Camera in the middle of a HL game? Huh?
I am the camera in the HL series.
Even the speech of G-Man at HL2’s opening (And EP2’s speech when Alyx is healed) was me and my eyes being shown stuff by the G-Man.
And no, the flashback at the start of EP 1 doesn’t count. I am unconcious then and see that in my mind.
^What this guy said.
Alright, alright! To you and everyone else who quoted me. There may be someone (just a bunch) who loved HL1 and loves the sequel the same much, but the sequels don’t have the same quality of the first chapter, which didn’t have cutscenes and was awesome and breathtaking at the same time.
We were discussing your comment elsewhere. I think I get where you’re coming from: HL2 seemed to be made for a wider demographic and wasn’t as challenging as HL. I don’t necessarily disagree with that, but nonetheless, I enjoyed HL2 as much or more than HL.
I don’t know what you were expecting, but I wasn’t disappointed with HL2. It’s a great game. I don’t know if that qualifies me as a Valve fanboy, but if that’s the case, I would be OK with that. They’re a very innovative company that makes great games. Whether or not someone enjoys those games is subjective.
I’ve been prickling with that “The only people who really LOVE HL2 and episodes are fanboys or fangirls”, I must admit.
I liked HL2 actually, but I can’t say I prefer it over HL1. In HL1 I was just a silly scientist with the worst job among all the others (scientists) and I ended up saving all the survivors.
In HL2… Goooordon Freeman! I can’t stand the setting of HL2, even if the plot is solid, because it seems something made only to get extra money out of the HL name. Looks more like a reboot or a brand new game. Not that I wasn’t happy when I read that Valve was working on a sequel, but nothing can be better than HL as fps. It had fast paced fights, a plot, good storytelling, puzzles to break the monotony of the fights, many weapons, good level design… I’d give it 10/10 if wasn’t for the graphic (yes it was good but SiN had a better graphic).
This is why I’m here after all: this mod is the most important mod ever made.
PS: I didn’t see where you were discussing my comment, another topic? I didn’t look for it sincerely, sorry! 
I love Half Life, it was a great game. But Half Life 2 is objectively speaking of a higher quality. Better physics, better voice acting, better gameplay. Half Life 2 is what really got me to appreciate first person shooters, along with the original Rainbow Six.
So the argument that true HL fans don’t like HL2+Episodes is at the very best deeply flawed. Let’s not “No true scotsman” this, allright?
As for cutscenes in HL2, the only real “cutscene” was when the G-man takes control of your viewpoint at the beginning and the end of the game. Episode One only did this once at the beginning, and never took control of your view at any point afterwards. This was likely to reinforce the notion that the Vortigaunts freed you from the control of the G-man. Episode Two let you retain control of your viewpoint the whole time, but movements were restricted during encounters with the Advisors.
Stop prickling, you’ll go blind.
HL2 was a bit over the top with the ego-stroking of the player through the NPCs fawning over Freeman as the heroic alpha and Alyx being annoyingly smitten, as if Valve still held the mid 90s stereotype of gamers as nerdy teenaged virgins who wear coke bottle glasses held together with a band-aid at the bridge, and snort when laughing at a joke told in Klingon. It didn’t ruin the game, but it was a little annoying, unnecessary and out-of-touch.
New engine. Essentially a new game with the same character and a tie-in to the original story line.
Agreed
Fanboy
+1
I can’t stress this enough. Once you start showing the player everything then Half-Life ceases to be Half-Life.
Dotard, I am seriously questioning if you understand why Half-Life is such a good game. Because everything you are proposing would hurt the experience, not help. And yes, even more scripted sequences.
You know why? One of the reason in HL (and BM) scripted sequences are so awesome to come across is because they are infrequent. Once you start adding more, they loose the spectacle, become predictable, and unimpressive. Valve knew this, which is why they spaced them out the way they did.
Once you start jumping from set piece to set piece it ruins the pacing, and does exactly the same thing CoD tries to do 90% of the time.
On topic of HL2, I love it, but the ego-stroking annoys the fuck out of me to this day.
Episode Two also includes a G-Man encounter during the Alyx healing scene.
Basically the only time you don’t have control over where you look is when GORDON literally has no control over where he looks. So it’s fine to have those, IMO.
I just don’t want you as a player to be forced into looking at things via forced camera vignettes, and such. And Valve does a beautiful job of subtly nudging your consciously controlled view toward things that they really want you to see, using small psychological cues like specific NPC placement, lighting, geometry, color choice, contrast, etc.
That’s what I like about Valve, because other then HL, too many linear games feel artifically linear, like I literally have control of nothing I’m doing except I can move from side to side, like a one-way road with multiple lanes.
Valve’s games feel “organically” linear, because they direct the player to check out things, and they usually have boundaries that don’t look like you could get past even in real life, with the exception of chain-link fences in HL2.
^ Oh yeah, whoops. The first time I played Episode Two I basically couldn’t watch that scene because the framerate went into the low fives. This is back when I played Episode Two on a win XP with a FX5200 Graphics card that ran HL2 on medium.
Just objective.
To this whole HL1vsHL2 topic that came out of nowhere, the original feels more “Half-Lifish” I agree, but HL2 feels more “AAA” if you know what I mean.
Some people perhaps do not realize it’s 2012 already and not 1998
I’m a Half-Life veteran you know, I love the game. But if I wanted to play it just with better audio-visuals, there’s HL: S and sound/texture replacement mods.
I’m not saying there aren’t new things and it’s not modernized, but upon the word “remake” one may imagine more changes/additions.
You fail to come to realize that this game is built on the Source Engine mainly for the purpose of using it’s “advanced capabilities” and to do things Valve couldn’t back then due to technical limitations.
Yeah, you still don’t get it. The examples you gave of things you want to change were puzzles. That’s Half-Life. You still don’t understand that. Your idea of a ‘modernizing’ HL seems to be to dumb it down like so many other ‘modern’ FPSs - hence the CoD reference.
And don’t use red text.
Why exactly is a design decision like avoiding cut scenes in favor of maintaining immersion a flaw, or a sign of an outdated game? It’s not like the original Half Life game couldn’t have had cut scenes. The game engine supported it, and even if it didn’t there could have been pre rendered scenes if the the choice was made to include them. Not having cut scenes then was a conscience design choice. It worked really well in my opinion. To me it works even better now. With the advanced features of the engine, there are more tools you can use within the gameplay to deliver the story to the player. To me resorting to cinematic cut scenes doesn’t enhance the game at all. It’s ignoring what works about the style of game that Half Life ( and by extension Black Mesa ) is going for.
Yes, there is a point where you don’t have control of the camera in HL / BM, but it comes with reason. You are either knocked out, or locked in a sort of teleportation…field…thingy. This is far different than forcing the camera view during gameplay or at chapter intervals to where they are supposed to be looking. Clever level design and subtle player guidance are sufficient tools to accomplish this. To force the camera to swing to what you consider important is not only lazy in my view, it’s also immersion breaking. The worst part I find is that it isn’t needed. Implementing a feature that doesn’t enhance a game, but rather simplifies it down because people are used to it in modern games isn’t a step forward in my view.
Lots of modern games have quick time events now too. I hardly see how including them in BM would make it better though…
Sorry for that red text. But:
I wouldn’t call either of those instances as puzzles.
A simple scripted sequence could help:
But you are right, I know what you are talking about.
BUT even though an unique (but outdated design/approach), it got replaced a bit with HL2, for what we know, HL3 will be 180* degree different from it’s predecessor only for people to complain how it isn’t “half-life”
Thank you for your contribution and view on the thing
I didn’t really notice what was or wasn’t going on with the marines in that sequence. I was too busy running like hell in the opposite direction. The reason it scared the fuck out of me was the incredibly unexpected reveal. It was a great way to trip up people who had played the original HL.
They’re puzzles. You have a problem and you have to figure out how to solve it in order to advance. How do I kill the Garg? How do I make the Marines stop coming? etc
It’s a puzzle. You have to figure it out yourself. Most people do that, others might need some help. It’s not a design issue, and changing these things as you’ve suggested will absolutely ruin the game.
No, I don’t think you do.
The reason you think puzzles and integrated narrative are outdated is because your experience and perspective is from some modern shooters that are essentially shooting galleries. Valve did not drop this design approach for HL2, and I absolutely can’t even imagine that puzzles and integrated narrative would be dropped from HL3, it wouldn’t be a HL game. These are basic features of the HL series - they’re the things that define the HL games.
You’re talking about changing the things that define the HL games and make the games great. You’re even somehow under the impression that HL2 dropped these. People have been trying to tell you this, and you’re not getting it. It’s not an outdated design approach, it’s the basic approach of all the Half-Life games and what makes HL games so great - they’re not run-and-shoot. But you seem to want them to be that.
It’s the same thing with the cut scenes. Half-Life doesn’t have cut scenes. You love cut scenes and think they make a game “professional” and “modern”. They don’t. Cut scenes suck. They’re a cheap, lazy way to tell a story, without integrating the narrative into game itself, and they’re certainly not modern.
One of the reasons Half Life is so great is because there are no cut scenes. The story is told through clues in the environment and info gathered from interactions with NPCs. The player pieces together the narrative him/herself. When people use the word “immersion”, that’s part of what they’re talking about. Cut scenes destroy immersion. In Half-life, once the game starts, you are Gordon Freeman and you see only see what he sees, the immersion is never broken with cut scenes.
Your suggestion about dropping puzzles and adding cut scenes in order to modernize Half Life are totally backwards. That’s why I said that some people don’t understand or appreciate Half Life. It’s why I referenced CoD, because that’s what you really what to make it - a run-and-shoot with the story told through cut scenes. You want to walk through an environment unobstructed, occasionally happening into bad guys that you shoot, and you want to replace the integrated narrative with cut scenes. You think turning a great game into a modern shooting gallery with cut scenes makes a game modern and professional, and that’s completely backward. Half Life is a great game because of the puzzles and integrated narrative, not in spite those things.
there might be a miscommunication or something
One of the key-features of the Half-Life series is its story telling and most almost ALL of them are made in real time during gameplay. that´s why everyone llked hl, cutscenes and ripping players control during action moments makes you feel that you not are part of the story and that´s so anti-HL.
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.