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Old Man Rambles & Yells At Cloud Warning. In the first game, Gordon's a scientist with very little backstory & a mute: he's an ordinary guy in scientific focused power armour, he's not a stoic badass Space Marine. This allowed him just enough personality for him to be relatable to players, but also wasn't a major detriment if you weren't invested in Gordon's backstory. His personal life isn't really explored in the game. Despite the government/alien forces he's facing, how he's a small pawn in a vast mysterious world of interests, you could define your Gordon through your actions. Valve's first game is a seamless, unbroken first person experience throughout, no dialogue choices or cut-scenes to drag the player's control away, which was a big selling point on release. You can only define Gordon by pressing E on certain things, and whether to shoot kill friendlies or not: but the friendly fire choices still work for making your unique version of Gordon. Your Gordon wants to do his very best to help everyone? Escort friendly NPCs as far as you can, putting up with the wonky path finding and going back repeatedly to guide them as far as the level permits.Your Gordon is a pragmatist who wants to help others, but his own survival is the most important goal? Only take the NPCs that are most helpful to you, and/or leave them behind if they refuse to navigate things like stairs or corners. Want Gordon to be a psychopath who shoots all Black Mesa staff for gleeful fun or ammo? Sure, go nuts! Occasionally you get a "Failed to effectively utilize human assets in the field" a few times: even for those cases, you can keep them alive to a certain point, then kill them afterwards. Even as an occasionally edgy teen playing in 1999, I usually tried to be more pragmatic with friendlies and only left them behind after 2 or 3 tries if their path-finding didn't cooperate. Nowadays I do my very best to bring everyone along as far as possible. But that's how I play and my version of Gordon: other players can shape him differently. The sequel has Gordon returning decades after Black Mesa, with even more horrific events having occurred in his absence, and the Combine is even more of an existential threat with the death of native wildlife & sterilization of the human race. Even if the Combine never come back at all, at best humanity & the planet are facing decades of painful rebuilding, at worst, it's too late for everything. He's an even smaller pawn in the sequel's story. How can you specifically, the player, shape your version of Gordon in this backdrop and have him respond to this disorienting new threat, with legends and myths about his experience decades ago? You can't. No friendly fire, and since your only real way of interacting with the world is pressing E or shooting things, you have no optional effect on defining Gordon's personality compared to the previous title. The HL2 beta did indeed have friendly fire and recorded dialogue acknowledging it, so Valve were planning on it being in game until they removed it. Since there's no cutscenes or dialogue choices, you can't really define your Gordon through your actions. Gordon could be traumatised but still numbly doing the right thing no matter what, he could be a reluctant but pragmatic hero who will kill a few humans if it'll stop a far bigger threat in the long run, or Gordon's completely crazy like in Freeman's Mind 2 and shooting Vortigaunts since he doesn't know they're now friendly. Sorry, can't define your Gordon personality in the game now! FYI I hate most morality systems and the binary/arbitrary nonsense choices you have to make. But Valve could easily allow a few extra lines of dialogue acknowledging the player's decisions, so that the game feels less artificial, whilst keeping the overall HL2 "Gordon is seen as Earth's saviour, no matter what" plot. Have some generic Resistance members, who always open up two slow moving gates for you at a captured checkpoint (you can open both gates yourself at anytime). They have a brief conversation with you, or each other, based on your friendly fire choices, whilst waiting. They've got orders to hold the checkpoint so they won't follow you. Then a few levels later, Gordon reaches a brief section with Alyx, who helps him out, and then something like my crappy dialogue plays out. No other changes or dialogue would be necessary. - Gordon hasn't killed any friendlies at all: "It's great to see you! All the stories about you & the Black Mesa incident were true I guess! The Combine have a special weapon on the roof blah blah" - Gordon has killed a few friendlies: "Hey Gordon, we need your help. There's some chatter about what happened recently, but fog of war and confusion and all that, right? Maybe some tragic mistakes happened? Anyway, the Combine have a special weapon ..." - Gordon has killed a lot of friendlies. "I-I don't know if I believe what I've been hearing... but...okay, the Combine occupation is a threat to everyone, it's bigger than us...so let's focus on stopping them. They have a special..." I genuinely would love to have a coffee with Marc Laidlaw and have a long chat about the interaction of player choice vs story/worldbuilding plot impacting on the storylines and the choices made for HL2 & later titles. Maybe the frantic development of the second game, the leak and major redesigns influenced their decision? Maybe Valve wanted to focus much more on characterization with Alyx and Barney, so they didn't want to muddy the waters by allowing generic rebels to be killed? Or the removal of friendly fire in the final game was a meta-commentary on "The illusion of choice" theme in video games?
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Feb 12, 2024 06:26
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ashpanash posted:How do you do a Half-Life 2 when Half-Life was so open-ended? That’s the challenge Valve faced, and personally I think they went about it the right way: choose a side. If “your” Gordon Freeman wasn’t that person, well, your adventures would be different. But so what? Swallow their pill and you still get a great game, just one that’s a little less open-ended in terms of your player character. True, Valve couldn't just do the same magic trick again. Plus turning very vaguely defined NPCs into fleshed out characters with ret-conned backstories & connections to Gordon is a monumentally difficult task. Valve did a great job of world building and portraying a depressive dystopia of a dying world. I don't know if Marc Laidlaw ever seriously considered saying "Screw it, only Gordon, G-Man & the Black Mesa invasion happened, but no references besides those three things. HL2 is a full clean slate, all new characters, Gordon has absolutely no connection whatsoever or familiar faces in this horrific future, so no Eli, Barney, Kleiner types etc. It'll allow more freedom in the story telling & less baggage to the first game" I'd love to ask Marc that: maybe a 20th Anniversary documentary will do so? Doing that though, would have been a very, very bold move, for the fans, Valve, the publisher, so perhaps they didn't want such a radical decision You could argue that the start of HL2 has Gordon plucked into a very similar timeline, but some things like Barney being best pals with Gordon, Breen being the administrator of Black Mesa are different to what we experienced in HL1. I kind of like this fan theory explanation. Plus in 2004, meta-verses weren't completely oversaturated to the general audience yet, so it would have felt fairly unique then. I dunno, I've always had this mixed feeling of "Valve had to make more detailed, unique characters with a better fleshed out world, wafer thin plots wasn't going to cut it anymore for the sequel so changes were necessary" vs "I had little but very welcome player agency in how I could express my version of Gordon, even though the main story beats were the same, but that player agency is all gone now for HL2".
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Feb 12, 2024 14:07
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cumpantry posted:it's not really like HL1 commented on that agency or anything. it was just there. but it didnt harm or change the game so it worked. for HL2 allowing casual friendly fire would pretty much tar the entire narrative. i mean what should you have been allowed to mow down Eli and Alyx? at that point we've strayed too far from what the friendly fire actually does: in the first game, it doesn't matter at all. there aren't any 'character'. in the second game there are and it does. Alyx doesn't have infinite health, only very fast health recovery so she can actually die during normal game-play. You get a Game Over Message if she, Barney or Gregori are killed. Specifically, a "Assignment Terminated. Reason: Failure To Preserve Mission-Critical Personnel" message. Just have the rebels die without any Game Over Messages, give the important NPCs enough health to handle a minor accidental shooting, have them say 1 or 2 lines acknowledging your behaviour (also like the first game) and then continuing their important story dialogue as if you hadn't shot them, for "advancing the plot" reasons. Accidentally shoot an important character in the shoulder once? Whoops, but luckily you have a second chance. Shoot them with a shotgun in the head, Game Over. It's definitely not perfect, but a "well, good enough" solution without doing all kinds of crazy branching storylines. You could also screw with minor Deus Ex 1 characters & important NPCs just by shooting them, but most players on probably didn't do that deliberately the first time. Oh well, I have to deal with it  On a different note, I also really appreciate the slow panic building up in Breen's messages as he realises Gordon's overwhelming the prison security 
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Feb 13, 2024 05:48
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CJacobs posted:Well, if Gordon is supposed to be you, then you probably should know that your every move is being watched by an essentially omnipotent being that can warp you out of reality whenever he wants. Every person who plays Half-Life knows that and is forced to acknowledge that. You may be a little more hesitant to act like a psycho after finding that out. Very good point, it'd be overwhelming & horrifying for Gordon to face the reality warping powers by the G-Man being dumped decades from prior events, he'd probably try to be on his best behaviour. Another way to put my thoughts might be the "I'm screwed by the G-Man & other vast powers beyond human comprehension, I'm literally an ant to these forces: but I still have a tiny bit of control in how I can respond to this poo poo sandwich. I can be live up to the legend and save everyone even at my own risk, I can accidentally kill a few rebels in the crossfire if I must in order to defeat a greater threat, or be a crazy lunatic: this is the only real choice I have and I'm going to use it" game play narrative. HL1 had this limited player self expression present. The leaked HL2 beta allowed rebels and Vortigaunts to be killed, so Valve in late 2003 still thought friendly fire was an acceptable gameplay/narrative decision. But then again, if Marc Laidlaw always meant this to be a "Your few choices are even more meaningless and limited, as the Combine Empire is so powerful: I wanted a narrative where you're completely stripped of all self control compared to the first game, since you're so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Your name is a sick joke as you're not actually 'Free Man at all so no friendly fire at all.", then he did a brilliant job. I salute him if that's what he intended all along. As I said earlier, I'd genuinely love to have a long chat with him about during HL2 and how much gameplay vs story clashed with his creative decisions, given how hectic the development was. Little bit of trivia: Valve spelt wheel as "wheele" in the Airboat Physics code, so it only has 3 points of contact for steering, instead of the intended 4. They still haven't fixed this, but there's a mod for it.
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Feb 13, 2024 07:07
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