I don’t…
Listen to me, TGP.
You’ve come so far.
You have seen the release of Black Mesa.
You have seen many hardships, and endured them all.
And now this is your biggest task yet.
It will be difficult. But it can be done.
TGP, YOU WILL MAKE IT!
Loving the shit outta this game.
That’s all 
Don’t think that’s it, I have 2GBs of video memory.
Fucking do it.
Yeah that’s my attempt at a pep-talk.
Effectiveness ?
God, writing exposition is a pain in the ass. It’s impossible to work in a ton of it without it seeming forced and awkward.
Maybe it is time to answer a few questions then:
How much of this exposition is needed?
Why is it needed?
Are there parts of this that I can cut and no one would notice?
Is there a way I can introduce some of this naturally through another conversation?
Can some of this be mentioned in passing by seemingly innocuous characters that are more important than I have lead the reader to believe before now?
Good questions. I need to think on this before I write more…
Edit: The key thing I’m worried about here is that I’m putting a ton of description of the setting and characters in a relatively small space, and now there’s also a few good paragraphs of key exposition I need to fit in somewhere. Your questions helped; I’m cutting out a lot of extraneous description here and I have some more ideas for dialogue.
I have done some (poorly done erotic) writing myself. I have ignored or answered incorrectly every single one of those questions and paid the price for it 
Whenever I write something I just say “fuck you” to exposition and drop really subtle hints in the dialogue, leaving the reader guessing for the most part.
I’d like to try that, but I’m worried that I’ll just end up confusing them or causing certain important details to escape notice. In what I’m writing right now, the fact that the protagonist is the only one able to breath the atmosphere is fairly key, but I don’t think I can both be subtle and point that out.
Edit: I just realized that I’ve already given enough information for the reader to be wondering about that fact, I explicitly mentioned the workers having to wear gas masks and there’s an earlier bit where I described his taking a breath. This is getting really complicated.
Well, yeah, it does depend on what your writing, and I guess I’ve mostly just done stuff simple enough where the plot itself can go forward without complex situations, and the backstory is where I don’t drop details.
Hmm. I guess I could put the really key exposition in a prologue of some sort and just completely ignore it for now, but that might screw me up.
Or I could just find a decent spot in the writing and tell it all there, but that’s just so bland.
Ugh, like I said before, exposition is a pain in the ass.
Edit: Fuck me, I can’t remember how to format dialogue.
Edit 2: Dammnit google, I want grammar help, not star wars fan fiction.
Edit 3: Now microsoft word won’t let me insert new indentations, going to the start of the line and pressing tab actually adjusts the margins.
Edit 4: fuck it, i’m going to play motherload
The reader isn’t stupid and shouldn’t be treated as such. Implication is the key here. This way you can involve the reader while you slowly introduce official information to confirm or negate the many theories created from this method.
…that, that is quite true. I probably won’t even bother with a ton of exposition in this first draft, as a matter of fact.
By the way: https://www.xgenstudios.com/game.php?keyword=motherload
Fucking addictive, that game.
I agree with this. IMO, Surface Tension had many of the iconic moments in HL1, and most of them are gone now, or changed to the point where they aren’t iconic anymore.
Also, I thought that Ram said the part where HECU shoot you while you’re in a vent was gone. Nope, it’s still there, only now the second Garg is right there, and he’s much faster than he used to be.
Those issues and some balance issues (it seems enemies do more damage overall, while the player does about the same, making Normal harder than I remember it being in HL1) the mod is fantastic. Can’t wait for Xen.
Also, with the Hive Hand, (I know not everyone did this, but) when I was in Questionable Ethics, the room where the agrunts and HECU fight, I hit the button to kill everything in the room. Makes it odd that Gordon immediately figures out how to use the Hive Hand the way he did, considering I didn’t see any agrunts other than the naked one at the beginning of the chapter. And about that naked agrunt: if they’re genetically engineering these guys, you would think their armor would be part of their bodies. I always did. The naked one should look like he’s had some of his skin cut/ripped off.
The lack of Agrunts also stuck out to me, as I too used the tesla to kill the grunts. At least there was that hilarious animation where Gordon puts on the hivehand, though, like he’s trying to figure it out.
Edit: You know, I haven’t seen anybody mention that animation. Did everyone else miss it or something?
I saw it, I just thought it was odd how he figured it out so fast, considering my previous post. (trying not to spoil much for those who haven’t played yet)
Yeah. Even as Surface Tension was so well-done, a lot of the story that was told through gameplay and environment has been lost.
Also, the grunts were so hard to fight that I actually missed a lot of scenery; I barely even looked at the osprey during the whole time you fight it, and when I blew it up I had to run back to cover rather than watch it crash since there were still soldiers around. I similarly missed some ospreys and other things during that last surface fight in Forget About Freeman.