Yeah, the ship really isn’t that small.
Thing is, that’s not the actual ship. It’s just one of a whole bunch of photoshops that never made it into the game.
Having logged 145+ hours in Half Life 2, I feel I can comment with some authority.
It can be argued that the original Half-Life was a deconstruction of Doom. In Doom you’re a meathead space marine that runs around and shoots shit. In Half-Life you have to think on your feet and use cover, because running and gunning can get you killed very quickly. Enemy soldiers and aliens can infight and give you something to watch, leaving you to mop up the leftovers. The real blemish on HL1 was Xen, because it was straight-up horribly designed with absolutely nothing to signpost what you were supposed to do, or where to go, which contrasted heavily with the rest of the game.
Half-Life 2 is an excellent game. There aren’t many weapons, and usage of the starting pistol gets phased out about five chapters in, but many guns can be utilized effectively in the later chapters. The SMG’s best function is it’s underslung grenade launcher, and the bullets are reasonably good against antlions in a pinch on the coast. The AR2 is the go to gun for use on soldiers at medium range, and the energy ball launcher is just plain fun to use. Shotguns get the job done at short range on zombies and close range soldiers, and the RPG is used against the game’s heavy artillery such as Striders and gunships. The revolver can be used in a pinch to compliment long range engagement, and fires potentially more accurately than the crossbow when used in conjunction with the suit’s zoom feature. The best moments of HL2 were when you had to juggle all of these functions, such as many fights in the ruined City 17 chapters and Nova Prospkt.
I played a bit of the shareware Doom 1 ages ago, but my main experience with the franchise comes from the third installment, technically a remake of the first game with more horror-based mechanics. You have to constantly switch between the flashlight and your weapons to survive, because the environments are constantly shifting in lighting conditions between dark and pitch black. The monsters LITERALLY come out of closets- I’ve seen multiple sequences where there are false walls over small rooms that are purposefully designed to spawn monsters behind you. It’s cheap and awful and poor design, whereas Half Life 2’s opponents are always logically positioned and moving to flank you. About the only HL game element that would be consistent with Doom’s enemy positioning and combat would have been the original HL’s Xen portals dropping aliens everywhere. That felt cheap as well, which is one of the many reasons why I hold HL2 in higher regard than the first game.
Combine Soldiers can drop from rappels, jump out of dropship containers, and run around the edges of buildings to get the drop on you. Many zombies will masquerade as corpses and pop up when you least expect it. The only “nowhere” spawning monster would be the Antlions, but these will pop up from broken concrete in spawn holes in Nova Prospkt, or from the sand on the coast.
As for the matter of a silent protagonist, the whole purpose of this was to allow the player to imprint on the protagonist. I may not completely agree with this creative direction, but I respect it nonetheless. Would the plot honestly be better if there were gigantic Metal Gear Solid style exposition breaks that take control away from the player? Because then you wouldn’t be able to ignore the story if you want. You don’t get anything out of the narrative, so go play with the physics engine while the grown-ups are talking. Play with the teleporter in Kleiner’s lab, or toss around barrels while Alyx angsts over her dad. But if you look around Eli’s lab in Black Mesa East, the beauty of Valve’s approach to exposition is held in sharp relief. You can go over to the newspapers and learn about the Seven Hour War. Eli’s exposition is short and to the point:
“Dr. Breen… He’s the administrator of this whole vile business now. He ended the Seven Hour War by negotiating Earth’s ‘surrender.’ The Combine rewarded him with power.”
Now imagine if instead of this, you got a gigantic cutscene flashback showing all of this. Wouldn’t that take you out of Gordon’s perspective? It could feel shoehorned at best, and flat out annoying at worst, because on successive playthroughs you’d be stuck watching plot material you already know. At current, there’s plenty of interactive stuff to play around with, and most of the world’s state is left implied. Empty oceans, the lack of terrestrial life, the walls of City 17 eating old buildings. It’s brilliant because it’s minimalist, and lets you put together your own conclusions based on the level’s mise en scene. (Yes, I’m a film major. This applies, look it up.) It manages to be far more cinematic by NOT using cutscene content.
Heck, the original version of Eli’s lab would have seen Gordon getting to watch a slideshow explaining how we got here. How, honestly would that be better?
To come back to Doom 3 again, the PDA was the principal storytelling device for giving Doomguy insight into the goings-on at the UAC base. I happened to like the storytelling functions here, because you could start the audiolog going and let it play as you explored. If there had been less of a focus on combat it could have been even more atmospheric, but with the constantly respawning enemies being launched at me out of closets, the sense of atmosphere was very much undermined. Additionally, NPC interactions in the vein of HL were deliberately done out of Doomguy’s perspective. For instance, the scene where Doomguy hears Swann talking to the security chief being heard through a vent had a fancy camera going through the vent into the room. While cinematic, I think it would be far more interesting to just hear the conversation through the vent, or follow the audio of the conversation through vents in the ceiling and reaching the NPCs to observe through a window.
At any rate, Full-Death, the way you’ve gone about tearing apart Half Life 2 leads me to believe you don’t understand the creative decisions that led to the game being presented the way it is, and refuse to consider the implications of the changes you would want. I don’t wish to patronize you, but you simply aren’t thinking about the bigger picture.
Well for him to be banned so quickly I think even the mods were aware he was an obvious troll, CoD avatar, failed criticism, stupid logic, give me a break.
Looks like a perma-ban too. Darn. I was looking forward to stretching my critical muscles.
that was quick i was forwarding the discussion with this outlaw, but is better for the threads sake
Well, the Borealis is an ice breaker IIRC, which are apparently medium sized ships (if someone can remember which real life ship inspired the Borealis then you could get a better idea).
I don’t see the game being set completely in the Borealis, though, the final chapter maybe, or the second to last chapter. But, with all the stuff the Combine might’ve jammed into the ship it will be probably the size of a entire complex by now (with the borealis in the middle). Or maybe the ship is still derelict, turning the game into a race to the finish line.
I imagine the game at first is set in the arctic finding the borealis, then gordon finds it, retrieves valuable portal information but isn’t enough, then with the help of Judith they create a portal to the ruins of aperture science to find more info, we get a nice little glados cameo and maybe some little levels with the portal gun (he doesn’t keep it afterwards), retrieves some good info, they make a portal to the combine’s home planet and gordon nukes the hell out of them, the end.
Yeah I just pulled this out of my ass so it’s flawed.
^ I would HATE it if we went back to Aperture. Leave that in the Portal games. I don’t want to see Glados, I want hunters in the snow, I want my Borealis. I want some kind of choice- an ethical quandry, over whether or not to use the tech as Kleiner and Mossman want, or to destroy it like Eli wanted and Alyx would likely want.
That’s obvious, it stinks 
I think that Gordon will venture to Xen somewhere in the game, at least that’s what those concept art photos seemed to imply (unless they’ve cut Xen out, but I hope not).
I just want another reference to portal in it, even if it’s just some old recordng of cave johnson inside the ship or maybe blueprints for the creation of glados.
Considering the escape of Chell, and lack of further human test subjects, there’s not really anything to go on with in Portal series, I think. Except for bloody bird testing, I guess.
I’d even be down for a full show of GLaDOS, and her agreeing to help Gordon. Or a cameo. Either Chell or GLaDOS. Maybe a little Lamarr style peak of Atlas/P-Body (Y’know, Anticitizen One).
Or maybe Chell appearing as a character in Half-Life.
I don’t know. Maybe HL3 will happen betwen the two Portals, with Gordon and Alyx awakening Wheatley in the Borealis, and portalling him to Aperture.
Whatever of these, or anything completely different, Valve’s going to make it epic. I trust that.
The fact that valve added a workshop for portal 2 where everyone can make their own maps to share (so that the game stays alive a little longer) just proves that they probably won’t ever make a portal 3, at least so soon, the same goes for left 4 dead. Besides if there were a portal 3 what else could they add other than new maps with a portal gun? I don’t like ongoing franchises, I want them to make a new story next and not make sequels (except half-life, until we get the conclusion to the story.)
So I want want half-life 3 to also be a sort of sequel to portal 2, but it doesn’t have to be the main focus, just a little hint at what happened in aperture and chell’s fate, maybe something extra in the future like a dlc or something where gordon goes to aperture, canon or not.
What happened to a Portal character related to Gordon or something like that? Unless I remember it wrong.
Wait, who got permabanned here?
Apparently the guy got his posts deleted too. Creepy…
What was he talking about to be banned?
It’s not important, trust me.
Oh
Okay, then
I have no idea what you’re referring to, honestly.