see are as human as they look. Breen does not in fact answer to anyone; his relationship with the Combine is an alliance or a membership, not that of a vassal. The Striders, Gunships, and Dropships are either piloted or cybernetic/teleoperated constructs.
Breen is in fact leader of the Combine, and is not explaining his problems to his superiors but rather to his underlings to reassure them. The resistance, having never been able to infiltrate the Combine at above entry level, has never properly understood the relationship.
The G-man is in fact an agent of the Combine himself and is simply employing you to clean up Breen, who is conducting a rogue operation here on Earth and ruining the Combine's good name. Meanwhile the Combine smiles at Breen so he doesn't see the dagger in the ribs coming.
And I could well go on if I chose to devote more time to it.
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Funny thing is, all those could be right. The only thing that disproves them are obscure newspaper clippings that you can't even read on low-rez (which is a sever handicap btw; if you can't follow the "story" because you're computer can't handle high-rez textures, then that's pretty retarded).
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*Snip*
Bullocks. For one, your first little theory is proven completely wrong by the newspaper headline in Eli's lab that announces "Earth Surrenders!". Your second theory? There are multiple instances where characters specifically say that Breen was 'appointed' by the Combine. The third? The G-Man's motives are meant to be heavily ambiguous, it's just common sense when you play the game.
Now, please, go on. Sooner or later you'll realise that guesswork won't get you far, as the story in HL2 is far more solid than you seem to think.
Moreover, I challenge you to present evidence to the contrary of what Blaise posted ealier. But I believe you'll find that the information Blaise presented is not in fact guesswork, as it is made by the game itself, that's the crux of the issue here. He's not the one coming up with the various tidbits he posted earlier, they are all stated as such inside the bloody game! Granted, you have to look deeper that normal, considerably deeper than most other FPS's where the story is - as Blaise said - simply tagged on, but it's rather shallow to say the game had no story because you just couldn't be arsed to look for it.
Funny thing is, all those could be right. The only thing that disproves them are obscure newspaper clippings that you can't even read on low-rez (which is a sever handicap btw; if you can't follow the "story" because you're computer can't handle high-rez textures, then that's pretty retarded).
And you won't get much out of Freespace 2's story if you don't have a soundcard and can't read. Curse you :v: for not making the story clearer!!
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*Snip*
Bullocks. For one, your first little theory is proven completely wrong by the newspaper headline in Eli's lab that announces "Earth Surrenders!". Your second theory? There are multiple instances where characters specifically say that Breen was 'appointed' by the Combine. The third? The G-Man's motives are meant to be heavily ambiguous, it's just common sense when you play the game.
Now, please, go on. Sooner or later you'll realise that guesswork won't get you far, as the story in HL2 is far more solid than you seem to think.
You don't get it. Even if its story was as concrete as you say, I cut my teeth on 100+ episode TV shows, with actual characters. (Which tangentially is another of HL2's faults; it is a story without a main character in any meaningful sense of the words.) I'm not trying. It took me two minutes to come up with that, no more.
Besides, come now. I already covered your objection to the second theory. Similarly by the time you arrive in Point Insertion, recent history has been erased. "They put something in the water to make you forget." ring bells? Why should it not suit the purposes of Breen and co. to manipulate people into believing Breen is all that's standing between Earth and the nasty extradimensional loonies?
You see a very small slice of the world in HL2. Very small indeed. A planet, if you'll forgive me for point out the painfully obvious, is a very big place. You'd never get everyone to surrender. (Hell, you'd have trouble getting everyone to believe they lost the 7 Hour War!) Isn't that the concept behind the Resistance? Why must they have a monoply? They are supposedly small, uncoordinated. But this is a You have no idea what's taking place outside of a conservative 50 square miles. For all the player knows, Earth lost the 7 Hour War, surrendered...and then rose and threw off their shackles three weeks later. You're catching the tail end of the rebellion. The Resistance has been working for awhile, and they seem pretty confidant for a ragtag collection of untrained freedom fighters who are supposedly totally overmatched. Are they really what the game seems to portray them as?
Gordon Freeman is impressive, as he should be considering he is the player, but he hardly qualifies for "unique background". Others would qualify as equally capable as well; lest we forget the player characters who did their own part in turning back the Xen in Opposing Force and Code Blue. Breen is the face of the Combine that you know. He may well not be the only face. Or the first to fall.
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You don't get it. Even if its story was as concrete as you say, I cut my teeth on 100+ episode TV shows, with actual characters. (Which tangentially is another of HL2's faults; it is a story without a main character in any meaningful sense of the words.) I'm not trying. It took me two minutes to come up with that, no more.
Well then, try. You seem to agree with Adlo and CP that the game is loose enough to be interpreted considerably differently than what Blaise put forth, so let's see you back that supposition up.
Besides, come now. I already covered your objection to the second theory. Similarly by the time you arrive in Point Insertion, recent history has been erased. "They put something in the water to make you forget." ring bells? Why should it not suit the purposes of Breen and co. to manipulate people into believing Breen is all that's standing between Earth and the nasty extradimensional loonies?
If there was such a widespread operation to 'erase the past', you'd hear more about it. Moreover, it would stand to reason that the Resistance [namely those at Black Mesa East] aren't exactly going to drink city tapwater.
You see a very small slice of the world in HL2. Very small indeed. A planet, if you'll forgive me for point out the painfully obvious, is a very big place. You'd never get everyone to surrender. (Hell, you'd have trouble getting everyone to believe they lost the 7 Hour War!) Isn't that the concept behind the Resistance? Why must they have a monoply? They are supposedly small, uncoordinated. But this is a
When you're dealing with an extradimensional legion that can tunnel through to our dimension at any place on the planet, with an army undoubtedly bigger than the combined population of our entire planet, a massive technological superiority, and a... well, you get the idea. Anyway, the details of the war beyond the fact that we lost are quite inconsequential. All the player needs to know is that Earth lost the war, and the Combine is in [relatively] firm control of the planet.
While some may quite obviously disagree, I really like the fact that the game doesn't linger on the past, and instead focusses on the bleak present.
You have no idea what's taking place outside of a conservative 50 square miles. For all the player knows, Earth lost the 7 Hour War, surrendered...and then rose and threw off their shackles three weeks later.
They expand on the state of the world in Episode 1, showing outside [even arctic] locations. Indeed, the Resistance seems to have a pretty firm grasp of the situation on a global scale, and i'm sure they'd sorta mention it if half the planet was already free. Moreover, from what we see of the landscape outside of City 17, Xen and Borderworld creatures have run rampant all over the planet, especially in the [now draining] oceans.
You're catching the tail end of the rebellion. The Resistance has been working for awhile, and they seem pretty confidant for a ragtag collection of untrained freedom fighters who are supposedly totally overmatched. Are they really what the game seems to portray them as?
The Resistance was able to survive the same way they have in past human wars; you're going to know the ins-and-outs of your home a heck of a lot better than a foreign, occupying force. Their push to topple the Combine in City 17 succeeded entirely because of Freeman's actions during the game. The Combine focussed pretty much all it's resources in tracking you down and taking you out, allowing the Resistance to get into strategic positions to move once the time came [namely the destruction of Nova Prospekt].
Gordon Freeman is impressive, as he should be considering he is the player, but he hardly qualifies for "unique background". Others would qualify as equally capable as well; lest we forget the player characters who did their own part in turning back the Xen in Opposing Force and Code Blue. Breen is the face of the Combine that you know. He may well not be the only face. Or the first to fall.
Actually, he does. He was the primary focus of the G-Man in HL1, and the one who destroyed the Nihilanth. Indeed, the G-Man's interest in him quite possibly means that he is in some way 'special', supported by his ability to survive the invasion, and his subsequent extradimensional victories in Xen.
Granted, Shephard battled hard against the Race-X Aliens and the subsequent invasion by that big squid thingy, but his victory wasn't as large, not to mention that he survived in part because he was part of a group, rather than a lone-eagle like Gordon. His imprisonment in the void by the G-Man is evidence alone that, while special, Shephard just ain't Gordon.
Barney, on the other hand, was just some random guy. He wasn't a big hero, and only managed to get through the Black Mesa incident on luck alone. Hence, the G-Man quite obviously doesn't have any interest in him, or the other characters we've seen in further HL games, such as Dr's Cross & Green.
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Dekker, word of advice, if you want to continue posting, don't spam the threads with irrelevant crap, just FYI
Hl1's story wasn't terribly wonderous, it WAS, however, cohesive, you were there from the get go, hell, the resonance cascade was partially your fault, if not caused by you.
HL2's story is a mish-mash of various things, ignoring commentary, Strategy guides (which are mostly conjecture anyway), what are you left with?
It's Set (roughly) 20 years or so after the black mesa incident (this was gathered by comparing the photo of alyx as a child in Vance's lab, it was the only thing he got out of black mesa)
sometime after you capped the nihilanth, the portal storms erupted (or so we assume, it might have been because the nihilanth was a controlling force, or that it was pure coincidence from the resonance cascade)
after those got worse, the combine happened upon earth, hence begun the 7 hour war.
after the 7 hour war, Breen the former black mesa administrator, mediated some kind of surrender, and occupation of earth.
the combine took over earth, and by the looks of it, drained the oceans, and instigated a regime, in which they ruled over the planet, Why?.. we don't know why, why they didn't just wipe out the human race, capture, or what, i don't know, their motives were never elaborated on.
the Vortigaunts are clearly not a combine race, or a race under the former nihilanth, their own motives are as mysterious as the G-man's.
The G-Man himself remains a mystery, just who, or what he is as big of a mystery, as anything else.
From what the G-man tells gordon, gordon himself is a freelance agent of sorts, which means that the g-man has motives in utilising Gordon, for money, power, who knows.
Blaise, you really are looking too deep into this, as far as i can see, the entire HL2 story can be squeezed into the one paragraph.
Doom 3's story wasn't that great either, but in a way, you could garner snippets of info from computers, voice recordings, emails, people, survivors, and whatnot.
all HL2 did was give you a couple of bullitin boards, a photo, and some sad survivors that didn't really give you much in the way of info.
i mean, there's no cohesion in the story, you don't know where precisely on earth city 17 is (or what city 17 -was-), nova prospekt, or even what year it was. so many details were left in the air in favor of "keeping the player as in the dark as the character" which doesn't make any sense, really.
'Cuz, you know, when in doubt, you'd ASK for any info, quite possibly this would be accompanied with a funny look, a comment about where you have been in the past X amount of years, and finally you'd get your info, which would be a logical progression to things..
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And you won't get much out of Freespace 2's story if you don't have a soundcard and can't read. Curse you :v: for not making the story clearer!!
That's a pretty weak argument. Most all machines these days come with onboard sound, and honestly you wouldn't be playing the game if you couldn't read. Grasping for straws?
EDIT: And extrapolating from the excellent post that Turnsky just said; Doom 3 is an example of how to do what HL2 was trying to do, except it's an example of how to do it well (even though the storyline was not very complex - and neither was HL2's when it all boils down to it).
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EDIT: And extrapolating from the excellent post that Turnsky just said; Doom 3 is an example of how to do what HL2 was trying to do, except it's an example of how to do it well (even though the storyline was not very complex - and neither was HL2's when it all boils down to it).
complex story or not, it seems that valve took all conventional means of information gathering and threw it out the window.. Gordon's an MIT scientist for pete's sake, you'd think he'd at least 'ask' a question, even if he doesn't speak, most people in his situation would ask "what the hell's going on?"
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I wasn't about to carefully look for clues and try to "discover" some possibly deeper plot on my own
Then the failure is yours.
alternative explanation
I call Occam's Razor. You multiply entities unnecessarily; a Breen-led cabal distinct from both Earth and the Combine, the fact of Breen lying through his teeth to everyone about his relationship to the Combine.
That's a pretty weak argument.
Almost as weak as saying that something doesn't really count because you, individually, couldn't see it very well.
Blaise, you really are looking too deep into this, as far as i can see, the entire HL2 story can be squeezed into the one paragraph.
You didn't have to cite multiple references in order to convince people that the story didn't exist solely within strategy guides and Valve interviews. Anyway, you missed out most of the details. Also, we know what the Combine's intentions are: assimilating Earth into the Combine empire, taking what is best from humanity and using it in controlling their dominion.
As an aside, I found Doom 3's logs and movies rather tedious. Technicians and scientists blathering on about technobabble nonsense that wasn't the slightest bit interesting and rarely relevant to the plot and the main issue at hand, i.e. demons from Hell. Of course, I was incredibly bored by the non-verbal explanations of the Mars facility, with its randomly-mechanical randomly-electro-glowy automated machines, all called something silly like "Ionised Plasma Desalinisation Converter." Most of the scenes of destruction and devastation were meaningless because I didn't really know what an Ionised Plasma doohickey was supposed to be like in the first place. At least in HL2, I could say "That's a Soviet-era car; it is in disrepair," or "That's a house; a mortar shell went through the roof."
you don't know where precisely on earth city 17 is (or what city 17 -was-), nova prospekt, or even what year it was
Why do you need to know that? What relevance does it have to the story of alien oppression and tyranny overthrown by humanity? You're in City 17 - Earth is different now, the cities aren't called what they used to be called.
Gordon's an MIT scientist for pete's sake, you'd think he'd at least 'ask' a question, even if he doesn't speak, most people in his situation would ask "what the hell's going on?"
That's a game design decision. Half-life isn't about dialogue trees, cutscenes where 'Gordon' takes control and talks to people for the player. It's about guns and shooting and such in a realistic immersive enviroment. Gordon is a silent protagonist in order to minimise all possible perception of a separate 'Gordon' identity. Why is this an issue?
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That's a game design decision. Half-life isn't about dialogue trees, cutscenes where 'Gordon' takes control and talks to people for the player. It's about guns and shooting and such in a realistic immersive enviroment. Gordon is a silent protagonist in order to minimise all possible perception of a separate 'Gordon' identity. Why is this an issue?
The fact being, that silent protagonist or no, it wouldn't have taken much of a stretch for somebody to give you a brief recap of the twenty or so years that you have been 'indisposed', yes, gordon is silent, but, the other characters, aren't
for example, a random city 17 resident asking you, "do you remember during the 7 hour war, this happened?" or " did you fight in the 7 hour war?" or something to that effect, and when they're greeted by gordon's now trademark silence, they give you a small insult about where have you been, and give you some sorta explaination.
That aside, it looks like they're trying to give HL2 a story with the episodic content.
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Obviously it's a cash in.............Or ALyx fans have simply bought all the company shares and ordered it.
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That's a game design decision. Half-life isn't about dialogue trees, cutscenes where 'Gordon' takes control and talks to people for the player. It's about guns and shooting and such in a realistic immersive enviroment. Gordon is a silent protagonist in order to minimise all possible perception of a separate 'Gordon' identity. Why is this an issue?
The fact being, that silent protagonist or no, it wouldn't have taken much of a stretch for somebody to give you a brief recap of the twenty or so years that you have been 'indisposed', yes, gordon is silent, but, the other characters, aren't
for example, a random city 17 resident asking you, "do you remember during the 7 hour war, this happened?" or " did you fight in the 7 hour war?" or something to that effect, and when they're greeted by gordon's now trademark silence, they give you a small insult about where have you been, and give you some sorta explaination.
That aside, it looks like they're trying to give HL2 a story with the episodic content.
Hell, don't need any of that. Just let the player read the discarded newspapers they find in the likes of highway 17. It's that simple; it even adds a richness and depth to the areas outside the city, and the player is still learning stuff in a realistic and immersive way as if they 'were Freeman'; i.e. exactly the justification for having a mute character and ****-all exposition. It's all very well going 'oh, in reality people would assume you knew', but in reality you'd still bloody well ask.
Supposedly, Gabe Newell said in interviews the HL2 story was morally ambiguous; but the only briefest hint of anything like that is in Breens dialogue at the ending. Your actions are entirely without context; you know nothing of what's happening to the populace, how widespread the rebellion is, how important the Citadel or City 17 are.... it's a corridor shooter with added physics.