>HL2's facial animations were exaggerated
Meanwhile a cutscene added just to show off the facial animations in a game from 2004:
How is that exaggerated exactly? Unless all the zoomers in the US are force-fed SSRI's so their brains are completely burned out where the lifeless facial animations of Bethesda games are deemed as the natural baseline, so adding actual emotions to them is considered as "exaggerated".
Let's not forget that Valve demonstrated all of that in 2003 where they straight up said that their tech was based on Paul Ekman's research:
The technology Valve introduced with Source still holds up to this day, and ultimately it's all in the animator's hands to make the facial expressions realistic like in HL2 or exaggerated like in Skibidi Toilet, which perhaps is the only true experience that idiot has with HL2 facial animations:
Dude's either lying out his ass about playing HL2 or is basing his idea off of Gmod/SFM videos.
I'd say both. Didn't bother to play HL2 but wants to tryhard as a "true gamer", and thinks that all the GMod shitposts are what HL2's facial anims look like. Both of which is insanely retarded. I'm a stupid little baby zoom zoom that was maybe at most drawing stupid shit in MS Paint on my parents' Win98 laptop when HL2 released if even that, but it didn't stop me to play and appreciate HL2 many many years after it's release, where before I would watch GMod animations and that would be my first experience of HL2 facial animations.
It's never too late to experience old media and be able to appreciate it even if you weren't around for it when it first released. If you refuse to do so you just show that you're developmentally stunted, retrospect is one of the most important abilities of the human brain, and it's a clear cut sign of your lack of this ability if you can't analyze video games from 2004 by the lens of 2004 gaming as a 23 year old in current year.
Now for a different flavor of zoomer cringe. I've bought into the whole retrospect of the character of Gordon Freeman recently. This short animation from CoreyLaddo is a good visualization of it:
Gordon Freeman is a pretty fucking tragic character.
A 27-year old scientist that has just graduated from MIT, worked for about a week in the most prestigious science facility in the US, everything was looking great. A dream job and a bright future ahead of him, a young blue collar civilian worker with a college education.
Then on this fateful day he would end up causing the event that inevitably led to the end of the world as we know it. In the span of these two days, he would restlessly fight to fend off an alien invasion of Earth, fight the US military, end up in an extraterrestrial world to defeat an interdimensional eldritch god. And not that long ago he was just an average scientist with no military training or will to hurt another living being. That alone would leave anyone traumatized for life.
But if that wasn't enough, by the end of it all he was apprehended what is essentially a demigod, and from his perspective, the last thing he remembered was stepping into that portal. The very next thing is him waking up 20 years after those events with no knowledge of what happened, only to witness that humanity has been enslaved by an even worse extraterrestrial force with seemingly no hope for the species' survival, the planet drained from it's resources, with Xen lifeforms causing most of our planet's species to go extinct. Then it would be another four days of relentless fighting for survival with no rest, including a week long rift after the teleportation from Nova Prospekt and the few days between Gordon being put into stasis by the G-Man and then being pulled out of it by the Vortigaunts.
Gordon Freeman must have the greatest PTSD of any first person shooter protagonists in history. It's no wonder he's silent all the time.
