Honestly the fact that Magnusson has held a grudge over his microwave casserole for twenty years is respectable. Imagine hearing everyone around you give this guy verbal head for decades, when all you know about him is he's the fucking intern who ruined your last lunch before the world went to shit.
I didn't even think about it in the context of it being his last lunch before the world went to shit. Maybe Magnusson was already having a shitty day. His wife just left him. Kleiner and Eli are nerd tag-teaming him. He's a lonely guy going through some stuff, and then the fucking intern who never shows up for work on time blows up the casserole you were really looking forward to eating, the one thing you were looking forward to that day to bring some small measure of joy. I'd be pissed too.
Could you imagine if people in this treated you like "just a guy"? People would probably be just as annoyed that the guy who stopped an alien and military invasion single handedly isn't being treated better.
There's like three other (dead) guys in the same room as the Nihilanth that also tried firing a billion rockets at it. Gordon just got lucky, the only reason it wasn't Scientist in HEV Suit #5 immediately after Gordon that killed it is because the plot says so. The in-universe explanation still makes sense as the Vorts do worship him as a messiah since he did still kill the Nihilanth regardless of why or how, and anybody who knew Gordon was just Dude #4 to give it a shot are no longer around to explain it.
@@woodenotaku He still did it. You could say he was just as lucky that he survived all his encounters with, oh I don't know, the entire fucking US military and other aliens he fought beforehand. People forget that the scientists in HL1 also treat Gordon like a hero throughout most of the back half of the original game, and start trusting him as the go-to guy for pretty much everything. "Oh Gordon, please reach the Lambda Complex and save us, you're the only one who can survive that perilous journey!", "Oh Gordon, please launch the rocket, we need it for reasons which won't ever matter later!", "Oh Gordon, please kill the big alien fetus, we are all counting on you!", etc. It's funny, because it doesn't matter if you've been slaughtering every scientist and security guard you meet throughout the game (which people REALLY loved doing for whatever reason), you will still be treated as The Chosen One by the rest of the Black Mesa staff, you will still go to Xen, kill the Nihilanth and be a hero. Face it, HL1 is also to blame for Freeman's status as a hero. Hell, arguably even more so, given the fact that in the original Gordon does practically everything alone, whereas in HL2 he has moments in which the Resistance helps him greatly, such as the Battle of City 17. And it's not as if people immediately start worshipping you the moment you exit the train, in fact nobody aside from your former Black Mesa colleagues and the Vortigaunts (cough cough vortessence) even recognize you. Gordon later gains notoriety due to his actions and I'd argue rightfully so. Idk, I think the whole "people love Gordon too much!!1!" argument was always stupid.
It makes sense why Breen would be on edge about Gordon Freeman. The guy causes the Resonance Cascade, kills every alien and Marine he runs across, and then disappears for twenty years. Next thing you know, he teleports into your office in an HEV suit and then just warps away. Imagine if you worked at a Papa Johns and one of your pizza delivery guys just disappears one night. Cold case, nobody knows what happened to him, he's probably dead for trying to out-pizza the hut or fled to Mexico. Then one night after you were promoted to Wells Fargo or something, he just materializes inside your office at 4:30 PM. He's not delivering pizza, he's delivering fear.
I see Dr. Breen's speech later during water hazard, saying that Gordon is just a physicist and kinda him trying to convince himself of that after this guy just teleported into his office and stood there, menacingly.
That NoClip doc is a fuckin gold mine as far as I'm considering, and hearing Gabe admit his own personal failures apart from the teams speaks volumes to his out look as a leader in the company
I like how Gabe's "confession" points at that he doesn't really boss around in Valve, other people there actually have a lot of responsibility too for the decisions that are made in the company. And he can speak only for himself since other devs might have did their job better than him for all he knows.
@@telefrag. a big possibility. But if Gabe wasn't Gabe then Valve would have just given up at the Steam Machine not being a hit and retreated to just being a game developer and storefront. They wouldn't have pressed on to change the PC Handheld landscape and possibly make the OS that'll finally take on Windows for real.
@@BunkerAnon Or he'd have retired and we'd be paying a 9.99$ subscription fee to use and download games off of Steam implemented by his corpo replacement... Hell, that might still happen someday.
@@planescaped I've heard that Gabe has plans in place for his eventual passing / successor / management of the company, to prevent that exact scenario from occurring. One can but hope. Valve is, among other things, a privately owned company and as such isn't as prone to enshittification. They're far from perfect, but imagine a world in which the Vivendi suit claimed them and, I dunno, EA became the dominant online game store. For what issues I do take with Valve, Gabe's foresight to start backing Proton and other Linux-based solutions to escape the rapidly rotting Windows ecosystem may be the thing that saves PC gaming in the long term.
It's also the most famous case of gaming blue-balls ever- that anything short of Half-Life 3 being the gaming equivalent of world peace would be considered a disappointment, and I can't imagine how intimidating that would be to anybody in the industry that takes pride in their work like Valve does.
@@hunterlord101 I feel like people are always overreacting about this, personally I would take anything with the quality of Half Life Episode 2 or Half Life Alyx (not in the context of being a VR game but as being a quality Half Life game) that wraps up the story post-episode 2 and I'd be at peace.
@@DutchThriceman Yeah. We gamers think that, but Valve is known for doing base emptying homeruns. So that kinda puts them in a pickle as a great game would be them abtting below their average...
Less writers block and more a Michaelangelo complex. They felt too pressured to make a masterpiece, make it revolutionary, that they forgot that all anyone wanted was a satisfying conclusion. Finish what you started, then work on your next groundbreaking experience damnit! D:
ep 3 did not need to be earth shattering, mechanically..it only needed to be better than ep 2, like ep2 was to ep1...The Thing-esque atmosphere, the ice gun, the blob physics, narrative conclusion...that's more than enough for most of us
Dudes waiting on Half life 3 and dudes waiting on a real season four of the transformers cartoon* have a bunch in common I guess (* - everything that isn't G1 was filler arc crap, especially all of it)
I see where Civvie is coming from regarding the question of what he can possibly add that others haven't said, but these videos are very entertaining. The humor is spot on as always IMO.
Old man Civvie gets angry (at the cloud) not playing some bullshit brown mazes with keycards more then when he does. For an hour and a half. Christmas miracle, for sure.
Say what you will about Breen, but he was dropping some truth bombs when he said Gordo was nothing but a mindless pawn whose contract was open to the highest bidder...
@@xsoultillerx In the HL2 Beta storyline, the combine were brutal but necessary for the survival of humanity. Earth's ecosystem in the beta was so ravaged by xen life, some areas were just lifeless dry wastelands. Even the combine had constant trouble trying to fight off the Xenian fauna as they became increasingly more starved and desperate, so pre-war Earth military had no chance. Not to mention, the Combine still allowed humans have children and leisure to some extent. Said beta plot points ironically make the generic bond villain looking Consul (beta Breen) more sympathetic to release Breen, who was ended up being a backstabbing, deluded evil scientist basically.
@@Stryker98wasn’t a big plot twist in the beta going to be the consul was literally turning himself into some kind of alien-slug hybrid thing, probably to survive the fact the combine in the beta was literally poisoning the atmosphere
One of my favorite things about Ep 2 was that Magnusson WASN’T actually a villain. I was waiting for the inevitable betrayal the whole time, and it never came!
yea no he's just an asshole with a grudge. Good guys are allowed to be grudge holding assholes. And even when he was berating everyone and being a dick, he was entirely in the right the whole way given he was trying to keep everyone on task.
Honestly, what surprises me the most about Half Life 2 is that it still looks pretty damn good 20 years later. Not just because of art direction, but like... The texture work and the meshes are good as well. They are aged and not HD like other stuff, but they look better than some new stuff today!
Some games just age well: Metroid Prime, all these years later, still looks grand, to such a point the Switch version actually looks slightly worse. And Painkiller, despite also showing it's age, can still have it's glorious visuals, particularly in the environments and enemies.
@@Umbra_Ursus There was an interview on RUclips with one of the Retro Studio employees who worked on the original Metroid Prime and he talked about how they figured out that they could do pseudo dynamic lighting basically for free on the Gamecube and he theorized how it was likely that the combination of the Switch's hardware and the the new graphics pipeline that was used for the remaster more than likely couldn't do the same thing without impacting performance.
...and the VR port isn't bad either. Certainly more of a "game" than many titles, and it even has better physical interactions than some native VR games. Not all...Definitely not perfect, but a hell of a mod that's free if you own HL2.
@@Civvie11 Braindance tech is coming along pretty good by the sounds of it. I'm sure there's no moral boundaries being crossed and everyone involved is definitely healthy, happy, and fairly compensated in humane working conditions.
Yeah, that intro was carefully designed to blow your mind off with everything: atmosphere, physics, facial animations, everything was so top notch that it burned itself on your eyelids and stayed with you forever since.
@@Civvie11 I would tell you to ask the administration, but i guess you are still recovering from the last electrically induced bladder evacuation so its okay
Civvie, I think I have to disagree on your "He's just a guy" and now "he's Jesus" take -- If you saved the world, then go missing for twenty years... the lore and legend that comes from your return is almost to be expected. Especially with the world ending around everyone in the mean time. We know enough people from Black Mesa lived to tell the tale.
And also the fact that the people living under the combine's reign are living absolutely squalor lives and constantly fear being visited by the metro cops, and would probably be clinging onto any shred of hope they can cling to. And if that shred of hope is the possible return of some MIT graduate who took out both the military and a vast alien army, then they're gonna see him and treat him as a Jesus-type guy.
Omg! Everybody! Everybody! It's really him!!! [Wife's water breaks] Not now, babe! The pun master is here making predictions. Seriously tho (joking aside), the one liners you come up with for your videos are absolutely hilarious. I listen to them like, "how tf does he come up with these?"
I think that it was a mistake to not do something to wrap the story up. It seems that Valve didn't have a good understanding of how important the setting/characters/plot were to many of the fans.
Or maybe Valve letting the players run crazy for more than a decade because of this unresolved cliffhanger - maybe it oddly was the best thing that could've happened to Half-Life? If they just finished the story there and then, we'd all be like "OK, that's that". Maybe them backing up and leaving the book open for us to write our own endings... maybe that made Half-Life so much more personal for the players?
Agreed, I'm not obsessed with the story or anything (it's still very much a video game story at the end of the day) but it does annoy me as someone who enjoys the craft of storytelling. They really didn't need to pressure themselves to "innovate" for a final episode. That's not what episodes are for! Just give us an ending!
Personally I believe that the reason why Valve hasn't made Half-Life 3 yet is because they feel like it would need to be as innovative and industry changing as the previous games and so far they haven't been able to find a way to do that or the technology. But this is purely based on absolutely nothing and is purely my own opinion.
Because after they missed original, 5 years or so, window there is nothing they can do that wouldn't be a massive dissapointment. Expectations are too high and even if they release second coming of jeebus it won't be enough. Although now that industry is crumbling and bar of what is good is on the floor...
@@unfa00 I really don't think that's the case, based on how that's not the case for any other game. Whenever a legendary title spawns a dogfart sequel people basically just pretend they didn't see it. Look at Age of Empires. Those dudes struck gold with the second title, then made a third and a fourth title nobody played. Then they remade the second one, and its still very popular today and has like 30k daily players on steam alone.
I didn’t realise it until my playthrough this year for the 20th anniversary but one of the most fun ways to dispose of hunters is to use a physics prop as a shield with the gravity gun and after they’ve fired their needler volley into it throw it at them. It’s awesome
There's Logs in the final fight, just for that. Valve KNEW exactly what they were doing. Always do. I just wish they did it, properly the FIRST god damn time and knew better then to Tamper with what works. Half-Life Source is a Great example of Valve breaking things, HORRIBLY.
I wanted to mention this, because I never saw it come up. The Hunters! They are actually incredibly weak to prop objects. You wouldn't think that, but simply using the gravity gun and flinging large enough stuff at them takes them down extremely quickly. Depending on difficulty, simply shooting two car tires at them with the gravity gun is enough to kill them.
Less efficient, but they also take a bunch of damage from the magnum; according to a dev comment they intentionally did that because of the player perception that the magnum's the most powerful weapon.
One small detail I like is that Ravenholm is visible in water hazard. It's a town in the distance which looks kinda benign in the dusk. But replaying the game, it's an ominous sight when you think of the horrors inside the town (horrors you'll have to be dealing with very soon).
I love it when games make other parts of the game visible from where you are. Really helps sell that idea of the world being a real place and not just a set of levels. Fun fact: Initially Ravenholm was supposed to be between Water Hazard and BM East. If you check out the E3 2003 demo, you can see Gordon arriving to Ravenholm using some docks. The foreshadowing might be left over from that, since they changed the order of the areas fairly late in production, but it's cool still.
That little scene with Alyx in the train was so sweet. "I feel the urge to comfort her, and tell her that it's alright. But, alas, I can't speak. All I can do is murder- and allegedly do science- and maybe that's enough." It's like a companion piece to Leadhead's piece on Alyx!
the HDTF joke reminded me that if i had a nickel for every time a jojo VA voiced a lead character in a disasterpiece mod i'd have two nickels which isn't much but it's crazy that it not only happened twice but both VAs were from the same jojo part as well.
The way you bring up the absurd degree to which everyone cares about Gordon in 2 reminds me of one of the things I honestly love about 2's plot - namely how LITTLE the Combine cares. About humanity, the world, everything really. They care about Gordon a little, since they probably know about G-Man and Breen was freaking out over him, but not that much really - not enough to even bother sending more than some schlubby metrocops after him, the very bottom of the totem pole relatively speaking. Even when you start encountering real soldiers in earnest, they almost always start out preoccupied by some other deployment or are just kinda chilling in their own bases; it's very rare that a full squad is actually sent out to hunt down Gordon 'specifically' until near the very end of the game. Even the resistance seems to be little more than an afterthought to them, to the point where you kind of get the impression that the only reason they weren't squashed out years ago was because the Combine were basically leaving them be so long as they didn't rock the boat too much or grow to big to become a real threat. I mean why would they care, we can't have kids anymore so humanity will be functionally extinct in a generation - its a problem that's gonna fix itself real soon from their perspective, nothing to worry about really. The only thing the Combine really gives a shit about is sucking the planet dry of all natural resources and they could not give less of a damn about anyone or anything that happened to be there before them. And they could very easily obliterate every scrap of resistance, maybe even every trace of life on Earth if they felt inclined to put in the time and effort necessary. You see plenty of evidence throughout the games that this is no exaggeration, to the point Eli outright says they "won't last seven minutes" this time if they get the superportal open. This is a truly gigantic, interdimensional and world-spanning empire that could kill us all just by sneezing. But they don't; they don't bother at all, they just don't CARE - and that honestly makes them way scarier to me than a lot of other evil villain factions that have arguably done way worse on-screen. It's pure banality of evil, a kind of brutality borne as much from sheer apathy as it is from genuine viciousness. These guys can do way, way worse to you than what you've been seeing - they HAVE done much worse in the past and will do so again if given the chance. Its only through sheer luck really that you manage to hit them hard enough and quickly enough to smack them down before they can bring their full force to bear. And at the end of it all you don't really accomplish anything more than wresting away some small border outpost in the boonies. That's all the liberation of Earth amounts to in the grand scheme of things; the rest of the Combine isn't affected or inconvenienced at all, aside from maybe the price of authentic seawater going up a few cents (and honestly they can probably get that just as easily somewhere else). The situation seems incredibly important from the player's limited perspective when really they're just a pawn for some multiversal C.I.A. spook's personal brush war against an incomprehensibly vast superpower.
Magnus has the worst coworkers in the world. He’s got one normal guy working for him, a traitor, a guy doing unthinkable things to a headcrab, and Dr.Freeman.* * Better known for other work.
the dude's soo far gone and fed up with his workers that he promotes a Vortigaunt to full Scientist position to just even things out. even gives him a labcoat and an ID to make things professional by the smallest means.
An hour and a half of civvie? And he’s playing half life 2? Possibly at gunpoint? Hell yeah brother! Oorah to ashes! 7, 7 and a half. Sewer count. Beetlejuice… My nose is bleeding.
HL2's beginning is one of the best media has to offer. Like, of all media. Books, other games, movies, tv shows, whatever the future brings, HL2's beginning is fuckin GREAT. Yes, okay, HL2 came out at a sensitive, important time for me.
Fun fact: the demo on the Xbox version _specifically_ was the ravenholm chapter; and when I learned you can bisect a zombie with a saw blade, I was sold.
I disagree with the “half life WASNT a power fantasy” argument. You’re a young man but among the best scientists in the world at one of the most advanced facilities. You then spring into action as an ultimate badass killing everything in your way. Not really sure how you would interpret it otherwise.
Youre literally a cosmic superweapon weapon wielded by nefarious eldritch forces like the Gman or Vortigaunts in a multidimensional war of unfathomable scale. Id say thats a power fantasy
If anything, I think the "everyman" aspect worked early in half life, but the sorta like.. cosmic superweapon lacking free will being basically being used to wreak absolute havoc and secure assets whereever it is needed, thats kinds infinitely more interesting and makes Gordon a compelling character, not just a player self insert (which is a good thing despite what it sounds like)
you're not OP tho..not until the gravity gun power up at the citadel finale...you kill everything in your way in every fps, but their all not power fantasy..Black Mesa makes you it's B*@tch
I can understand the whole "holy it's Gordon im creaming" but you gotta understand this man survived a dimension tear fought his way outta an alien infested saw fest of a building fought the American army and won and after that teleported himself to an alien home world whopped an alien overlord and halved the species of said alien home world at that point he deserves some respect
Also he say he has a hard time calling any game the best when it has a pistol this shitty. But then Doom has a worse pistol and he would have no issue calling it the best fps game.
Even to this day I think that intro where you see every pore in GMan's face was the biggest jump scare of my life. Granted it was neat having textures that high detailed for the time.
We joke, but HOLY FUCKING SHIT, it just has not been Gordon's 3 WEEKS or so... The last time he got proper sleep was before he went to work that fateful day, his family? Oh they're likely fucking dead either from the Portal Storms or as a knock on effect of the 7 Hour War. That moment when he accepted the job offer? Well at first Gordon saw this, took the job offer (as it was a way out) and the literal NEXT THING HE KNOWS, he's being rambled at by the G Man and on a train to City 17. He hasn't aged at all and likely hadn't known that 20 years had gone by since he'd gone to Xen... Then the whole thing of being put with the 'Savior' role (what with being the symbol the Resistance follows because he's the man who went through hell and came out the other side seemingly unaffected except being ready to kick MORE ass) and the events of Half Life 2 happen and when he's dug out of the rubble? That hug from Alyx was likely the first time in 20 GODDAMNED YEARS that he'd been given positive physical contact by another human being, let alone a hug. Like, anyone else would have likely, at some point, just went 'FUCK THIS' and sat on the ground and just...contemplated/passed the fuck out because the stress would be insane to go through. Not even MENTIONING the fact that the last we see of him, he'd lost one of his only remaining friends while he was forced to fucking WATCH.
power of morphine and whatever else that suit pumps into him. vets have less side effects than what Gordon is going to have when he takes off that suit.
Left hand analogue stick + right hand mouse should be a thing. Would have obviated so much: the need to have edge friction, the need to PWM the A and D keys to turn vehicles, the inability to fully integrate the player as a physics entity because of instantaneous acceleration. WASD has outlived its usefulness. It well, well past time for more nuanced movement control to be standard.
@@QUINTIX256 as someone that has played using mixed input (and gyro) it's really not that crazy different. you can do it right now if you like, there are custom schemes on steam input you can import or make your own. as for the airboat and car controls, they don't really simulate steering an actual vehicle, they grip well and don't spin out of control so pressing or tapping the keys works well enough, seeing as we're not playing a racing sim... and if we were, an analog controller would still not be "enough".
47:00 you’re meant to use the turrets against the Combine in that section. Not surprising you missed it as you typically use the wrong guns on each enemy for some reason.
also there is a second-floor platform (accessible if you stack some boxes/barrels) where you can camp behind some turrets and the combine are unable to reach you making the level a joke
@@PerryNoydicus I never figured that out in my playthrough but I found my own way to cheese it in the form of using props to block off one of the connecting hallways, so the soldiers would all have to either funnel through one of two entry points right next to eachother to get to me, or try the entrance behind me and get turned into Swiss cheese by a gaggle of turrets.
One of my favorite William Blake poems is called The Garden of Love. Check it out: I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door; So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore. And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.
@@insanejughead Man I wish that he would reupload those Idiot Box episodes in higher quality, or even better, make a comeback. Same with the kitty0706 (R.I.P) videos.
I've been replaying half-life 2 recently and I was struck with the realisation that the characters have more and better facial animations than AAA games released this year
Ok, you got me. Quiet part is I love you and Harris's content so much I was in for the long haul after the RUclips glitched and then gonna hunt for HL2 Civvie after
The portal storms were not caused by the Resonance Cascade. That was a localized event that was (sort of) ended when you launched that big-ass missile. The missile contained a satellite that was an emergency failsafe to stop the portals from tearing apart spacetime or something like that. Once you launched the missile, the primary threat caused directly by the accident was over, but the Nihilanth caught wind of your universe's existence and poked his psychic fingers through the rift to keep it open, and began an invasion with his enslaved army of Vortigaunts, Grunts and Alien Controllers. The Nihilanth himself was being pursued by the Combine for unclear reasons, and he was the last of his race, presumably from another universe that the Combine conquered, and his intention was to conquer this universe and use it as part of his getaway plan. When you killed the Nihilanth, its death throes caused the portal storms, ripping apart spacetime across our universe and decimating most of Earth's infrastructure before the Combine got through, who learned of your existence because of the rift that the Nihilanth kept open with its dying psychic fingers. Then they invaded, as they have with countless other universes, and easily conquered Earth in seven hours. This is the problem with this type of storytelling. Much of this is only in filler material that it's easy to not know the context and get things mixed up by accident.
42:04 Edge friction is actually something that has been in the engine since Quake, you can control it in the console by setting the variable edgefriction.
I don't care what excuses they make. I still hold a grudge for the lack of a conclusion to Half Life 2 episodes. You have a story, that you wanted me invested in. That I was invested in. And I bought into the episodes for the exact reason that I wanted to get just a little smidgeon of closure. It would never have "failed to meet up to expectations" unless you failed to create an end-point to the cliffhanger that is leading up to Judith Mossman and the Borealis. You weren't pushing anything but the story forward with episode one. You weren't pushing "gaming as a whole" or the medium forward with episode 2. Valve was just making extremely well-done games that everyone enjoyed and I wanted to see the conclusion. I'm still upset because I see how much money steam started to bring in. And I know about the "flat corporate structure" where nobody is your boss and it just leads to a bunch of cliques and failed projects as people lose interest in what they are doing and move to a different part of the office to do something else. Crushing the dreams of developers internally when they can't get a graphics designer or a programmer or whatever to continue working on a project that they had cooking. It makes me angry today to think of. I praise Valve and even Gabe Newell personally for a lot of things, but they deserve a good slap for failing to finish the three episodes. And Gabe deserves one personally for the failure of managing the internal corporate structure. I'm only upset because I love the guys who worked on these projects. But I am upset. And thanks for the Christmas present Civvie.
Oh don't worry, they're fully aware that they screwed up in that regard. It's in the documentary, some devs/ex devs feel like that. But they also explained that they didn't know how to end the story, so yeah, it probably would've "failed to meet expectations" regardless. Although, I do understand their point of view when making games. Valve wants to advance gaming, or at least what's possible with gaming, with each game. Episode 3 didn't bring enough to the table and they also feel like the Episode format was a screw up too. Overall the episodes thing was a major setback both for the story and the gameplay.
@@lechuzaarg2404 The fact that HLA changed Episode 2's ending via time travel really cements in my mind that Valve had written themselves into a corner with Eli's death and had no idea how to proceed from that.
I binge every Civvie video as soon as it releases, every time, like a hamster to a waterbottle, but watching him have a short existential crisis with a vortigaunt who was unintentionally blocking a door was the Christmas present I didn't know I needed. Happy holidays, everyone.
Civvie was certainly not at gunpoint the whole time he put this video together. He was however forced to live in a cell with broken glass on the floor until the project was complete.
Now that was a lovely hour and a half dedicated to one of the more formative experiences of my PC Gamin' life. Thank you very much Civvie, and may yo have a merry christmas and a happy new year!
You know what is the worst part of Half-life 2? Activision pushing Troika to release Bloodlines on the same day in its buggy self with second half of the game barely finished and combat heavy.
Ok about the Pentagon Wars reference. That movie was a hit piece and it worked wonders. Now its fact that the Pentagon burns piles of money on bullshit. The Bradley is one of the few times they got it completely right. It was never meant to be an armoured vehicle. Its a bulletproof transport and modular platform that can be modded into doing any job required. The "main character" in the movie and book is an actual guy who went after the Bradley project with a hatchet, mainly because his own waste of money project was shitcanned before he could fill his pockets and pat his ego. And he is full of shit. History has proven him wrong. But that movie was seen by so many people. And it just feels so cathartic to call out the Pentagon in their bullshit, so most people just take it as gospel. So in a very real way the bad guys won in that movie. Oh and the guy is connected to a group of Pentagon insiders who think that planes should just dogfight and bombers should wipe whole cities off the map with cluster bombardments. They are the people who bankrolled the movie.
Thank you for posting this, I was about to write a far less well written comment about the same. The bradley has proven itself time and time again as one of the best modern IFVs.
I grew up playing a shit ton of Star Trek games, most of them not very good. But Tony Todd was in almost all of them as a generic Klingon. He was wonderful in Deep Space 9, both returning as Kern and as an adult Jake Sisko in the episode The Visitor. He had tremendous range, and a huge heart. Thanks for mentioning him, Civvie.
At this rate, the "Best Documentary" category at the 2025 Oscars is gonna be nothing but Half-Life 2 retrospectives and the AlternateHub G1 Transformers video.
Considering how people behind half life 2 regrets combining portal and half life universes I'm almost entirely sure borealis will probably will be retconned
There was a long time where I thought Valve was just resting on its laurels about 3, but the idea that a developer hit a wall where they couldn't do anything new with their game and just let that be an actual organic stopping point for the franchise (minus Alyx I guess) feels impossible now. It sucks, but I love Valve in the end for doing it.
I used to think so too, but after seeing the anniversary doc I actually think Valve made a huge mistake. They got too caught up on doing bigger, better, new techs, new features that they were unable to do another game at all in the end. Truth is a HL3 with "mere" polished Episode 2 gameplay and features with better GFX would've been a great sendoff to the series, but Valve let perfectionism kill the game.
@@tomorbataar5922 gabe did hint that it was a mistake, and that they could do something good now with half life 3, also they did state multiple times since half life alyx that they aren't afraid of the number 3 anymore, i do expect an announcement next year for it
@@GuilhermeSantos-sd5uw Yeah I think the fact they did HL:A at all, yet alone it's ending, shows they're likely ready for the franchise again. Just sucks it took them so long, I barely play games these days.
Never thought Id enjoy watching yet another playthrough of half life 2 but your comedy and narration and pacing is fucking phenomenal. This has really improved my morning gonna have to watch the rest of your content now < 3
Gotta say, Civvie, much as the quality of your vids has only been on the up, this might be the best vid you've made thus far, and I don't just say that because HL2 is my favorite game trilogy of all time. Much as I disagree with some of your criticisms (sorry, I love Water Hazard and no one can change that, but then I love pretty much every chapter aside from the final stretch of the base game), you articulate them really well and I agree with some of them myself. I waited for this vid for a long time and it was worth every second. PS: I've said it before in other vids, but I can't express how much I love that the Kreed bit is still alive and well.
@@IncognitoActivado Tour-ist? I sure wish I was, but unfortunately I don't play Mann vs Machine very often, thank you for reminding me I need to grind those tours still!
1:12:04 BUT CIVVIE, HALF-LIFE HAS ALWAYS HAD HEALTH COME OUT OF WALLS! God, I've been looking forward to this video since I subscribed to the Patreon (basically back when you made the first Half-Life video). Always liked the moment-to-moment gameplay/gunplay of 1 more than 2. Lots of great jokes in this episode-- and now I can't wait for the Deus Ex video (when it's done!)
Deus Ex? Let's go!! That is the successor to Thief and System Shock 2, and is game of the year 2000 easily. It was an absolutely big game for the time.
Can I just say that streaming this video to people who also are familiar with hbomberguy and civvie, and claiming its a new hbomberguy video has been great fun
You knocked this one out of the park, Civvie! Fantastic video. I laughed so often it hurt, although some parts of the story still hit hard, even after all these years, especially the end of episode 2. I need to play through these again. I haven't played them for at least a decade now.
God damn, I remember playing half life 2 on like medium to low settings in 2004 and thought that graphics had peaked. I remember discussing with my friends that there is literally no need to improve graphics anymore. Looking at this video I still think it holds up, especially the water.
I think that now. I played an EA battlefront game and it was uncanny. I don't like it because every time lag made somebody teleport or 2 models clipped it all became disturbing
Amazing video Civvie. My brother has been in hospital after suffering a heart attack at 44. My little dog died a week ago, in short, December 2024 sucks. But life is a little better thanks to your video. Also, you can’t leave without your friend Laszlo!
Starting to theorize that the reason why Hbomberguy barely uploads is because he's in the Department of Special Corrections with Civvie. This is like, the second crossover they've had.
It's that time of year for Hbomberguy to come out of his basement to absolutely wreck someone's career with a multi hour video essay. Glad you stood up to this bully Civvie.
Honestly the grunts in Half Life were way dumber than combine soldiers, they couldn't even run and shoot at the same time. The only reason they were stronger is because they were absolute bullet sponges, plus their helmets were completely bulletproof to make headshots even harder. Oh and the alien grunts with their hive hands that shoot homing bullets which could even hit you behind cover were just ridiculous
I remember this being discussed by the HL2 community back in the day, and the consensus was that the Combine are nerfed by a combination of insufficient HP and hampered by the level design. The Combine's AI was best suited for wider open areas, where their flanking/suppressing fire scripts shine strongest. However, the majority of the time we see them in HL2, they're inside buildings with not much room, so they can't escape/re-group properly, and with their modest HP, quickly get taken out. By simply bumping up the HP of the Combine by about 50% or so, people found that the Combine became significantly more lethal and "intelligent" because they could afford to take risks, regroup, and make more decisions, in the same way that the HECU could rush you back in HL1 because they didn't fall apart on your first magdump at them.
Cool video. One note. I don’t understand your issue with Gordon becoming more than “just a guy.” If you as “just a guy” killed a boss and had quake 1 level movement, you’d become a legend too. Joking aside, I like to think of Gordon’s ascension as Half Life 2’s greatest bit of narrative irony. Half Life is always about illusions of choice and events outside our control, and trying to take back control. Whether that be on the level of getting a badass gun to kill a helicopter, or building a resistance to destroy extraterrestrial fascism. But the part that gives Half Life that darker edge is that lingering in the back of your mind there’s a hollowness to it. All your world saving antics in the first game, but until midway through Gordon was just running from the feds after being the (as far as we knew) cause of a major disaster. In Half Life 2 we see time and again that while Gordon is helping people, it’s just as often that he’s the cause of their demise. I think you and the game actually AGREE that Gordon Freeman is not Jesus, the game only paints him as such to make the truth hit that much harder. HL2 is no less or more of a power fantasy game than HL1, don’t forget that the Gluon Gun is more insane of a weapon than anything HL2 ever gives you. Edit: yeah idk it really does sound like your beef is that it’s… not niche or inaccessible enough? I know it ain’t boomshooting but like you never really offer any counterargument toward what kind of experience you want if you don’t want this. Like, if you put 6 years into something wouldn’t you feel like shit if a friend of yours just couldn’t enjoy it because they weren’t good at idk diagonal strafing techniques in Doom
@ That’s a lie and you know it. Gordon gets a “hey good job man” but Doomguy gets interns at the UAC literally pissing their pants in a huge ass cutscene in Eternal. Not even halfway comparable.
@ Except playtesting and later survey showed people tended not to kill scientists and liked those characters. Just because you’re a psycho doesn’t mean others will be.
@@KoylTraneAs much as I am a fan of Doom franchise, Eternal has much worse protagonist worship than HL2. Like that woman in radio who talks about Doomslayer and other stuff like that.
![[TF2] How to Trolldier: Direct Combat Techniques](/img/1.gif)
Honestly the fact that Magnusson has held a grudge over his microwave casserole for twenty years is respectable. Imagine hearing everyone around you give this guy verbal head for decades, when all you know about him is he's the fucking intern who ruined your last lunch before the world went to shit.
I didn't even think about it in the context of it being his last lunch before the world went to shit. Maybe Magnusson was already having a shitty day. His wife just left him. Kleiner and Eli are nerd tag-teaming him. He's a lonely guy going through some stuff, and then the fucking intern who never shows up for work on time blows up the casserole you were really looking forward to eating, the one thing you were looking forward to that day to bring some small measure of joy.
I'd be pissed too.
HL2 is ten years later not twenty.
@@RonaldHondaAlyx was a baby during the events of HL1, according to dialog in HL2.
She is around 22 during HL2.
@@smgeezus7186 ok
@@RonaldHonda it's 20, not 10
I dunno man, Gordon lost his "Just a guy" as soon as he killed the Nihalanth
Could you imagine if people in this treated you like "just a guy"? People would probably be just as annoyed that the guy who stopped an alien and military invasion single handedly isn't being treated better.
Just a guy with a physics degree and a grenade launcher.
Not to mention the vorts probably told the humans about how he saved them
There's like three other (dead) guys in the same room as the Nihilanth that also tried firing a billion rockets at it.
Gordon just got lucky, the only reason it wasn't Scientist in HEV Suit #5 immediately after Gordon that killed it is because the plot says so.
The in-universe explanation still makes sense as the Vorts do worship him as a messiah since he did still kill the Nihilanth regardless of why or how, and anybody who knew Gordon was just Dude #4 to give it a shot are no longer around to explain it.
@@woodenotaku He still did it. You could say he was just as lucky that he survived all his encounters with, oh I don't know, the entire fucking US military and other aliens he fought beforehand. People forget that the scientists in HL1 also treat Gordon like a hero throughout most of the back half of the original game, and start trusting him as the go-to guy for pretty much everything. "Oh Gordon, please reach the Lambda Complex and save us, you're the only one who can survive that perilous journey!", "Oh Gordon, please launch the rocket, we need it for reasons which won't ever matter later!", "Oh Gordon, please kill the big alien fetus, we are all counting on you!", etc. It's funny, because it doesn't matter if you've been slaughtering every scientist and security guard you meet throughout the game (which people REALLY loved doing for whatever reason), you will still be treated as The Chosen One by the rest of the Black Mesa staff, you will still go to Xen, kill the Nihilanth and be a hero. Face it, HL1 is also to blame for Freeman's status as a hero. Hell, arguably even more so, given the fact that in the original Gordon does practically everything alone, whereas in HL2 he has moments in which the Resistance helps him greatly, such as the Battle of City 17.
And it's not as if people immediately start worshipping you the moment you exit the train, in fact nobody aside from your former Black Mesa colleagues and the Vortigaunts (cough cough vortessence) even recognize you. Gordon later gains notoriety due to his actions and I'd argue rightfully so. Idk, I think the whole "people love Gordon too much!!1!" argument was always stupid.
It makes sense why Breen would be on edge about Gordon Freeman. The guy causes the Resonance Cascade, kills every alien and Marine he runs across, and then disappears for twenty years. Next thing you know, he teleports into your office in an HEV suit and then just warps away. Imagine if you worked at a Papa Johns and one of your pizza delivery guys just disappears one night. Cold case, nobody knows what happened to him, he's probably dead for trying to out-pizza the hut or fled to Mexico. Then one night after you were promoted to Wells Fargo or something, he just materializes inside your office at 4:30 PM. He's not delivering pizza, he's delivering fear.
I see Dr. Breen's speech later during water hazard, saying that Gordon is just a physicist and kinda him trying to convince himself of that after this guy just teleported into his office and stood there, menacingly.
@@eclipserepeater2466 this, its pure cope, Freeman is unraveling their hold at an astonishing rate a week later and its all gone to shit.
Sorry, but while I get the horror in that hypothetical scenario you proposed, it's also weirdly hilarious.
with extra cheese
@@throwback19841 Im literally crying
Press F for Laszlo, the finest mind of his generation.
F
L, get wrecked bozo. Next time stay off the sand.
Thanx, bro
Rip László
F
That NoClip doc is a fuckin gold mine as far as I'm considering, and hearing Gabe admit his own personal failures apart from the teams speaks volumes to his out look as a leader in the company
I like how Gabe's "confession" points at that he doesn't really boss around in Valve, other people there actually have a lot of responsibility too for the decisions that are made in the company. And he can speak only for himself since other devs might have did their job better than him for all he knows.
@@telefrag. a big possibility. But if Gabe wasn't Gabe then Valve would have just given up at the Steam Machine not being a hit and retreated to just being a game developer and storefront. They wouldn't have pressed on to change the PC Handheld landscape and possibly make the OS that'll finally take on Windows for real.
@@BunkerAnon Or he'd have retired and we'd be paying a 9.99$ subscription fee to use and download games off of Steam implemented by his corpo replacement...
Hell, that might still happen someday.
@@planescaped I've heard that Gabe has plans in place for his eventual passing / successor / management of the company, to prevent that exact scenario from occurring. One can but hope. Valve is, among other things, a privately owned company and as such isn't as prone to enshittification. They're far from perfect, but imagine a world in which the Vivendi suit claimed them and, I dunno, EA became the dominant online game store. For what issues I do take with Valve, Gabe's foresight to start backing Proton and other Linux-based solutions to escape the rapidly rotting Windows ecosystem may be the thing that saves PC gaming in the long term.
That Gabe himself confirmed that Half-Life 3 doesn't exist because they had the ultimate case of writer's block is so humbling.
It's also the most famous case of gaming blue-balls ever- that anything short of Half-Life 3 being the gaming equivalent of world peace would be considered a disappointment, and I can't imagine how intimidating that would be to anybody in the industry that takes pride in their work like Valve does.
@@hunterlord101 I feel like people are always overreacting about this, personally I would take anything with the quality of Half Life Episode 2 or Half Life Alyx (not in the context of being a VR game but as being a quality Half Life game) that wraps up the story post-episode 2 and I'd be at peace.
@@DutchThriceman
Yeah. We gamers think that, but Valve is known for doing base emptying homeruns. So that kinda puts them in a pickle as a great game would be them abtting below their average...
Less writers block and more a Michaelangelo complex. They felt too pressured to make a masterpiece, make it revolutionary, that they forgot that all anyone wanted was a satisfying conclusion.
Finish what you started, then work on your next groundbreaking experience damnit! D:
@@planescaped That's not what they said at all
Valve not understanding how much the story meant to fans, is almost on par to Hasbro not understanding how much Optimus Prime meant to kids.
I too recently watched the PointlessHub video
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you just watched the PointlessHub video on the G1 Transformers Movie
ep 3 did not need to be earth shattering, mechanically..it only needed to be better than ep 2, like ep2 was to ep1...The Thing-esque atmosphere, the ice gun, the blob physics, narrative conclusion...that's more than enough for most of us
Almost on par with hasbro not understanding...well, anything, really
Dudes waiting on Half life 3 and dudes waiting on a real season four of the transformers cartoon* have a bunch in common I guess
(* - everything that isn't G1 was filler arc crap, especially all of it)
The vortigaunt blocking the door while telling the player life's not worth living unless you have freedom was absolutely brilliant.
He was a double agent, trying to get Gordon to off himself so the Combine would win
He did Half-Life 2 which means he can do Halo
Were it so easy.
halo even has an absolutely superb shotgun. it really seems like a game that'd be more or less up his alley
Yeah I can see why he wouldn't enjoy deus ex, but halo is pretty fun.
I see where Civvie is coming from regarding the question of what he can possibly add that others haven't said, but these videos are very entertaining. The humor is spot on as always IMO.
halo is the embodiment of everything civvie hates about modern shooters, i can't imagine it ever being on the show
Old man Civvie gets angry (at the cloud) not playing some bullshit brown mazes with keycards more then when he does. For an hour and a half. Christmas miracle, for sure.
Civvie! you just made a bunch of sad army grunts happier , were throwing this on the barracks tv now
Do it again for the unlisted video too! XD
I hope they do something nice at the DFAC for you all.
Same, Moroccan BMP driver/mechanic here, nothing but sand dunes and cold nights and earful of CV-11.
@@walt_man what unlisted video ?
Go an hero for ultimate happy now.
Did you seriously not see the pun "Gordon of Love"?
And don't tell me you're above that kind of thing.
That would have been an actionable pun.
Not until later in the edit.
I couldn't think of a good place to use it so I threw something in the credits. And the description.
electrecution
Actionable pun detected.
I actually read the title as that when I originally saw the video.
Say what you will about Breen, but he was dropping some truth bombs when he said Gordo was nothing but a mindless pawn whose contract was open to the highest bidder...
Eddie Gordo Freeman
the problem with breen imo is that almost everything that makes him a good character is relegated to either cut content or mark laidlaw fanfiction
@@xsoultillerx bro didnt pay attention to the breencasts
@@xsoultillerx In the HL2 Beta storyline, the combine were brutal but necessary for the survival of humanity. Earth's ecosystem in the beta was so ravaged by xen life, some areas were just lifeless dry wastelands. Even the combine had constant trouble trying to fight off the Xenian fauna as they became increasingly more starved and desperate, so pre-war Earth military had no chance. Not to mention, the Combine still allowed humans have children and leisure to some extent. Said beta plot points ironically make the generic bond villain looking Consul (beta Breen) more sympathetic to release Breen, who was ended up being a backstabbing, deluded evil scientist basically.
@@Stryker98wasn’t a big plot twist in the beta going to be the consul was literally turning himself into some kind of alien-slug hybrid thing, probably to survive the fact the combine in the beta was literally poisoning the atmosphere
You can't have your character go back to "just being a guy" when they've killed what can be best described as a nascent god.
One of my favorite things about Ep 2 was that Magnusson WASN’T actually a villain. I was waiting for the inevitable betrayal the whole time, and it never came!
He's just a dick and it's great!
yea no he's just an asshole with a grudge. Good guys are allowed to be grudge holding assholes. And even when he was berating everyone and being a dick, he was entirely in the right the whole way given he was trying to keep everyone on task.
Honestly, what surprises me the most about Half Life 2 is that it still looks pretty damn good 20 years later. Not just because of art direction, but like... The texture work and the meshes are good as well. They are aged and not HD like other stuff, but they look better than some new stuff today!
@@torylva that's also probably because no one's gotten tired of Gmod and Gmod is still on the same version of source as original half life 2
It helps a lot that this was the era of programmable GPUs so all that shader work really took it up a notch compared to titles in the before times.
Some games just age well: Metroid Prime, all these years later, still looks grand, to such a point the Switch version actually looks slightly worse. And Painkiller, despite also showing it's age, can still have it's glorious visuals, particularly in the environments and enemies.
@@Umbra_Ursus There was an interview on RUclips with one of the Retro Studio employees who worked on the original Metroid Prime and he talked about how they figured out that they could do pseudo dynamic lighting basically for free on the Gamecube and he theorized how it was likely that the combination of the Switch's hardware and the the new graphics pipeline that was used for the remaster more than likely couldn't do the same thing without impacting performance.
...and the VR port isn't bad either. Certainly more of a "game" than many titles, and it even has better physical interactions than some native VR games. Not all...Definitely not perfect, but a hell of a mod that's free if you own HL2.
Thank you for reviewing my favorite childhood game Civvie, when will you be reviewing my memories as they happened in real time?
We don't have the technology.
Yet.
@@Civvie11 Braindance tech is coming along pretty good by the sounds of it. I'm sure there's no moral boundaries being crossed and everyone involved is definitely healthy, happy, and fairly compensated in humane working conditions.
Yeah, that intro was carefully designed to blow your mind off with everything: atmosphere, physics, facial animations, everything was so top notch that it burned itself on your eyelids and stayed with you forever since.
Well, I guess Valve has something to strive for in hl3
@@Civvie11 I would tell you to ask the administration, but i guess you are still recovering from the last electrically induced bladder evacuation so its okay
"They even hired a guy from looking glass to prepare for bankrupcy." 💀 Too soon, Civvie, too soon...
Civvie, I think I have to disagree on your "He's just a guy" and now "he's Jesus" take -- If you saved the world, then go missing for twenty years... the lore and legend that comes from your return is almost to be expected. Especially with the world ending around everyone in the mean time. We know enough people from Black Mesa lived to tell the tale.
Also the idea that it goes against Half Life 1 is sort of like complaining that Luke Skywalker isn't still a farmer in Episode 6
And also the fact that the people living under the combine's reign are living absolutely squalor lives and constantly fear being visited by the metro cops, and would probably be clinging onto any shred of hope they can cling to. And if that shred of hope is the possible return of some MIT graduate who took out both the military and a vast alien army, then they're gonna see him and treat him as a Jesus-type guy.
Lamar is the key to all of this
You do know that Valve STOLE gordon feeblemans iconic goatee from Steven Seagal, yeah?
Omg! Everybody! Everybody! It's really him!!! [Wife's water breaks] Not now, babe! The pun master is here making predictions.
Seriously tho (joking aside), the one liners you come up with for your videos are absolutely hilarious. I listen to them like, "how tf does he come up with these?"
He’s a funnier character than we’ve ever had before. Hopefully it’ll work
Somebody get a shitload of dimes.
I can't believe Tommy Tallarico was the first American to work on Half-Life 2, his mother must be very proud.
I mean. His music is in this video.
Did you know that Dr Breen's citadel was in an episode of Cribs ?
@uuytk "This is where the magic happens."
I am shocked James Somerton wrote the script for this hour long vid
His mother is very proud of James Somerton
Civvie: "I don't love Half-Life 2"
Civvie, seven minutes later: "I love Half-Life 2"
@@IncognitoActivado Wrong. and it won awards for a reason. HL2 aged better than HL1
@@IncognitoActivado Very wrong opinion lmao
Hlf-Life 2 will do that to man.
I think this is the definition of a love-hate relationship
@@DKArmstrong He still says what is wrong with that game, so...
I think that it was a mistake to not do something to wrap the story up. It seems that Valve didn't have a good understanding of how important the setting/characters/plot were to many of the fans.
Or maybe Valve letting the players run crazy for more than a decade because of this unresolved cliffhanger - maybe it oddly was the best thing that could've happened to Half-Life?
If they just finished the story there and then, we'd all be like "OK, that's that".
Maybe them backing up and leaving the book open for us to write our own endings... maybe that made Half-Life so much more personal for the players?
Agreed, I'm not obsessed with the story or anything (it's still very much a video game story at the end of the day) but it does annoy me as someone who enjoys the craft of storytelling. They really didn't need to pressure themselves to "innovate" for a final episode. That's not what episodes are for! Just give us an ending!
Personally I believe that the reason why Valve hasn't made Half-Life 3 yet is because they feel like it would need to be as innovative and industry changing as the previous games and so far they haven't been able to find a way to do that or the technology.
But this is purely based on absolutely nothing and is purely my own opinion.
Because after they missed original, 5 years or so, window there is nothing they can do that wouldn't be a massive dissapointment. Expectations are too high and even if they release second coming of jeebus it won't be enough. Although now that industry is crumbling and bar of what is good is on the floor...
@@unfa00 I really don't think that's the case, based on how that's not the case for any other game. Whenever a legendary title spawns a dogfart sequel people basically just pretend they didn't see it. Look at Age of Empires. Those dudes struck gold with the second title, then made a third and a fourth title nobody played. Then they remade the second one, and its still very popular today and has like 30k daily players on steam alone.
I didn’t realise it until my playthrough this year for the 20th anniversary but one of the most fun ways to dispose of hunters is to use a physics prop as a shield with the gravity gun and after they’ve fired their needler volley into it throw it at them. It’s awesome
There's Logs in the final fight, just for that. Valve KNEW exactly what they were doing. Always do.
I just wish they did it, properly the FIRST god damn time and knew better then to Tamper with what works. Half-Life Source is a Great example of Valve breaking things, HORRIBLY.
I wanted to mention this, because I never saw it come up. The Hunters! They are actually incredibly weak to prop objects. You wouldn't think that, but simply using the gravity gun and flinging large enough stuff at them takes them down extremely quickly. Depending on difficulty, simply shooting two car tires at them with the gravity gun is enough to kill them.
Less efficient, but they also take a bunch of damage from the magnum; according to a dev comment they intentionally did that because of the player perception that the magnum's the most powerful weapon.
One small detail I like is that Ravenholm is visible in water hazard. It's a town in the distance which looks kinda benign in the dusk. But replaying the game, it's an ominous sight when you think of the horrors inside the town (horrors you'll have to be dealing with very soon).
Huh. I never noticed that before. That's actually really fucking cool
I love it when games make other parts of the game visible from where you are. Really helps sell that idea of the world being a real place and not just a set of levels.
Fun fact: Initially Ravenholm was supposed to be between Water Hazard and BM East. If you check out the E3 2003 demo, you can see Gordon arriving to Ravenholm using some docks. The foreshadowing might be left over from that, since they changed the order of the areas fairly late in production, but it's cool still.
That little scene with Alyx in the train was so sweet.
"I feel the urge to comfort her, and tell her that it's alright. But, alas, I can't speak. All I can do is murder- and allegedly do science- and maybe that's enough."
It's like a companion piece to Leadhead's piece on Alyx!
Leadhead mentioned
"we're under sttack by mitchell shepard" snuck that right in. can't wait for the 20th anniversary HDTF documentary with dev interviews
the HDTF joke reminded me that if i had a nickel for every time a jojo VA voiced a lead character in a disasterpiece mod i'd have two nickels which isn't much but it's crazy that it not only happened twice but both VAs were from the same jojo part as well.
HDTF is canon.
Please explain.
@@drakep.5857Michell Shephard is the protagonist of Hunt down the Freeman, a shit fangame
@@LordRambo No it isn't.
Meet the Feebles is a nice flashbang for anyone who remembers it. Thank you Civvie
The way you bring up the absurd degree to which everyone cares about Gordon in 2 reminds me of one of the things I honestly love about 2's plot - namely how LITTLE the Combine cares. About humanity, the world, everything really. They care about Gordon a little, since they probably know about G-Man and Breen was freaking out over him, but not that much really - not enough to even bother sending more than some schlubby metrocops after him, the very bottom of the totem pole relatively speaking. Even when you start encountering real soldiers in earnest, they almost always start out preoccupied by some other deployment or are just kinda chilling in their own bases; it's very rare that a full squad is actually sent out to hunt down Gordon 'specifically' until near the very end of the game. Even the resistance seems to be little more than an afterthought to them, to the point where you kind of get the impression that the only reason they weren't squashed out years ago was because the Combine were basically leaving them be so long as they didn't rock the boat too much or grow to big to become a real threat. I mean why would they care, we can't have kids anymore so humanity will be functionally extinct in a generation - its a problem that's gonna fix itself real soon from their perspective, nothing to worry about really.
The only thing the Combine really gives a shit about is sucking the planet dry of all natural resources and they could not give less of a damn about anyone or anything that happened to be there before them. And they could very easily obliterate every scrap of resistance, maybe even every trace of life on Earth if they felt inclined to put in the time and effort necessary. You see plenty of evidence throughout the games that this is no exaggeration, to the point Eli outright says they "won't last seven minutes" this time if they get the superportal open. This is a truly gigantic, interdimensional and world-spanning empire that could kill us all just by sneezing. But they don't; they don't bother at all, they just don't CARE - and that honestly makes them way scarier to me than a lot of other evil villain factions that have arguably done way worse on-screen. It's pure banality of evil, a kind of brutality borne as much from sheer apathy as it is from genuine viciousness. These guys can do way, way worse to you than what you've been seeing - they HAVE done much worse in the past and will do so again if given the chance. Its only through sheer luck really that you manage to hit them hard enough and quickly enough to smack them down before they can bring their full force to bear.
And at the end of it all you don't really accomplish anything more than wresting away some small border outpost in the boonies. That's all the liberation of Earth amounts to in the grand scheme of things; the rest of the Combine isn't affected or inconvenienced at all, aside from maybe the price of authentic seawater going up a few cents (and honestly they can probably get that just as easily somewhere else). The situation seems incredibly important from the player's limited perspective when really they're just a pawn for some multiversal C.I.A. spook's personal brush war against an incomprehensibly vast superpower.
Laszlo died so that civvie could make a video about half life 2. Truly a finest mind of his generation.
Magnus has the worst coworkers in the world. He’s got one normal guy working for him, a traitor, a guy doing unthinkable things to a headcrab, and Dr.Freeman.*
* Better known for other work.
Tbh that pretty normal thing happened besides the combined occupied thing.
I get that ref!🤣
the dude's soo far gone and fed up with his workers that he promotes a Vortigaunt to full Scientist position to just even things out.
even gives him a labcoat and an ID to make things professional by the smallest means.
An hour and a half of civvie? And he’s playing half life 2? Possibly at gunpoint?
Hell yeah brother! Oorah to ashes! 7, 7 and a half. Sewer count. Beetlejuice…
My nose is bleeding.
The sun is leaking
The sun is leaking
“Honk Honk, Raw, Sewer Count”
Cancer Mouse!
Nice fuckin model.
HL2's beginning is one of the best media has to offer. Like, of all media. Books, other games, movies, tv shows, whatever the future brings, HL2's beginning is fuckin GREAT. Yes, okay, HL2 came out at a sensitive, important time for me.
High key its always your vids that i watch while in the barracks man.
Fun fact: the demo on the Xbox version _specifically_ was the ravenholm chapter; and when I learned you can bisect a zombie with a saw blade, I was sold.
pc demo as well: Point Insertion followed by Ravenholm
"What could I possibly add?" he asked, with 94 Minutes left on the video.
I disagree with the “half life WASNT a power fantasy” argument. You’re a young man but among the best scientists in the world at one of the most advanced facilities. You then spring into action as an ultimate badass killing everything in your way. Not really sure how you would interpret it otherwise.
Youre literally a cosmic superweapon weapon wielded by nefarious eldritch forces like the Gman or Vortigaunts in a multidimensional war of unfathomable scale. Id say thats a power fantasy
If anything, I think the "everyman" aspect worked early in half life, but the sorta like.. cosmic superweapon lacking free will being basically being used to wreak absolute havoc and secure assets whereever it is needed, thats kinds infinitely more interesting and makes Gordon a compelling character, not just a player self insert (which is a good thing despite what it sounds like)
Power fantasy is so over used. Litterally thoasands of people staffed that facility
you're not OP tho..not until the gravity gun power up at the citadel finale...you kill everything in your way in every fps, but their all not power fantasy..Black Mesa makes you it's B*@tch
Yes, because being a nerdy scientist is always what I think of when I think POWER FANTASY
I can understand the whole "holy it's Gordon im creaming" but you gotta understand this man survived a dimension tear fought his way outta an alien infested saw fest of a building fought the American army and won and after that teleported himself to an alien home world whopped an alien overlord and halved the species of said alien home world at that point he deserves some respect
2:08 for a guy who played doom when it came out, you gotta have pretty bad aim with that pistol
Also he say he has a hard time calling any game the best when it has a pistol this shitty.
But then Doom has a worse pistol and he would have no issue calling it the best fps game.
@@atifarshad7624 You spend like, three seconds using the pistol in Doom 1 if you aren't pistol starting every level.
@@matthewgagnon9426 Me, a pistol starter: "Well I can explain...."
@@matthewgagnon9426 same thing in half life 2 when you get the smg, you only use the pistol for long range/low ammo
I think Civvie likes Ravenholm so much because Father Gregori looks like him
Things I was not expecting: H. Bomberguy talking about Meet the Feebles
I had to pause the video from laughing at that gag. Was not expecting that.
I miss H. Bomberguy. Love his content!
i had to check if i misclicked on my feed
really annoying
@@GG_1318l take
Even to this day I think that intro where you see every pore in GMan's face was the biggest jump scare of my life. Granted it was neat having textures that high detailed for the time.
His breath smells like paint.
I always figured Gman even smells unnatural, I bet his breath smells like antifreeze
I felt the same way again in Alyx, except, you know, more.
His breath smells like a dentist office
Never once have I thought about how Gman smells
45:09 - MDK soundtrack? I could be wrong but I'm sure that loop is burned into my brain from inhaling the demo over and over as a child
The irony of Ravenholm being so good that it reverts Gordon from the messiah back to a regular dude will never be not funny lol
We joke, but HOLY FUCKING SHIT, it just has not been Gordon's 3 WEEKS or so...
The last time he got proper sleep was before he went to work that fateful day, his family? Oh they're likely fucking dead either from the Portal Storms or as a knock on effect of the 7 Hour War. That moment when he accepted the job offer? Well at first Gordon saw this, took the job offer (as it was a way out) and the literal NEXT THING HE KNOWS, he's being rambled at by the G Man and on a train to City 17. He hasn't aged at all and likely hadn't known that 20 years had gone by since he'd gone to Xen...
Then the whole thing of being put with the 'Savior' role (what with being the symbol the Resistance follows because he's the man who went through hell and came out the other side seemingly unaffected except being ready to kick MORE ass) and the events of Half Life 2 happen and when he's dug out of the rubble? That hug from Alyx was likely the first time in 20 GODDAMNED YEARS that he'd been given positive physical contact by another human being, let alone a hug. Like, anyone else would have likely, at some point, just went 'FUCK THIS' and sat on the ground and just...contemplated/passed the fuck out because the stress would be insane to go through. Not even MENTIONING the fact that the last we see of him, he'd lost one of his only remaining friends while he was forced to fucking WATCH.
power of morphine and whatever else that suit pumps into him. vets have less side effects than what Gordon is going to have when he takes off that suit.
Just need to remind you that the "offer" Gordon "accepted" was to get enslaved to not face execution.
@SPTX. EVEN WORSE then. Because it wasn't even a good way out but it was either crawl through Broken Glass or be put in front of a firing squad.
The (Free)man needs a moment's worth of respite, and probably some... Sustenance!
Headcanon I read elsewhere today: whenever the time of day changes too quickly, it's actually Gordon taking a nap.
28:45 never seen anyone have so much trouble with the airboat as you .
For real. I love water hazard
Civvie's a run & gun kinda guy, not a jump & drive.
ikr? like, speed the fucking thing up grandpa
Left hand analogue stick + right hand mouse should be a thing. Would have obviated so much: the need to have edge friction, the need to PWM the A and D keys to turn vehicles, the inability to fully integrate the player as a physics entity because of instantaneous acceleration.
WASD has outlived its usefulness. It well, well past time for more nuanced movement control to be standard.
@@QUINTIX256
as someone that has played using mixed input (and gyro) it's really not that crazy different. you can do it right now if you like, there are custom schemes on steam input you can import or make your own.
as for the airboat and car controls, they don't really simulate steering an actual vehicle, they grip well and don't spin out of control so pressing or tapping the keys works well enough, seeing as we're not playing a racing sim... and if we were, an analog controller would still not be "enough".
I honestly love that you’re willing to critique the imperfections of Half Life 2 while still acknowledging how groundbreaking it is.
Now if only he could have same attitude towards Halo instead of purely hating that.
@@IncognitoActivado dude is the lone half life 2 hater
@@IncognitoActivado This isn't steam or reddit where you can farm for karma/clown points sir, you're only wasting your trolling efforts here.
@@nathane5287 He's right you know
@@IncognitoActivado yes it won 30 something awards for being trash
We'll always have Entropy Zero.
Good old Bad Cop. Eh, hehehe...
Wilson my beloved
Feeling pretty good about myself today.
"Open for business."
47:00 you’re meant to use the turrets against the Combine in that section. Not surprising you missed it as you typically use the wrong guns on each enemy for some reason.
also there is a second-floor platform (accessible if you stack some boxes/barrels) where you can camp behind some turrets and the combine are unable to reach you making the level a joke
@@PerryNoydicus I never figured that out in my playthrough but I found my own way to cheese it in the form of using props to block off one of the connecting hallways, so the soldiers would all have to either funnel through one of two entry points right next to eachother to get to me, or try the entrance behind me and get turned into Swiss cheese by a gaggle of turrets.
And to think Freeman is still running off that one bag of vending machine Doritos and a single cup of coffee.
To be fair, there were a few Coke machines he could have looted between Sector C and the Lambda Complex.
@vaclav4435 Freeman's Mind account for this?
you forgot about the two shots of vodka he had for breakfast
what about copious amounts of morphine HEV has been injecting him with since hl1?
One of my favorite William Blake poems is called The Garden of Love. Check it out:
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.
Surprisingly fitting
Well if it isn't... Gorgeous Freeman ❤
I miss DasBoSchitt.
@@insanejughead Man I wish that he would reupload those Idiot Box episodes in higher quality, or even better, make a comeback. Same with the kitty0706 (R.I.P) videos.
@@d-d-i Same, dude. Same.
*unzip pants*
XD ahh the time of HL2 machinima ....anyone remember Gordons brother John Freeman ? .... he used to drive real fast 😀
I've been replaying half-life 2 recently and I was struck with the realisation that the characters have more and better facial animations than AAA games released this year
Ok, you got me. Quiet part is I love you and Harris's content so much I was in for the long haul after the RUclips glitched and then gonna hunt for HL2 Civvie after
The portal storms were not caused by the Resonance Cascade. That was a localized event that was (sort of) ended when you launched that big-ass missile. The missile contained a satellite that was an emergency failsafe to stop the portals from tearing apart spacetime or something like that.
Once you launched the missile, the primary threat caused directly by the accident was over, but the Nihilanth caught wind of your universe's existence and poked his psychic fingers through the rift to keep it open, and began an invasion with his enslaved army of Vortigaunts, Grunts and Alien Controllers. The Nihilanth himself was being pursued by the Combine for unclear reasons, and he was the last of his race, presumably from another universe that the Combine conquered, and his intention was to conquer this universe and use it as part of his getaway plan.
When you killed the Nihilanth, its death throes caused the portal storms, ripping apart spacetime across our universe and decimating most of Earth's infrastructure before the Combine got through, who learned of your existence because of the rift that the Nihilanth kept open with its dying psychic fingers. Then they invaded, as they have with countless other universes, and easily conquered Earth in seven hours.
This is the problem with this type of storytelling. Much of this is only in filler material that it's easy to not know the context and get things mixed up by accident.
42:04 Edge friction is actually something that has been in the engine since Quake, you can control it in the console by setting the variable edgefriction.
I don't care what excuses they make. I still hold a grudge for the lack of a conclusion to Half Life 2 episodes. You have a story, that you wanted me invested in. That I was invested in. And I bought into the episodes for the exact reason that I wanted to get just a little smidgeon of closure.
It would never have "failed to meet up to expectations" unless you failed to create an end-point to the cliffhanger that is leading up to Judith Mossman and the Borealis. You weren't pushing anything but the story forward with episode one. You weren't pushing "gaming as a whole" or the medium forward with episode 2. Valve was just making extremely well-done games that everyone enjoyed and I wanted to see the conclusion.
I'm still upset because I see how much money steam started to bring in. And I know about the "flat corporate structure" where nobody is your boss and it just leads to a bunch of cliques and failed projects as people lose interest in what they are doing and move to a different part of the office to do something else. Crushing the dreams of developers internally when they can't get a graphics designer or a programmer or whatever to continue working on a project that they had cooking. It makes me angry today to think of.
I praise Valve and even Gabe Newell personally for a lot of things, but they deserve a good slap for failing to finish the three episodes. And Gabe deserves one personally for the failure of managing the internal corporate structure.
I'm only upset because I love the guys who worked on these projects. But I am upset.
And thanks for the Christmas present Civvie.
HLX. Soon.
And so many people still have such blinders on that your comment only has ten upvotes, despite not a word being wrong.
Oh don't worry, they're fully aware that they screwed up in that regard. It's in the documentary, some devs/ex devs feel like that. But they also explained that they didn't know how to end the story, so yeah, it probably would've "failed to meet expectations" regardless.
Although, I do understand their point of view when making games. Valve wants to advance gaming, or at least what's possible with gaming, with each game. Episode 3 didn't bring enough to the table and they also feel like the Episode format was a screw up too.
Overall the episodes thing was a major setback both for the story and the gameplay.
@@lechuzaarg2404 The fact that HLA changed Episode 2's ending via time travel really cements in my mind that Valve had written themselves into a corner with Eli's death and had no idea how to proceed from that.
@@lechuzaarg2404 lmao it was not a "major setback" to story or gameplay. what an overly dramatic thing to say.
By Carmack, he actually did it.
Broke out into hysteric laughter when you pulled that black messa soundclip.
I binge every Civvie video as soon as it releases, every time, like a hamster to a waterbottle, but watching him have a short existential crisis with a vortigaunt who was unintentionally blocking a door was the Christmas present I didn't know I needed. Happy holidays, everyone.
What's the timestamp for that clip?
@@fjp1247 try 39:56
Civvie was certainly not at gunpoint the whole time he put this video together.
He was however forced to live in a cell with broken glass on the floor until the project was complete.
First the TF2 comics finally conclude, and now this? Valve fans eating good this Christmas.
And the Skibidi Toilet x Fortnite collab 🥰🥳
@@papayerno😡😡
False.
@@papayer no
@@IncognitoActivado go shower
Glad that Civvie manage to upload a non-holiday video that's considered a holiday gift to me. Especially over an hour this time around!
Way to dance around the beta civvie, dark interval, mega build and raising the bar redux hyper fixators are coming for your ass.
Now that was a lovely hour and a half dedicated to one of the more formative experiences of my PC Gamin' life. Thank you very much Civvie, and may yo have a merry christmas and a happy new year!
You know what is the worst part of Half-life 2? Activision pushing Troika to release Bloodlines on the same day in its buggy self with second half of the game barely finished and combat heavy.
Ok about the Pentagon Wars reference. That movie was a hit piece and it worked wonders.
Now its fact that the Pentagon burns piles of money on bullshit. The Bradley is one of the few times they got it completely right.
It was never meant to be an armoured vehicle. Its a bulletproof transport and modular platform that can be modded into doing any job required.
The "main character" in the movie and book is an actual guy who went after the Bradley project with a hatchet, mainly because his own waste of money project was shitcanned before he could fill his pockets and pat his ego.
And he is full of shit. History has proven him wrong.
But that movie was seen by so many people. And it just feels so cathartic to call out the Pentagon in their bullshit, so most people just take it as gospel.
So in a very real way the bad guys won in that movie.
Oh and the guy is connected to a group of Pentagon insiders who think that planes should just dogfight and bombers should wipe whole cities off the map with cluster bombardments. They are the people who bankrolled the movie.
Thank you for posting this, I was about to write a far less well written comment about the same. The bradley has proven itself time and time again as one of the best modern IFVs.
100%
H bomberguy in the video and a sober lazerpig in the comments.
You've mentioned Halo twice in one video Civvie. What Does That Mean
I grew up playing a shit ton of Star Trek games, most of them not very good. But Tony Todd was in almost all of them as a generic Klingon. He was wonderful in Deep Space 9, both returning as Kern and as an adult Jake Sisko in the episode The Visitor. He had tremendous range, and a huge heart. Thanks for mentioning him, Civvie.
At this rate, the "Best Documentary" category at the 2025 Oscars is gonna be nothing but Half-Life 2 retrospectives and the AlternateHub G1 Transformers video.
Hello fellow man of culture
Now Civvie needs to grab Cody+Tyler to do some bits. It's funny how Tyler sounds unironically like a closer AX3 than Civvie's own VO+FX.
That G1 Transformers video must really be good then?
Whats the transformers doc called?
@ ruclips.net/video/GruykPi-Gkk/видео.htmlsi=oWurXpC4zdVv0hil
Its scary to think that we were this close to not having Half Life 2.
1:01:05 "Minor Fracture Detected" was just Comedy Gold
Agreed. It's always the dumbest jokes that hit the best.
Thinking the HL2 pistol sucks is a skill issue tbh.
Considering how people behind half life 2 regrets combining portal and half life universes I'm almost entirely sure borealis will probably will be retconned
I feel like Half-Life 2 could've definitely used more of a wider cast of enemies besides combine and zombies.
I swear the universe is trying to push me to actually playing the entirety of half-life
As you goddamn should! And the great mod campaigns people have made!
It is, and you should
YOU MEAN YOU HAVENT??
How haven’t you played em yet fix that soon
I feel the same.
I somehow missed some great franchises over the course of years.
There was a long time where I thought Valve was just resting on its laurels about 3, but the idea that a developer hit a wall where they couldn't do anything new with their game and just let that be an actual organic stopping point for the franchise (minus Alyx I guess) feels impossible now. It sucks, but I love Valve in the end for doing it.
I used to think so too, but after seeing the anniversary doc I actually think Valve made a huge mistake. They got too caught up on doing bigger, better, new techs, new features that they were unable to do another game at all in the end. Truth is a HL3 with "mere" polished Episode 2 gameplay and features with better GFX would've been a great sendoff to the series, but Valve let perfectionism kill the game.
@@tomorbataar5922 gabe did hint that it was a mistake, and that they could do something good now with half life 3, also they did state multiple times since half life alyx that they aren't afraid of the number 3 anymore, i do expect an announcement next year for it
@@GuilhermeSantos-sd5uw Yeah I think the fact they did HL:A at all, yet alone it's ending, shows they're likely ready for the franchise again. Just sucks it took them so long, I barely play games these days.
Never thought Id enjoy watching yet another playthrough of half life 2 but your comedy and narration and pacing is fucking phenomenal. This has really improved my morning gonna have to watch the rest of your content now < 3
This really is top tier entertainment. The unbelievable amount of effort one man puts into this, nothing but love Civvie.
Gotta say, Civvie, much as the quality of your vids has only been on the up, this might be the best vid you've made thus far, and I don't just say that because HL2 is my favorite game trilogy of all time.
Much as I disagree with some of your criticisms (sorry, I love Water Hazard and no one can change that, but then I love pretty much every chapter aside from the final stretch of the base game), you articulate them really well and I agree with some of them myself. I waited for this vid for a long time and it was worth every second.
PS: I've said it before in other vids, but I can't express how much I love that the Kreed bit is still alive and well.
@@IncognitoActivado Yeah, call me a tourist the way I enjoy driving along and seeing the sights and sounds of Half-Life 2!
@@IncognitoActivadoWELCOMEEEE TO WARRRRIO WORLD
@@IncognitoActivado Tour-ist? I sure wish I was, but unfortunately I don't play Mann vs Machine very often, thank you for reminding me I need to grind those tours still!
@@Wizuu0274 I don't care, tourist; try again. :)
@@IncognitoActivado What's with this gatekeeping "tourist" nonsense? Who appointed you to decide whether someone's opinions matter or not?
1:09:45 that editing is on point. I did a double take.
1:12:04 BUT CIVVIE, HALF-LIFE HAS ALWAYS HAD HEALTH COME OUT OF WALLS!
God, I've been looking forward to this video since I subscribed to the Patreon (basically back when you made the first Half-Life video). Always liked the moment-to-moment gameplay/gunplay of 1 more than 2. Lots of great jokes in this episode-- and now I can't wait for the Deus Ex video (when it's done!)
DAMN IT! YOU'RE RIGHT!
Deus Ex? Let's go!! That is the successor to Thief and System Shock 2, and is game of the year 2000 easily. It was an absolutely big game for the time.
@@Heat7208 Oh my god, JC, a Bomb!
Can I just say that streaming this video to people who also are familiar with hbomberguy and civvie, and claiming its a new hbomberguy video has been great fun
You knocked this one out of the park, Civvie! Fantastic video. I laughed so often it hurt, although some parts of the story still hit hard, even after all these years, especially the end of episode 2.
I need to play through these again. I haven't played them for at least a decade now.
God damn, I remember playing half life 2 on like medium to low settings in 2004 and thought that graphics had peaked. I remember discussing with my friends that there is literally no need to improve graphics anymore. Looking at this video I still think it holds up, especially the water.
I think that now. I played an EA battlefront game and it was uncanny. I don't like it because every time lag made somebody teleport or 2 models clipped it all became disturbing
ohhh the nostalgia dude, you deserve a week out if inmprisonment after this vid. Keep it up Civvie
best gordon ramsey insert I've ever seen... that was PERFECTION
Where? I missed it!
@@unfa00 During the first video chat in Episode 2. The one shortly before the hunter reveal.
1:09:43
That edit was so damn smooth. This whole video's editing is on another level, really
Really great video civvie, it isn't easy making an original video on a game that has been reviewed to death, but you did an excellent job!
Amazing video Civvie. My brother has been in hospital after suffering a heart attack at 44. My little dog died a week ago, in short, December 2024 sucks. But life is a little better thanks to your video.
Also, you can’t leave without your friend Laszlo!
Starting to theorize that the reason why Hbomberguy barely uploads is because he's in the Department of Special Corrections with Civvie. This is like, the second crossover they've had.
The second? What was the first?
@@LonelySpaceDetective Hbomb's video about the War on Christmas stuff had Covvie voice someone at the very end
Half-Life 3 would just be Gordon running away from adoring fans like he's The Beatles.
In the style of subway surf. Canal Surf.
"By the Combine, by the Combine, by the Combine! Dr. Freeman...! Is it really, really you!?"
It's that time of year for Hbomberguy to come out of his basement to absolutely wreck someone's career with a multi hour video essay. Glad you stood up to this bully Civvie.
Honestly the grunts in Half Life were way dumber than combine soldiers, they couldn't even run and shoot at the same time. The only reason they were stronger is because they were absolute bullet sponges, plus their helmets were completely bulletproof to make headshots even harder. Oh and the alien grunts with their hive hands that shoot homing bullets which could even hit you behind cover were just ridiculous
I remember this being discussed by the HL2 community back in the day, and the consensus was that the Combine are nerfed by a combination of insufficient HP and hampered by the level design. The Combine's AI was best suited for wider open areas, where their flanking/suppressing fire scripts shine strongest. However, the majority of the time we see them in HL2, they're inside buildings with not much room, so they can't escape/re-group properly, and with their modest HP, quickly get taken out.
By simply bumping up the HP of the Combine by about 50% or so, people found that the Combine became significantly more lethal and "intelligent" because they could afford to take risks, regroup, and make more decisions, in the same way that the HECU could rush you back in HL1 because they didn't fall apart on your first magdump at them.
@@BirdmanDeuce26It also doesn't help that the Combine doesn't feel like they're designed to deal with Gordon's 90's fps protagonist speed.
Bravo for getting a clip of Pentagon Wars. HBOs best movie!
This is the one video I have been looking for the most from you, can't wait to watch it !
that's a weirdly huge episode of Freeman's Mind
MEET THE FEEBLES MENTIONED
Cool video. One note.
I don’t understand your issue with Gordon becoming more than “just a guy.” If you as “just a guy” killed a boss and had quake 1 level movement, you’d become a legend too. Joking aside, I like to think of Gordon’s ascension as Half Life 2’s greatest bit of narrative irony. Half Life is always about illusions of choice and events outside our control, and trying to take back control. Whether that be on the level of getting a badass gun to kill a helicopter, or building a resistance to destroy extraterrestrial fascism. But the part that gives Half Life that darker edge is that lingering in the back of your mind there’s a hollowness to it. All your world saving antics in the first game, but until midway through Gordon was just running from the feds after being the (as far as we knew) cause of a major disaster. In Half Life 2 we see time and again that while Gordon is helping people, it’s just as often that he’s the cause of their demise. I think you and the game actually AGREE that Gordon Freeman is not Jesus, the game only paints him as such to make the truth hit that much harder. HL2 is no less or more of a power fantasy game than HL1, don’t forget that the Gluon Gun is more insane of a weapon than anything HL2 ever gives you.
Edit: yeah idk it really does sound like your beef is that it’s… not niche or inaccessible enough? I know it ain’t boomshooting but like you never really offer any counterargument toward what kind of experience you want if you don’t want this. Like, if you put 6 years into something wouldn’t you feel like shit if a friend of yours just couldn’t enjoy it because they weren’t good at idk diagonal strafing techniques in Doom
The dude is tiring of hearing how cool Freeman is, it's not that difficult to grasp. Even modern Doom games don't glaze Doomguy that hard
@ That’s a lie and you know it. Gordon gets a “hey good job man” but Doomguy gets interns at the UAC literally pissing their pants in a huge ass cutscene in Eternal. Not even halfway comparable.
@@throwawaydetective9080 I'd rather have people afraid of Freeman considering the scientist body count you can amass in the first game
@ Except playtesting and later survey showed people tended not to kill scientists and liked those characters. Just because you’re a psycho doesn’t mean others will be.
@@KoylTraneAs much as I am a fan of Doom franchise, Eternal has much worse protagonist worship than HL2. Like that woman in radio who talks about Doomslayer and other stuff like that.
What a wonderful Christmas gift, a brand new cinematic length Civvie 11 video :D