The Story Behind Half-Life

[CSN NewsBot]

Valve's Marc Laidlaw, author extraordinaire, sat down for a little Q&A session with CVG. The interview dives into his mind to find out what makes him tick, where his inspiration comes from, and what it takes to make the characters come to "life."

An obvious outing for the Half-Life universe would be a movie. Would this work? Do you think it'll ever happen?



Laidlaw: This project always crashes up against the hard reality that Gordon Freeman is a cipher - a Teflon conduit for the player's senses. As soon as you try to turn him into an actual character separate from the player's will, he loses whatever it is that makes him an interesting first-person-game protagonist.



[...]Even if Valve make the movie independently, we would have to solve the Freeman character dilemma - but at least I believe we would solve it in such a way that it would be true to the rest of our vision.



The first Half-Life movie treatment pitched to us climaxed with a tearful reunion between enslaved Vortigaunts and their Vortiwives and children. The last one I saw had Black Mesa invaded by a cavalry unit, just so as to feature a scene of bullsquids tearing into armoured horses... Which I admit is sort of cool, but has nothing to do with Half-Life."

Did they honestly pitch the notion of Vortiwives for a Half-Life movie to Valve?

[Zeratul114]

Did I mention I have a Vortiwife fetish?

[FAF]

Did I mention I have an armoured horse fetish?

[peagle]

The whole Vortiwives idea completely Chewbaccasfamilizes the HL universe for me.

[ph03nix(k)]

SF in games tends to turn on imagery of armour-plated oafs and shiny warships.

Thats right, fuck you Halo

[FAF]

Halo is simply a natural continuation of an anthropological trend; ignoring nerds.



You see nerds like you and I spend years playing Half Life, EVE, Quake etc while the rest of the non-nerd world laughs at us for playing "silly games". But it only takes one little glitch in the system to throw things out of whack, such as Xbox becoming popular or WoW being released...and all the workmates, siblings, acquaintances etc buy into the zeitgeist and we get nothing but "OMG Halo/WoW/Spiderman3/Metal Gear rocks!!! You should play this game, it's a revolution".....while the casual nerd has to suffer the supposed "revolution" that he/she has been engaged with for the past decade.



Good job "Halo"....we salute you...



...with 1 finger...

[meowmeow]

Halo is to scientology what Half-Life is to other religions.



But to make a HL movie would mean that Gordon has to stay silent throughout the entire game, and most people in this world will get annoyed by that because all they want to see is blood, gore and explosions every where while the main character yells out "Yipi-ka-yey mother fucker."

[Thortok2000]

What if they did a Half-Life movie where the entire movie is from first person perspective, just like the game, only in movie form with like, special effects and stuff? =P



It'd be odd. But cool.

[Zeratul114]

Thortok2000 wrote..

What if they did a Half-Life movie where the entire movie is from first person perspective, just like the game, only in movie form with like, special effects and stuff? =P



It'd be odd. But cool.

Hey I think they've already made that, it's called a game.

[Gpig]

I wonder if Valve would be opposed to the two main characters from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz taking on the rolls of Gordan/Barney and making it an action movie, but with more comedic pacing.

[kerosine99]

People in the movie industry are by and large absolute idiots.



I'm surprised they didn't pitch Gordon Freeman facing off against a giant spider in the final act. You know what I'm talking about.

[Gpig]

kerosine99 wrote..

People in the movie industry are by and large absolute idiots.



I'm surprised they didn't pitch Gordon Freeman facing off against a giant spider in the final act. You know what I'm talking about.

It couldn't be any gayer or less fun than the original ending of Half-Life

[Thortok2000]

Zeratul114 wrote..

Hey I think they've already made that, it's called a game.

Yeah, but it'd be cooler to see it on the big screen and without having to actually play. And without any puzzles, just pure story.



That's what movies are, you know. =P

[SushiEF101]

I think the way Half-Life as we know it is a video game and should stay a video game.



In my opinion, in order to make a decent movie they need to make a brand new character that is exclusive for the movie and tell his story of survival getting out of Black Mesa (Like a janitor played by Mark Wahlberg). Mention Gordon a few times, and bingo! You can add your bullsquids ravaging the military armored vehicles if you so wish but having Gordon Freeman in his own movie just wouldn't work as well as everyone hopes.

[DevgruSeal H.E]

Unless it's shot in first-person perspective. Then it'd be exactly like watching somebody in a play-through of Half-Life + 2. With better 'graphics'.