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

[armoreddinnerjacket]

Rather disappointed that there is no valve made comics set in Half Life's universe. They have it for L4D and TF2 but not Half Life. And this cant be justified as a "Half Life is told strictly through Gordon's eyes" when Half Life Alyx is now a thing.

I still cant explain why this theme just invokes such feelings of discomfort and even fear. Almost like your mind can detect something malicious in it even if you cant.

Things like that just add this whole aspect of the unknown in Half Life 2. Rebels even comment on it, saying they cant get it out of their head, almost implying some sort of hidden message or indocrination happening.

 

[kazotomega]

Rather disappointed that there is no valve made comics set in Half Life's universe. They have it for L4D and TF2 but not Half Life. And this cant be justified as a "Half Life is told strictly through Gordon's eyes" when Half Life Alyx is now a thing.

To be fair it was never justified as only being through Gordon's eyes as blue shift and opposing force exist as well. But yea they don't have many comics for portal either except for the rab rat comic which sucks. Both series have good potential for comics. There are some unofficial comics like "A Place in the West" which are pretty good and are still ongoing even now i think.

Hell they can even make live action shows of them as shown with Freeman Chronicles:

A series in aperture could work too as a comedy like aperture R&D did

Honestly, i think the only future stuff that's ever gonna be for half-life and portal is from the fandom. And with AI voices becoming an actual option for voice acting it could definitely be a possibility.

 

[TVB]

To be fair it was never justified as only being through Gordon's eyes as blue shift and opposing force exist as well. But yea they don't have many comics for portal either except for the rab rat comic which sucks. Both series have good potential for comics. There are some unofficial comics like "A Place in the West" which are pretty good and are still ongoing even now i think.

Hell they can even make live action shows of them as shown with Freeman Chronicles:

A series in aperture could work too as a comedy like aperture R&D did

Honestly, i think the only future stuff that's ever gonna be for half-life and portal is from the fandom. And with AI voices becoming an actual option for voice acting it could definitely be a possibility.

There was a live-action movie of both Half-Life and Portal in the works with J.J. Abrams to potentially produce. Neither of them ever got made, thank god.

 

[The handsome tard]

There was a live-action movie of both Half-Life and Portal in the works with J.J. Abrams to potentially produce. Neither of them ever got made, thank god.

NGL, I legit would take Uwe Boll instead of JJ.Abrams for this.
Would it be good? Hell no.
Would it be amazingly hilarious to watch with friends, snacks and enough alcohol to kill an orphanage? Hell yes

 

[TVB]

NGL, I legit would take Uwe Boll instead of JJ.Abrams for this.
Would it be good? Hell no.
Would it be amazingly hilarious to watch with friends, snacks and enough alcohol to kill an orphanage? Hell yes

Oh god, Uwe Boll's version of either Half Life and Portal will be amazing. No, both will be shit at the end of the day because face it, this is Uwe Boll we're talking about, but they will still make me smile compared to bullshit such as Doom Annihilation, Tomb Raider 2018, Legend of Chun-Li, the Assassin's Creed movie or that shitty Last of Us HBO show.

 

[CuzinEd]

I have been playing VtMB for a week or so now. It uses a beta version of the Source engine used in Half life 2. You can see it while playing the game. Especially in the facial animations. Half Life 2 still has pretty good facial animations. But it made me start up Half Life 2 the other day and play it for a while. My first time playing it was the Xbox port back in late 2004 or early 2005. My first time playing Half Life was on the PS2. But the PC is clearly the better way to play these games. I might jump back into Black Mesa as well.

 

[TVB]

It's weird because graphically, HL2 is amazing (plus, its soundtrack is fire), but the gameplay is mid-tier.

 

[Inafune Fanfiction]

It's weird because graphically, HL2 is amazing (plus, its soundtrack is fire), but the gameplay is mid-tier.

The base gameplay hasn't aged well. Its very clunky even compared to its contemporaries. Even more so on the Orange box version.

There were also some huge oddities that are still not addressed to this day by the "HL2 beta community" which seems to have been taken over by discord troons and glowies LARPing as russians at some point over the last decade

I really dont buy the whole "alyx was going to be the new face of the series all along haha" narrative that has been pushed for a few years now.
Its more or less just political propaganda. There was no actual sendoff for gordon because doing so would have killed steam before it got anywhere, valve knew this but avoided talking about that elephant in the room, and with so many edits to things like the HL2 Beta project, who knows what was simply added in because no one really cares to keep an archive. They also added a mod launcher at some point that wasn't there a decade ago.

Then there's the magnum that was missing entirely from the alpha and beta versions of HL2 with supposedly no references to it anywhere in the files, but my god will they cream themselves over the OICW and its different iterations. I can understand the rest of the weapons being in various states of completion but the magnum is a part of half life's arsenal that valve has never really known what to do with. So it's hard to believe it wasnt in the files somewhere if they can pull the alpha/2001 version of the OICW like they did out of the WC mappack.

 

[armoreddinnerjacket]

Then there's the magnum that was missing entirely from the alpha and beta versions of HL2 with supposedly no references to it anywhere in the files, but my god will they cream themselves over the OICW and its different iterations. I can understand the rest of the weapons being in various states of completion but the magnum is a part of half life's arsenal that valve has never really known what to do with. So it's hard to believe it wasnt in the files somewhere if they can pull the alpha/2001 version of the OICW like they did out of the WC mappack.

I can honestly believe that the Magnum was not on the table in the beginning, taking into account oddities like the old leather spy suit that was supposed to have an evil-sounding HEV voice. Weapons-wise early HL2 development seems to have been highly experimental, with the more conventional loadout coming later.

 

[Spruce Supremacist]

Dario Casali, one of the key people who worked on Half-Life 1 and many other projects at Valve, has recently started a developer commentary play-through of Half-Life 1, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the series. Very laid-back gameplay with a lot of interesting trivia from someone who was part of the core development team.

 

[The handsome tard]

Dario Casali, one of the key people who worked on Half-Life 1 and many other projects at Valve, has recently started a developer commentary play-through of Half-Life 1, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the series. Very laid-back gameplay with a lot of interesting trivia from someone who was part of the core development team.

"About those revenant monster closets...I dont regret a thing and I would do it again."

 

[30+GameOvers]

Dario Casali, one of the key people who worked on Half-Life 1 and many other projects at Valve, has recently started a developer commentary play-through of Half-Life 1, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the series. Very laid-back gameplay with a lot of interesting trivia from someone who was part of the core development team.

Something to tide me over until the next episode of Freeman's Mind, which will come in about 3-4 months if the last one is anything to go by.
Good to see him doing some classic Doom content as well, great find

 

[Broke Ass Centrist]

There were also some huge oddities that are still not addressed to this day by the "HL2 beta community" which seems to have been taken over by discord troons and glowies LARPing as russians at some point over the last decade

The russian community is still there, doing fine for itself for the most part. The problem is the new wave of "Cut Content" servers being lead by ex facepunch cunts. These are the idiots that obsess over dumb shit. The russian aspect actually acts well to gatekeep troons/morons since they can't interact.

 

[BirdUp]

Hell they can even make live action shows of them as shown with Freeman Chronicles:

freeman chronicles had a cool trailer where it looked like they were doing a Die Hard direction

the series is just a VFX reel for the production company
gman looks like an early Romero zombie

 

[thhrang]

 

[Douglas Mortimer]

The update is great!

Another excuse to go in and play the game again

 

[TVB]

Happy 25th birthday

 

[The handsome tard]

Ooookay. Turns out this is one of those "Lets change how things worked for years and hope this doesnt break a shit ton of mods" updates.

Good riddance, Valve. You pulled a Bethesda.


Edit: The update itself is fine, I guess. It did improve things for the game itself but Im talking about the wider community creations getting affected by this. I played HL1 more times I can count so Im not in a rush to replay it, however, I am still playing mods made by the community to this day and this update affected the very base in which they function. And I cant imagine most modders will change the version they pump out mods neither, but we will see.

At least there is a workaround.

The solution is to downgrade it and its simple to those that dont know.

Spoiler: The solution

Go to Half Life in the Library
Go to properties
Go to Betas
Select "Pre anniversary" option
There, the game is how it was before

 

[BirdUp]

the hell did they change

 

[Lone Wandering Courier]

The new maps look like they might be good but I haven't got a chance to play them, assuming there are any vanilla servers to play them on.