Half Life thread - Discussions about Valve's FPS magnum opus(es) and any related content (spin offs, expansions and etc)

[thhrang]

Anyway, that's why I personally want to play Half Life 3 before I die, to see how the story concludes, good or bad I just want to see if mankind manages to be truly free in the end or if we're doomed one way or the other to become slaves to either the Combine or the Gman's "employers".

Part of me wants to actually see what the Combine Overworld / the actual Combine leaders or original species that started the empire look like, since all of what we see in HL2 are Synths or creatures created/manipulated by them (including the Advisors if BreenGrub is considered canonical), and it could be really cool to actually directly see just how the Combine got to the point they are. But on the other hand, I think part of the lore's biggest strength is how very much it leaves to the player's imagination - it would be super hard to nail something like that, always a possibility that the player's personal interpretation/imagination winds up being cooler than whatever the writers actually come up with/explain. Same thing for the G-Man & his employers, it feels like a mysterybox that, if answered unsatisfyingly, could leave a huge stain on the entire franchise.

 

[>tfw no Asian gf]

Part of me wants to actually see what the Combine Overworld / the actual Combine leaders or original species that started the empire look like, since all of what we see in HL2 are Synths or creatures created/manipulated by them (including the Advisors if BreenGrub is considered canonical), and it could be really cool to actually directly see just how the Combine got to the point they are. But on the other hand, I think part of the lore's biggest strength is how very much it leaves to the player's imagination - it would be super hard to nail something like that, always a possibility that the player's personal interpretation/imagination winds up being cooler than whatever the writers actually come up with/explain. Same thing for the G-Man & his employers, it feels like a mysterybox that, if answered unsatisfyingly, could leave a huge stain on the entire franchise.

I think the safest and overall best option would be to leave a few breadcrumbs here and there but never a full on explanation of how the Combine began or who/what the Gman's employers are, sometimes it's fine to leave a few questions left unanswered, and like you said, if the writers try to provide an answer and it isn't satisfactory then it'd leave a sour note on the franchise. One of the things I like the most about the Combine as a faction is just how little we actually know about them, it really makes them look more 'alien' and intimidating, so by giving them an explanation and concrete origins it takes away all of that, it's sort of like when a horror movie explains its monster, it takes away the horror of the unknown, less is more as they say.

But regarding the Combine Overworld, oh yeah, I'd love to see it, I think this fan animation made a pretty good job at showing what a tint part of it might look like, the massive, absurd scale of everything, the assymetrical architecture of the structures, it even has brand new creepy synths crawling through the place like giant spiders from hell.

https://youtu.be/lJOZN3YhLtY?si=Zi4QFYSZGUFrtPvn

 

[Hepativore]

Part of me wants to actually see what the Combine Overworld / the actual Combine leaders or original species that started the empire look like, since all of what we see in HL2 are Synths or creatures created/manipulated by them (including the Advisors if BreenGrub is considered canonical), and it could be really cool to actually directly see just how the Combine got to the point they are. But on the other hand, I think part of the lore's biggest strength is how very much it leaves to the player's imagination - it would be super hard to nail something like that, always a possibility that the player's personal interpretation/imagination winds up being cooler than whatever the writers actually come up with/explain. Same thing for the G-Man & his employers, it feels like a mysterybox that, if answered unsatisfyingly, could leave a huge stain on the entire franchise.

It would also be interesting if Half-Life started to delve into the details of how things like Combine soldiers, elites, and stalkers are made, as we have only seen that one partially-dressed soldier in Nova Prospect. I would actually like to see how people are modified by the Combine for these different roles.

It would probably be something akin to the Stroggification process from Quake IV, and probably even worse when it comes to how people are made into stalkers.

I would also like to see some of the creepier synths make it into a Half-Life game that were cut like the guard synth, which is a human modified into a synth. Its actual "head" is the robotic one sticking out in front of it as the human head has had its eyes removed and a breathing port installed in place of its nose and mouth.

 

[Star Classic]

One thing that I find particularly grim about HL2's lore is that because of the suppression field, every corpse you find, every zombie you see, every metrocop you kill, is one less human. Period. The number of humans will never go up again, so every time you kill a metrocop you're, in a weird way, contributing to humanity's extinction, without Freeman, mankind would've been doomed to a slow but inevitable death, this also made me wonder just how many humans are there left alive by the time of the game? I imagine there are less than a billion considering how humanity was absolutely assraped from the portal storms and then the 7 hour war.

These two videos, while fan made, I think are the best interpretation of how humanity at large faired before and after the war. even by the end of the Cascade humanity has already lost 300 million people with the 7 Hour war killing 2 of the 6 billion people on earth with only a horrifying 5 million left by the time Freeman arrives. I think to me HL2 and the episodes always did really well with the theme of overcoming the impossible, even if there are moments of clarity of just how beaten are like the Citadel pod ride with "Echoes of A Resonance Casade" playing in the background.

Really when you strip out the gameplay and just focus on the lore, Half Life 2 is less of a shooter and more of a cosmic horror story, humanity finds itself in a desperate fight for survival against an eldritch abomination given the form of an extremely advanced alien empire, planet Earth is forever scarred but so is humanity's collective psyche, think about it, even if the resistance succeeds and wipes out the remaining Combine forces on Earth then what happens next? Earth is irreparably damaged, countless species have almost certainly been driven to extinction and been replaced with hostile Xen fauna, Earth's resources are most likely heavily depleted after decades of unrelenting Combine activity and perhaps worse than all of that, is that the fear of the Combine will never go away, because they weren't defeated, they were just sealed away from Earth, but the Combine still exists and still dominates multiple dimensions and countless species. That thought will linger on the minds of every human who ever looks up at the night sky and wonder if one of those stars is home to sentient civilization, a civilization that, like humanity before, began exploring where it shouldn't have and in their ignorance, obtained the attention of the Combine.

That's why I'm hoping HL3 kills the Combine outright, maybe even a Halo 3 situation with killing the Combine in Act 2 and focusing on G-man in Act 3. We've already done the impossible in HL1 and 2, who's to say God wouldn't let us do it again?

Anyway, that's why I personally want to play Half Life 3 before I die, to see how the story concludes, good or bad I just want to see if mankind manages to be truly free in the end or if we're doomed one way or the other to become slaves to either the Combine or the Gman's "employers".

Honestly, I just want Freeman and Alyx to have a happy ending. "No one is more deserving of a rest" as G-man says.

If it's any hope, I find that Portal 2 offers a truly happy ending for Earth judging by what's shown. Regardless of your thoughts about it's story I couldn't help but feel happy to see that Earth recovered from being raped by the Combine.

Of course, there's also the ending of preventing all of this from happening. I know you guys hate time travel but I wouldn't mind stopping the Cascade or maybe even preventing the Combine's existence.

 

[Hepativore]

That's why I'm hoping HL3 kills the Combine outright, maybe even a Halo 3 situation with killing the Combine in Act 2 and focusing on G-man in Act 3. We've already done the impossible in HL1 and 2, who's to say God wouldn't let us do it again?

Half-Life 2 seems to imply that what we see of the Combine is only a tiny fraction of their empire and forces as its leadership largely regards Earth as a backwater world of minimal importance in the grand scheme of things. What might happen is not necessarily defeating the Combine but driving them off Earth because they regard their occupation on the planet as being more trouble than it is worth for what little our world might mean to them. However, on their way out, they might mount an extermination attack or send a bomb through a portal that would obliterate all life on Earth as a final "fuck you!" gesture to the remaining inhabitants.

Also, even with the Combine gone, Earth's ecosystem and environment would still be in shambles from what the Combine did, and perhaps it would be interesting to explore how humanity copes with the aftermath of a ruined Earth that is still infested with headcrabs, barnacles, antlions, and perhaps even enclaves of Combine Overwatch holdouts that are trying to use leftover synths to build and maintain control over their own territories because they are still "programmed" by their brain implants to try and maintain "order".

You could even make a spin-off game based on the above and call it Half-Life: Aftermath or something like that.

 

[JesusChristDenton]

I know you guys hate time travel but I wouldn't mind stopping the Cascade or maybe even preventing the Combine's existence.

HL3 being like Marathon Infinity does sound pretty interesting, I just hope it isn't portrayed in some generic MCU tier multiverse slop way.

You could even make a spin-off game based on the above and call it Half-Life: Aftermath or something like that.

There's actually a fan made mod for that called Half-Life 2: Thunder's Leaves.

 

[Star Classic]

HL3 being like Marathon Infinity does sound pretty interesting, I just hope it isn't portrayed in some generic MCU tier multiverse slop way.

Despite people saying HL:Alyx had "Marvel-tier" dialogue (not true) they still handed the time travel part pretty well minus a few glaring story concerns but I think those were left open for them to handle in HL3. Anyways my point is that I have trust in Valve to handle time travel in way that works. I think Valve sees Multiverses as a just a fun little concept, as seen in PETI, plus they somehow make it work too. I like the idea that our Earth isn't even the first one that the Combine has taken over.

I agree somewhat with the MCU remark, but only if were talking anything outside of Loki or Endgame, which I think handled it well mostly. I think a better example woulda been BioShock Infinite. but I still get the point.

There's actually a fan made mod for that called Half-Life 2: Thunder's Leaves.

On the topic of post-EP2 content I don't really care much for it. It brings out a sort of nihilism in me when people say "this mod takes place like 50 years from EP2 and were still fighting the Combine"

like yeah I guess that probably makes the most sense within the context of what's been shown in HL2 and EP2 but it goes a little too much into "Too Bleak, Don't Care" territory for me

Thunders Leaves is still pretty good though, they get a gold star just for making sense of the SMG's grenade launcher. Of course they balance this out by adding in an technical abomination of a shotgun.

 

[Star Classic]

But on the other hand, I think part of the lore's biggest strength is how very much it leaves to the player's imagination - it would be super hard to nail something like that, always a possibility that the player's personal interpretation/imagination winds up being cooler than whatever the writers actually come up with/explain. Same thing for the G-Man & his employers, it feels like a mysterybox that, if answered unsatisfyingly, could leave a huge stain on the entire franchise.

I agree, I think part of the allure of Half-Life for me is that it's lore is, well, I'll just be blunt, very very small. I don't mean that in a bad way either, me thinks Valve did that intentionally + that's also just part of the Valve DNA. pretty much everything is open to interpretation.

It adds another input for creativity OUTSIDE of the game, which to me is so so important. My fun with Half-Life doesn't end when I turn off the game. I find using the table scraps of lore to create one big puzzle to understand it all just as fun as playing the game.

Something I did realize though about the story is that even though we can piece it together it's all unknown to the protagonists, Gordon has no idea it's been 20 years since he left BM or that he "lost", or even that the Vorts are now his allies (something else is that he doesn't even know the word "vort" until HL2) outside of maybe using deduction skills from seeing Eli and the sweeping Vort. Shephard doesn't know he's supposed to kill the scientists or that Freeman is responsible for the Cascade. Barney is just an underpaid security officer whos response policy is to keep anyone but himself alive. Alyx is just a kid trying to save her father. They don't know anything about the grander scheme of things or how little, or later, big the consequences of their actions are. They all know nothing, and I love that.

 

[recanman]

I would also like to see some of the creepier synths make it into a Half-Life game that were cut like the guard synth, which is a human modified into a synth. Its actual "head" is the robotic one sticking out in front of it as the human head has had its eyes removed and a breathing port installed in place of its nose and mouth.

View attachment 7015485

Thats one of the reasons I liked Alyx which is that it further expanded on the synths although it was only restricted to human synths due to vr restrictions probably, it was still interesting for what they were going for both gameplay and lorewise, especially with the much more gruesome modifications from the few encounters of dead grunts we saw.

Part of me wants to actually see what the Combine Overworld / the actual Combine leaders or original species that started the empire look like, since all of what we see in HL2 are Synths or creatures created/manipulated by them (including the Advisors if BreenGrub is considered canonical), and it could be really cool to actually directly see just how the Combine got to the point they are. But on the other hand, I think part of the lore's biggest strength is how very much it leaves to the player's imagination - it would be super hard to nail something like that, always a possibility that the player's personal interpretation/imagination winds up being cooler than whatever the writers actually come up with/explain. Same thing for the G-Man & his employers, it feels like a mysterybox that, if answered unsatisfyingly, could leave a huge stain on the entire franchise.

I like to think that the combine doesn't even have leaders at the point they are at in hl2 and are purely automated. I've seen a few people suggest the idea that whatever creatures started the combine have long since evolved to the point they aren't even physical which would match with how much Breen was praising them at the end of hl2. Though that could just him being desperate and trying to demoralize gordon and alyx since he was at the point of either being disintegrated or put into some worm creature.

 

[Star Classic]

Thats one of the reasons I liked Alyx which is that it further expanded on the synths although it was only restricted to human synths due to vr restrictions probably

View attachment 7017190

It's a shame, too. Some of the concepts they had in mind like the horse synth would've been awesome to see but I know it would've been hell to design and worse to play against

 

[The handsome tard]

ne thing that I find particularly grim about HL2's lore is that because of the suppression field, every corpse you find, every zombie you see, every metrocop you kill, is one less human. Period. The number of humans will never go up again, so every time you kill a metrocop you're, in a weird way, contributing to humanity's extinction, without Freeman, mankind would've been doomed to a slow but inevitable death, this also made me wonder just how many humans are there left alive by the time of the game? I imagine there are less than a billion considering how humanity was absolutely assraped from the portal storms and then the 7 hour war.

Altho it is a bit cringy seeing Eli kind of "suggesting" Gordon and Alyx give him grandkids, it is sad to imagine that after 20 years of never seeing any babies or kids whatsoever, Eli wants the joy of becoming a grandfather. Guess it helps makes his death pre-HLA a whole more tragic.

When he says to people start having kids again, its beyond of a need to replenish humanity's numbers but to remind themselves that not all is lost and there will have a future to fight for.

I like stories where humanity is pushed to the brink and all the differences and tribalism dont matter anymore as we become a true reunited people against a common enemy and HL2 probably was the introduction of it to myself and to many others.

 

[Patrick Bait-man]

>be me
>buy VR set to play HL:A shortly after release
>play a few hours, incredible
>...
>sell VR set because it's shit and uncomfortable
>buy another VR set
>play other VR games
>...
>sell VR set out of lack of interest
>...
>i forgot to finish HL:A

Nearly 5 years later and I still haven't finished it. Shamefur dispray for a hardcore Half-Life fan. Is it worth trying out a NoVR mod?

 

[Star Classic]

>be me
>buy VR set to play HL:A shortly after release
>play a few hours, incredible
>...
>sell VR set because it's shit and uncomfortable
>buy another VR set
>play other VR games
>...
>sell VR set out of lack of interest
>...
>i forgot to finish HL:A

Nearly 5 years later and I still haven't finished it. Shamefur dispray for a hardcore Half-Life fan. Is it worth trying out a NoVR mod?

It could be worse, you could've shelled out 1000 bones just for one game like I did. I really, really like Alyx but even I don't need to tell you getting an Index just to play it is a bad finical move. I'm still curious how their going to explain all the important story moments in HL3. I imagine you'll have a couple no spoiler players who are really confused as to why Eli is speaking to them and not dead. Then again so is Freeman.

Is it worth trying out a NoVR mod?
No, heck no.

 

[thhrang]

(Skip gay ad from 2;00 to 2:40)

Is it worth trying out a NoVR mod?

I played it with this NoVR mod and had a good time, obviously not as good or fun as one would imagine VR is, but it's fully playable from start to finish and I found it a valuable experience as a Half-Life fan who doesn't have/has never used VR. Although since you're not in a rush I would probably consider waiting for the other more fine-tuned mod currently being developed by this guy to finally come out of years-long development, since it appears way more robust and polished than the one on ModDB.

 

[Joshua Cohen Mohnstein]

the new stonetoss is about half-life:



I don't think I've ever heard someone single out Valve when talking about DEI.

 

[TheHarbinger]

I don't think I've ever heard someone single out Valve when talking about DEI.

There were entire threads on places like RPGCodex or Gamefaqs criticizing Half Life 2 and Alyx for moving away from Half Life 1's narrative style, plot, and characters. And slowly making the story less about Gordon. And more about the new racially diverse cast of characters. It's very clear that the majority of current Half Life fans seem to dislike the first game and the Gearbox expansions. The old PC players of the 90s have been replaced by a new generation of fans who only played the second game and the VR spinoff and have no interest in 'boomer shooters' or whatever they don't like about Half Life 1.

This isn't a new opinion. It's just one that gets downvoted to oblivion everywhere. Including even this site, where Valve and Gabe Newell are generally revered as heroes, and criticism is meant with instant hostility.

 

[Hexadecimal Machine]

The diversity within Half-Life 2 doesn't harm the story and gameplay experience. Half-Life 2 is a very enjoyable game in which the diverse characters didn't try and shove their diversity down your throats. This is very very different from now when it is done in such a poor manner and shoved down your throats through the whole game. Valve didn't have "DEI", they just had diverse characters.

 

[One Angry Computer]

the new stonetoss is about half-life:

View attachment 7030277

I don't think I've ever heard someone single out Valve when talking about DEI.

Valve doesn't need to use cheap DEI practices to tell a solid story, Eli is was black because he was modeled after a famous black scientist. Not just to fill some quotas.

There were entire threads on places like RPGCodex or Gamefaqs criticizing Half Life 2 and Alyx for moving away from Half Life 1's narrative style, plot, and characters. And slowly making the story less about Gordon. And more about the new racially diverse cast of characters.

It was an experimental move to make the world less dead and lonely, I believe. And they created a whole narrative that the arrival of Gordon from his freezer nap would hail the last remnants of humanity into a freedom war against the Combine. It makes sense thematically that you see other races; they're the last humans that are constantly relocated by the Combine.

 

[Love Is Blue]

the new stonetoss is about half-life:

View attachment 7030277

I don't think I've ever heard someone single out Valve when talking about DEI.

because Eli is a scientist character in half life which happens to be black, same as Louis Coach and the demo. There's a big difference between them and something out of AssCreed Bix Nood edition

 

[Joshua Cohen Mohnstein]

There were entire threads on places like RPGCodex or Gamefaqs criticizing Half Life 2 and Alyx for moving away from Half Life 1's narrative style, plot, and characters. And slowly making the story less about Gordon. And more about the new racially diverse cast of characters.

I think part of why HL2 has more of a narrative focus was to show off Valve's character animation technology like face-modeling and character rigging. The game begins with a close-up of G-Man speaking directly to the player, after all. Relegating that technology to just stock caricatures with a handful of goofy lines as they were in HL1 probably seemed like a waste of the tech to the devs during the second game's development.

It's very clear that the majority of current Half Life fans seem to dislike the first game and the Gearbox expansions. The old PC players of the 90s have been replaced by a new generation of fans who only played the second game and the VR spinoff and have no interest in 'boomer shooters' or whatever they don't like about Half Life 1.

This isn't a new opinion. It's just one that gets downvoted to oblivion everywhere. Including even this site, where Valve and Gabe Newell are generally revered as heroes, and criticism is meant with instant hostility.

I think it's just a consequence of time passing and the centralization of the internet. A lot of the old PC players have left the internet outright, leaving only late-millennials and early zoomers who have fond memories of the Orange Box to talk about Valve. They're the ones who make the YouTube videos talking about how amazing the source engine was and how Valve is the best gaming company ever. Younger zoomers then watch these videos and perpetutate the cycle of Source and Valve worship which has led to the current state of the Valve game community and the common consenous that the older games just ought to be forgotten.

It was an experimental move to make the world less dead and lonely, I believe. And they created a whole narrative that the arrival of Gordon from his freezer nap would hail the last remnants of humanity into a freedom war against the Combine. It makes sense thematically that you see other races; they're the last humans that are constantly relocated by the Combine.

Ironically, you could use HL2's world as an anti-woke warning against mass immgration and urbanization. The Combine (the one world government) forces everyone into dirty, densely-packed, mutli-racial, oppressive cities to keep the humans feeling alone and disorganized to discourage a mass revolt against the ruling government.