GamesRadar is ****ing stupid

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Original article: http://www.gamesradar.com/f/5-reasons-to-hate-half-life/a-20100324125537598076

5 reasons to hate Half-Life - Joe McNeilly, GamesRadar US

Here’s a new line of Hatewear for you to try on. We’ll trot out a beloved sacred cow franchise and give you five simple reasons why it may not be the hippo’s nipples after all. We’ll be here all week, making lists of things to hate about the things you like. Will we pick on your favorite franchise? Check back tomorrow. Until then, see what’s not to like about Half-Life.

1. Fact: Alyx Vance is overrated

She somehow manages to constantly make fanboy dream date lists (our own included-link), but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s a one-trick pony. The only reason she stands out at all is purely by contrast to the hyper-sexualized vixens that normally appear in videogames. You (meaning “the internet,” not you individually) claim that Alyx is the best because she isn’t objectified, then you go and objectify her in countless mods and fan art.

HLhatealyxnude--article_image.jpg


2. Gordon Freeman is a shallow hipster icon with no real substance

Even more than Alyx, Gordon Freeman is lauded for characteristics that are largely generated by the wishful imaginings of his fans. He’s the ultimate synecdoche (a portmanteau of “synthetic” and “douche” if I remember my lit crit correctly), in that his glasses and crowbar are more than simply a substitution for the rest of him: they actually constitute the totality of his character.

half-life3--article_image.jpg


3. They will never explain G-Man

Put forth as many watertight, bulletproof theories as you like. It’s just too easy to trot him out every time they need a deus ex machina or red herring to throw at the player. The second Valve explains G-Man and his motives is the second Half Life has to start making sense, and therefore dies. Remember, strong-silent-guy, there are things about this world that you were never meant to know.

HLhategmananswers--article_image.jpg


4. A crowbar does as much damage as a gun?

We’re not theoretical physicists, but we’re pretty sure we’d rather be hit with a crowbar than shot with a gun. Yet somehow, magically, in the hands of a mild-mannered mute with enormous glasses, the crowbar becomes orders of magnitude more powerful. Maybe a trick Gordon learned at MIT? Funny in a game lauded for it’s realistic physics!

5. Valve takes their sweet ass time with everything

I thought the goal of episodic content was to have quick turnaround times? Instead we get sequels to games we weren’t even tired of playing yet (Portal, L4Deeeeeeeeeeznuts). So what’s the holdup Valve? Having already conquered videogame physics, maybe they’ve moved on to modeling the best dang astrophysics you’ve ever seen. Look out, 2015, Gordon is gonna get heliocentric on your ass!
Click to expand...
 
The fact they put Deez Nuts in L4D is enough to make me vomit with rage.
 
I happen to agree with two and three.

So shoot me?

On second thought... Not counting TF2, I don't think I like a single post-2000 Valve game anymore. Jesus. And even TF2's dwindling in hours played.

WHY AM I EVEN ON THIS FORUM.

Midlife gamer crisis, ffffffffff
 
Maybe you, like, got a life or something.
 
Hmmm, an interesting way to attract site views.

You fool! You've played right into their hands!
 
Apparently Gordon Freeman was hipster before every 20 something douchebag caught on and ruined glasses for everyone. Further proof of Valve's trendsetting.

While I like what Valve has tried to do with Alyx, I hate that she's basically an "insta-girlfriend" character for a guy that's never spoken a single word while the world has been ending.
 
Think they kind of missed the point on Freeman - he isn't a character. Thats the whole point, he's simply an empty void for the player to fill.

As for the G-Man, no Sci-fi franchise ever ties up all the loose ends. To be honest no fiction franchise ever ties up all the loose ends. You just have to deal with that, sadly.

The crowbar thing, well, in halo smacking someone with a rifle butt does more damage than shooting them. In CoD 4 onward a knife is always an instant kill.

While the lack of Ep.3 is vexing, I think of the wait between episodes somewhat like those old Stella Artois adverts where Ron Pearlman hits the French guard in the head with a ladle, its a reassuringly long wait.
 
Alyx isn't really a girlfriend, but a helper for the protagonist. She's also a solid female character, which is rare in today's video games. Gordon Freeman is supposed to be you, he isn't a character, but a placeholder as mentioned by Marc Laidlaw - he's only there to make people buy the game.

Half-Life series never been about G-Man. At least, I don't feel that way. So far, only Episode Two is focusing on G-Man's personality, motives behind him. He's an important figure like CSM, but can we really say X-Files was about CSM?

ninja'd
 
In other news, Halflife2.net endorses GamesRadar's article entitled "5 Reasons to Hate Halo".
 
Bob_Marley said:
Think they kind of missed the point on Freeman - he isn't a character. Thats the whole point, he's simply an empty void for the player to fill.
Click to expand...
:l

"About that beer I owed ya. Gordon, it's me, Barney from Black Mesa."

"I shot every Barney I found when I played HL1. You guys annoyed the hell out of me. Plus I needed your ammo."

"Remember Dr. Magnusson?"

"No."

"Yeah he's a asshole isn't he?"

Oh and let's not forget: http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/File:Freeman_job_letter.jpg

Yeah I sure remember talking to the HR guy at Black Mesa right after I typed my resume after finishing my Physics degree at MIT, all in game.

Bob_Marley said:
As for the G-Man, no Sci-fi franchise ever ties up all the loose ends. To be honest no fiction franchise ever ties up all the loose ends. You just have to deal with that, sadly.
Click to expand...
You ever hear of a show called Lost? You know why people watch it? Because weird, mysterious shit happened. Every episode. By every episode I mean there were clues ****ing everywhere. It took a while to finally figure out, but while it was a mystery there was a consistency to it. Slowly, things started to make sense. There are patterns in the weirdness and you can slowly deduce what's going on (smoke monster -> it hurts people -> the island is defending itself).

What happens in HL? G-Man shows up, saves Gordon's life, rambles on about employers and getting the job done, then leaves. The same speech. For four games. All we know about him is from a few lines of dialogue and the rest is speculative bullshit. They can hardly be called 'loose ends.' Loose ends to what? We are given NOTHING. After three ****ing games we still don't know about even the ****ing combine. But Viper, you say, Eli made reference to the G-Man! He's important because other characters talk abouBOLLOCKS. He says 'you know the man I'm talking about' and then gets INTERRUPTED AND DIES. THAT IS NOT A TEASE, THAT'S NOT EVEN A COCKTEASE, THAT'S A GIRL COMING UP TO YOU AND FLICKING YOU IN THE BALLS ONCE A YEAR. You come out of it shocked and then forget about the whole thing. Until it happens again. A year later.

At this pace, we'll probably find out that the G-Man is like, not human or something idk lul by Half-Life: Episode 26.

For the record, mysterious events in stories are effective when they're OBVIOUS. As in, wait a minute, why is this character doing that? What's going on here, have I missed something? The only explicit mystery in the plot has been the same for all four games: 'Who is this man in the suit with the funny voice' and 'who are these enemies I'm fighting' and it gets shoved so hard aside by OMG ALYX drama that you stop caring. Instead, fans concoct crazy ideas that have nothing to do with the actual story because the story is so void by itself. More mystery has been had by people digging around in game files and finding random inconsistencies and 'clues' about enemies and characters. If your fans are creating the story out of your trashbin, you're doing it wrong.

(Apologies to Darkside; I don't think I can rant on a forum without reading like him.)
 
Viperidae said:
:l

"About that beer I owed ya. Gordon, it's me, Barney from Black Mesa."

"I shot every Barney I found when I played HL1. You guys annoyed the hell out of me. Plus I needed your ammo."

"Remember Dr. Magnusson?"

"No."

"Yeah he's a asshole isn't he?"

Oh and let's not forget: http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/File:Freeman_job_letter.jpg

Yeah I sure remember talking to the HR guy at Black Mesa right after I typed my resume after finishing my Physics degree at MIT, all in game.
Click to expand...

Well they kind of need to have a bit of a story up until the point that you're actually playing, there's no need to act like a dick about it LOL
 
Then why create Magnusson? He's created after you start playing. There was no reason he had to be ex-BMRF. He could have just been some local scientist.
 
someone is butthurt

They explained why they made him a Black Mesa scientist.

Viperidae said:
He's created after you start playing.
Click to expand...

That's a bad argument. Half-Life didn't have any characters. What do you expect them to do, remake clone scientists from original Half-Life - or maybe the forklift guy from the intro, huh?
 
I agree with some of the reasonings about Freeman, G-Man and the failing of episodic content. Anyway, this is a game, there's no need to read too much into it. A magical power suit turns a theoretical physicist into a super-human? G-Man is a cheap deus-ex-machina-mystery-machine? OK. Agreed. Now, let me kick some Combine ass.
 
You know, people don't buy Half-Life to kill Combine soldiers.
 
Barnz said:
That's a bad argument. Half-Life didn't have any characters. What do you expect them to do, remake clone scientists from original Half-Life - or maybe the forklift guy from the intro, huh?
Click to expand...
Create new ones? There's nothing wrong with Alyx storywise. She develops on her own, and everyone is entitled to his/her attitude toward her.

But force feeding us characters we're supposed to 'remember' from an earlier game when they weren't even there, and then telling us that the player is supposed to be himself/herself and not an endlessly referenced character of a mute scientist with a bad memory, is completely inconsistent and illogical.

Bob_Marley said:
Just like you remember going through bootcamp and assaulting your superior officer in Doom, eh?
Click to expand...
Except Doom doesn't pretend to have a plot beyond 'shit just got real, go kill things,' and Id certainly doesn't rant and rave about how immersive their 'choose your own space marine' story is. In fact, Carmack dismisses story.

Bob_Marley said:
Because thats who Gordon Freeman is - he's Doomguy with a PHD and a beard.
Click to expand...
Valve would have you think otherwise. Half-Life's story is proudly masturbated over.
 
Viperidae said:
But force feeding us characters we're supposed to 'remember' from an earlier game when they weren't even there, and then telling us that the player is supposed to be himself/herself and not and endlessly referenced character of a mute scientist with a bad memory, is completely inconsistent and illogical.
Click to expand...

Good point, but I think Half-Life 2 should be considered as a standalone game, rather than being a direct sequel. It has little to do with Black Mesa's story, in fact you don't have to original to understand the new Half-Life games. I like character references.

Viperidae said:
Valve would have you think otherwise. Half-Life's story is proudly masturbated over.
Click to expand...

It's not about Gordon, but his adventure through the series. I can't say I like City 17 much as I like Black Mesa, but I admit Valve did a great work on the city. I'm sure many here seen the leaked content, there's some impressive stuff in there. It's believable, and makes you somewhat paranoid.

Let's not forget Gearbox's additions too. They expanded original game in good way, and explained many background elements.
 
G-man description is accurate in this, they wont bother with an explanation, hes there to be shadowy
 
3. They will never explain G-Man

Put forth as many watertight, bulletproof theories as you like. It’s just too easy to trot him out every time they need a deus ex machina or red herring to throw at the player. The second Valve explains G-Man and his motives is the second Half Life has to start making sense, and therefore dies. Remember, strong-silent-guy, there are things about this world that you were never meant to know.
Click to expand...

Butthurt because he posted a "G-Man is Gordon's son from the future" thread here and got flamed for it. Now he's trolling us.
 
Nit picking D:

I don't know why they didn't mention that Gordon is able to pull barrels of air underwater. I'm no physicist, but I know for a fact that the mass of air within is greater than Gordon's weight.
 
This is about as discussion-worthy as the average 'PLOTHOLE!' thread on imdb. Just some shitty troll who can't even think up 5 reasons without scrabbling for stuff like unrealistic crowbar damage.
 
Wait... you mean you guys don't think this is supposed to be humour? I'll give you that it's pretty goddamned weak, but it's pretty apparent that this is played for laughs that aren't coming.
 
I'd rather get shot missing vital organs than have a crowbar slammed into me full force. Honestly don't underestimate blunt force trauma and throw in some bone fracturing if you're really unlucky.
 
Although I'm a strong supporter of "to each his own," it seemed like they were just taking cheap shots.
 
I can take cheap shots at any game.

Like, how come I can take a bullet to the face in MW2 and go lie down somewhere and isntantly become better? It makes sense in sci-fi games because of 'magical healing foam' like they used in the Halo books, but that's supposed to be mdoern warfare. Shouldn't I be spending a week or so in the infirmary before going and getting shot again?

Even if Kane is an alien, he should be dead by now, he took an ion cannon to the face. And even if he's immortal, why didn't he just walk into the GDI base and kill everyone with his immortal god powers?

How does Kleiner and Magnusson manage to survive a total takeover while being old men who are only good at science? Taking cover in a blatantly obvious hiding place in the middle of the city while working on a device that should put forth massive energy signatures that would alert the Combine immediately!

Why can I do 9+G turns in Ace Combat even though that would kill someone realistically?

How do the guys in Gears of War get so buff despite never eating steak?
 
Would i be right to assume a force filled whack to the head with a crowbar would do more damage than a 9mm bullet?

wtf are these guys on.
 
Lone Wolf said:
Would i be right to assume a force filled whack to the head with a crowbar would do more damage than a 9mm bullet?

wtf are these guys on.
Click to expand...

It'd also be probably a hell of a lot more painful.
 
GamesRadar is stupid, alright, but not because they took shots at Half-Life--because they took all the WRONG shots at Half-Life. Parading the "sacred cow" to throw stones at it is fine and dandy, but you've gotta do it right, or you look like a douche. Also, people will be able to refute your arguments better and that's no fun for YOU. So without further ado here are the REAL 5 reasons to hate Half-Life:

1. Vagueness of plot

Half-Life 1 was iconic because it didn't present you with all the facts. At the beginning of the game the sum of what you knew was that you were a physicist working in a research facility with obvious ties to the government, working with hazardous "anomalous" materials. Before shit hits the fan you hear snippets of dialogue indicating that something momentous is about to take place today, that there have been administrative personnel overseeing it, and the scientists are concerned that they might tax the mysterious equipment too far. After shit hits the fan, your main concern is survival and you only piece together the story from bits of exposition by scientists and by paying attention to your surroundings.

It was a wonderful technique that makes Half-Life remain a classic to this day, but Valve, in trying to recapture what they had, took a good formula and just went TOO FUCKING FAR. As Viperidae put it:

fans concoct crazy ideas that have nothing to do with the actual story because the story is so void by itself. More mystery has been had by people digging around in game files and finding random inconsistencies and 'clues' about enemies and characters. If your fans are creating the story out of your trashbin, you're doing it wrong.
Click to expand...

Valve, rather than being in the business of telling a cohesive story--which Half-Life was--is now in the business of cliffhangers and vagueries that they make up as they go along. They're so intent on giving Gordon the meanest information that, in times when there should be exposition, you get nothing. When you should get answers, you get more questions. It's a constant carrot-on-a-stick tease to ensure that fans will keep playing and buying the installments just to get a shred of what the fuck is going on, only to be presented with more sixty-four dollar questions.

And in order to find 'answers' to these questions, people rummage around with their pak explorers and GCFscape hoping to glean something out of model names and unused soundbites. The fact that it is the players, and not Valve, who flesh out most of the story isn't clever, it isn't a unique way to tell a story, it's aggravating. The fact that a single plot point in your story requires thirteen threads, a wiki entry (plus footnotes and references), and obscure lines written in .cpp files, you've clearly misconstrued what made your original game popular in the first place. You went from wading in a pool to diving into the Mariana Trench.

2. Valve takes their sweet ass time with everything

I don't know why this was #5 on GamesRadar's list. I'm hoping they were only rifling off reasons as they came to them rather than listing them in order of importance, because this one, THIS ONE, is goddamn important.

Yes, Valve takes their time with everything. And for awhile, it was a bit of a joke. A funny joke. Even Valve poked fun at themselves for their almost lethargic attitude when it came to releasing things. What kept them in the favor of the public was, despite how long their games took, their games were done WELL. You knew that with time, you were guaranteed a quality product.

Well...almost a quality product. Y'know, barring bugs and storyline problems and shortness of gameplay and that goddamn stutter they never fixed and revisions to the game(s) that had to be updated through Steam based on collected statistics and--wait, I'm getting off track here.

So you were guaranteed a relatively quality product in exchange for really long development cycles. "When it's done" was the go-to phrase that made you feel warm and comfortable and abated any ire you might feel when you realized, "Holy shit, this is taking a long ass time!" But it was OK, because they'd release it when it was done, and only when it was done. You could wait it out, right?

But then it became a little bit less of a joke. Episodic content was supposed to solve long development time. Valve talked a lot about how they'd cut back in terms of game time in order to bring you a game every few months. They talked a lot about how they had one team working on Ep1, and one team working on Ep2, and when those projects finished the two teams would combine and push out Ep3. You remember that? You remember ALL the interviews where they said that, repeatedly?

Well that never happened, did it?

And now you're waiting for Episode 3. It's been three years already, and you're waiting. Valve keeps promising that you'll hear about it "sometime soon," but we ain't heard shit. We heard about L4D2. And we've heard about Portal 2. But the last thing we heard about Episode 3 is seeing some really old concept art and that there might be a deaf character. Remember when Gabe was going to say something about Episode 3 and Doug told him "We aren't talking about that today?" It's almost perverse how they're keeping this game in the dark. You've got people on the forums making two threads about how OH MY GOD, SAXTON HALE HAS A LAMBDA ON HIS BICEP AND YOU CAN ONLY MAKE OUT THREE FINGERS ON HIS HAND! THIS IS PROOF OF EPISODE THREE GUISE!

It's more than just "Valve takes their sweet ass time with everything." It's that they take their sweet ass time with everything without telling YOU anything. Shit, I remember waiting around for eight goddamn years for TF2: Brotherhood of Arms, and they stopped telling me a goddamn thing about that like four years into it. This policy of "We don't want to tell anyone anything because we have to cut things and don't want to get peoples' hopes up" is bullshit. There's not a single person here who hasn't loved watching the hydra video even if "not yours, can't have." Just give your fans SOMETHING. Throw out a fucking bone every now and then. You're not some clandestine organization hording information on the secrets of the future, waiting to dole it out when the public is ready to handle it. You're a goddamn development house. Show us progress even if you DO have to cut it later. The fans are hating you more for showing us nothing, rather than showing us what we'll never have.

3. AI is dumb as bricks

Gonna stand here and shoot. Yep. Just...just gonna stand here. And shoot. There was an instance I had in Episode 2 where I was walking into the farmhouse (was it a farmhouse?) where the juvenile advisor is, and there was this overwatch soldier with a shotgun standing in the doorway...and I shot him...and he just stood there. Like an idiot. And it's not like it hadn't been the first time I'd seen enemies behave like this in Half-Life 2 and beyond, but that moment really sticks out to me. It's like, "Damn, it's been three games already, you'd think you could get an overwatch soldier who, y'know, uses some goddamn common sense or has a sense of self-preservation and tactics."

You remember there used to be threads about that to try and explain why the AI was stupid? Yeah, you do. Those threads in Rumors and Speculation, god rest that board's soul, about how "Maybe metrocops and overwatch don't run because they've been programmed by the Combine not to." When you have to actively find in-universe reasons as to why that goddamn enemy soldier won't just FLANK or RUN AWAY or SHOW EVEN SOME SENSE OF SOMETHING BEYOND "Durr hurr, gonna stand here and shoot!" you know you've got a problem.

The AI does wonderful things in large groups with a lot of space. We know this because of Gmod. We've known this for years. It's just too bad that most of the areas Valve designs, and puts Combine soldiers into, aren't large open spaces.

4. No boss fights, or "Where's my damn reward?"

Think about Half-Life. The first Half-Life. Now recall all the memorable parts of that game. I'm not even going to tell you which ones to remember. Just stop, and think about the most memorable parts you had in that game.



You got them in your head?



I can say, with a pretty good certainty, most of you thought about the tentacle. Oh yeah, fighting the tentacle, sneaking past it to turn on the oxygen and fuel and light that sucker up. I bet some of you thought of the gargantua, running away as it lumbered behind you, trying to lure it into the generator. While not a boss fight per se, I bet some of you thought about your first meeting with the ichthyosaur. Maybe some of you thought about the gonarch, or the Nihilanth. Some of you might've thought about the helicopter.

Remember how good it felt defeating those creatures? You felt like, "Yeah, I took this big ass thing out! It was a hard battle, but I did it." You felt satisfaction. You felt like you really accomplished something after a lot of exploring and fighting smaller enemies.

Valve has done away with boss fights. Or, at least, entertaining ones. They've supposedly "moved past" bosses as a motivation/reward for the player. You know what you get as a reward now? Vistas. Oh, look at the bloody SCENERY! Isn't it wonderful? You drove all around the countryside and fought all these mooks and you get to look off a cliff or some shit.

Any boss fights have been reduced to fighting another goddamn hunter chopper, or a gunship, or a strider. Or groups of those things. The last "boss fight" was fighting the striders and hunters in Ep2, and even that didn't FEEL like a boss fight. C'mon, you know it didn't. It felt like you were driving around fighting a horde of enemies the same like you had been doing. Oh, they were BIGGER enemies, to be sure, but they weren't bosses. They could be a little difficult at times--although not very, because you had your magical "Kills a strider in one shot" weapon--but they didn't feel like a boss fight. I don't know about you, but I sure as hell didn't feel like, "YEAH, I beat ALL those things! I'm awesome!" when I was done. I felt more like, "Damn, that was exhausting and I don't really feel rewarded for my effort. Welp, time to go back to the base."

You do the same thing in Anticitizen One (or was it Follow Freeman? Those two blend in together) against all the striders. Just you have to use rockets instead of a strider buster. It's the same damn fight. Just like it's the same damn fight against every gunship, against every hunter chopper. You're not challenged. You're not rewarded. You leave feeling like, "I just fought that same goddamn thing like twenty times already. How many do they have?" You feel drained instead of invigorated.

But hey, at least you get some nice SCENERY.

5. You're still gonna buy it

Yeah, that's the real reason to hate Half-Life. You can read (or write) tl;dr posts enumerating all the reasons Half-Life, as a franchise, sucks--believe me, I could do a couple more bullet points here--but ultimately you're still gonna buy the games. I'm still gonna buy the games. Off of one really good title, Valve's roped us all in. Even if they've fallen off the boat and quality has declined, you're still gonna buy their stuff. The expression, "____ could shit on a plate and you'd eat it and ask for seconds" is no more applicable to any developer than Valve.

And you should hate them for that.
 
games fine, l2p

My single, solitary complaint I have with the Half-Life series is that I thought Valve half-assed bridging the first and second game together. They decided to drop their "exposition" scene from HL2, so if you wanted to figure out what happened you had to book a trip to the god damn Middle East and scour ancient buried cities for ****ing Sanskrit runes that you had to decode and triangulate with fifteen other ****ing information points before you can nod your head knowingly and say "Oh, that's how the portal storms began."
 
FishBulb said:
Hmmm, an interesting way to attract site views.

You fool! You've played right into their hands!
Click to expand...

tbh it's pretty obvious it's written to incite nerd rage (read: trolling lolol)




Also, why does the sniper shoot black boxes now? :sniper:
(maybe it's just my computer)
 
Darkside, I hope someone important reads your last post, because it's the best one I've read in a long damn time. Unfortunately. No one will.
 
Well, I do agree about Alyx. I've never really given a shit about her.

Also, great post Darkside, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think in an effort to evolve game design they've side-stepped some of the wholly necessary game mechanics that make the experience rewarding. The reality is Valve could have have it's cake and eat it too, hyuck hyuck!
 
Darkside55 said:
1. Vagueness of plot

Half-Life 1 was iconic because it didn't present you with all the facts. At the beginning of the game the sum of what you knew was that you were a physicist working in a research facility with obvious ties to the government, working with hazardous "anomalous" materials. Before shit hits the fan you hear snippets of dialogue indicating that something momentous is about to take place today, that there have been administrative personnel overseeing it, and the scientists are concerned that they might tax the mysterious equipment too far. After shit hits the fan, your main concern is survival and you only piece together the story from bits of exposition by scientists and by paying attention to your surroundings.

It was a wonderful technique that makes Half-Life remain a classic to this day, but Valve, in trying to recapture what they had, took a good formula and just went TOO FUCKING FAR. As Viperidae put it:



Valve, rather than being in the business of telling a cohesive story--which Half-Life was--is now in the business of cliffhangers and vagueries that they make up as they go along. They're so intent on giving Gordon the meanest information that, in times when there should be exposition, you get nothing. When you should get answers, you get more questions. It's a constant carrot-on-a-stick tease to ensure that fans will keep playing and buying the installments just to get a shred of what the fuck is going on, only to be presented with more sixty-four dollar questions.

And in order to find 'answers' to these questions, people rummage around with their pak explorers and GCFscape hoping to glean something out of model names and unused soundbites. The fact that it is the players, and not Valve, who flesh out most of the story isn't clever, it isn't a unique way to tell a story, it's aggravating. The fact that a single plot point in your story requires thirteen threads, a wiki entry (plus footnotes and references), and obscure lines written in .cpp files, you've clearly misconstrued what made your original game popular in the first place. You went from wading in a pool to diving into the Mariana Trench.
Click to expand...


I'm inclined to agree with you on all of your other points aside from this.

A.) If you can't figure out like, 85% of the story after playing the games, you're a retard.
If you need a wiki entry to figure out that the Vorts were slaves of Nihilanth, you're a retard. If you need a Wiki entry to understand that the Advisors are a race completely dependent on technology and convert other species into biological weapons, you're a retard.
If you need a wiki entry to explain that Gordon was gone for a long time after Half-Life 1, you're a retard.

B.) Oh no's, people look in files for plot clues, that must mean the plot is bad! Or, you know, it means people are curious.

I will say, Valve made an awful ending for HL2; talking about the very end, when G-man comes. It was uninteresting and samey.
-But Valve realized this and fixed it by creating the episodes, which cleverly continued the ending of HL2.
 
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