Wow… I’ve been into the HL games for about 5 years now (Not as long as a lot of the other people here, I know. But I do play them ALOT) and I never thought about using tripmines on the assassins… Genius.
Unfortunately. Kind of gain their attention, then set up tripmines in doorways or where you know they’ll run, then hide. They just run into them.
It’s probably the 2nd most boring way to kill them (first being hivehand, I honestly think thats such a cop out to kill them with).
In the lambda sector with the containers I usually just go around trying to shoot them with the glock, magnum, shotgun and MP5. Feels more fun. Sometimes the crossbow, but its just not as fun since they cant be pinned to walls. 
I’m probably alone on this but I feel that the assassins are probably the worst enemy type in the game. They only appear twice in the game and each time, they just feel completely out of place. I know why they’re there, storywise, but it just feels…wrong, I guess. I don’t know.
Instead, I would’ve liked to see a massive firefight with the HECU, possibly with stronger HECU soldiers than you normally encounter, and, when you’re completely drained of health from the battle, you limp eagerly towards the med unit on the wall and then get knocked out by two more HECU soldiers.
Same goes for later in the game, another huge firefight with the HECU, this time, they’re desperately fighting for their lives and they not only have to deal with a maniac scientist with a crowbar, but also the fact that Xenians keep teleporting in. This second part where the assassins attack is, for me, a very boring moment gamewise and I feel that it would’ve been better for an all out brutal and chaotic assault with you in the thick of things. You could try battling or running for your life away from the battle.
I think it would’ve been much stronger, storywise, if this was the case. But, maybe that’s just me.
I like the assasins from a design perspective but like you say the story element that they were their own faction is missing… male black ops would show this better than female assassins.
It is not clear that they are not on the same side
Xenian corpses at the assassins’ location in Lambda Core.
I both agree and disagree with you.
I understand why they’re there storywise or whatever; Government needs a proper clean up of the entire situation, good, sure, makes sense.
The problem is, not only is it explained very well/indepth (and nobody bring up OppForce okay? We’re on HL/BM here), but yes, it is quite lackluster.
I’m not sure if a firefight would be as such a good idea, just because I personally feel like they’re more professional, stealthy and trained to not need to, or whatever.
But I definitely think in general they needed to just be more of a fun or serious enemy/threat unless you’re running at them stupidly with guns blazing, which gets you killed.
I do like the idea of them being overwhelmed by the Xenians and kind of having to try fight HECU, Xenians and Gordon at the same time.
I’m not expecting BM team to fix it since it’s not really ‘right’ to do so in the spirit of HL I guess, so sorry for going off topic myself. But apart from those 2 instances where the assassins kind of randomly appear to attack Gordan, and only Gordan, you’re kind of like “why…the hell are they here again?”.
TL;DR - Black Ops/assassins needed more prescence storyline wise and gameplay wise should’ve been better but that’s not a BM issue, its a HL one. Yes I’m calling it an issue, HL fanboys come at me)
I completely agree. The Assassins are most definitely the most nonsensical part of the game. You have no idea what they are and what they’re doing in Black Mesa, they’re extremely good at their job, and their models are much smaller than you and seriously look like children. I know they’ll never be removed, because the game has already been mapped around them, but they definitely could have been cut from the game for Black Mesa.
I agree. This is something that was not fantastic about Half-Life.
Maybe a radio with some HECU member rambling about Black Ops killing friendlies before getting killed.
Half-Life’s strong point has never been storytelling, sadly.
So, anyway, back to the suggestions. Sorry for the derailment.
I think you made a valid point and I agree with you…
So I’ll second your suggestion…
As another suggestion Half life told story in a unique way even though it was quite ambiguous at times that was a positive so I’ll also second your suggestion possibly Lambda core crate room (2nd encounter) to show a few marines get mowed down by Black Ops Assassins female ones and even a couple of males thrown in if it makes it better story telling only.
Other than that I got very little in the way of suggestions to add now.
I second the suggestion of a few HECU getting shot by assassins. No elaborate scripts or anything necessary. Just that little bit of in-game “confirmation” would be helpful in fleshing out the Half-Life story.
As to the topic, what I’d like to see on the final version is the toning down of bloom in the game. Or perhaps giving the option of a slider for the amount of bloom. I don’t know if that’s possible.
When I see parts of the game that look like this:
it looks pretty awesome but doesn’t feel “real” enough to me. It feels post-processed. The amount of bloom on the lights in this scene (and scenes like it throughout the game) is too much, in my opinion.
I don’t know if there’s a way to control the amount of bloom, though.
That seems to be the material values and not directly related to the lighting values.
This has more to do with the bumpmaps I think?
The worst example I saw in Black Mesa was the reflections in the cafeteria in we got hostiles. The reflections appear to almost be in mid air. So what probably needs to be done to stop that effect occuring of excessive bloom and reflections is change material reflectiveness and perhaps use one of these env_tone_map controllers.
Scientists Lab coats are another example of being too reflective when close to a HDR light source
As are the sand and sand/rock blend reflect and bloom too much.
Wether or not some textures can be given a matte finish or not I don’t know for sure but it is in the material values and can be simply edited with text editor notepad (good idea for a mod there)
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/HDR_Lighting_Settings
But I could be wrong but I think that will fix it. Otherwise you can switch HDR off in your settings.
But I think it has more to do with shaders than the lighting itself.
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Category:List_of_Shader_Parameters
Ronster, where on Earth are you getting that this is a normalmap issue? It’s not, it’s stuff that has to be modified in Hammer via tonemap controllers and sprites.
And reflections aren’t normalmap-related, either. They’re an entirely different parameter.
Thanks for the correction. I said environment tone map though.
Some surfaces are way too reflective too so I thought that was in the material to tone down reflectiveness?
Nope, think you might have me confused with someone else.
Are you thinking about adding greater npc varieties? Like black female scientists, or construction workers (with the impervious forklift, etc…)
Yeah, more npc variants would be great.
Disagree, because the first time we see Assassins is way back at the end of in Apprehension, nearly a full day before FAF. We don’t see them again until Lambda Core, when presumably the HECU are finishing up evacuation, but I think it’d still be too early for them to be fighting the Soldiers.
Gus.
