Half-Life 2 - A Look Back

[CSN NewsBot]

The website, Computer and Video Games, recently conducted an interview with Valve's Doug Lombardi and Marc Laidlaw about the steps that went into the creation of Half-Life 2. The article offers a great deal of insight into some of the decisions made that shaped the story, the characters, and even the atmospheric details.



Ever wonder what it takes to turn even the smallest of details into a "virtual reality?" Oh, I am so witty! All joking aside, here's what Marc Laidlow had to say about the creation of the crying couple near the beginning of the game.

Laidlaw: The germ of that idea came from a couple who appear both in Nintendo's Zelda: Ocarina Of Time and Zelda: Majora's Mask - oblivious to their surroundings and totally absorbed in each other. I wanted to do a darker, City 17 version. It was easy to summarise the idea, but difficult to convince people it was worth the production costs. While all I had to do was write a few lines of dialogue, someone else had to pose and animate them, set them up in the level, make sure they were invulnerable to playtesters... All that added up to quite a lot of work for quite a few people and is indicative of how much thought goes into even the smallest scenes in the game.

There are plenty more interesting bits where that came from. I was quite impressed at the amount of thought that went into creating any number of the game's facets.

[HACKER HELL STORM]

im replaying hl2 right now and loving it.

[Grimbal]

I will when i get my new amd 64 3400+ 6800gt

[Manji]

Shouldn't it be Computer and Video Games?

[Que_?]

Half-Life 2 - A Look Back



Lies - lies lies and more lies

[ultracooldom]

i used to buy that magazine, CVG what i used to call it :)

[woah]

I just replayed the original Half-Life and enjoyed it much more than Half-Life 2.

[3DZOEF]

Is it "Laidlow or Laidlaw?"

appended @ [time="1129290547"]

woah wrote..

I just replayed the original Half-Life and enjoyed it much more than Half-Life 2.

Oh good news for you then ! There is a mod coming for halflife 2 that makes halflife 1 use the source engine (not comparable to HL SOURCE!). This one uses real HALFLIFE 2 textures instead of the old HALFLIFE ones. And has got REMADE models. Its called BLACK MESA SOURCE and it is currenly under development take a look at some screenshots at the official site: http://blackmesa.leak-free.org/html/media.html

[-:Nighthawk:-]

That mod actually looks really cool, 3DZOEF. I was hoping the original HL:S would just feature the existing level geometry with updated textures and possibly some bumpmaps or something, and models as well if they really wanted to go for it. What it actually turned out to be was somewhat disheartening, if only because the potential of Source was so... unused.



Maybe Tenebrae just gave me false hope with it's awesome revitalization of the original Quake. I can understand staying true to the original feel of Half-Life, but with as little upgrading as was done, not even updating the textures... HL:S doesn't even feel worth playing over vanilla Half-Life.



If these guys have the time to remap all of the original levels in HL and script the whole thing, that's an amazing undertaking, but one I'll certainly be hoping to see completed! :)