Half-Life 2 - Episode 2 - Unfamiliar Ceilings

[Leet]

I still don't know what the "horse" was

E: Ok it's a statue which was my theory

[BobisOnlyBob]

I just want to say, I'm so glad that somehow, the turbo gravity gun wasn't spoiled to me in any way whatsoever

I've been looking forward to your reaction all game, it's basically the one part since Ravenholm I've been waiting for and you delivered in spades

[Awoo]

I just want to say, I'm so glad that somehow, the turbo gravity gun wasn't spoiled to me in any way whatsoever

One of the most pure and awesome raocow experiences to date, for sure!

[xnamkcor]

It's slightly disconcerting that the citadel seems much larger than the actual city.

Also, this "unnatural shapes" seem pretty natural to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal

[Piesonscreations]

The Man of Freedom visits Monsters Inc. and becomes powerful.

[thatguyif]

Ah, so this is like your wish at the end of Guacamelee come true, except you're more "sure why not" rather than "yay"



I will say both episodes combined PLUS Lost Coast is shorter than the main game by a significant amount. If I had to hazard a guess, based on calculating the length of the series (12:50:13, in case you're wondering) against the average, the number of videos left overall is 28±2. Episode One is shorter than Episode Two.

Hey, gives me four weeks to figure out a proper screencap for the King of All Cosmos :D

[Dark Hunter]

And here the player has to climb into a Combine pod again. Truly the height of stupid actions Gordon could possibly take after what happened last time! And just for no reason other than the developers needed you to be captured for the sake of the story.

So set up an unwinnable scripted combat scene and have the player get captured that way, Valve! You've done that before!

Yeah, I'm kind of harsh about this, but Valve have proven themselves to be better game designers than that.


Well, regardless, congrats on finishing the game, raocow! And yeah, the game ends in pretty much exactly the way the last game did, with the G-Man doing G-Man things and confusing the hell out of everybody. I don't know if Valve ever had an over-arching story they wanted to tell and HL2 was just a middle chapter in it, or if they just did this to set up room for sequels. But I hope you have fun with the Episodes!

[Petzi]

I just want to say, I'm so glad that somehow, the turbo gravity gun wasn't spoiled to me in any way whatsoever

Slightly surprised that you didn't enact an embargo on comments, like with AUS

[Leet]

This anti-climax is why I've always thought that Half-Life 1 was a lot better than 2, it just feels like a much more complete game. The episodes don't exactly fix this for me

partially because they don't include a single new weapon, and only introduces new enemies in Ep2, making it feel less like a fuller game and instead just "more game length"

. But they're all still great.

[Leet]

Obscure deeplore facts: The name "Xen" and the orange Xenium crystals first appeared not in Half-Life, but in "The Third Force", a novel written by Half-Life writer Marc Laidlaw and part of the expanded universe of the Japanese video game "Gadget" by Haruhiko Shono. Laidlaw has also said that the G-man is "weirdly/interdimensionally related" to a character from Gadget, although the works are not linked in any official way, only in Laidlaw's imagination.

[Piesonscreations]

Obscure deeplore facts: The name "Xen" and the orange Xenium crystals first appeared not in Half-Life, but in "The Third Force", a novel written by Half-Life writer Marc Laidlaw and part of the expanded universe of the Japanese video game "Gadget" by Haruhiko Shono. Laidlaw has also said that the G-man is "weirdly/interdimensionally related" to a character from Gadget, although the works are not linked in any official way, only in Laidlaw's imagination.

Half-life is fanfiction, then.

[Grounder]

Mainline Half-Life anything having a satisfying ending? That's a good joke, rao.

Another month and change to go, I guess.

[thatguyif]

And here the player has to climb into a Combine pod again. Truly the height of stupid actions Gordon could possibly take after what happened last time! And just for no reason other than the developers needed you to be captured for the sake of the story.

So set up an unwinnable scripted combat scene and have the player get captured that way, Valve! You've done that before!

Yeah, I'm kind of harsh about this, but Valve have proven themselves to be better game designers than that.

I dunno. How else would they be able to put Gordon at the top of the Citadel without creating, in all honesty, a very long-winding and repetitive level? I feel like the controllable segments of the Citadel were just the right length for a stage that had the potential to be way too large.

Honestly, this is likely the most plausible solution they could make. Teleportation would've been an ass pull (especially when the game points out repeatedly that the two known methods of teleportation (Black Mesa and Combine) require a ridiculous amount of power to go anywhere), multiple elevators (or some super-express elevator) would've required lengthening the level more than it needs to. Given the harshness of your critique, I would like to hear what you propose to be a better solution without massively altering the setting itself.

[Leet]

Given the harshness of your critique, I would like to hear what you propose to be a better solution without massively altering the setting itself.

Reading is hard

So set up an unwinnable scripted combat scene and have the player get captured that way, Valve! You've done that before!

[thatguyif]

Given the harshness of your critique, I would like to hear what you propose to be a better solution without massively altering the setting itself.

Reading is hard

So set up an unwinnable scripted combat scene and have the player get captured that way, Valve! You've done that before!

It didn't read like an actual solution

[Leet]

Reading comprehension is also hard

[ano0maly]

I liked the sequence of riding the pod because it gives you an expansive (if brief) tour of what the innerworkings of the Citadel look like. It's something the game is known for, to give you a taste of what the environment would be realistically, even if you can't always explore past certain points or only glance at those points.

Although the second time it was odd to voluntary enter it and just end up captured by Dr. Breen.

Or maybe Freeman knew Dr. Mossman would save the day before Alyx did

[Donut]

I think raocow's genuine reaction was to him being captured was what the developers were going for. A subtle but overarching theme of Half Life is the idea that, in spite of how open the world feels, Gordon is being funneled through a pre-determined path, with things always just happening to turn out the way things need for the plot to move forward (in the first game at least, it was pretty much explicit the G-Man was cordoning Gordon off from more rational escape paths). While I won't deny Gordon being captured this way is incredibly silly, one can make the argument this was a result of even more dangerous and rash decisions always turning out well for him in the past and him (read: the player) no longer thinking about the incredibly questionable choice of climbing into a prison pod. I could be reading too much into it, but I think it's somewhat fitting that this eventually backfires in a major way.

[Leet]

^ This is a good point especially in light of the fact that when you do meet Dr. Breen, he wants to talk to you about the G-Man and says some very suspect things. I'm not sure if there is a consensus on what "Did you not realize your contract was open to the highest bidder?" exactly means, but...

[xnamkcor]

https://youtu.be/Ol5RpDEzLzY

[Dark Hunter]

So set up an unwinnable scripted combat scene and have the player get captured that way, Valve! You've done that before!

It didn't read like an actual solution

Don't see why not. Have the game force Gordon to lose and get captured. Maybe the Combine knock him out. He wakes up a few minutes later in a pod being escorted to Breen's office.

Or, hell, keep the pod sequence. But have Gordon get captured, restrained, and then the Combine stuff him in the pod and send him up.

Doesn't exactly take a lot of brainpower to come up with an alternative.

[xnamkcor]

Silly raocow, altars are immovable.

[Grounder]

this happened

i'm sure everyone who downloaded it on early 2000s internet was thrilled

[thatguyif]

Don't see why not. Have the game force Gordon to lose and get captured. Maybe the Combine knock him out. He wakes up a few minutes later in a pod being escorted to Breen's office.

Or, hell, keep the pod sequence. But have Gordon get captured, restrained, and then the Combine stuff him in the pod and send him up.

Doesn't exactly take a lot of brainpower to come up with an alternative.

Okay, how would you do that? How would you have Gordon Freeman, who has spent the majority of the game killing Combine with relative ease, suddenly get captured by them in a plausible manner? Describe the scenario to me in more words than "have the game force him to lose."

It would require a situation where you have to cheapshot the player without any chance to counter, disable the player's controls in a cinematic, or have the "unwinnable fight" that the player doesn't know is unwinnable. All three of these situations essentially forces the player to yield control to the developer, and that is something Valve has taken great pains to avoid. There's only two times they've done that outside the beginning and end of each game:

When you get suddenly clubbed in the back of the head in HL1, and when Eli gets killed at the end of Episode Two.

The first, which used choice 1, was likely a consequence of inexperience, an inability to connect two points in the game. The second, which used choice 2, was

the ending

regardless, and got

cosmically retconned in Alyx

, which betrays Valve's feelings about it.

The thing about HL in general is that the player maintains control throughout the whole story, no matter the circumstance. This gets ignored a lot in discussions of this game, but this is very much in line with the philosophy imposed on this series, that the narrative is more or less directed by the player rather than by the developer. You're presenting scenarios where the player has to essentially give up control just to advance the developer's plot. Basically, Valve wanted to avoid exactly what you proposed because it went against the philosophy of the design, exceptions dictating the rule. In this situation, they had an out. Does this feel stupid to the player? Perhaps. But again, the game's idea was not to have the developer step in to advance the plot unless absolutely necessary.

Anyway, Lost Coast was a tech demo showcasing the first attempts at high-dynamic range lighting in games. Grounder may be joking around, but really, HDR allowed for much more decent lighting. If you want an example of how bad bloom (the main method of lighting at the time) could get, look no further than Oblivion.

[BobisOnlyBob]

There's only two times they've done that...

I would argue that the meeting with Alyx at the end of Point Insertion uses this - very specifically "clubbed in the back of the head" - and that the rail coffins are a fairly vulgar workaround to a limitation of their own making, but the second coffin can be excused, since the player likely tried the first one out of curiosity/confusion and it paid off in spades, so why wouldn't it work a second time?

I can provide a very simple scenario where Gordon is kidnapped at the end during the Super Gravity Gun sequence - the gun simply loses its charge after the Strider battle, becoming orange again. One last small skirmish using the energy balls alone as a defense, and then effectively useless in a corridor with no energy ball columns, Gordon is grabbed by some freaky Stalkers from several sides (a single energy ball insufficient to stop them), who drag him into the coffin. At the destination, the Gravity Gun is once again re-energized by the grid there! Hope! But he's still immobile, and the Combine Elite confiscate it from him. Gameplay and story continues as before.