Half-Life VR:AI But The Cast is Commentating (ACT 1) 

Thanks for watching! This was our first time doing something like this, so the pacing is... atrocious. We get a bit better in the next ones. The commentary sessions for acts 2 and 3 were already done and will be going up over the next week or so, and the intro story may continue ;). ACT 4 Commentary will be streamed LIVE, Thursday, 5/21 @ 8pm EST on my twitch channel. Be there! twitch.tv/wayneradiotv

gotta love how Benry says "Tommy likes mean people" and then it turns out that Benry and Tommy are friends

benrey has an entirely different vibe to him with a clearer mic the more muffled gmod mic makes him sound like some teenage griefer and it just adds to his character

Never ask: A WOMAN, her AGE A MAN, his SALARY GORDON, for his PASSPORT

I can’t believe “I did have a wife but they took her in the divorce” was a complete accident, that line was too good to be an accident EDIT: same with “we made it black into back mesa”

He should've drank the soda, he would have seen the movie faster

When the directors commentary is considered canon

i love how Tommy says hi, and the entire chat fell in love with him

I now occasionally just say "shut the fuck-" and nobody understands why I cut it short so I'd like to thank gir for that

"We're like a bunch of six year olds who were given a bucket of paint and a human cloning machine." - Holly 'Dr. Coomer' 2020

This series is a masterpiece held together with glue and duct tape

At around 36:49, Mike's name is changed to: - radishlover87236 - rutabagafan27816 - cabbage_muncher78136 - lettuce_licker1386 - has this ever happened to you? - FRUIT SALAD - YUMMY YUMMY - Mike? (G-Man, Stagehand)

I don't feel like enough people are talking about the fact that Mike nearly and accidentally messed up the whole series by spawning in the Nihalinth, I find that to be exquisitely hilarious

I can't believe "they took my wife in the divorce" was an accident???

one of my favourite little details is that Benry never runs, he always walks regardless of whats happening

My interpretation of Dr. Coomer that answers two questions people might have, is that he IS the tutorial npc, but he's supposed to die to a barnacle, and wayne saved him, because he got the glock early, and he keeps going "Look Gordon, Ropes!" because he never is supposed to learn that barnacles aren't ropes. That's also why he's very glitchy (or at least thats what i think)

The secret scientist doing the dance from the credits is like finding the turrets in portal 2 practicing for those games credits.

i think my most favorite thing about this whole series is the fact that gmod's trash ass voice chat sound quality makes the voice acting just that tiny little bit more believable sounding

hearing benrey's voice not sounding like its coming out of a tin can is. kinda weird

When g man says the incident wouldn't've happened if he brought his passport, he was correct. Gordon describes how it went wrong as "three samples, one test subject, kaboom" implying that multiple people in the room was the cause of the cascade. The only reason benrey followed Gordon was due to his lack of pass port. Tommy and bubby going in was also due to benrey being in there. With all this evidence, it is clear this all really *could* have been avoided if Gordon brought his pass port

I like how when the scientist NPC’s express pain, Wayne interprets it as anger/stubbornness and that they are trying to annoy him personally

I had no idea just how crucial that Gmod radio effect was to the whole stream's audio. It somehow made Bubby and Coomer sound way more like the scientists, and it made Benry sound like the dude who minges on a Gmod RP server which totally fit him.

"I had an Ex-wife but they took her in the divorce" is the greatest thing ever

15:51 "We'd be living in the alternate universe where Baaulp and I are the villains" God I *wish* we got to see Tommy and Coomer as the final bad guys.

Mad props to Holly tho!! She had Dr. Coomer's voice down so well that multiple times throughout act 1 i questioned if it was audio pulled from something else or prerecorded lines. the only thing that stopped me from believing that was the very specific lines and, of course, common sense. i think it was the consistency of "Hello, Gordon!" that made me question it again several times.

When you hear how Benry sounds in HD compared to the in-game compression it really does make every line a lot more innocent. Something about the compression just makes him sound really malevolent while also disinterested, like he's doing a job but get gets some sort of joy out of causing problems for people. When it's HD it just sounds like he's genuinely confused or concerned most of the time.

I love how aggressive g-man is with making sure everything is perfect for tommy's birthday party

1:18:49 Wayne saying “FUCKING” sounds so angry and aggressive like he’s literally watering his mouth with each “FUCK”

When tommy said “ it was all instinct Mr. Freeman. I’m scared!” After blowing away numerous enemies, I just sat there and said. “ a very logical reason for self defense.”

I cannot believe that Gordon's repeated mental breakdowns were actually Wayne doubling over from laughter. It's so incredible how so many things managed to mesh together to make a compelling narrative starting from nothing with basically no plan.

I just realised that tommy is just a scared mafia kid

Good lord, Holly's feral hyena laughter adds so much to these commentaries

GAME THEORY: towards the beginning of the video Benry says "Tommy likes mean people", and after everything it's (semi) implied that tommy and benry are still friends. Benry is MEAN people confirmed!!!!

When I first watched this series, that part where Dr. Coomer says "Old enough to know better" then immediately goes for it only to fail cracked me up waaay more than it should have.

This whole trilogy is like a whole random DnD one shot.

0:59 I like how g-man is a literal god but still packs heat just in case

i love the chat collectively going “AAAA” whenever benrey uses his sweet voice

Holly sounds like the friend you *want* to have

Honestly Holly deserves SO much praise for coming up with a lot of the best lines in HLVRAI imo

i love benrys groan. it fits so well with a guy whos just trying to fit in but has never experienced pain, so hes just trying his best. he just doesnt care

Coincidence: The voice actor for the Gman in real half-life is called *Mike Shapiro* and the voice actor used here is also called *Mike*

Benrey's "get me out of this box" kills me everytime.

I love how they act like this is a full big screen release and a poor drawing they made in kindergarten at the same time

" This is my son josh , Im not lonely I swear , I have a wife who I made this child with . Im living a full life and im not living alone in a 1 bedroom apartment"

17:17 the pure HUMOR in the "and be a friendly co-worker, and just- How the FFFFFUU-"

One of my favorite underrated moments is when Wayne tries calling a vote for the scientist's life and asks the group to say "I", and when the scientist is immediately shot Bubby just goes "Ay, ay, ay"

"Anything the Military does is an act of aggression." Comrade Bubby

the fact that Mike's name randomly changes in subtle ways, like, "G-Hand, Stageman" was tripping me tf out

This whole series is just "How hard can we gaslight Wayne?" And it's beautiful

The wikipedia thing goes from 1. Anyone can edit 2. Anyone from Black Mesa can edit 3.no-one will ever edit again!

Tommy’s most famous line is “ this is a dimension were evolved with moon shoes”

1:32:42 For anyone curious, assuming you have to purchase additional playcoins with real money (5 dollars to 1 playcoin), Gordon uses 3 coins here, and burns 1 to be rescued from the water. He has (2) Playcoins remaining after that. So we can summize that Gordon begins the game with 6 Playcoins.

The Turreting Test bit is super fitting actually, because the Turing Test is used to determine how human like an AI is

I love how Holly is just constantly dying in the background.

0:58 Love how the G-Man, an interdimensional being with near unlimited power, used a regular gun to threaten Gordon.

I like how Wayne has the "Director" chair set up behind him in a way that just makes it look like he's sitting on the floor in front of it.

THAT ENDING. Perfect representation of how HARD they were trying to hold back this entire time

Benry says there’s no predetermined deaths then says Gordon will die in All Dogs Go To Heaven 2, and I wish it was recognized more XD

I love Holly's laugh so much! It goes from just plain wholesome to fantastically acidic and terrifying!

My favorite part of the whole series was in act 2 or 3 when coomer was like "These look like ropes, but they may actually be barnacles in disguise. Look Gordon, ropes! These can be used to help across large holes."

I feel as if Mike isn't getting NEARLY enough praise for this, because holy shit

The Black Mesa sweet voice mod is called the wowozela, for all that is looking for it

Everyone say "thank you, Holly" for inventing voice acting.

when I first watched this, I thought dr coomers voice was actual AI. Holly did an amazing job!

Everybody unanimously and instantaneously agreeing that they were gonna race through all the deadly lasers, debris, and dead bodies is what got me hooked on this series!

everyone is talking about Benry, but what about the time Coomer became a god and tried to enter the world in Gordon's dreams? what happened to that whole thing?

Bubby's "I want to perfect my run!" comment makes way more sense given that Gir had played the game a bunch prior.

Idk why but Wayne saying “Blast furnace” Instead of “Blast pit” is the funniest shit ever for some reason.

Can we stop and appreciate Holly's punch at 1:21:37 that sounds like, y'know, the sound of Benrey's body being crushed by the door? I'm a little disappointed it wasn't acknowledged. (I have no idea if it was intentional; it's hard to say with her.)

I just realized the gman called the science team his friends, nice.

Holly's and Gir's voice acting still just blows my mind, when I first saw this I thought they were just using a soundboard until things Coomer and Bubby were saying were just so specific to every situation. The in-game voice chat sounds just compressed enough that it sounds like their voices are from the original game. Bravo for that, seriously that is what sold me on the entire production. That being said Tommy is still my favorite though lolol "Slowly like Molasses drips off a spoon!" lmao

Since the premise of the stream is that it IS a game being played, I’d imagine Wayne mentioning Joshua just him being in-character as Gordon, but he’s just being in-character for the AI, so as soon as he walks away he doesn’t care enough to remember about Joshua

i love the bits where wayne said shit like "gordon SPRINT" or "gordon GO" it's really fucking funny

"They took my wife in the divorce." is my favorite line in the series

my first inference re: Bubby's name was that the second time Bubby's name comes up, Wayne says "That's not your fucking name". and Gir says "That's what I said when I was born", to himself. But I like the implication that Bubby's first words were, "That's not my fucking name."

holly is like the mascot for this whole thing. love her work in this.

holly killed it as coomer she honestly sounds like a broken npc and it’s so perfect

Just kinda of a fun fact about Black Mesa itself, the Science team does actually live in Black Mesa, that's why there's fast food and entertainment in Black Mesa.

My friend and I couldn't stop laughing when Tommy said "oh god all of his blood is outside of him" for a week. time for context 50:48

My headcanon for Pikachu being there was that they were doing unethical gene splicing and made real life Pokémon at Black Massa.

"DO YE SEE THEE NEXT STEP GOORDON?!" "SLOWUER THAN MOLASSES DRIPS OFF A SPOUN!"

“The one and only doctor Coomer” oh no, he is not the one and only

Holly has made some of the greatest lines, she definitely created a lovable character for us to enjoy

I can explain why there's so many random skulls around. Half-Life 1 had actual gibs that you could spawn in a map with a "gibshooter" entity. In HL2, however, that entity was made to spawn only the skull gib. All these maps still use the original entity names which is why like 5 million skulls pop out of vents sometimes. For instance, that bit where there's a scientist surrounded by skulls right after you meet the peeper puppies? There's supposed to be random hl1 gibs shooting out of that bloody vent in front of him.

Head canon: when the passports were destroyed, benrey became vulnerable and and was defeated, but not killed. He still exists but his powers are weakened so about that of the gmans, but since he's benrey he's not really a threat anymore.

1:29:15 always fuckin' kills me i love the raw intensity of Wayne's voice when he sees a skeleton running for its life

Scorpy wasnt acting he was just...HIMSELF

It's only just occurred to me that Benrey's "niiice" was to the other guard talking about how his target range time was finally gonna pay off.

36:47 just came back to this video after a while to rewatch it and i just realised that Mike was changing nicknames to incomprehesible garbage during this section and it makes me appreciate this video 100% more

it's so weird hearing all the voices clearly instead of them being mangled by the Gmod ingame voice chat compression

Someone made a Dr. Coomer horror game called "Goodbye Gordon."

I love Holly's witch cackle of a laugh, it warms my heart so much.

Technical explanation for the f-ed up textures from lasers It appears to be using the texture 'bigshot1' which is a decal that has no alpha layer to occlude the sides of it, and the texture itself is really large for some reason. I'm not sure if this issue is also present in Half-Life Source, but this texture was probably different originally or was planned to be changed, but that never happened.

One of the most common occurrences with funny web series like this that I love is when they make random jokes in the first episode and later on build off those jokes and make them into actual plot points.

I figured out how many playcoins Wayne had at the beginning, 6. He used three on coomer at the vents Then he burnt a play coin In the final act when he went back in time he used one to go back And then after that he used his last one for the SUPER-PLAYER feature!

Just thought of something for how the scientists act. All the scientists are different builds of valve’s self-aware AI that are being put to the test together in one build and also mixing with the regular AI. Dr coomer is the earliest build, that still relies on triggers and the like causing it to bug out at times. They’re also the tutorial npc and so have been familiarised with in-game features like play coins and such. Bubby doesn’t rely on triggers and comes up with everything related to his character randomly like say, AI Dungeon. But he’s flawed in that sometimes what the AI conjures up doesn’t make much sense and so we get things like the name “bubby”, how he mentions both wanting to go home while also living in black Mesa and the mention of “the prototypes” which the game has to make-do with and add these prototypes in somewhere to make what he said make sense. He’s also been familiarised with the game and comes equipped with things like a H.U.D to identify things. Tommy uses bubby’s AI Dungeon technology but to a lesser extent, instead having a preset personality and name to stop the wrong things from being said. However when push comes to shove he does have to come up with things like his dog Sunkist (Which may only be a PNG because the game didn’t have time to sort out a proper model) and his second name, coolata. He also has not been familiarised with the game that much so the AI won’t break immersion and start talking about in-game mechanics. This has it’s flaws however as the AI doesn’t know what things are called and so calls vortigaunts and hound eyes “vonneguts” and “peeper-puppies”. Benrey is the latest model, using bubby’s AI Dungeon backstory but more refined. He’s intelligent about the game but doesn’t speak about it also. But I also think that benrey is the one “moderating” the game, he’d be the one to actually put sunkist in the game after Tommy’s mention of them. But this also has it’s flaws, as when benrey comes up with “passports” he makes sure that everyone has a passport except Gordon and one person whom he wants to demonstrate on. He can also do the stuff he ends up doing in the final chapter because of this. But he can’t be undefeatable, as it’s written in the code that you can kill any npc you so please. So whatever else moderates the game adds in a way to kill him, which stops a lot of the biased passport stuff but also means the game can go absolutely wild, so much that the characters end up going to a Chuck-E-Cheese party right after he dies. I know none of this was intentional, but wow. Edit: And for Gordon, either he’s just a player who’s playing along with the AI to see how it reacts or is still a player, but has an AI that generates voice lines for him. Also, the coomer rope thing may be caused by barnacles using a cut “rope” asset in the lore since he’s an earlier build, and since he’s the designated tutorial npc bubby would have thought that they were in fact ropes and tommy would also be mislead. A prime example of how hlvrai unintentionally creates a huge narrative that maintains cohesion perfectly. Edit 2: actually, a lot of things dr coomer mentions could be cut content that managed to re-appear in the game because coomer’s code includes triggers for these things and so they start appearing.

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i love Benrey just casually buying popcorn in the intro like he forgot he was supposed to be "dead"

You ever think about how this is all canonically occurring on the same day?

1:18:00 I'm sad nobody commented on bubby's line, because that's one of my favourite lines. It's weirdly making sense in this context