Eh, I’ve sat and read the fliers and news clippings on the boards (like in the lab), watched the monitors and listened to the chatter. I guess it just hasn’t drawn me in.
That hasn’t been my feeling at all. I can dork around in the lab for an hour if I want, during which anyone could tell me whatever they want to. In fact, when I enter the second lab, I’m told to “look around” and the scientist chats about the board, Black Mesa, invites me to play with his spinning rock, etc. Obviously no one is going to sit and chat while a Combine helicopter is shooting at me but the idea that no one can talk feels very artificial. They have time to have me play with a giant robot dog but not enough time to say what my objective is?
I should also mention that the original Half-Life is a very different game. It’s a point of big contention among fans over which is better. To me it seems to boil down to narrative vs atmosphere.
If you want world crafting, and a well executed minimalist story, go get yourself Half-Life 2. If you want an atmosphere that makes you feel like you’re really in that situation trying your best to survive, the original can’t be beat. Gameplay is a toss-up, they’re both fundamentally a relatively linear FPS (Half-Life 1 was less linear than 2, but you really didn’t have much a choice for 90% of the path you took. It certainly wasn’t Deus Ex or anything). Gameplay in 1 was definitely harder, I think easy on the first game is harder than hard on HL2, but I think 2 is also more fair and does a better job of resource management. Also, the original suffers from “Xen Syndrome” where the last eighth or so of the game is not nearly as good as the rest (opinions range from “mediocre” to “the ending was complete and utter shit”).
I don’t recall ever being unsure of what my objective was at any point in the game. Admittedly, about 50% of the time, your objective is “Run away!” which helps, but even then, the game usually makes a point of telling you where you’re running to, and why. After Ravenholme, when you start taking more proactive moves against the Combine, you generally have pretty specific objectives, if not terribly complicated ones.
I’m told “Go there” and given a push numerous times but no one bothers to clarify what’s going on. As I said, they have time to play with a giant robot dog and spin a glowing rock but not enough to elaborate on what they want from me
Yeah, I just finished Ravenholme and the mine. Reached the next base and they want me to drive a car up the coast to some prison. I didn’t feel like another vehicle sequence after the airboat thing and called it quits for the night.
Anyway, I don’t want this to turn into me arguing what HL2 isn’t good because I don’t hate it, I’m just underwhelmed. Different things for different people I guess; I played Dragon Age and loved it. People recommended Mass Effect and both of them completely failed to draw me in and I gave them both up fairly quickly.
I think I see what you’re getting at. The deal is, up until about where you are in the game, nobody has a plan for you. The Combine is too powerful. There’s a resistance movement, but they don’t have any sort of coherent objective. And most of all, they’re not expecting Gordon Freeman to suddenly appear.
It’s kind of like if, in the middle of the London Blitz, King Arthur suddenly showed up. Initially, nobody would know what to do with him, and the chief concern would be getting him the hell out of the way of the bombs. But the fact that he appeared at that moment would clearly mean that Something Important is Going On.
That’s basically where you’re at up until you get through Ravenholme. You’re the only person who has ever stood up to the Combine, and survived - in the previous game, you destroyed the Combine-installed tyrant who ruled over the Vortigaunt’s homeworld. Then you vanished for (IIRC) seven years. Suddenly you appear, literally out of nowhere, on a train headed for the capital city of Combine-occupied Earth. Both sides figure out who you are right away - the first half of the game, you’re basically a MacGuffin that both sides are trying to get their hands on. You’re trying to get to safety so the resistance can figure out just what to do with you. The point you’re at now is where it starts to turn around, and you begin actively sabotaging Combine efforts on Earth, starting with going to Nova Prospekt to rescue Eli.
I had the opposite experience: I played the hell out of *Mass Effect, beating the game at least three times. I barely managed to finish Dragon Age, and still haven’t felt compelled to pick up the sequel, let alone play the original one again.
Point of contention, there’s no evidence that the Nihilanth was a Combine overlord. Theories range from him being a slave too (he had shackled like the Vorts did), to him being an unaffiliated power on Xen that was also bad, but mostly just prevented the Combine from using Xen to effectively teleport, to actually being friendly, but brainwashed/enslaved (preventing portal storms from happening). The evidence is in his like, 6 lines of barely coherent dialogue, mind you. Either way, I don’t think the implication really exists that the incident in Half-Life 1 was directly connected with the Combine.
I think you’re mixing up the Seven Hour War with how long you were gone. Admittedly the backstory seems to jump around with how long it’s been, but Gordon Freeman was a fresh hire at Black Mesa after getting his doctorate at the beginning of Half-Life 1, so mid-twenties (assuming he got his dissertation done really fast), and Alyx is roughly the same age as him in this game, and I think she was like, 5 or 6 at the time of the Black Mesa Event (given evidence from Ep2, “Our Mutual Friend” chapter).
I think you’re more of a force of nature. The right man in the wrong place, to quote the game. Gordon doesn’t DO anything, all he is is a symbol. He shows up and suddenly the resistance goes somewhere, otherwise he sort of just blunders into a couple key locations with little actual direction and scored a couple key victories. It’s kind of a weird story, in a way. Gordon Freeman by all accounts is a minor character in the story, he’s just the guy who shoots things, everybody else is the brains of the outfit, the politicos, and the guys who know the objectives, and yet through a twist of fate due to Black Mesa, Gordon is the catalyst to actually GET these plans in action. If you want to get English class-y, you can make some interesting observations (and in fact, I have written such an analysis for a class :p), but I don’t think it’s really necessary.
Huh. So I felt it was 7 years, and was about to post it above. Then I recalled somewhere that it was 20 years. The timeline suggests it was “around 20 years.” So my second inkling was correct.
The 7 hour war is another one of those things you might miss without reading clippings.
Hmm. I’m not familiar with the theory that Nihilanth was totally unaffiliated with the Combine. There’s got to be some connection between the two: they share some of the same ecology. Head crabs and barnacles, for example. So there must be some pre-existing contact between the two cultures. And the Combine attacking immediately after the defeat at Xen seems awfully coincidental, if it wasn’t a direct retaliation for the losses inflicted on the other world. But I’m not all that well versed on the lore for Half-Life 2, beyond what I’ve gleaned first hand from playing the games.
I should note that all the following comes directly from the games, or is inferred from those events, unless specifically noted otherwise.
The implication is that headcrabs and barnicles (and the fish thing) are all wildlife of Xen, and they got randomly teleported in with the resonance cascade at the beginning of Half-Life 1. Note that barnacles only appear in abandoned areas of Half-Life 2, furthering that implication, the Combine never actively control them. Headcrabs, likewise, are simply weaponized, like throwing wild ferrets at the enemy. It’s said that the ecology of Earth changed during the portal storms, each violent storm basically warping in more and more wild-animal aliens (antlions, barnacles, etc), until the Combine came in and stabalized it with their Citadels.
Xen is the border world, and the only way teleportation can work in the Half-Life universe (EXCEPT for Aperture Science, because Cave Johnson is crazy) is by slinging yourself through Xen. That means that Xen is a militaristically advantageous place to control, since you can control teleportation. But it also means that Xen is sort of a hole where species kind of go after failing at teleportation. It’s also implied that “maybe possibly” the vortessence allows Vortigaunts to access Xen naturally, but it’s been stated by developers that none of the sentient aliens (Vorts, Grunts, Nihilanth, etc) are native to Xen, so there’s that at least.
It’s basically stated outright in the original game that the Nihilanth is the thing controlling the portals in Xen, opening and closing them (aside from Black Mesa technology, of course). This means that since we’re told that Xen is how everyone teleports, if the Nihilanth controls it, the Combine can’t teleport (probably).
This leaves several scenarios open:
The Nihilanth is a neutral party, controlling Xen, but not affiliated with anyone (or at worst, hostile to the Combine). When he died, control of Xen was abdicated, and the Combine could warp in troops to take over Earth after getting control of Xen.
The Nihilanth is either a Combine himself, or else enslaved by the Combine. When you go in and kill him, you basically just relinquished their control of Xen, and it pissed them off pretty hard, so after they reinstated control, they decided your planet was as good a target as any.
While the Nihilanth controlled the portals, it does not prevent teleportation. However, killing the Nihilanth and therefore causing portal storms on Earth was basically a “LOOK OVER HERE AT THE NICE PLANET” sign to the Combine, so they warped in and curb-stomped us because we basically told them that we existed.
The thing is, we really don’t have enough information other than to guess. It’s also implied at the end of HL1 that G-man’s “employers” took control of Xen. This could mean that he’s secretly working for the Combine, but it could also mean any number of things depending on any number of variables. The safest answer is probably that the Nihilanth was Combine, and the Vorts were Combine slaves, but that leaves open still other questions (the Combine clearly mechanize enemies they overtake, like Humans and Striders, but the Vorts, Grunts, Gorgs, etc are fully organic). I was just saying that the story connecting 1 and 2 is very shakey except for the basic fact that SOMEHOW the Black Mesa Event, killing the Nihilanth and the Combine invasion are linked (neglecting the G-man subplot with Alyx etc etc).
All the subsequent detail-hashing aside, this actually makes the game sound decent and it’s a shame that it didn’t resonate (to me) from the game itself. I’ll have to take a deep breath for another vehicle sequence and try it a little longer if it’ll start to show more focus. Thanks.
If you want a full storyline that ties all games in that universe (i.e. Half-Life, Half-Life 2, HL2 Episodes, Portal, Blue Shift, etc.) together in a coherent timeline-based narrative, I found this site is excellent: Shaw Communications
Nihilianth was actually a denizen of the Vortigaunt homeworld, and the Votigaunts’ leader (though, not necessarily a Vortigaunt himself). The Vortigaunts escaped after the invasion and went from world to world with the combine actively pursuing them. Eventually they wind up in Xen, a borderworld which is a bit of a subway station to the universe. Xen has no native lifeforms, according to Marc Laidlaw, one of the designers of the universe. The Combine invade Xen and enslave the Vortigaunts who they want to hybridize with their own genetic code to create a super soldier.
Around this time the G-Man, who no-one really knows who he works for, but apparently he’s not affiliated with any of the parties introduced by the end of the HL2 episodes, sets events in motion to start the resonance cascade, which opens portals between Xen and Earth. At this point, the denizens of Xen invade Earth because, hey, it’s there. (Except for the Vortigaunts who are likely trying to escape the combine enslavement.)
The combine noticing the resonance cascade, turn their sights to earth. After Gordon frees the Vortigaunts from their slavery by killing their enslaved leader, the combine realize that they can create supersoldiers using humans as well. So they set out to enslave humanity. (The combine soldiers are hybridized humans.)
Thus for the next 20 years, the Combine conquers Earth and the G-Man sits back and waits until he can release his new Gordon Freeman puppet to the world. It’s pretty apparent the G-Man is no fan of the combine, but other than that, he remains a mystery. It’s established in HL2 episode 1 that the Vortigaunts do not like him.
As a decent fan of half-life 2 and the sequels (episode 1 and 2), I have to say that the narrative is really supplemented by reading forums, wikis, etc. You miss a lot in the game, and it’s hard to put all the pieces together. I enjoyed the games for the puzzles and gameplay (and gravity gun!!), but the story was only really fleshed out and interesting to me when I went through and discussed it with people and read more about it.
It’s certainly not a cinematic game like MGS or Halo where the story is presented directly to you. My advice: Don’t go back into the game expecting the story to become more coherent and intrinsically interesting. Just take the game for what it is: a pretty fun first person shooter with some nice physics puzzles.
I find it kind of shocking that anyone can dismiss Ravenholm with “walked around a town with aliens, met a guy who kills aliens”. There’s one part of Episode 1 (down in a mine shaft thing with Alyx) that scared me more than any game, film, book… hell, maybe more than anything that happened in real life.
My first two playthroughs I RAN OUT OF AMMO in Ravenholm. And I still badassed my way out, and this was in the arena where there’s barely anything to gravity gun, and all the traps are broken. That was so fun, though Ravenholm is still one of my least favorite sections.
Í still have the magnetic (non exploding) mine you use to play with DOG, allmost through Ravelholm…
For me the best part of HL2 is that it is almost like one large map, there is a teleport in the beginning…but it feels like a movie done in one long continuous take(shot?)
…and no cutscenes. That’s one of my favorite bits, too. Much more immersive. If not for the loading pauses, my disbelief might never have stopped being suspended while playing that game.
I also loved the part where after you’ve worked your way through the city and you’re atop the building waiting for Fr. Gregori to send over the gondola to get you to safety. You’re sitting there, wide open, as it makes it’s way over, and you hear the screams of the toughest guys you’ve fought so far, and the drainpipes start to shake as you hear them coming up to your position.
Pretty cool.
Ravenholm is one of my favorite levels in a FPS ever.
