final battle

[leib10]

Played it last night on Hard.

It was hard. I think the delay between Striders appearing was reduced, and the number of Hunters per battle group increased. Plus the fact that Hunters are much, much more dangerous on Hard.

 

[Daggett]

i guess the battle was a little repetitive, but while playing i found hardly any time to sit and thing about what they were doing wrong. i enjoyed the constant running around blowing things up, running over hunters. gah! personally, i thought it was great

 

[Crazy_killer]

Ye I expected more since they try to launch a rocket that closes the portal, you would expect all combine forces to come in to stop that from happening, however I was still very pleased with it, and ofcourse the ending (wich to me is the most important thing because usualy you get a lot of info then) was AWESOME.

 

[Black Op]

Gunships would make no sense, considering you'd then have an infinite supply of rockets. You also have to remember, when considering the gameplay, that it's all about stopping the Striders.

Unless we leave it to the NPCs to shoot the Gunships down with their RPGs. With some clever scripting, the Gunships would actually pose very little threat to the player in comparision to the Striders and Hunters. However you have a good point in that the focus is supposed to be on the Striders, so perhaps it'd be better have only one Gunship or two appear at the end which get shot down by friendly NPCs.

Black Op needs to post here more.

I'm trying to do my best you know, considering my school work and et cetera.

 

[capteeni]

Was anyone else a little dissapointed in the final battle?

It was neat for the first 5 minutes, but then it got sooooo repetative.

I was hoping for gunships, combine, striders, hunters, all mixed in, with many rebel forces all running around fighting in one large battle.


But instead it was just the same thing over and over again, more striders with more hunters, kill hunters, blow up striders with m device, repeat.

It could have been more diverse. It didn't feel like a battle at all.

War is repetitive.

 

[Alexander_Q]

I wish they will add an option of some sort (a harder difficulty level maybe) that adds combine soldiers and gunships to that battle (with them a bunch of resistance soldiers too of course)..

I've been fantasising about that for three days. If I had my way, the battle would have gone something like this:

Same layout - valley with landmarks. No infinite supplies, just A LOT OF THEM. Maybe some of the buildings have basements for extra capacity. No set goals to begin with, no "stop the striders from reaching the base". Rebels are spread out all over the valley with a variety of weapons. The combine attack with gunships, dropships, striders, soldiers, shells filled with headcrabs, hunters, the works. It's insane. Getting out of cover is not encouraged.

However, the rebels are actually decently effective at fighting combine, and do cause kills occasionally. You are told only to "fight for your life". Then, maybe five minutes into epic fight, call comes in "a strider is heading for one of the generators over at the sawmill" and you must make your way over there quickly and kill that particular strider that is going to destroy that particular building. Then, after another five minutes "a handful of rebels are pinned down by striders in the house south west of the sawmill". You head over there, take down the striders as you see fit, or maybe it's not striders, maybe it's combine soldiers, and the mission is failed if you don't keep a certain amount alive.

And thus the objectives keep changing: "A gunship is circling the base taking pot shots that endanger the rocket" or "make haste and carry these supplies to the rebels fighting at the water tower" or even "try and snipe the combine commander who is giving orders from somewhere near the crane". Each objective would carry with it the chance of failure, which could mean gameover for particular ones or just make future ones harder.

Thus the battle would be always fresh, always exciting, never repetitive, and frighteningly hectic. Because the forces aren't all "escorting the striders" to a particular single goal, there isn't the problem of having more combine in one area than the player can possibly handle. And of course you'd still have your car.

Also, the combat would be broken up between urgency and lack of urgency - in the times between objectives you could be firing from the window of a house, which would mean an opportunity for hunters to enter and do what hunters do best - scare the shit out of you when you least expect it. So there would be both "creative combat" (like in the attack on the inn) and also "urgent combat" (like the adrenalin rush in the original strider battle when the striders are about to destroy the base and you blow them up at the last second).

 

[Crash Happy]

How about if there was some sort of battle mode where once you had completed certain key scenes it allowed you to revisit them but with altered objectives and resources? So the final battle but you could choose Gunships and Striders for instance?
Would make a nice mod maybe.
I just completed it again, big difference using the car as a battering ram but still managed to let the first building drop sooner than I wanted. Pesky game.

 

[dogboy73]

Did you play on easy or with the commentary mode on, because I've not met a person yet who thought it was either easy or strolled through it without dying a few times, whether on normal or hard. Also given that you claim the hunters and Striders wrre easy to dispatch what then any great purpose in adding the infinitely easier to kill combine?

[/quote]

I actually had it set on medium. I never play HL on anything less. Not since reading the review of HL in PC Gamer 1998. It stated 'play on hard & savour every moment' or something to that effect. they were right to. Playing HL2 on easy is like cheating it's so easy! I only had it on medium because my rig really struggled & my frame rate was pants when there was to much going on. Just bought some new kit though. Looking forward to going though EP2 again on hard. I still think the end battle will be fairly straight forward though. Given how easy it was on medium.

 

[Shift]

You guys keep failing to grasp, the force that attacks White Forest is all the Combine had left. They had to muster scrambled units from the field after major defeat in City 17 so they were limited.

On your way to White Forest, you are intercepted many times by the Combine trying to get the data packet, a hunter chopper, hunters and a lot of infatry. They would have spent half of their re-scrambled force to intercept you, that failed, so they have to use their reserves, i.e. their Striders and remaining hunters, to attack the base by force and destroy the rocket.

You talk about the Combine having all these different units thrown into the battle but they limited to what they can use because it is a force that was battered in City 17. The force that attacks White Forest is everything they had left.

 

[Crash Happy]

I do like the idea that the Combine is starting to become limited and that the most they could scare up/spare for the operation was the what we faced. However I think people are more saying what they think they would have liked to see, rather than plot.

 

[Shift]

But thats why Valve excel other developers, because they use a strong plot as they driving force for their gameplay mechanics, not just throw in a hectic battle situation even though it doesn't make any sense.

 

[Alexander_Q]

But thats why Valve excel other developers, because they use a strong plot as they driving force for their gameplay mechanics, not just throw in a hectic battle situation even though it doesn't make any sense.

Actually, if you listen to the commentary, they did have a hectic battle as per the trailer, but removed it because it was too damned hard, not because of any plot-conscious realisations.

 

[Black Op]

You guys keep failing to grasp, the force that attacks White Forest is all the Combine had left.

However the bridge scene showed that the Overwatch had some Gunships left; there's no evidence to suggest that the Resistance managed to shoot them all down before Freeman arrived at White Forest.

 

[Shift]

Actually all the commentary said was they were gonna thrown in infantry, like Combine Elites which wouldn't have made much difference. But like you said didn't because it would have been made too hard.

 

[Shift]

However the bridge scene showed that the Overwatch had some Gunships left; there's no evidence to suggest that the Resistance managed to shoot them all down before Freeman arrived at White Forest.

Well i dunno about that, other things could have happened beforehand, not to mention the area where YOU shoot down the chopper, one of the guys said you have admire the Combine's persistency, not to mention the men looked as if they had been tackling the problem for a while. Plus White Forest did look as they have been having probe attacks for a while, probably involving more units.

 

[dogboy73]

You guys keep failing to grasp, the force that attacks White Forest is all the Combine had left.

Well that's cleared that up then ...... so what are we going to be fighting in EPIII?

 

[Crash Happy]

It's possible that story-wise that's all they had available in the area at that time. They must have known that the resistance were running out of time to launch their satelite though and need to get in and stop it before that happened. Previous attempts had failed (possibly including any spare choppers) as mentioned when you arrive. We know the Combine exist still elsewhere on earth though and although the transmision from Mossman was old we saw them there.

 

[Hoekman]

overheads

Valve has always strived to provide a beautiful game that can run smoothly on the majority of pc's at the time of release, I think the absence of combine soldiers and gunships during the final climactic battle had much more to do with the need to meet their "graphical budget" then lack of ambition in the scope of it. I think it is also reasonable to argue that it streamlines the gameplay mechanics of the final battle to challenge the player with only 2 new concepts ( hunter packs grouped with striders, and the magnusson device ). To introduce a lot of the suggestions made from this thread would make a chaotic battle hard to predict from a development stand point, and would virtualy negate the efforts vlave made showcasing thier cinematic physics, as it would be very difficult to use valve's subtelty in directing player's attention to scripted events in an enemy/(threat) saturated environment.

 

[Alexander_Q]

Which would be all well and good if they hadn't already stated that their reasons were not story or graphics driven. The original battle WAS much more exciting and epic. We all saw the trailer. They need not have even invented magnusson devices.

 

[dogboy73]

Valve has always strived to provide a beautiful game that can run smoothly on the majority of pc's at the time of release.

Clealry I'm in a minority then because it runs like poo on my machine

(so much so that I've just bought a whole load of new kit that shoukd hopefully eat the Source engine for breakfast. Building tomorrow )

 

[Shakermaker]

I hate all you people who say it is easy. In two runs I managed to get to the 2nd wave with 3 striders left. I get utterly frustrated by Magnusson's balls not sticking to the striders. I had a couple of perfect shots that just bounced off.

 

[Alexander_Q]

It was crazy difficult the first time, and I was only playing on medium. The third time I did it was without death.

It seems the magnussons prefer sticking to the top of striders as per the diagram.

 

[Hoekman]

hunter escort

If you look closely the hunters sometimes protect the striders and shoot the devices off them. You'll notice that if you kill all the hunters around a strider the devices will stick everytime

 

[ranmafan]

It's true: A Magnusson device will stick to even a Strider's leg if you get really lucky, and will fall off if hit by a flechette, but to be honest I tend to launch them from really far away (and pray it sticks) because the Hunters have more trouble hitting a moving target and their volleys only last for a short period of time.

What this means is that by the time the M device gets to the Strider, they've exhausted their immediate volley and you should shoot it, fast.

Then again, quicksaves are your friend...

 

[Crash Happy]

Actually Hoekman he's right. My second run through the game I had several M-Balls ricochet off the strider. Never happened on the first run and there were no Hunters around.
At the time they looked like clean shots but I guess maybe I caught a leg or something. I certainly didn't think so at the time however and boy those balls flew.