Half-Life 2 Episode One Delayed

Folks looking forward to their next fix from City 17 will have to wait a few more days than expected. The last time a release date was announced, they were aiming for April 24th. Now folks are going to have to wait for May 31st for the expansion to the hit game. From the Eurogamer article: "You're on top of an exploding building, okay, so how do you not all die. It answers a bunch of those questions. It also raises some questions about what the G-Man's real role is in the Half-Life universe, so there are some surprises there for people". Here's hoping it is worth the wait.

Comments

What's the story line, Kenneth?

[hal9000(jr)]

"You're on top of an exploding building, okay, so how do you not all die. It answers a bunch of those questions. It also raises some questions about what the G-Man's real role is in the Half-Life universe, so there are some surprises there for people"

So I am a big fan of Half-Life and Half-life 2. It's the only game I play when I have time, but I never got the story line. I think the Valve floks know how to make a fun (Ravenholm still gives me the creeps), interactive, addictive game, but the story line, such as it is, ain't too compelling. It's too bad too, because I think they did have an oppty to have a more interesting story in the game and the components seem to be available to provide more puzzle solving manilplate the world more.

Re:What's the story line, Kenneth?

[Frobozz0]

I always thought Half Life 2 was strong because of the atmosphere it produces and the mystery they maintain in the story line. It's anything but shallow to me. In fact, I was drawn in hook, line, and sinker.

Re:What's the story line, Kenneth?

[mrchaotica]

You don't know the storyline because Gordon doesn't know the storyline.

Re:What's the story line, Kenneth?

[Phanatic1a]

The problem I had was that so little information regarding the storyline existed in the game. You play a smart guy, PhD in theoretical physics, you fight back invaders from Xen, travel to another world/dimension, kill the Big Bad, and then wake up to find you're back on earth and there's this gigantic building in the middle of town that's growing and this organization called the Combine spitting out tripods to impale people. It's natural that, well, you'd have a few questions to ask. But you don't. You don't utter a single word in the whole game. People tell you a few things, but they're the only source of exposition.

Take a look at the backstory: probably about 90% of it is stuff that you could only learn from sources external to the game: web pages, forums, official information from Valve. But in the game, you're wandering around Combine prison/death camps, and there're no documents you can read, no computers you can activate to look for information. Nobody's left logs or notebooks around.

Half-life 2 was a good game. But, absent the graphics, System Shock 2 was a *better* game. You felt like you were actually figuring stuff out, solving the mystery of "What the hell just happened?", instead of just riding a train to a set destination. If the player is expected to acquire knowledge of the backstory that will improve his enjoyment of the game, that knowledge should be conveyed in the game. When playing F.E.A.R., I found out about the plot by playing the game, not by going to external web pages in order to learn who Alma is.

Re:What's the story line, Kenneth?

[MMaestro]

Three words : Show your sources.

The overall problem the parent posts are trying to bring up is the fact that a HUGE amount of 'backstory' (for the lack of a better word) doesn't exist IN GAME. Even the link you showed is full of flaws and is largely extrapolated.

Under the supervision of researchers Eli Vance and Dr.Kleiner, crystals are retrieved from Xen, and organisms are analyzed.

In Half-Life 1, the scientists reacted to the headcrabs as if it was the first time they had seen them. With the exception of the experimental weapons (which could be justified as nothing more than experimental future weapons, don't forget assault rifles were experimentally used in the 1940's but were only fully adopted in the 60's), theres no evidence of any alien technology besides the alien artifact in the beginning.

1.3. The Portal Storms

Pure extrapolation. No evidence to support this entire segment. Considering the Combine's advanced technology and comparisons to modern human technology, a worldwide invasion in 7 hours (according to the in game newspaper clipping) is easy. Hit key military installations via a blitzkrieg air assault (a jet fighter can fly across the world in under 12 hours, alien technology could easily halve this), threaten the political leadership with military superiority (parking a tank on the front lawn usually does the trick) and the war ends when governments realize they can't use the nuclear option (Can't launch nukes through teleporters you don't even know about.)

Breen surrenders Earth to the Combine, explaining that the Combine are here for good, to immortalize humanity.

Actually near the end of Half-Life 2, Breen is reluctant to flee to the Combine homeworld since he would be forced to abandon his human body. Sounds like hes simply doing it for power by any means necessary.

The whole Half-Life storyline is extremely poor. In game theres virtually nothing, its like an action/mystery story without the answer at the end. Gameplay-wise its awesome, but storyline-wise Doom 3 had a stronger storyline in comparison.

Re:As usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because they don't need every employee they have to finish up the first one. There's no use for a graphical designer if all the graphics are already gold for example. Could be there's just some coding bugs to work out, which leaves everyone but the programmers open for the next project.