@@allencompassingevil At this time of year, at this time of day, at this part of the Web, localized entirely within this comment section, I can say that it's still not there. Still, may I see it?
Stuff like _this_ is how Valve inspired me to pursue sound design. Their games wouldn't get under your skin so effectively without such creative, smart, atmospheric audio.
@@commodore7331 Are there basic fundamentals in Sound Design that are similar to Art? I've been thinking of learning Sound Design, I just don't know where to start.
@@chrysecreative5575 As for fundamentals, I really don't know. But Marshall McGee makes really good videos about sound design and taught me a lot about it. Good luck man.
It is assumable that most of the beta Citadel sounds were removed because they made no sense. A lot of the beta sounds were really just creepy to be creepy, without any thought put into why the sounds would play.
Man, there is just something about this particular ambience, the absolute nature of something incredible as The Citadel. The powerful dark energy that hums from within, its swirling power that not only is powerful, but its very swirls of energy making these scratching distortions into the sky, rattling it in a way more special than what lightning can. The Citadel and its meaning, The Combine and their authoritarian dominance. It towers high up, penetrating the dark clouds, shrouding its full awe and in some cases, might be for the better. Nothing strikes more imposing than The Citadel. Its intimidation that strikes genuine fear to all who has seen and heard stories of it. The authority it holds as it stands taller than any known structure to Mankind, towering o'er them, suppressing their will just by sight alone. What lies beneath its metallic carbon walls? What chronic and insane cruelty that goes on in the stalker processing chambers? What astronomically advanced technology that lies within its Aperture-designed and inspired machinery and equipment? What significant power do the Combine truly possess outside what Earth sees as an imposing token military that controls them?
I've spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours living vicariously through the Source engine, particularly in HL2 + Gmod. This particular ambience was used a lot in the snow version of gm_construct, great memories...
The citadel never fails to amaze me. I love the looks of it, but I think the sounds capture me more. I love the sci-fi looks, but it will never compare to the dreadful sounds. The citadel would never be complete without the horrorifying sounds it has today.
the citadel itself is a pretty good representation of the combine, it sounds like it has its own heart beating every second, with tinier organisms living in it as a hive
@Random Demon happy dying then. ME and HL are similar in their concept and it's why i love both. Also i'm not comparing them, i'm saying how great their concept is. ME doesn't suck at all, it literally did something original and made a genre out of it.
Permafrost I agree I heard them too even the game itself says that when you put in developer 1 in the console portal will say : soundscape: citadel.Util.Drone.
@@Slimek They didn't get inspired by the ideology of Marx, they were inspired by the locale. Their reasons were directly that for European people, New York has its own atmosphere Alien to them, they just think its an endless city of towers, and people who thought that way made Max Payne. They initially set Half Life 2 in America actually, specifically Washington DC. But they felt it was too close for players in America and it wouldn't just be trite but an invasion force hitting Washington DC feels too overdone. They wanted a place they could slightly exaggerate as Max Payne exaggerated New York, a nameless city in Eastern Europe like Prague that could be exaggerated on. There are authoritarianism themes, but really if you get down to it, it's just a choice of the idea of an inverse of Max Payne, the New World fighting a Brave New World, a world not of Socialism but more a nightmarish vision of the conclusion of Foucault's idea of Biopolitical thought. The "Universal Union" has connotations, but it's fairly clear from a writing perspective Laidlaw just made the Combine without ideology, they're just here to make humanity useful biological tools in their Swiss army knife of already assimilated useful tools for their shapes and sizes helping cover their manners of invasion, it's Biopolitical Utilitarianism. Breen is just using the closest compatible sounding ideology to make it seem like its something it isn't, which may sound Socialist, but it's darker than that. The Combine simply have a human sized whole in their knife set they want to fashion to cut a specific type of meat, so to speak. They're just kind of a more streamlined biological borg without the collective consciousness, more connections can be made with the British Empire or Colonialism. So it might have a flavor of "this must be communism parody" but really its just a choice of location away from America unique enough to set a fictional city in, and the idea of civil repression. But it wasn't really a comment on those nations, they just wanted a location that felt like it had prior history.
I always liked Black Mesa East, because it gave you 15 mins of relative peace (and essential story building) before launching you into the terror of Ravenholm. Also loved Follow Freeman, Nova Prospect and Sandtraps (the nighttime part of making your way to Nova P along the coast and taking down all the Combine outposts)
Of course not. What would we need a ginormous mechanized metal tower that can teleport between dimensions and carry thousands of weapons and soldiers for?
The Half-Life Franchise shows how underrated sound design can be. Between the reverb effects and the ambient noise, even some of the machinery whirring in the background in both, the citadel and Black Mesa, you really start to get lost in these worlds in a good way.
Otherworldly. This was for a game in 2004 I haven't seen later games create such alien and at the same time earthly feelings. Valve's sound design is unique.
My most favorite thing to see while playing Half Life 2 is the Citadel high up in the sky. I’m very big Half Life 2 fan since 2015! It’s my most favorite game of all time. 💯💯💯
I absolutely love the image that accompanies the ambience. The polluted skies, the bright street lights, the skyscrapers, and the citadel that looms over it all. Hauntingly beautiful! I would love to see a model replacement of the default citadel with the citadel in this image, it is simply the perfect citadel mostly because it has elements from both eras of development.
Part of me believes that the half life 2 beta will have more attention. A dark, gritty environment. The green toxic air is a great narrative. Its 1984 but far worse lingers besides big brother. Cant believe I could have missed this, half life 2 beta story is really fuckin interesting. I'm sure someone will mod the story to make it like this. The councilor was supposed to be half human and half combine, just some really dark stuff. This game needed more time, but at least we have Ravenhome, that's the only aspect of the dark story we got. What a creepy soundtrack too damn what this could have been!!
As unsettling as this ambience was intended to be, it's calming and peaceful to me. This is used on a lot Gmod RP maps and a good chunk of my time playing was spent downloading new maps for the sole purpose of exploring. I spent hours listening to ambience like this in the empty spaces of Gmod. Good times.
"Gas giants inhabited by vast meteorological intelligences. Worlds stretched thin across the membranes where the dimensions intersect... Impossible to describe with our limited vocabulary!"
on every single RP map in GMOD whenever you enter a Combine buiding/area - you definetely hear this sound - not only in Citadel :) I still have my HL2 Ultimate Edition 7 which is probably long gone since I don't see it anywhere published/on sale. Even in torrent area its basically gone. It's nice to keep this edition preserved - long downloaded like 12-13 years ago
there's just something about the sounds, the fact that ur up there thousands of meters away from gordon and dog and barney would during a mission, there's just something so creepy about the sounds the atmosphere, oh gosh god must be angry for what the combine is doing with the world there's just something about it in an unexplainable way cause of how limited we can explain, no other game in 2004 had this much creepyness, god this video is a goosebump machine
I like to imagine that if a Stalker attempts to refuse to work while on the job, its accompanying soldier just Sparta kicks them off the catwalk, and they plummet down into the dark depths of the Citadel, guaranteed dead
Teo Pazdrijan No. Think of it like this, City 17’s Citadel is the Capital Citadel which houses Breen. Other cities have their own Citadels. Most likely in different shapes or configurations. After the Capital Citadel was destroyed, the rest in the network were disabled.
Every single area in the game has amazing soundscapes, but the Citadel takes the cake for me. It's the most unique soundscape I've ever heard and it is executed perfectly.
For whatever reason this audio warps me right back to when I was a small child in Sunday school at Church, the unending vibration-like drone in the background places an image of a glorious golden light pouring into a warm empty playroom.. quite the comforting feeling I was not expecting to find while listening to this.
Why does city 17 have city lights like that? It doesn’t make any sense considering the city looks like that during the final elevator ride before you meet Dr. Breen. The city is also getting destroyed during this and technically speaking, you wouldn’t be able to see it because you’re above the clouds. This always bothered me because it’s obvious valve did it so it would look cool instead of understanding what makes those lights lol.
@Borka Dump In the game there's also a lot of light, but even war zones can still have a lot of the underground cablework and lights and stuff running, or there could be local generators, who knows.
Valve really knows how to incite feelings of an existential crisis by making you feel small but in an oddly good way. Just look at the size of the Citadel next to those tiny human-built skyscrapers!
i had planned to listen to a bit, move on, and watch something else. but i busied myself with something and quickly found that the video had ended, and I missed the noise.
