Back in the day, what made Half Life so special?

Back in the day, what made Half Life so special?

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It was a time in which if you're game had shooting in it, it was given the moniker of 'Doom clone'. Half Life ended that shit.

>Unlike many other games at the time, Half-Life features no cutscenes; the player has uninterrupted control of Freeman, and the story is told through scripted sequences seen through his eyes.

Also mods.

That time had already kinda ended with Quake a couple years before.

Mods.

>no cutscenes
u wot m8

Prior to Half-Life most shooters had discrete levels that had little or no resemblance to real life environments (or had such poor graphics that their attempts at portraying such environments were failures). Half-Life did a believable job of putting you in such environments, and each level joined together smoothly with all others in a continuous sequence. It made the world seem larger and more immersive.

Lack of cutscenes was also a big part of this. You were in a a complete world instead of just in control of a character completing levels.

Yes, no cutscenes.
A cutscene as in a movie that takes control away from you.

>A cutscene or event scene (sometimes in-game cinematic or in-game movie) is a sequence in a video game that is not interactive, breaking up the gameplay. Such scenes could be used to show conversations between characters, bring exposition to the player, set the mood, reward the player, introduce new gameplay elements, show the effects of a player's actions, create emotional connections, improve pacing or foreshadow future events.[2][3]

The game never took the camera away from you to play a cutscene, you were always looking through Gordon's perspective

By that logic, DMC4 has no cutscenes either since you can always mess with the camera.

>realistic environments feat. good platforming
>amazing and varied level design and tempo
>football-sized facehugger enemies along with the usual humanoids
>hands-off storytelling conveyed through brief scripted events
>good arsenal (even tho the handgun had unlimited range)

still the best game of all time, pretty much

The level design, the pacing, the gunplay, even the story. There are only a few shooters (including HL2) that are better than this masterpiece, and we're almost 20 years later now. F.

Feels bad when the best shooter I've played in years is a FUCKING REMAKE OF THIS GAME!!! (black mesa)

Can you 180° the camera and stare at the wall while the event takes places? Can you crouch jump around like a spastic while a movie plays?

You're a moron, stop abusing the word logic.

You console babies should really stfu.

the perfect shape of the number 3

You're a retard because this directly contradicts your idea of a cutscene.

Half Life does have cutscenes. Several of them, infact and every single one is unskippable.

There's too many reasons why. Perhaps the biggest is that it was possibly the first FPS to do "real" environments that weren't just Doom-like mazes. Accompany that with interesting enemies/NPCs, interesting ever-changing locations, fun weapons, etc, and you have Half-Life. It's not hard to see why this game was special, and why still it holds up very well. Unlike HL2 does today youtube.com/watch?v=mpCv12q6fFI

Both of these are my posts.
You simply lack reading comprehension and you're an imbecile in general. Or you have a shaky grasp on the english language, I don't know. I don't care either.
I'll go play XCOM now, have fun arguing in circles with somebody else, child.

So you contradict yourself, prove yourself wrong and then attempt (and fail embarrassingly) to save face by claiming your original definition is wrong because it can be used against you.

Good work there, child.

>Half Life does have cutscenes. Several of them, infact

A scripted event is a cutscene. Wew lad, just when I thought console plebs couldn't get more stupid you come out and say something like this. There is exactly 1 cutscene in halflife, and it does not last very long at all. (It's when you're captured and lose all your weapons mid game)

Just keep quiet, you're making a fool out of yourself.

shitload of insane attention of level details.
There's one moment when game gives you shotgun - at the next room you can """""procedurally"""" destroy every section of a archival cabinet to bits and even see appropriate contents in the rubble. AI shit-talking to you, animal enemies have various behaviour pattern, many HL-veterans aren't aware to this day

youtube.com/watch?v=Elwb2lV88hM
youtube.com/watch?v=Z8_R2OMgNUY
youtube.com/watch?v=9jO-P3kXlCI&t=3s

The entire philosophy behind the game development, heavily endorsed (and sometimes enforced) by Gaben himself, was "Put as much of cool stuff as possible and make sure it looks fun and feels natural, so our game will become the best one ever made to date"

it was doom with better graphics

>There is exactly 1 cutscene in halflife, and it does not last very long at all.
youtube.com/watch?v=rDDkQf_y9So

Oh dear, looks like you've been proven irrefutably wrong. How did that happen?

was fun and interesting

Should I play this in 2017?

I'm not a kid I was just poor at the time

Play black.mesa

my personal choice of ending: gordan and alyx give up and escape and go live in a farm for the rest of their life
they let the aliens win and die of old age
that's what I believe

>proves himself wrong
>says others are wrong

How did you get this retarded? Did your parents drop you a lot as a baby?

You do not know what a cutscene is. Learn English before posting.

>Should I play this in 2017?
Yes, play Black Mesa first, then HL2 and both Episodes. You can also play HL1 still, besides the dated graphics the game is still solid. They are by far the best shooters ever made.

Were you dropped on your head when you were a baby?

lol are you trolling or actually retarded?

This is getting dumber by the minute.

>You do not know what a cutscene is
A cutscene is this As you have now acknowledged, everything shown in that video is a cutscene as it meets the requirements for them that were stated in this very thread.

Don't get angry that you lost through your own hubris, children. Learn from your mistakes and don't embarrass yourself so much in public again.

>you're

if i were you I'd play the original. I haven't played black mesa yet but GoldSrc engine (the original HL engine and Valve engine before HL2) holds up really well, the gunplay is really fun.

The only scene in the entire game where you do not control the character is when you are being dragged to the trash compactor. Every other scene in the entire game has you controlling the character, hence interactive and not a movie or cinematic.

What exactly do you not understand about the words 'NOT interactive'?

A scripted event is NOT the same as a cutscene. Seriously how dense can one person be?

>being this retarted

Read Read it twice. Half Life has cutscenes.

Understand it.

Read the first sentence. Use google translator if you're having trouble, buddy.

Confirmed for idiot.

No, it has exactly 1 short cutscene.

I'm glad you do and accept it.

Read this once: You are a complete moron.

youtube.com/watch?v=0iXfWWrwrlQ

>Being this dumb

I'm not the one denying Half Life has cutscenes, child.

>the definition of a cutscene
The one you can't seem to comprehend you mean? I dunno man, must be everybody else.

Really good video on it: youtube.com/watch?v=bp5vOgz8vyI

>"""""""""""""""facts""""""""""""""" about half life

No cutscenes, focus on story and level progression, mods

There wasn't anything special about HL back then or even now. Everything HL did was already done in prior 3D fps', like Quake, Quake 2, Unreal 1, and Turok 2.

>trying to save face on an anonymous image board about video games by saying 'child'.

That's when you know you lost hard.

Half life's arsenal was kind of underrated. Shit like trip mines and satchels were incredibly fun to play around with. And I feel like the crossbow is just as iconic to half life as the crowbar in terms of being a "rifle" or "sniper". Only weapon that I really found useless was snarks.

Half life 2's disappointing arsenal is the main reason I'd put 1 above it.

Honestly I would put the Combine Pulse Rifle over most of the weapons in Half Life. That thing was a beast.

Have you played the "Suprise Mod" (not sure about the name, can't find any images about it either) for Half Life? All the weapons have tons of alternative stuff on them, like a grappling hook for the crowbar or triple shot cross bow. Shit was insane.

Somehow, CPR reload animation is cute as fuck

>Half life's arsenal was kind of underrated.
I agree

>Half life 2's disappointing arsenal
I think HL2's arsenal is also underrated, the gravity gun alone was such good fun.

found an old thread about it
facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=788335

Ahoy is a p gud channel

I honestly wasn't a fan of half life 2's weapon philosophy were you had less ammunition so that you are forced to use your entire arsenal. On paper it sounds fine, but I never got to use the magnum or crossbow because of that. It ended up forcing you to recycle between the same three weapons pulse rifle and shotgun and I guess the mp7 for when you're out of pulse rifle rounds. Whereas on half life 1 I felt like I had more freedom with how I wanted to engage a firefight. I'd always fuck around with satchels or use crossbows or magnums, made encounters more replayable.

I will say that they really mastered the use of the gravity gun in the next two episodes where you had more creative uses for it as a weapon (hunters, that helicopter boss battle, the dual ant lion guard fight, striders) that it almost makes up for the loss of all the other weapons.

mods

Nah, but thanks m8. Played the half life games for the first time in years last January and they still hold up. I'm probably going to play black mesa soon.

>Back in the day, what made Half Life so special?
Marketing

Millennial detected.

"Cut"+"scene"
To cut away from the scene

his voice is amazing

Wolfinstein and Doom made FPS games a thing. Doom especially because suddenly you could shoot enemies above or below you. There were things like stairs,

Half-Life ended the term "Doom clone." It was much much more than a run and gun situation. You had a mission, a plot. You needed to survive not just kill everything. You were a more relateable character, the world was more rich than any FPS game before it, there were government coverups and memorable set pieces.

Shit like that.

Half Life is special because it started the destruction of the FPS genre, a process which Call of Duty and Halo finished just 5 short years later

Slow down, friend.

>It was a time in which if you're game had shooting in it, it was given the moniker of 'Doom clone'. Half Life ended that shit.

Goldeneye.

>Perhaps the biggest is that it was possibly the first FPS to do "real" environments that weren't just Doom-like mazes

Goldeneye. Also, Duke, though those were semi-realistic I guess.

>Half-Life ended the term "Doom clone." It was much much more than a run and gun situation. You had a mission, a plot. You needed to survive not just kill everything.

Goldeneye

Nigger please, Half Life was and still is the best FPS ever made. COD and Halo are console games and should have never been ported to PC.

>Comparing clumsy N64 games to PC games.

>special pleading

Read the first sentence, lmao, it proves you wrong.

Please be bait, niggas can't be this stupid.

Goldeneye still had very small and completely separate levels, like a doom clone. No voice acting due to the N64's limitations, like a doom clone.

But yes, Goldeneye was a great game in its time, not even nearly as good as Half Life, but pretty solid, especially for a console game.

Goldeneye was fucking trash for its time

the N64 controller is shit for FPS even by console controller standards

/thread

>Goldeneye still had very small and completely separate levels, like a doom clone.
Having separate levels isn't a defining feature of a Doom clone. Further, Goldeneye's levels can hardly be called "very small". In terms of spatial size, some like Surface are larger than any loaded section of Half-Life.

>No voice acting due to the N64's limitations, like a doom clone.
A lack of voice acting isn't a defining feature of a Doom clone. There were a number of Doom clones that actually had voice acting. But please, keep grasping at those straws.

Also, pic related triggers Valvedrones. It's your character in Goldeneye, having a conversation with an NPC outside of a cutscene. And you can actually leave the room at any time.

Goldeneye release date: 28 August 1997
Half-Life release date: November 19 1998

I'm not even claiming Goldeneye was an innovator or anything, but that Half-Life wasn't much of one.

>not Hexen
>not Strife
>not Powerslave/Exhumed

>the N64 controller is shit for FPS even by console controller standards
You are so wrong is hurts. The NM64 is the only traditional console controller that works for FPS games. Not on par or better than kb/m, obviously, but a hell of a lot better than dual analog garbage.

>>Unlike many other games at the time, Half-Life features no cutscenes

Bullshit. I've been playing shits tons of 90's FPS games this last year and almost fucking none of them have cutscenes, and if they do it's short 30 second shit at the beginning and at the end.

That's not what made Half Life famous, it was the level design being linear and not a set of levels but a realistic progression through a military base and story was told through level design, instead of having fuck all story at all.

nostalgia.

>Goldeneye was fucking trash for its time
You're high, everybody loved that game, it was a console seller ffs.

>Having separate levels isn't a defining feature of a Doom clone.
Yes, it is.

>A lack of voice acting isn't a defining feature of a Doom clone.
Not a defining one, I agree, but it still lacked it, like most doom clones.

>grasping at those straws.
lolwat? Are you trying to 'win' some sort of argument here lad? Perhaps you should visit plebbit.

>pic related triggers Valvedrones
kek, okay?

>I'm not even claiming Goldeneye was an innovator or anything
You should be, because it absolutely was.

>that Half-Life wasn't much of one.
This is where you're making yourself look ridiculous. Half Life is the most innovative FPS ever to this very date.

>Half Life is the most innovative FPS ever to this very date.
Not even him but how the fuck can you even claim that?

>Half Life is the most innovative FPS ever to this very date.

It innovated nothing except continuous level design

It didn't even do that, see Unreal 1.

I stand corrected. Funny cause I felt like I was forgetting an earlier game that did it. Thanks user.

Agreed, it's what makes Half Life great today. Nowadays every shooter has cutscenes and qte's for some reason.

Not the same guy, but it's true.

FPS as a genre owes a shitload of it's storytelling methods to HL1. Hate the game all you want, but the standard it set is there for a reason.

I was sure feeling so nostalgic when I've played it 4 or 5 times in a row 18 years ago. Goddamn, I'd give anything to have the chance to kick your teeth down your throat.

>FPS as a genre owes a shitload of it's storytelling methods to HL1.

System Shock had the environmental storytelling (audio logs). Goldeneye did the in-engine NPC conversations.

But ti didn't innovate any of that. Games like Quake 2, Goldeneye, or Unreal all did that form of story telling, objectives, or level design first.

>he doesn't know about the AI

Didn't Strife do this in 1995, with actual voiced NPC's as well.

Didn't Ultima Underworld 1 and 2 do this and have NPC conversations before System Shock 1 even?

Pretty easily actually. I imagine it's just as easy as denying this obvious fact.

And the way it told its story. And the superior AI. Also, you say 'nothing except continuous level design' as if it's some little meaningless thing, but you're wrong about that. On top of all that the level design itself was near perfectly paced, well thought out, unlike any other game, especially at the time.

>not System Shock

You've been given examples of how other games did that stuff first/better yet all you say is, 'no, HL is perfect.'