A cut version of Portal 1's ending featured a cave leading to a cliff area with a Half-Life Xen skybox.Was Aperture Science originally meant to be based in Xen? Or was this a placeholder for something else?@richterovertime investigates: https://t.co/po6rCSJo65 pic.twitter.com/ATAP48FC1V— LambdaGeneration (@LambdaGen) May 6, 2022
We're working on a demo! Since a lot of people are very excited about the mod, we've decided to give you a glimpse of what we're working on. There's no ETA yet, but things are progressing well!#Archthrones #DarkSouls3 pic.twitter.com/CGx7kTuzWF— Dark Souls: Archthrones (@Archthrones) May 6, 2022
Gonna look at Half-Life: Alyx's SDK and tweet about it a little. If you don't know already, I've historically had a big old axe to grind with modern level design tools! Still do. Neither Unity nor UE4 has level design tools worth mentioning built-in. This looks more promising.— Joe Wintergreen (@joewintergreen) May 19, 2020
this heavily-scripted, extremely good, sort of ridiculous bit of e3 footage evokes a game I want to make, but the bummer is, even though hl2's ai was never going to be able to get these kinds of results, if it *could*, this still wouldn't happen because nobody plays this way pic.twitter.com/6QPHhJFvHR— Joe Wintergreen (@joewintergreen) October 5, 2021
MIND YOU, the fact that those things felt revolutionary at the time (eg realistic-seeming NPCs) was in large part *because* the game was not specifically built around themmost players aren't engaging with a given system constantly enough to see the edges of it— Joe Wintergreen (@joewintergreen) April 27, 2022
it is true and weird that both half-life games are considered super influential and important and were good, but almost nothing of what was compelling about either of them was adopted into anything else. they are still pretty much the only place to find the things they did https://t.co/CEwlx9761I— Joe Wintergreen (@joewintergreen) April 26, 2022
one of the funnier ones is people thinking they have taken the "it's first-person the whole thing!!!" thing from half-life but they've actually discarded the "never take control of the camera" thing and gone with "it's all one long shot!" which is fuckin nothing
"one long shot" somehow retaining its impressiveness to some people when migrated from film to video games is some of the most bewildering shit.
you know the camera isn't real right. you know nobody's holding it. you know it's easier to defy physics than not to in this context
both hl1 and hl2 are actually full of stubs of situations you could make a whole game around
like: being scared in a fucked up research facility with some security guards and normal folks, and they're chatty and have interesting behaviours. that's the biggest deal in hl1 to me
MIND YOU, the fact that those things felt revolutionary at the time (eg realistic-seeming NPCs) was in large part *because* the game was not specifically built around them
most players aren't engaging with a given system constantly enough to see the edges of it
Something that happens very often in game development is the encroachment of...investment-style thinking? on dev priorities:
it's seen as not worth it to implement something complex if it isn't a major feature, and if you DO implement something complex, you better use it often..
...but often, the more frequently you deploy the cool complex thing, the less value it has to the player
so now in most games, very rarely do you see something that's both cool and rare
Some things are cool *because* they're rare. You can implement a cool feature, understandably say "wow we should make this happen more", and now it's not cool. Doesn't mean it's bad, but it's not a story people tell anymore or an impressive moment
"one long shot" somehow retaining its impressiveness to some people when migrated from film to video games is some of the most bewildering shit.
you know the camera isn't real right. you know nobody's holding it. you know it's easier to defy physics than not to in this context
the fact that those things felt revolutionary at the time (eg realistic-seeming NPCs) was in large part *because* the game was not specifically built around them
most players aren't engaging with a given system constantly enough to see the edges of it
Something that happens very often in game development is the encroachment of...investment-style thinking? on dev priorities:
it's seen as not worth it to implement something complex if it isn't a major feature, and if you DO implement something complex, you better use it often..
...but often, the more frequently you deploy the cool complex thing, the less value it has to the player
so now in most games, very rarely do you see something that's both cool and rare
2022 is looking good for the standalone Source Engine puzzle game, PUNT:https://t.co/I8Gjmwd8MJ pic.twitter.com/ZJIpOt1H4c— ModDB (@ModDB) April 30, 2022
Half-Life was the first game of its type to tell a story within the actual game instead of in the manual. https://t.co/yty7GiJLVi— John Titor, Tasked to Saturation. (@ArsCordis) April 27, 2022
Set-pieces, popularized reloading as a part of the combat loop, popularized a more linear "corridor" style level designThere's more, certainly, but I'm hungover.Half-life just sorta influenced everything, it's like asking how Lord of the Rings influenced fantasy. https://t.co/JMR3lwauqB— DJ Peach Cobbler (@DJ_PeachCobbler) April 27, 2022
Doom-likes and Quake-likes are singular ideas that only shaped their own futures. Half-life wasn't the first game to feature real time environmental storytelling, it was the best one to feature a story that people gave a shit about. https://t.co/MOYtQDHmXP— 🍁 Sgt. Kirby (@TheSgtKirby) April 27, 2022
Interesting thread discussing what Half-Life's "legacy" is. It's true that Unreal did many similar things and was arguably more technically impressive, but it's a testament to HL's legacy that it's so tough to pinpoint its influence. https://t.co/cn8dCXZQbR— mike valverde (@thisismikev) April 27, 2022
half-life is this giant black hole in the history of video games. everyone who talks about it is usually just playing a long-standing game of telephone where the goal is to impart how influential and important it was while telling you as little about it as possible— The Tax Collector Man | BLM (@thetaxgoblin) April 26, 2022
insane that we live in the year 2022, which contains almost zero thoughtful content about the original Half-Life. there are indie devs creating doom-likes and quake-likes but zero half-likes. people continually call Half-Life “influential” but cannot cite what it influenced— The Tax Collector Man | BLM (@thetaxgoblin) April 26, 2022
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