Can I just ask what people expect from a half life story? Like it’s always been pretty thin on the ground, right?
What was the first game? Experiment goes wrong, aliens notice us and invade, we kill a bunch of them, there’s the occasional macguffin, travel to their planet, beat the big bad enemy, boom, mysterious gman puts us in the fridge.
The two expansions seem like the same story from another POV, I have no memory of any important events from either one.
Second game, gman drops us mysteriously back like 20 years later. We kill a bunch of enemies, there’s some more macguffin, the vortigaunts were enslaved now they’re on our side. There’s a bit of intrigue, we beat the local bad guy, the vortigaunts save us.
The following two chapters, apart from having to rescue people, I couldn’t tell you what even happens. The world is implied to be so big that you are an insignificant player and you could never hope to grasp what’s really gping on, and we never get more than glimpses of what’s really happening. It seems more like the idea of a world that leaves open the possibility of more or less anything happening and within which to set games, than a coherent story with structure and tension and stakes, beyond “world in peril” or “friend in peril”, which is pretty bog standard stuff.
Like sure we might be a bit invested in Alyx & her dad’s stories, but I always assumed people were hyped for sequels because the games play well and have an interesting backdrop. What exactly is the special sauce that mark laidlaw brings? Yes the environmental storytelling was novel and well done, but it’s always been so vague because they’re so committed to never leaving the players POV, and they spend so little time explaining the actual world.
Speaking entirely personally, I thought at least Half Life Alyx’s story worked on two levels. It was about freeing the gman as Alyx but gman sorta represented… Oh man, now I’m worried I can’t remember the game well enough to communicate my original thoughts. I remember playing it and feeling like the gman represented the writers or creativity, a bigger picture concept or something that went meta. And if that was the case it felt like Valve creating a piece of art that said Alyx and VR have revitalized our desire to tell stories and GMAN is free again.
The moment they drop their new headset I’ll buy it and play again just to relive the experience but I’d say I’m excited about Half Life because Valve makes A) good games B) they make solid diegetic games which I find to be kinda rare C) their games often feel like they came from a team of artists than just a team of coders. Maybe that’s the polish or maybe that’s the massive amount of testing I’m led to believe they do but when valve makes a new game it often feels like the guy who made Stanley Parable just made a new game - easy to recognize art because it’s so good.
I agree the diegetic storytelling is very well done and that did push the craft of game storytelling forwards, but the actual world itself is a lot of texture with very little substance. Loads of cool ideas, but almost no decisions, like they want the freedom to add anything at any time without ever restricting themselves by saying “here is how this concept actually works”, or even “this is who this person is”.
We never really meet the aliens or the antagonists, ever. The gman is an alien in a skin-suit, and Breen is just a collaborator. They are both essentially puppets.
Like, what was the nihilanth? We killed it, then… what? I guess the vortigaunts were freed, but how does that tie into the slug beings, the human cyborg slavery, any of it? The vortigaunts could easily explain at least some of the world, What does any of it mean?
I get the idea of being deep in and unable to see the forest for the trees, and that is definitely a style of story that you can do, but it’s unsatisfying long term. Eventually you have to get at least a glimpse of the broader picture or nothing has any meaning. The world has no rules, which doesn’t make good science fiction.
I say this as someone who regularly replays HL2 because I enjoy the texture so much, I just acknowledge it’s very limited.
I mean, I guess you’re right as far as I’m willing to debate the point. Does that change anything? I don’t feel like the franchise has done the Lost thing where every episode (in this case game) only asks more questions and never answers them. I also don’t feel like I’m dying to learn more about the world or that the small scope of their answers takes me out of the experience. Like, it’s perfectly encapsulated to what I need to enjoy the “movie” that is this game.
I completely agree that this has costs, and that it probably can’t go on for forever. Like one of the costs is I don’t super care about this world, it’s not a world I want to run a TTRPG in, or could envision a hundred spin-offs. I want the end of this story and I’d be okay if it stopped. Idk, that’s a fine thing to make imo. And again, it’s been top of it’s class in execution since it’s inception (never played the smaller games like Blue something or other) so idk - hard for me to nitpick the world or the game.
Now Valve please release your new VR set so I can buy it or the Big Picture 2 and get back into VR.
Yeah, I think we more or less agree, and I’m not trying to say it’s a bad game or even a bad story, just that there’s not a lot I need closure on. I think the only thing that could be done to “ruin” it would be to pile on a bunch of unsatisfying answers to the open questions about the world. I’d definitely play HL3 just to experience more of the world, I just don’t care that much about where the story goes and I don’t think that’s ever been the main draw.
It would be nice to get some explanations of the world that would extend it and allow people to tell more interesting stories within it, but I honestly doubt that those answers exist. It really feels like they’re kind of just riffing and they don’t have a bigger vision for where it all goes, if I had to guess.
I think this is why I always loved System Shock and System Shock 2 so much more as the narrative building was so much bigger than any game I’ve played before I since. I wish someone would sort the licensing out for that game and bring us a System Shock 3.
I’m working up the courage to try those for the first time, but as very old games now, I’m a little apprehensive about all the friction they’re likely to have.
Can I just ask what people expect from a half life story? Like it’s always been pretty thin on the ground, right?
What was the first game? Experiment goes wrong, aliens notice us and invade, we kill a bunch of them, there’s the occasional macguffin, travel to their planet, beat the big bad enemy, boom, mysterious gman puts us in the fridge.
The two expansions seem like the same story from another POV, I have no memory of any important events from either one.
Second game, gman drops us mysteriously back like 20 years later. We kill a bunch of enemies, there’s some more macguffin, the vortigaunts were enslaved now they’re on our side. There’s a bit of intrigue, we beat the local bad guy, the vortigaunts save us.
The following two chapters, apart from having to rescue people, I couldn’t tell you what even happens. The world is implied to be so big that you are an insignificant player and you could never hope to grasp what’s really gping on, and we never get more than glimpses of what’s really happening. It seems more like the idea of a world that leaves open the possibility of more or less anything happening and within which to set games, than a coherent story with structure and tension and stakes, beyond “world in peril” or “friend in peril”, which is pretty bog standard stuff.
Like sure we might be a bit invested in Alyx & her dad’s stories, but I always assumed people were hyped for sequels because the games play well and have an interesting backdrop. What exactly is the special sauce that mark laidlaw brings? Yes the environmental storytelling was novel and well done, but it’s always been so vague because they’re so committed to never leaving the players POV, and they spend so little time explaining the actual world.
Speaking entirely personally, I thought at least Half Life Alyx’s story worked on two levels. It was about freeing the gman as Alyx but gman sorta represented… Oh man, now I’m worried I can’t remember the game well enough to communicate my original thoughts. I remember playing it and feeling like the gman represented the writers or creativity, a bigger picture concept or something that went meta. And if that was the case it felt like Valve creating a piece of art that said Alyx and VR have revitalized our desire to tell stories and GMAN is free again.
The moment they drop their new headset I’ll buy it and play again just to relive the experience but I’d say I’m excited about Half Life because Valve makes A) good games B) they make solid diegetic games which I find to be kinda rare C) their games often feel like they came from a team of artists than just a team of coders. Maybe that’s the polish or maybe that’s the massive amount of testing I’m led to believe they do but when valve makes a new game it often feels like the guy who made Stanley Parable just made a new game - easy to recognize art because it’s so good.
I agree the diegetic storytelling is very well done and that did push the craft of game storytelling forwards, but the actual world itself is a lot of texture with very little substance. Loads of cool ideas, but almost no decisions, like they want the freedom to add anything at any time without ever restricting themselves by saying “here is how this concept actually works”, or even “this is who this person is”.
We never really meet the aliens or the antagonists, ever. The gman is an alien in a skin-suit, and Breen is just a collaborator. They are both essentially puppets.
Like, what was the nihilanth? We killed it, then… what? I guess the vortigaunts were freed, but how does that tie into the slug beings, the human cyborg slavery, any of it? The vortigaunts could easily explain at least some of the world, What does any of it mean?
I get the idea of being deep in and unable to see the forest for the trees, and that is definitely a style of story that you can do, but it’s unsatisfying long term. Eventually you have to get at least a glimpse of the broader picture or nothing has any meaning. The world has no rules, which doesn’t make good science fiction.
I say this as someone who regularly replays HL2 because I enjoy the texture so much, I just acknowledge it’s very limited.
I mean, I guess you’re right as far as I’m willing to debate the point. Does that change anything? I don’t feel like the franchise has done the Lost thing where every episode (in this case game) only asks more questions and never answers them. I also don’t feel like I’m dying to learn more about the world or that the small scope of their answers takes me out of the experience. Like, it’s perfectly encapsulated to what I need to enjoy the “movie” that is this game.
I completely agree that this has costs, and that it probably can’t go on for forever. Like one of the costs is I don’t super care about this world, it’s not a world I want to run a TTRPG in, or could envision a hundred spin-offs. I want the end of this story and I’d be okay if it stopped. Idk, that’s a fine thing to make imo. And again, it’s been top of it’s class in execution since it’s inception (never played the smaller games like Blue something or other) so idk - hard for me to nitpick the world or the game.
Now Valve please release your new VR set so I can buy it or the Big Picture 2 and get back into VR.
Yeah, I think we more or less agree, and I’m not trying to say it’s a bad game or even a bad story, just that there’s not a lot I need closure on. I think the only thing that could be done to “ruin” it would be to pile on a bunch of unsatisfying answers to the open questions about the world. I’d definitely play HL3 just to experience more of the world, I just don’t care that much about where the story goes and I don’t think that’s ever been the main draw.
It would be nice to get some explanations of the world that would extend it and allow people to tell more interesting stories within it, but I honestly doubt that those answers exist. It really feels like they’re kind of just riffing and they don’t have a bigger vision for where it all goes, if I had to guess.
I think this is why I always loved System Shock and System Shock 2 so much more as the narrative building was so much bigger than any game I’ve played before I since. I wish someone would sort the licensing out for that game and bring us a System Shock 3.
I’m working up the courage to try those for the first time, but as very old games now, I’m a little apprehensive about all the friction they’re likely to have.