The most tragic part about this is how preventable it was. Gordon never told anyone about his deafness, because he didn't think anybody asked. They did, repeatedly, but he couldn't hear them.
13:50 As shown in Half-Life's instruction manual, it's established in his letter of acceptance for employment at Black Mesa that Gordon is unmarried and has no dependents, so this baby photo in his locker can't be his child. Officially, the baby was never given an explanation nor was any thought given to its meaning as it was just included as an Easter egg, the photo actually being the daughter of one of the developers. Hence, while series writer Marc Laidlaw has since offered the hypothesis that the baby could be a niece of Gordon's, it could also very well be that Gordon simply likes to collect and display photos of unrelated infants in his work locker.
i like to imagine that he was at the store one day and decided to buy a photo frame but he didnt have anything to put in the frame so he just kept the placeholder photo that was already there, personally
This guy here probably knows more about the HL series - both lore and game mechanics - than most people at Valve could ever hope to. Nice to see you here, Blackimus. Your video about the HL1 cockroaches made me realize just how many little details I was missing (and likely still am) from the game.
@@peekaboo1575 is right. Marph is Kind Of A Big Deal. All hail! Also I can't believe these guys didn't mess around with the guy taking a poop in the bathroom...
@Papyrus1910 What do you mean, he voices Steve in Minecraft. They fired the guy that goes "oof", you won't hear him in current versions of the game.
Different kind of tech. One is opening a hole between 2 locations in local space, what it seems they have done in half life 2 is use the universal travel method to instead teleport short distances.
not wormholes, according to aperture science, they are quantum tunnels, created by their all-new "Aperture Science Quantum Tunneling Device"! (patent pending since the 1950's)
My favourite part is the first thing gorden does after the resonance cascade starts and he teleports back into the facility right at the start, he immediately sees someone giving cpr with a medkit they're going to use on the floor next to them...and he just takes it and keeps walking. Not even the not helping the unconscious guy, but literally stealing their meds too
And thanks to his incompetence, and the general narcissism of his staff and grew and just a lot of workplace inefficiencies hazards and and red flags that really should be overhauled... He never will.. And to think this could have all been avoided if payroll hadn't screwed up and he could have afforded that good brand of dental scraping equipment, instead of those q-tips with biodegradable single use double packs.. this all could have been avoided... Just a couple of extra dollars he could have even had just a big enough box of store brand q-tips that he didn't have to keep reusing them every time they would snap off, trying to desperately attach the cotton to the increasingly degraded stick, because the gas station pack only came in a pack of two and he only needed a dollar more just to get a thousand but he only had two.. It's a cycle where there are many parties responsible in some way or another throughout society.. the scientist for being sociopathic narcissist.. black Mesa and it's failure to maintain proper eye wash stations that could have cleaned in here just as easily.. the gas station single packs for overpriced desperation purchases.. it's the thing but it's never enough of the thing.. Let's not even get into payroll, who left a few minutes early the week before and hadn't gotten his paperwork processed until Monday and it was a holiday so it didn't really get done till Thursday.. and it never will get done because now it's Friday and everyone at payroll has been transferred and they lost all the files after the nuclear cleansing.. The government for its bureaucratic incompetence in requiring back and forth forms to be filled out in real time on both ends by postage, losing them several times.. so even if they had been seen by payroll they still wouldn't have gone through anyways.. and the cycles of graft and incompetence that maintain that system which has caused government contracting to go into Private industry and independent contractors who are often unqualified because they don't need any paperwork.. It's aseries of events that could have easily led to a successful test and every single problem would have been more than likely still triggered by the weekend crew but that would have been significantly less personnel, and significantly less quality of personnel, perhaps to a point where by the nuclear glossing we hadn't even raised an eyebrow of the universal Union.. Or even if it has happened with Gordon there if you had his hearing still, he wouldn't have been able fight his way for hours if not days in tight quarter spaces with no hearing protection or even head protection depending on some canonical interpretations of the lore... No man could well.. except for a handicap turned into a handy asset, like the complete destruction of the nerve clusters and inner eardrum apparatus by way of a corrosive biodegradable gas station single-use q-tip.. that only came in a pack of two for an ear that needed at least four swabs, and in desperation turned into 29, and 37 on the other side.. Notice how valve put in all that closed captioning technology into source engine.. now you know why.
It's funny since nobody can read braille except computers. That's why we have programming languages, to transfer readible comments into braille which can be understood by computers. My brother studies computers that why I know so much about it.
Ever seen a train accident.. you're going to ride a tram that long, you better have a shrine to Rube Goldberg for his favors.. because his wrath is only diminished by his OCD and mechanical creativity.. train wrecks are often direct extensions of the dark God.. Fortunately.. a multi-staged physics sacrifice a day, keeps the dark God to ensure a rail line mechanics pay.. and the safe return of his first born, and or second-born depending on the situation.. and we all know, if he's setting up kidnappings for rail line mechanics LOL he's probably got other plans going on... Has a real thing for pennies apparently.. or at least you did back in the day when they were made out of more robust material..
Me too! Except I only replayed the train because I had no idea where to go past the changing rooms. Perhaps the fact my computer at the time didnt have audio speakers contributed.
At 2x speed the 'Gordon you lousy motherfucker - STOP FUCKING WITH THE MICROWAVE' sounded on point, abrupt, unhinged, and absolutely hilarious. 11/10 video for that alone
I really like the idea that Gordon has constant ringing tinnitus instead of being mute, but he's too proudy to let anyone know. As a physical disc-holding gamer, thank for you for including my cameo at 0:06
He does, Gordon was a specops soldier before becoming a scientist at MIT Got too close to a gun encampment and ruined his hearing, never stand within 10ft of a 50 kids
Small correction; the rocket was not intended to stop to nuke. It's purpose is to stop the portal storm. But since aliens keep showing up after, they realize something is keeping them open.
Suppy was such a good companion, it's tragic he pushes Gordon out of the way and takes a rocket to the chest exploding in a mist of gamer dust. His last words were that you can get 20% off using the link in the description (for the next 48 hours). What a hero.
Oh, I remember learning Gordon Freeman is a scientist and being worried I might have to do complicated science stuff in the game. "What if this game is like Myst or something? I'm not very smart, I might get stuck at one of its many science puzzles!"
@@Dr.Oofers jokes aside: no, that was turtle rock studios. valve also worked on it but the initial project came from turtle rock studios. valve was mainly responsible for travsforming this good game into a great game.
@@Buttersaemmel also worked on it? Valve's engine, game scripting, level design tools, writers, actors, music, Valve did much more to create Left 4 Dead then you give them credit for.
Intersting. I had the exact same thing happen with Q-Tipping. I survived my accident and am now completely 100% deaf in both ears, which is why I was able to hear the explanation of Gordon being a silent protagonist so well.
The train ride bit honestly reminded me of how I’d play fallout 3 when I was younger too scared to leave the vault lol which hopefully Mark and the boys plan on doing some expleening of fallout games
The tram story reminded me of playing Twilight Princess as a kid, but it was my brothers' copy and I was also bad at combat so I would just ride the horse around and that was satisfying enough
I love the part were through sheer wilpowere Gordan overcomes his deafness to have a conversation with Barney about the nuke. Truly a hero of our time.
I don't know what I love more about Half-life, the fact that the (probably) million dollar HEV suits are self serve like a snack machine, or that Gordon ruining some poor scientist's lunch is canon.
Main difference between Black Mesa and Aperture Science: one uses their deaf-mutes as guinea pigs, while the other puts them in charge of science experiments
I didn't realize how amazing this game was till I noticed that it did not have any cutscenes... like at all. I believe it's the same for the Portal games too. Even if something important happens on screen Gordon is still able to move and interact with everything. I don't know why this detail was so mind-blowing to me: giving the player free reign by not taking control away from them from beginning of the till the end. I wish more games could do things like this.
In HL2 the moments when control is taken away from you is to narratively show the control that Gman has over Gordon, and even when he does not control you your journey is still a straight line, thats why both games start in a train. Portal only has cutscenes in the ending.
This was a major part of the design philosophy the devs wanted to do iirc. Pretty sure I remember hearing that in the dev logs you can listen to while playing the game (if you're on that mode) It's also part of what made it so revolutionary at its time too
12:45 What makes this whole joke even better was that this was actually an ACTUAL bug in the game! Scientists were programmed to discuss random things when near other Scientists, including Gordon, so one common occurrence with this event was that one of the scientists will say, "Oh, Hello Gordon!" on the way down. This bug only got revealed in the recent documentary on Half Life that just got released.
in the Half-Life docu from Valve a few weeks ago, they explained why there is the baby photo. Its a photo from the daughter of one of the developers which was born at this time but with complications (has still a mental disability today). So another developer put in out of compassion.
Did you know? The G Man was originally called the GO Man because his middle initial started with o, but valve decided against that. His full name is actually G Ordanfree Man.
Funny goofy silly fact, before this video I had never seen anything about the actual Half-Life game but I had seen things like “Half-Life, Full Regret” and “Half-Life but the AI is self aware” so I had no idea Gordon was a silent protagonist until now…
I thought Eli and Kleiner were the 2 scientists you meet after coming up from the resonance cascade. And the nerd you meet at lambda is just another random dude.
We are ever so closer to getting a Portal 1+2 expleened! Also, been binging all of his stuff recently and just finished Last of Us! This was a warm welcome for sure!
I was very young when I first played this game and I could never get through the train ride most of the time cos it felt SOOO LONG. When I did get through, I got too spooked with the aliens appearing that I never played again 😂
This is actually a genius game mechanic. Kids are really impatient and most of them would turn the game off out of boredom , avoiding getting traumatized by the scary aliens.
I forgot how much of a slog some areas of HL1 is, but none the less it’s such a timeless masterpiece that’s partially responsible for everything every game after it did.
