half life 2 story

[Dsty2001]

it's your classic sci-fi B-Movie storyline

A Classic B-Movie storyline wouldn't have as many mysteries/twists in plots and the potential to make a great sequal. I'm sorry, but Half-Lifes story is far from *B-Movie*

 

[SMT]

I'm sorry, but Half-Lifes story is far from *B-Movie*

Aliens from another dimension invade Earth and turn secret military scientists into mindless, staggering zombies. Our only hope is an unlikely uber-nerd who, with the help of an expendable, wisecracking security guard, teleports to another dimension to fight a giant telekinetic space-baby.

ENOUGH SAID.

 

[Someone]

I think it's too easy to look back at the HL1 story and see it's flaws....but for it's time it was awesome. There just weren't many (any?) games that decided to actually have a story vs just mindless level to level killing.

Not that the story/plot itself was awesome (it was good but nothing special), but it was enough to grab your interest and make you see more than just killing of aliens/soilders during the game. There was more purpose to your actions.
---
Worth playing the first before getting HL2 though, not that you'd need to really, but it's more of a chapter in a book. Same go for BlueShift and Opposing Force. You wouldn't be missing a ton not to play, but you will understand who,what,why,where, when a little better (perhaps) and get a feel for what everything going on.

 

[ShadowFox]

No.. Shuzer is right. The story was okay.. but it was the suspense, the storytelling and the level design are what made it popular. Of course, I suppose if the only other game you ever played was Quake.. then the HL story would be amazing.

Really, the Half-Life 2 story seems to have very little to do with the HL story. I'm glad.. as the HL2 story seems much more integral to the game.

 

[wbcheater]

wow
so many replies in just a few minutes
actually the reason i brought hl is because of cs

i heard hl has 2 endings?
so which one do we start hl2 from?

ive said this many a times... hl1 has two(2) endings at the end when your with gman in the frieght car instead of walking throught the portal like everyone does. just wait there about 2-5 mins and gman will get board and give you another ending.... hl2 is starting from the first ending. where you join gman and work side by side with him...

 

[KagePrototype]

The story was cliched and thin. There was hardly anything to it in the first game. Really. the first and last 15 minutes of the game are the points with the main details. These are the only main things you find out in the rest of the game:

Spoiler

1. The government wants everyone associated with Black Mesa dead, especially you
2. You have to launch a rocket to help the Lambda team, who claim to have a solution to the invasion
3. You get captured, thrown in a trash compactor, and escape
4. You find out humans have been experimenting on the Xenians for quite some time
5. You realise the only way to stop the Xen invasion is to teleport to Xen and kill Nihilanth

These are the main points of the plot in HL in between the beginning and the end, with hardly anything else. There are a few odd points from other games, but they really don't advance the plot in any real direction. The only one is the introduction of Race X in opposing Force, and even then it's been confirmed they won't be in HL2. Face it, HL's plot was paper-thin for a video game, even in 1998.

People liked HL because of how it took FPS narrative to the next level. Before HL, Unreal was probably the game that told a coherent plot the best (and even that one was shit). But it only did it via little things to had to read every now and then. HL managed to create a very immersive and unpredictable experience, one that existed outside of the bog-standard run and gun formula that was getting tiresome. HL couldn't have been timed better for release, really. It was what the FPS genre needed at the time.

The plot was crap, everyone knows that. If you want a good video game plot, there are countless RPGs and adventure games that came out years before HL, with much better stories to tell. The plot wasn't what made it good -- what made it good was that it was an FPS, with just as much immersive quality as any RPG ever had. Through a combination of brilliant graphics, amazing AI and scripted sequences, it was the most original, challenging and immersive FPS game at the time. A good plot can never make a game good; it has to be fun first.

 

[Styloid]

HL1 plot:
-Gordon arrives at Black Mesa to perform experiment (There are technical difficulties and scientists are nervous)
-Experiment goes wrong but Gordon survives due to HEV suit
-Gordon encounters some survivors and must go to surface and find help
-Gordon makes his way around the complex meeting some aliens and obstacles
-Gordon sees a grunt only to realize the grunts are there to kill the scientists and not help them
-Gordon eventually reaches surface to find that marines are there to kill everybody
-Gordon heads back underground through a bunker on the surface
-Gordon learns that to stop the invasion he must launch a satellite first
-Gordon rides the tram and eventually launches the satellite
-Gordon is tricked by some soldiers and left in a trash compactor but escapes
-Gordon makes his way back into the building where he sees experiments with aliens and weapons
-Gordon saves some scientists who tell him to head toward the Lambda Core
-On the way there, Gordon struggles with marines but finds out the marines are evacuating and are going to use air strikes
-At Lambda Core, Gordon is transported by another scientist to Xen (an alien planet)
-Gordon defeats a Gonarch and gets through an alien factory
-Gordon defeats the Nihilanth (boss)
-Gordon encounters G-man face to face and is given 2 options
THE END

I feel that the plot (all the events of the story and how they are laid out) is very strong and very well laid out. I like the way the story is structured, the pacing of the action events, the variety in environments, the flow of the story, the way they presented the events.... I pretty much thought the plot was one of the best in any video game (save great adventure games like Grim Fandango). Definitely the premise was not the most original but what actually happens in the game (the plot) was fantastic or at least 'not crap'.

 

[wayne white]

videogames are crap telling stories.

 

[Lanthanide]

The storyline in Half-Life itself wasn't that great. But when you throw in the two expansions and Decay (wish I'd played that ) it is actually pretty damn well-thought out and done.

Here's an overview of the storyline: http://website.lineone.net/~wingerden/index.htm

Read that, find out just how much detail you were missing, and -then- decide whether HL1 had a storyline or not.

Quite a bit of the stuff on that page was new to me, even though I've played all the xpacks, I just hadn't made all the links between things.

 

[aeroripper]

Holy crap that really fit all the storylines together nicely... lots of reading lol

 

[A True Canadian]

Half-Life's storyline was told through the gameplay, not by cut-scenes. There were a few scripted sequences, but the way Half-Life's plot unraveled was very well done. Only a handfull of games have succeded in pulling this off the way Half-Life did.

To rip off a quote from a famous movie:

Of course, no one can be told the story of Half-Life; you have to see it for yourself.

 

[Yak_Fighter]

The story was cliched and thin. There was hardly anything to it in the first game. Really. the first and last 15 minutes of the game are the points with the main details. These are the only main things you find out in the rest of the game:

Spoiler

1. The government wants everyone associated with Black Mesa dead, especially you
2. You have to launch a rocket to help the Lambda team, who claim to have a solution to the invasion
3. You get captured, thrown in a trash compactor, and escape
4. You find out humans have been experimenting on the Xenians for quite some time
5. You realise the only way to stop the Xen invasion is to teleport to Xen and kill Nihilanth

These are the main points of the plot in HL in between the beginning and the end, with hardly anything else. There are a few odd points from other games, but they really don't advance the plot in any real direction. The only one is the introduction of Race X in opposing Force, and even then it's been confirmed they won't be in HL2. Face it, HL's plot was paper-thin for a video game, even in 1998.

People liked HL because of how it took FPS narrative to the next level. Before HL, Unreal was probably the game that told a coherent plot the best (and even that one was shit). But it only did it via little things to had to read every now and then. HL managed to create a very immersive and unpredictable experience, one that existed outside of the bog-standard run and gun formula that was getting tiresome. HL couldn't have been timed better for release, really. It was what the FPS genre needed at the time.

The plot was crap, everyone knows that. If you want a good video game plot, there are countless RPGs and adventure games that came out years before HL, with much better stories to tell. The plot wasn't what made it good -- what made it good was that it was an FPS, with just as much immersive quality as any RPG ever had. Through a combination of brilliant graphics, amazing AI and scripted sequences, it was the most original, challenging and immersive FPS game at the time. A good plot can never make a game good; it has to be fun first.

Who said you could post outside of the Snarkpit? As for a storyline, the first times I played through the singleplayer I missed much of it as its not all readily obvious. However, after I replayed it recently I realized how prevalent the storyline is in the game, and how much of an impact it has. Every level is important to the storyline, and there are many little details that can be overlooked if you aren't paying attention. You've got the soldiers discussing their distaste for killing defenseless scientists, the revelation of the teleportation labs, the frequent watch of the G-Man, the ability of the assassins to become invisible, stumbling upon the xenian factory, determining what the crystal is that caused all this mess, the various habitats/life cycles/relationships of the aliens, the hatred the marines eventually have for you, etc. It's alot more deep than it looks, especially for the FPS genre, which has never been a very effective storytelling device.

 

[Lanthanide]

The assassins only become invisible on Hard difficulty.

 

[Yak_Fighter]

Indeed you're right.