Newell Interviewed Pt. 2

[CSN NewsBot]

Remember the EuroGamer interview with Gabe Newell that was posted about a few days back? It turns out that EuroGamer wasn't quite finished with Mr. Newell. With Robin Walker fielding a greater number of answers this time around, even more insight is shed on the creation of Episode 1.

Eurogamer: At times Half-Life 2 felt like six games in one, and changed so radically throughout - is that an approach you wanted in Episode One?



Robin Walker: [...] You asked earlier about the physics gameplay, and we pushed on throughout the episode in two different ways. One was to increase the interactivity in the environment, and dealing with the larger scale problems of physics; stuff happening like massive objects falling on you as you go down an elevator shaft and how to keep them off the elevator.



And then we did something else that we've always wanted to do, which was to push physical interaction into our monsters and into our NPCs. For example, the Zombine monsters runs at you and pulls out a grenade that's about to go off, and in the past we haven't really allowed you to interact with the NPCs with your gravity gun, so we really wanted to you to be able to pull the grenade out of his hand or shoot it out of his hand with bullets...



Gabe Newell: If you can aim!

All of that and more can be found in part two of EuroGamer's interview.

[DevgruSeal H.E]

Interesting interview :) Hope theres more :P

[Gpig]

Part 1 of the interview was more interesting, but not bad.



I was wondering why the zombines kept dropping the grenades to early, I guess the shotgun blasts were sometimes hitting their hands. I just finished lowlife so I should have plenty of chances to shoot the grenades out of their hands before beating it with commentary. I think that's like the first time valve has actually put something into half-life that rewarded aiming at certain parts on the enemy.

[Jason X]

I always missed the zombies hand's, lol.



I suck at shooting small objects. (Insert stupid joke here)

[Vlux]

... you to be able to pull the grenade out of his hand or shoot it out of his hand with bullets...

You can do that!?!? WOW!



Oh, about that elevator thing. I probably died more in that single scene than all of the chapters combined in HL2.

[Zips]

I only knew about the grav gun ability to pull grenades out of their hands after an earlier interview (I think it was one of the video interviews with Robin). I had no idea you could shoot them out til this interview.

[DevgruSeal H.E]

It would be funny if you could shoot off one of their legs. Watch them plop over on their side and come crawling after you, like the ones do that don't have either legs...

[washuplushie]

DevgruSeal H.E wrote..

It would be funny if you could shoot off one of their legs. Watch them plop over on their side and come crawling after you, like the ones do that don't have either legs...

I wish HL2 was capable of Soldier of Fortune 2 style 'limb removal' with physics and all. i'd love to be able to shoot a zombie with a shotgun and see his arms, torso, and head flying in separate directions.