These are the lasting things that Half-Life 2 gave us, besides headcrabs and crowbars

Beyond the game itself (which rocks), <em>Half-Life 2</em> had a big impact on PC gaming.

See full article...

 

[Mental Gear Reduction]

Steam’s big push title

In the other thread, someone else posted their date of first install as being the day Steam came out. Mine was over a year later, October 10, 2004. And I'd bet almost anything that was for HL2, even though I have no actual memory of it. So, at least with me, that push worked.

the mute protagonist Gordon Freeman

That seemed like a good idea at the time, but it's been proven to be bad design since. Newell wanted the player to project his own voice into Gordon, reasoning that having any voice would detract from immersion. But in their design, that also meant you couldn't say anything, which was a super, super bad idea. That persisted into Portal, and while they were able to make it into a joke and mostly okay, it's still a bad idea.

It's been clearly demonstrated in the two decades since that gamers are just fine with a voiced protagonist. In fact, it's superior for immersion. Can you imagine playing Mass Effect without hearing Jennifer Hale or Mark Meer as "you"? (put me in the Hale camp, btw, I thought she was much better.)

I'm not being critical to be critical, the silent protagonist decision made sense in the absence of concrete evidence, but we have hard proof, after a lot more years, that it's not true and, in most cases, detracts from story games.

It would be hard to go back in time and tell our pre-broadband selves about pre-loading. You download entire games, over the Internet, and then they’re ready to play one second after the release time

I have never seen that work that way, at least on Steam. The decryption process takes forever. My experience has been that waiting until a game releases, and then downloading fresh, if you're on good broadband, is way quicker.

IIRC, it took more than an hour to unlock HL2, maybe close to two. The decryption process was just terrifically slow. And that just kept happening. Maybe it's gotten better in recent years, but with BG3, I just waited and downloaded the whole thing, and had that gigantic game running faster than I managed with Half Life 2, 18-ish years prior.

It’s really something, that game.

It really was, and still is. I replayed it about five years ago, and the memories are strong enough that I thought it was maybe 18 months.

Still hated Ravenholm, though. I've never been that great with the gravity gun.

 

[Auie]

You mean besides a long term unfulfilled yearning for HL3?

 

[eAi]

Loved the game, got it the day that it came out after a lot of anticipation - more than I'd had for any previous game (or almost any game since really). It was the first time I realised that some first person games give me motion sickness, so not an ideal experience! It gave me awful motion sickness but I still spent most of a day playing it non-stop!

 

[Coolman13355]

I'll have more to say later, but I'm surprised this article didn't have a passing mention as to how Valve is celebrating.

 

[stoattiep]

That seemed like a good idea at the time, but it's been proven to be bad design since.

I agree with everything else in your post, but I think I prefer a mute protagonist in certain kinds of games. Being mute wouldn't work in character-driven games, but for adventure-focused games I think it's good. Elden Ring and Tears of The Kingdom are two recent examples that come to mind.

I would be fine with HL3 having a voiced Freeman, but it would feel strange at first.

 

[danrien]

After this long series of articles making us all nostalgic for Half-Life, it only makes sense that Gabe Newell will post an op-ed announcing Half-Life 3.

 

[Albino_Boo]

I first came across Marc Laidlaw back in the 80s. Laidlaw had a short story in Bruce Sterling's cyberpunk anthology Mozart in Mirrorshades. This was when Cyberpunk was new. Marc's contribution was 400 boys. Looking back I do wonder if something of that short story made it into HL2. Laidlaw has made the story available so you can read it for yourself
https://www.marclaidlaw.com/online-fiction/400-boys/

 

[Albino_Boo]

After this long series of articles making us all nostalgic for Half-Life, it only makes sense that Gabe Newell will post an op-ed announcing Half-Life 3.

He will announce HL3 and then say it will never be released and he will be buried with the only copy of the code. Then Gabe will laugh manically and stroke a white cat.

 

[DNA_Doc]

<snipped>
That seemed like a good idea at the time, but it's been proven to be bad design since. Newell wanted the player to project his own voice into Gordon, reasoning that having any voice would detract from immersion. But in their design, that also meant you couldn't say anything, which was a super, super bad idea. That persisted into Portal, and while they were able to make it into a joke and mostly okay, it's still a bad idea.

It's been clearly demonstrated in the two decades since that gamers are just fine with a voiced protagonist. In fact, it's superior for immersion. Can you imagine playing Mass Effect without hearing Jennifer Hale or Mark Meer as "you"? (put me in the Hale camp, btw, I thought she was much better.)

I'm not being critical to be critical, the silent protagonist decision made sense in the absence of concrete evidence, but we have hard proof, after a lot more years, that it's not true and, in most cases, detracts from story games.
<snipped>

I strongly disagree with your take on the mute protagonist. I feel the same way when songs get too specific with names or locations - you lose the universality. Newell had the right idea.

 

[Zephro]

It’s hard to imagine another game developer building an engine with such a forward-thinking mission as Source. Rather than just build the thing that runs their next game, Valve crafted Source to be modular, such that its core could be continually improved (and shipped out over Steam), and newer technologies could be optionally ported into games both new and old, while not breaking any older titles working perfectly fine.

Hm, I dunno about this bit. id were developing engines as licensable, stand-alone products from Quake onwards, which was pretty forward-looking given the game came out in 1996. (Just ask Valve, who after all built HL1 on a modified Quake engine )

And licensing and developing the Unreal engine was Epic's main line of business from the early 2000s onwards.

Granted the idtech engines don't have backwards compatibility. (I don't know if Unreal does?) But still, thinking about engines as products in their own right definitely predates HL2.

 

[KDogg]

With HL2 being free on Steam, maybe whole new generations of gamers can discover the aggravations and frustrations of a great unfinished game that will never bring any sense of closure when HL2 and the episodes are completed. To me that's the big legacy of Half Life 2: frustration.

Seeing Valve celebrate it without finishing is just salt in the wound, at least for me. Episode 3 need not have been some revolutionary new gaming tech. It should have been a chapter that offered some closure to the HL2 saga, and then they could have come up with a HL3 if / when they came up with a new thing. They way they actually handled it was just cruel, just pretending that they were never going to do Ep3 and refusing to ever say anything about it.

 

[Meathim]

In the other thread, someone else posted their date of first install as being the day Steam came out. Mine was over a year later, October 10, 2004. And I'd bet almost anything that was for HL2, even though I have no actual memory of it. So, at least with me, that push worked.



That seemed like a good idea at the time, but it's been proven to be bad design since. Newell wanted the player to project his own voice into Gordon, reasoning that having any voice would detract from immersion. But in their design, that also meant you couldn't say anything, which was a super, super bad idea. That persisted into Portal, and while they were able to make it into a joke and mostly okay, it's still a bad idea.

It's been clearly demonstrated in the two decades since that gamers are just fine with a voiced protagonist. In fact, it's superior for immersion. Can you imagine playing Mass Effect without hearing Jennifer Hale or Mark Meer as "you"? (put me in the Hale camp, btw, I thought she was much better.)

I'm not being critical to be critical, the silent protagonist decision made sense in the absence of concrete evidence, but we have hard proof, after a lot more years, that it's not true and, in most cases, detracts from story games.

This is down to writing. I find HL2 much more immersive than most other games with voiced PCs. Also, funny that you say Mass Effect, the game I couldn't play partly because it didn't tell me what I was saying before I said it (the reprehensible Dialouge Wheel: I pick one option and the character say something completely different than what I thought it was going to be).

I would be fine with HL3 having a voiced Freeman, but it would feel strange at first.

Oh god no. No. It would be horrible. I would hate it so much, I can already feel it bubbling up inside of me.

 

[Teej]

That seemed like a good idea at the time, but it's been proven to be bad design since. Newell wanted the player to project his own voice into Gordon, reasoning that having any voice would detract from immersion. But in their design, that also meant you couldn't say anything, which was a super, super bad idea. That persisted into Portal, and while they were able to make it into a joke and mostly okay, it's still a bad idea.

It's been clearly demonstrated in the two decades since that gamers are just fine with a voiced protagonist. In fact, it's superior for immersion. Can you imagine playing Mass Effect without hearing Jennifer Hale or Mark Meer as "you"? (put me in the Hale camp, btw, I thought she was much better.)

Link says hi, and thinks you’re wrong.

Of course it was me voicing Link.

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

In the other thread, someone else posted their date of first install as being the day Steam came out. Mine was over a year later, October 10, 2004. And I'd bet almost anything that was for HL2, even though I have no actual memory of it. So, at least with me, that push worked.



That seemed like a good idea at the time, but it's been proven to be bad design since. Newell wanted the player to project his own voice into Gordon, reasoning that having any voice would detract from immersion. But in their design, that also meant you couldn't say anything, which was a super, super bad idea. That persisted into Portal, and while they were able to make it into a joke and mostly okay, it's still a bad idea.

It's been clearly demonstrated in the two decades since that gamers are just fine with a voiced protagonist. In fact, it's superior for immersion. Can you imagine playing Mass Effect without hearing Jennifer Hale or Mark Meer as "you"? (put me in the Hale camp, btw, I thought she was much better.)

I'm not being critical to be critical, the silent protagonist decision made sense in the absence of concrete evidence, but we have hard proof, after a lot more years, that it's not true and, in most cases, detracts from story games.



I have never seen that work that way, at least on Steam. The decryption process takes forever. My experience has been that waiting until a game releases, and then downloading fresh, if you're on good broadband, is way quicker.

IIRC, it took more than an hour to unlock HL2, maybe close to two. The decryption process was just terrifically slow. And that just kept happening. Maybe it's gotten better in recent years, but with BG3, I just waited and downloaded the whole thing, and had that gigantic game running faster than I managed with Half Life 2, 18-ish years prior.



It really was, and still is. I replayed it about five years ago, and the memories are strong enough that I thought it was maybe 18 months.

Still hated Ravenholm, though. I've never been that great with the gravity gun.

Not every game has to be the same. Gordon didn't have that much he really needed to say.

 

[Zephro]

Edit: nm, miscounted!

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

I first came across Marc Laidlaw back in the 80s. Laidlaw had a short story in Bruce Sterling's cyberpunk anthology Mozart in Mirrorshades. This was when Cyberpunk was new. Marc's contribution was 400 boys. Looking back I do wonder if something of that short story made it into HL2. Laidlaw has made the story available so you can read it for yourself
https://www.marclaidlaw.com/online-fiction/400-boys/

One thing did anyway:

Spoiler

silent protagonist.

 

[williamyf]

I'm probaly ninja'd somewhere already, but it was Half-Life 1, not HL2, the one which gave us headcrabs and crowbars...

Edit: ¡NOT NINJA'D! ¿¡Who would have tought!?

 

[dspariI]

Hm, I dunno about this bit. id were developing engines as licensable, stand-alone products from Quake onwards, which was pretty forward-looking given the game came out in 1996. (Just ask Valve, who after all built HL1 on a modified Quake engine )

And licensing and developing the Unreal engine was Epic's main line of business from the early 2000s onwards.

Granted the idtech engines don't have backwards compatibility. (I don't know if Unreal does?) But still, thinking about engines as products in their own right definitely predates HL2.

That part really overstates how much licensing the Source Engine actually had which is to say very little. It's never supported consoles which nixes multiplatform titles, and supposedly there's no longer even anyone at Valve that has a position dedicated to external licensing.

id had been licensing their engines to some degree at least going back to Wolf3D. Part of why Unreal beat id is because Epic treated the engine as a true product with tools and documentation even going back to the original. id treated it purely as a sideshow and from what I've read, didn't give much more than dumps of source code.

 

[danrien]

He will announce HL3 and then say it will never be released and he will be buried with the only copy of the code. Then Gabe will laugh manically and stroke a white cat.

Indeed, he probably keeps the only build on his personal computer, basking in its glory.

 

[NoSkill]

Brings back bad memories of Scouts griefing with crowbars.

 

[j00ce]

There's a difference between an unvoiced protagonist (no voice actor) and a silent one.

Unvoiced is acceptable. Silent is not. People are almost never silent when interacting with others. Valve took the mechanic to the extreme of literal silence, which as it turns out in the long run, doesn't work well.

And even unvoiced is not at all necessary. Nobody really cares. Jennifer Hale was an awesome me. But lots and lots of games don't voice the protagonist, while still allowing you to say things.

For me, the key difference is whether it's a sandbox game or a role playing game.

The GTA series is a good example. 3 was essentially a pure sandbox game; your character was silent and you could pretty much project yourself into the game.

Vice City gave your character a voice and a backstory, but it was fairly generic and lightweight, so it wasn't too hard to project onto him.

And then San Andrea's put you in the shoes of a specific character with a full backstory, culture and family. As did IV and V.

For me, the shift to role playing killed a lot of the pleasure I got from the games; it's a lot harder to project yourself into the game, especially since a lot of the quests are tied into your character's story.

I much prefer New Vegas style role playing: let me be the character!

 

[natefrog]

For those who missed these back in the day, GooseGoose's commentaries on HL2, Episode 1, and Episode 2 were extremely well done and from a unique perspective. Long watches, but each are well worth it in my opinion.

Thanks, GooseGoose, wherever you are now. And thanks to Myron for the HD remasters.

 

[50me12]

Man, did you see that shot!?!?!

-Barney

 

[ProfessorScience]

So today's the day.

 

[Flailsafe]

With HL2 being free on Steam...

Just to emphasize: Half Life 2 is free on Steam until November 18th!

 

[morlamweb]

In the other thread, someone else posted their date of first install as being the day Steam came out. Mine was over a year later, October 10, 2004. And I'd bet almost anything that was for HL2, even though I have no actual memory of it. So, at least with me, that push worked.



That seemed like a good idea at the time, but it's been proven to be bad design since. Newell wanted the player to project his own voice into Gordon, reasoning that having any voice would detract from immersion. But in their design, that also meant you couldn't say anything, which was a super, super bad idea. That persisted into Portal, and while they were able to make it into a joke and mostly okay, it's still a bad idea.

It's been clearly demonstrated in the two decades since that gamers are just fine with a voiced protagonist. In fact, it's superior for immersion. Can you imagine playing Mass Effect without hearing Jennifer Hale or Mark Meer as "you"? (put me in the Hale camp, btw, I thought she was much better.)

I'm not being critical to be critical, the silent protagonist decision made sense in the absence of concrete evidence, but we have hard proof, after a lot more years, that it's not true and, in most cases, detracts from story games.



I have never seen that work that way, at least on Steam. The decryption process takes forever. My experience has been that waiting until a game releases, and then downloading fresh, if you're on good broadband, is way quicker.

IIRC, it took more than an hour to unlock HL2, maybe close to two. The decryption process was just terrifically slow. And that just kept happening. Maybe it's gotten better in recent years, but with BG3, I just waited and downloaded the whole thing, and had that gigantic game running faster than I managed with Half Life 2, 18-ish years prior.



It really was, and still is. I replayed it about five years ago, and the memories are strong enough that I thought it was maybe 18 months.

Still hated Ravenholm, though. I've never been that great with the gravity gun.

Re: silent protagonists. Not every game needs to have a silent player character; nor does every player character need a voice. Valve made a choice for the Half-Life games, and I think it worked out well for those games. Irrational madea similar choice forBioshock 1 and 2, then switched toa fully-realized and -voiced character for Infinite. I wouldn't change a thing regarding player voices in any of those games.

 

[markgo]

Article:

90% ground breaking achievements
10% fan longing for Half Life 3

Comments:
<grin>

I take the ridiculously optimistic view that Half Life 3 WILL happen, if not in my lifetime, then my son’s.

 

[Nexus Trimean]

If you haven't read it, The "Concerned" Fan Webcomic for HL2 is a great side stroy. Sadly the original site is offline, but archive.org has a copy. It has a lot of little fun explanations for a bunch of Silly Half Life 2 Things. https://archive.org/details/hlcomic

 

[jc12]

If you haven't read it, The "Concerned" Fan Webcomic for HL2 is a great side stroy. Sadly the original site is offline, but archive.org has a copy. It has a lot of little fun explanations for a bunch of Silly Half Life 2 Things. https://archive.org/details/hlcomic

Chris's site is still online, just hasn't been updated since 2014. http://www.screencuisine.net/hlcomic/

 

[AceRimmer]

I'll have more to say later, but I'm surprised this article didn't have a passing mention as to how Valve is celebrating.

Eating snow leopard wrapped in gold that's been slow roasted over a bonfire of $1000 bills?

 

[ibad]

If Valve isn't working in HL3 now, with all this 20th anniversary stuff just being an excuse to get people hyped again, then all of this is very very cruel. I hope an announcement will be coming in the holiday season.

 

[BigDXLT]

I'm just assuming this "HL2" game update is an some kind of HL3 announcement and it's gonna be some meta ARG somewhere in the game. Maybe pieced together if you play the episodes as well (since they're "built in" now).

 

[NewCrow]

I got inspired by these articles and installed it... Steam said I last played it in 2008. It still looks pretty OK (I have not looked at the release notes to see what they updated), but I think I just don't have the patience to run through long corridors anymore.

It's a very linear game. Very good for its time.

OTOH, the last game I played was BG3, which definitely is not linear. It's not really fair to compare HL2 to a 19 years younger game.

 

[HuntingManatees]

. . . but I think I just don't have the patience to run through long corridors anymore.

I hadn't realized this until replaying during the pandemic, but the game switches from cramped hallways to wide open spaces without much in-between.

The original didn't throw you into many long-range shootouts like the second does. You had two general encounter layouts: corridors and warehouses, the latter being especially tense given the HECU soldiers' AI routine favoring a "run for cover, double back and flank" response to getting shot at, which meant that behind every giant crate lay a potential lead salad surprise.

It was just the right mix of space and claustrophobia to keep the shootouts exciting, and trading potshots with Combine guards on walkways just doesn't have the same intensity.

 

[williamyf]

Do not forget Codename:Gordon...

steam://install/92

A little flash dame NOT developed by valve, inspired by the E3 demo and the ßeta, launched vefore HL2

 

[wanderling]

I really liked this article series, as someone who loved the game and appreciated its contributions.

One thing I think was omitted, or at least didn't have much discussion, was the excellent sound design. 3D/surround sound in games was common enough before it came out that I had purchased a set of surround gaming speakers just before the game was released, and HL2 shined with it. Somewhere in the viaduct level, when the combine helicopter fired rockets at me, one flew over my head and exploded behind me, and it was amazing how much hearing that added to the immersion (and made me giggle).

One thing I do remember (I think) them making a big deal about before launch was also that different materials had different sound properties - prior to HL2, most materials in games were only the textures, if I recall properly, and didn't have a lot to differentiate them. HL2 made them sound (and sometimes behave) differently, which stepped up the world interactivity. Now, I can't imagine a game where a wooden door sounds the same as a sheet of metal - it'd seem lazy.

But what I think HL2 really nailed, and I think few other games I've played have done it to anywhere close to this level, is the volumetric aspect of the space in the sound (ie - how big the space is). Big sounds - rockets and the pulse rifle - echoed in outdoor spaces when there were walls around, which immensely added to the illusion of realism. Inside, the air sounded more dead, and the weapons more straightforwardly loud. Combined with the overall silence of the game, the ability to sense the size and directions in the space with just my ears made outdoor spaces feel more real than most other games.

 

[_GntlStone_]

Glad it's currently FREE since I somehow never played or purchased it.

I feel like my games education is incredibly incomplete. Time to rectify that shortcoming.

 

[Venator]

Thanks for the deep dive. Still have the CD-ROM with HL2 demo that came with new graphics card late 2005, HIS Radeon X1600 Pro. That also contained Dungeon Siege, probably my favourite childhood RPG (though not all-time), another gem of a game.