Somebody should make mod where experiment ends successfully, Gordon spends rest of his day on paper work, eats dinner in the kitchen, drinks beer with Barney and returns home by train at 5 pm
“There aren’t political prisoners being kept in a subterranean prison and being forced to play video games to make reviews on them, Freeman. You’re just being paranoid.”
“It’s bad to blame it all on one person, except Randy Pitchford” Gotta love how that’s slipped in between various jokes about Casali and enemy placement.
23:45 In all of my history of gaming, this was hands down the most glorious moment. When I got HL as a teen, there was pretty much no Internet in Moscow, so nowhere to look up. And I didn't speak English back then, so I couldn't figure out things by listening to NPCs. That damn dragon thing just kept killing me, and I had no idea of how to navigate it. I wasted all my ammo on it in vain, then got frustrated to a point when I just quit playing it for a year or so. A year later I heard from someone that the dragon was deaf, and that I could sneak past it. And when I did, and I started that fuel and oxygen compressors, I distinctively remember the feeling when I approached the "Launch" button in the control room. Ending my year of humiliation would take just pressing the button. And so I did. No buttons I pressed since would even remotely give me the sense of satisfaction I felt that day like 22 years ago.
It's actually blind (meaning can't see) not deaf (meaning hard of hearing). Still, this thing was pretty infuriating. Especially from my experience with it. The first time I ever played this game was in VR using an Oculus Quest 2 port. It basically annoyed me in real life when I first saw it.
I think this part of HL was a massive flex. Just as HL2 had massive flex with physics, HL1 had sound design. Sounds of enemy footsteps conveyed information, there was difference in loudness of various floors... it's a game about shooting enemies in the face, and Thief 1 was released just a few months back, and yet there's still a fabricated situation where you can flex how good your sound design is.
@@quint3ssent1ayour right this aspect of half life almost always gets overlooked,i wish modern games payed more attention to sound design instead of just visuals
@@civicrider5556 I feel like Halo will probably be one of the first divisive videos Civvie could do as I think he mentioned before he hates Halo's style of gameplay, or he at least said that similar to how he used to hold a somewhat petty grudge against Half-Life for "killing off Doom-likes" he holds a similar petty grudge towards Halo. It's purposeful use of a two weapon limit and regenerating health (which was meant to add a new tactical element you didn't see in most shooters of the era) got copied to the point that Halo could be seen as the "patient zero" of shooter tropes of the 00s, which really isn't Halo's fault because any time a success story comes along imitators are always inevitable but they shouldn't really tarnish the first example of that "thing" being done well (like Sonic may have lead to a "mascot platformer" craze in the early 90s but it's not like the existence of Bubsy hurt the quality of those original Sonic games).
@@BloodRedFox2008 I don't think he "hates" Halo so much as he hates the effect Halo had on FPS design. The Bungie designed Halo's are extremely competently made games for the most part, and the devs clearly understood how to work within the limits of consoles. But similar to Half-Life, a lot of developers learned the wrong lessons from Halo's design. Thankfully, I'd argue that Doom 2016 and Eternal are proof that you can still design throwbacks to the FPS of yore while still offering some modern niceties and conveniences, and end up with a fun product. A 2 weapon limit + health regen + linearity isn't something that NEEDS to be done to make playable FPS on any platform, if the developers are willing to invest in providing the players tools to stay aggressive and on the move, and provide environments that make the best use of your mobility. The funny thing is, in a lot of ways, the original Halo kinda did work to push the player to stay on the offensive. The enemies were generally pretty good at flanking, they could lob grenades pretty damn far, and if they had artillery they absolutely flushed you out and could eventually zero in on you.
"Why does the pistol work underwater?" Because Glocks are one of few pistols that do reliably work underwater out of the box. Admittedly they're ineffective as fuck but they're one of few that doesn't just straight up fail to work when you fire the first shot underwater. They don't reliably cycle but that first shot will always work.
Glock did also offer replacement parts that allowed the pistol to fire reliably underwater (at the risk of blowing your eardrums out). Probably one of those military/LEO only items.
@@forwardtsender8573 Shooting a gun while underwater is very bad for your hearing, yes, with the vibrations going through the liquid and into your ears. There may be some way to make a silencer to make things more bearable, but that's a big maybe. With all the resistance from the water, you also get seriously reduced velocity, aside from poor accuracy.
When people say "Glocks work underwater" what they mean is that they generally will not explode when fired underwater. They will not, however, "work" in the sense of poking a hole in things underwater. In that sense they fail utterly like other guns do.
And according to Half-Life/Gold Source, the act of crouching itself is bending your knees up, pulling your feet up from off the ground and then letting yourself fall.
Sven Coop. I remember playing on those jank ass servers going through the campaign with random ass character skins. Like you'd have three gordon freeman people who just installed the mod and then you'd have scream, Duke Nukem, a dude dressed as a bananna, and Optimus Prime. Everyone is always jumping. You don't stop jumping.
I never played it but did play it's unofficial source sequel Obsidian Conflict which was awesome. But yea some servers would do balance by making every enemy take multiple clips to kill
I fuckin’ love how every time he talks about ID, he has to come up with a new title for our “all powerful omnipotent deity of engineering” John Carmack
13:20 The Scientist Hunt mod was great. They had a game mode where one player was disguised as a scientist in a map full of regular NPC scientists and the other had to identify them and kill them. The scientist player got points for every innocent NPC scientist the hunter killed. An early precursor to Prop Hunt.
Fun fact: The player was originally able to carry up to 15 grenades, but this was changed to 10 later on. This is the reason that they often appear in clusters of 3 (15)
holy shit sven co-op, I remember downloading that from planet half-life back in the day because I loved single player mods and saw monsters in the screenshots, I was shocked when I opened it to being a multiplayer only game so I got into it and CO-OP HALF LIFE!? changed my life and i still have it installed on steam
Wake up sheeple. Civvie is the 5D ruler of the corporeal jail we call reality. He showed us, via future sight, what is to come. This video is 2year old, and it contains videos from two days ago.
Im confused, is ross's audio clip from his Killing Time video? But that came out last month ..... And this video is from a year ago... How... Is Civvie travelling thru time, is this a time paradox? my brain hurts.
51:58 I'm fairly confident that the "mysterious barrels that have aliens in them for some reasons" are supposed to be eggs / individual incubation chambers in which the alien grunts are artificially grown, organic armor and hive hand included. I actually thought it was pretty neat
@@TechnologicallyTechnical Nah, you don't always tuck your legs. Especially if you're jumping a gap or trying to reach something high up, rather than trying to get over something.
"Crouch jumping" is just a videogame tutorialised way of saying Coiling - the real parkour term. You're not crouch jumping IRL, you're coiling in the FPS.
@@TechnologicallyTechnical If you've ever had to jump up onto the tailgate of a truck but didn't want to swing your legs or use a step, you had to crouch jump.
The Xen 'citadel' is actually one of my favourite environments in Half-Life, but playing it on hard is rather masochistic indeed. Finding the alien grunts to be nothing more than a mass-produced bio weapon is certainly something. It was also a special moment to finally encounter an instance where the alien slaves were non-hostile, at least until the controllers intervened. The place has a special kind of atmosphere.
What I also like is that I disagree with Civvie 11's opinion about momentum. A lot of games don't take enough time to stop, and playing this game as an adult, after I played it as a kid, there are a lot of moments where I stopped, and looked around, or straight up took my time to observe what could be done or heard. There are a lot of clues given to you, so you can survive and overcome the obstacles. The other thing is that I think it makes you take it slower and more tactical, which, arguably, going into an unknown alien dimension, you would. A lot of people complain about this, but playing the game, having forgotten there was this place, I LOVED the ambiance, and the change of pace. It's a very good conclusion. You think you're done, but YOU are the hero, the one brave enough to go stop the invasion, jumping in when you don't know what will become of you. And the end, where the G-Man sets you up, giving you a choice with no real freedom. Also, I hate Half-Life 2. It's a good game, don't get me wrong, I just...It does not have the same impact on me, not the same creativity the first one had, in my eyes.
@@bertrandsalaun3721 I'd never say that I _hate_ Half-Life 2, but I don't believe it's aged as well as the original. It's a big revolving door of gimmicks. Here's the vehicle chapter, here's the gravity gun chapter, here's the other vehicle chapter, here's the chapter where you don't step on the sand, here's the chapter where you command an army of ants that do nothing but get in your way, etc etc so on and so forth. Save for the gravity gun, at no point do these mechanics conjoin & intersect in interesting ways. They're all on their own islands. It's frustrating. Still a fundamentally fun game but I think HL1 is the better designed experience. Episode 2 absolutely rocks, though.
@@samuelfreeman5483 I think that's actually a conscious choice in Morrowind. Since that's the Daedra that talk to you like that. And only them, they're gods and they're talking through you at their shrine. I mean Bethesda aren't above fucking that sort of thing up, but in that particular case, I think it was on purpose.
"Why does a pistol work under water" Because some of them just do. The Mythbusters did this back when Civvie11 was just a Civve5.5 and the most trouble they had under water was the spent casing not ejecting properly so it would not load the next round. You'd think the bullet would not go off when wet but it turns out bullets are sealed pretty tight. Unsurprisingly special ops have designed guns tht can fire under water, for reasons of the eternal need to kill anywhere, anytime.
@@sweetsucculentcontentnectar now that's one I'm intereted to see. I wonder if the water provides enough resistance to slow down the hammer that it wouldn't strike the primer with sufficient force.
@@tonnentonie2767 that’s how you know how many people just ran past them without giving a shit when even fans who dedicated 16 years of their life to remaking this game didn’t even notice it
@@D00000T word! first time players will be too anxious to hang around near the big thing that just went boom and second+ time players will be making a B line to the crowbar.
Actually that series is as close to cannon as it is far. It's complete paranoia, horror which is half-life then really frustrating situations yeah they completely made a masterpiece of a series
@@voodoolew Ross Scott of Accursed Farms. If you haven't seen Freemans Mind yet it's a real treat, you're in for a wild ride. He also does the Game Dungeon which is amazing in its own right. The episode I'm referencing only came out a couple months ago for his Halloween soecial
@@voodoolewwhen he says "well it's not modern major general" after destroying the tank, it's referencing the Freemans Mind series. At one point he sings modern major general while killing people in that section.
@@wingedfish1175 Multiple things: Adrian refers to Adrian Shephard, the U.S. marine protagonist of Half Life: Opposing Force. "Look Gordon, ropes!" is one of the running gags from the RU-vid series "Half Life VR But the AI is Self-Aware", in which the character Dr Coomer repeatedly confuses barnacles for ropes and exclaims some variation of "Look Gordon, ropes! We can use these for big pits!" before being promptly attacked by the barnacle.
23:30 you actually push a box against the wall so you can climb across the pipe above you. I played Half-Life so many times before I learned this. Mostly because who cares if you lose 5 health from electricity. Edit: HOL UP Gonarch's lair is fucking sick. Use that testicle like a punching bag with your bullets.
The train in On a Rail is also a tech demo, of one of the earliest vehicle sections. Making things that moved in such complex ways was novel at the time, just didn't age well.
Honestly, when it comes to most ideas in games, I can see how they're considered revolutionary when they're introduced, but that one is hard for me to wrap my head around being revolutionary even though it was (for clarity I'm 23 as of this comment lol)
@@themojogamer75 huge mood. I'm a similar age to you and it's hard to imagine On A Rail being innovative at its time, but in context, games really hadn't invented the Vehicle Ride yet.
On a rail is MUCH improved in Black Mesa. Same with a number of other annoying bits, but most impressive by FAR is Xen. Because holy shit the version of Xen in Black Mesa is unironically epic.
@@carljohan9265 interloper is still the worst thing invented by mankind ever though, and I agree on a rail is much better in Black Mesa, mostly because they removed most of it
@@downwindfish1 I don't know, I much prefer the BM version of interloper to quite a lot of levels in many games. I'm a sucker for factory levels in general. Having infinite tau and gluon gun ammo is also pretty fun.
@@homeygfunkoffacherryfruitl4971 Dude, for real. I remember getting that ending on purpose, turning on no clip, god mode, and impulse 101 expecting a long, fun slaughter of alien grunts, then feeling a crushing disappointment when I wiped out the first two rows and nothing else happened. I've never felt so robbed and betrayed in all my life and never trusted a damn thing the G-Man said again, even in Half Life 2...
@@ThePandoraGuy Have only experienced morphine to deal with pain and even then in laughably small quantities but from experience I can tell you there is no trip - it just makes you feel better. It blocks all pain, including pain you weren't even aware of. Scariest shit ever, I swear. The moment it starts losing even the tiniest of its effects I was already asking for more and that was after the first dose I was ever given. Even now I can't remember the pain I was feeling back then (excruciating though it was) but I still remember the calm that came after it. So no trip there, morphine is not hallucinogenic, it just makes you want it while making you think you need it. Insidious as fuck.
@@ke5uq1we8h the community remake is called Black Mesa. HL Source was Valve dumping the game code from the original with just barely enough tweaking to make it work. Then every sporadic update they somehow made it worse.
@@greenfolder2437 “Delivery for Mr. Abrams! *Boom* Oh come on, I know someone’s home. *Tank explodes* That’s ok, I don’t need a signature. You have a good day.”
47:57 This remark makes me think of something that I've always found really neat in a scary way when put into perspective with Half-Life 2 is that despite what you think is happening in HL1, you weren't fighting off a mighty interstellar empire, but just a small polity. The U.S military in this game is struggling against what amounts to the military forces of an interdimensional version of Malta, which is why they get their asses handed to them in less then seven hours when the _real_ interdimensional empire comes knocking.
Keep in mind the US Military was trampled by a nerd in a hazmat suit with no tactical combat training or experience. It's not like we sent the best of the best to clean up Black Mesa.
@@sorrenblitz805 We don't know that Gordon didn't have any combat training. He would have been around 21 years old at the height of the militia movement of the early Nineties. An intelligent young White man being concerned enough about government tyranny to obtain some level of training at arms is completely plausible.
@@RabbiHerschel all while getting a PhD in theoretical physics at MIT? ALL WHILE NOT UTTERING A SINGLE WORD? Sorry "sir", it wasn't his combat training that got him out of black Mesa. It was his unmatched understanding of physics that saved us.
"Valve's first game was.. Half-life." Well fuck, what is there left to do other than creating an entire gaming platform. If you keep going things can only go downhill
Gearbox is the perfect example. They co-developed Opposing Force, which probably deserves its own amount of kudos for being the gold-standard of game expansions, and it’s been going full-Randy ever since. Propposing Force when, Civvie?
@Jotaro97 Counter-strike also originated as a mod. So Half-life was their only original game as far as I know. But honestly, props to them. They looked to the modding community for talent and original ideas and, as a result, came out with Team Fortress, Portal, Counter-Strike and Dota. Now, gaming's gotten so corporate that taking any risks at all is a no go. All the AAA companies just make copies of their previous titles, or whatever trend is popular at the time, with each trend starting life from indie titles. Battleroyales grew popular from PUBG, Survival genre: Minecraft, more recently: Among Us. Some of the most popular games in gaming history were made because a successful gaming company found real talent and ideas and supported them. Now? The modding community is treated terribly. At worst, being attacked or resisted by the games original developers, like with Take Two and GTA V, and (just a bit better) Bethesda trying to attach price tags to them. How times change...
I would say that Civvie is too crass to be like a grandparent but last night my grandma taught me that tall high heels are called "fuck me pumps" so nevermind.
Yeah, except I would rather hear Civvie talk about how awesome Doom was, instead of my grandparents saying how awesome the 50's and 60's were. Though thankfully, they aren't like that.
I actually always saw the "youre a decisive man" line from the gman as a clue that freeman is being manipulated. You have proven that you will do as youre told, what else would his employers want?
"Oh yeah? Then why do you take it away from me at the start of the next game?" You ever question why Dr Kleiner just happens to have Gordon's HEV suit in stasis when Gordon arrives in C17? I take it as a soft confirmation from Valve that Kleiner, like Eli and Gordon, is on G-Man's "payroll". You did earn the suit: that's why he gives it to Kleiner, so it can be fixed up by the time he puts you back into play.
Half Life Alyx sorta supports this - while you can't see it in-game due to how dark it is the one time you see Gordon, if you look at his model the HEV suit has a really big hole in the stomach (and HL:A takes place before the G-Man wakes Gordon back up).
It's fun how people play games differently. Unlike your experience I went out of the way trying to save every scientist and Barney that I could. It's why I really liked what the devs of Black Mesa did, particularly the lobby area where you can rescue about 5-7 people before your elevator parkouring where they all do a little thing to get comfortable at their position while you trek ahead.
Yeah, it's a little sad but I would gather all the scientists and barneys I could in an area and then move crates/barrels etc to "fortify" their position.
There was an incident that changed the way I play in regards to the multiple Barneys and that was the Barney you encountered dying in the minefield. Valve knew tender hearted gamers such as myself would hear his pleas for help and went out of their way to make this particular Barney pull at your heart strings. My first instinct was to go to him and when I got there I immediately had my head blown off by a sniper. It wasn't until I made it back that I realized where the shot came from. Your not going to catch it on your first playthrough. That was the moment I realized valve straight up played me and I fell right into their damn trap. Classy GabeN. Really fucking classy.
@@erselley9017 If you ask me, that's less Valve trying to punish you for kindness, and more a visual story-telling. That is, HECU's were using helpless Black Mesa personel as bait to kill you or others. I don't know why that made you such a heartless guy. In my case, it only made me hate the HECU more, while still caring about Barneys and scientists. That's how I view it, at least.
Brings into mind Halo and me saving fellow Marines/Elites from avoidable death. And it sure frustrates me how certain games either make such efforts way too futile if not trivial (looking at you, Call of Duty, even the better older titles) or when the fudging plot kills them off later (hmm, I'll probably include Freedom Fighters and Wolfenstein: The New Order).
Ironically Gearbox did a much better job with the weapons. Unlike the crowbar the pipewrench feels like it's got some serious weight to it, and weapons they added in general feel like they have more weight/impact to them. Half-life's weapons are terrible compared to any other game of the time.
"Imagine playing this in `98" Did that, blind because the boxart was cool, and on my first PC. 800x600 on a Nivida TNT 16mb/AMD K6II 350 mhz/ 64mb. It was a wild rough ride. Thank you for this video!
I remember playing it without knowing ANYTHING about it. As soon as I placed the crystal in the anti-mass spectrometer my life changed forever. I was only 12.
I remember Half-Life's netcode being notoriously awful when it was new. Valve did fix it, but it was laggy as hell even for dial-up players. (which was most people until the mid-2000s)
Well, I was honestly unimpressed TBH. Right before it I saw the SiN demo (with interactive ATMs and computers where you could actually mess with the OS and such, and enormous bullet holes in the enemy heads), Unreal (was lucky enough to try it on Voodoo), Turok, Extreme Assault and other Glide or D3D titles (and also trying some FMV-featuring games like Wing Commander)... So - I was mostly like "oh, another GLQuake... somewhat neat, but still a GLQuake".
@Birger Jarl Well, story-wise it was Quake again (the guys invented a teleporter that led to some spooky dimension, and all the mess came out - so we need to shut it down). A few scripted scenes made some sense, but for me it was not enough of an excuse to have all the same labs and corridors all the way until a trippy pseudo-organic Xen (with almost the same texture reused along the whole sequence). Even the stock Quake (not even Scourge of Armagon, which had much more variance in map styles - and I'm not even thinking Unreal, which had the style changing rapidly from map to map, and definitely nailed it when it comes down to design and immersion) had things much more complex and different! Interactivity? Oh, a blown ingame microwave counts not after Duke Nukem 3D, where you could blow up entire buildings and play pool ;)
My personal theory is that Half Life's set piece battles came as a natural evolution of Casali's short and creative (at the time) combat design from Plutonia. In Half Life all battles are short and involving few actors, relying more on interesting entity placement and combinations than long prolongued engagements with the same NPCs, as it was usual during doom's early days of level design.
agreed. I actually find half life to be more of a pain in the ass than plutonia due to all the one off mechanics in the puzzles and just generally obtuse design. It's probably just that I'm more familiar with doom's engine and what can be done with it
Fun fact - computers of the time barely managed to run this game. I played the entire game at less than 10 fps around the time it came out. It actually made it easier on low fps, because when I tried to play it years later with a much better system I wasn't used to the enemies moving at all. So basically it's less monsters because that was pushing the limits of a lot of the hardware at that time. They often did clever tricks like waiting for one to die before spawning the next one, or next wave in. The intro ride played mostly smoothly though. Also the intro was in game, not some cut scene. Sadly all the loading screens are not shown here but the intro ride was 3 or 4 different levels cut together.
like two dumb shits on the short end of the shit stick... frag out and save the gesticulation animation.. ( *or* thats the best i can come up with at this hour of pre-dawn... heantai has not been averted.. mass hentai casualties confimed..)
@@HarriJokinen Have we seen the almighty Carmack strangle someone with multiple chins though? He might have a hard time reaching the neck enough to make the Gaben pass out.
Probably a brief mention of black mesa, since it's nearly the same game- but certainly the mainline games, blue shift and opposing force could be done in a single video, and we are DEFINITELY getting an alyx vid
@@yougotthecrowbar the main thing to cover would be the changes made, how mechanics and levels play out differently, but especially zen and the final boss ofcourse. Details about the effort put in by the team
I take it as, G-man knows that suit went through hell in Black Mesa and needed repair so he "nudged things hm?" In a particular direction to ensure that Gordon's Suit was made usable for his next assignment. Probably done years before to give Kleiner time to actually fix it properly.
Considering in the ending, G-Man said that Gordon had earned the suit. He was just keeping his word. Although since G-Man used Gordon to nudge things in Half Life 2, it wouldn’t surprise me if he made sure Kleiner got the suit to repair it and upgrade it for when Gordon’s gets out of stasis.
Makes sense. Maybe he even made sure that the HEV Mk.5 will be equipped with Alyx's hacky gizmo. That way Gordon can use Combine tech and their guns too
Interloper is even longer in Black Mesa, it's like if your friend came over at 5 am and stayed until 4 am the next day despite you telling them to leave 15 hours before they left.
I remember waiting for xen for so long and while visually I was blown away I got really sick of it really quick imo I preferred old xen it felt shorter
Nah it aint like your friend, its like your annoying younger second cousin who you hate came over and you anctiously wait for him to break something so you forego sleep and is exhausted when he finally leaves
@@n0vi as that one coop freemans mind series that introduced half life to twitter users and 9 year olds oh and bubby is such an underutilized character, especially because hes played by the one mf that knows half life
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413 Do I hear gatekeeping? But seriously, how old were you when you started playing Half Life? This is a new generation playing and appreciating the games you played as a child.
"Sometimes I get this feeling that half the time I'm not here, my stuff gets moved, the buckets full again and I didn't do that. I know what's wrong and none of you are doing anything about it!", makes me laugh everytime
"Shamblers are furry and I'm dying on this hill." I'm not disagreeing, Ranger's Shambler cosmetic has fuzz and I think there was a description somewhere with him using Shambler hide to stay warm. Edit: this is from Quake Champions.
I always imagined them as being covered in like worms and maggots I think it might've been princess mononoke that came from One of the ghibli movies anyway.
@@phantomspaceman Woah, you must not own VR/PS4/PS5. The last amazing clown shooter was the Until Dawn spinoff carnival game for Playstation VR. Legit amazing VR experience and plenty of clowns to put holes in.
The soldiers logic is always really infuriatingly stupid. “So you know that scientist who keeps defending himself from us who were sent here to kill a bunch of unarmed men in horrifically brutal ways? *Fuck* that guy.”
That Magnum is a Colt Python. They actually have a barrel that looks exactly like the model. The upper rib and lower weight get bigger near the end of the barrel.
If you think that’s hard, try the PS2 version. *Shudders and screams violently* I mean the PS2 version also had auto aim so fighting the floating baby aliens weren’t so bad and made Xen and Interloper actually much easier. Kind of a mixed bag.
Yeah but hard mode in Half Life and HL2 was pretty cheap. High damage, come around the corner and get immediately hitscan for half your bar. It is a slog to play them on harder difficulties for that reason. They all kind of do that, more or less, but HL2 seems to be the worse offender. Quake 2 was kinda easy but at least they tried to make enemies fair and smarter with higher difficulties, so that made/makes it a lot more enjoyable to play.
I genuinely think playing on hard is what made him hate Xen so much this playthrough. On normal it's mostly fine. I don't even hate the platforming, though I know I'm in the minority there.
Hey, I also played it in high school. Granted, I was a freshman, and I was a few years late to the party, so Half-Life 2 was just around the corner at that point, but still! Shit, that reminded me that Half-Life 2 is old enough to be considered a classic.
I first saw Half-Life played by my older cousin when I was about 10 years old in 1998 and I immediately thought it was amazing with the most mind-blowing moment being the Resonance Cascade right at the beginning. At the time I couldn't put my finger on why but as I got older I finally realized that Half-Life does the one thing that few other FPS games have done before or since: It puts you right in the middle of the cataclysm that kicks off the plot. Think back to Doom, Duke Nukem, even Quake, and you'll realize you're going in to a place after shit has already gone down and the invasion already happened. Not even Half-Life's contemporaries of the era deviated from this approach. Unreal starts with the Vortex Rikers already crashed on Na Pali and raided by the Skaarj who control the planet. Serious Sam has Mental victorious by destroying the Earth and Sam has to go back in time to find the means to stop Mental before the invasion can even begin. Quake 2 starts In Medias Res with Bitterman dropping on Stroggos as part of Operation Overlord as a last ditch counterattack against the Strogg who are winning their war against Earth. Even most modern games lack the balls to give you a front-row seat to Ground Zero because narrative-wise it's easier to do things the Doom way and have you come in after the fact. The only other example I can think of that takes the Half-Life approach is Prey '06.
@@sdsdfdu4437 Yeah, but you're not at ground zero. Doom 3 puts you in an abandoned communications facility on the other side of the base from the teleporter labs in Delta Complex when everything breaks loose.
@@doctorbrown5957 Nope. Clarke starts DS2 in an isolated cell in a mental asylum and the guy who lets him out is immediately killed by a necromorph. As you run for dear life you see the necromorphs have killed everyone else in the asylum meaning the outbreak is already underway and Clarke is being let out after the fact. Seeing the carnage and destruction in the space station proper further drives that point home. Clarke didn't see the necromorph outbreak as it started nor did he cause it unlike Gordon who did.
@@Anomaly188 I just tried looking through my steam library to see if any of my games fit the criteria, and I'm surprised most of them weren't. Even ones I thought had the player be present for the event that kicks off the plot often didn't. The ones that had the player present in any way shape or form were few and far between, and of those few most of them were cut scenes (as in Valkyria Chronicles, were the player character Welkin is present for the invasion of his homeland, but 1, the war has already been going on for a while, and 2, it happens in a cut scene; the player faces enemies that are already present), and only a couple had the player be present for the event within gameplay (as in Dishonored, where the player character Corvo tries to fight off assassins targeting the empress but fails - or rather, is forced to fail for plot reasons). This makes me sad. I wish more games did this. Having the player actively participate, or at least witness the very beginning of a plot started, especially if it's within gameplay and not a cut scene, would make a lot more people invested in the story of various games.
