Alec_85
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I was bored so I decided to translate this "new" article from the Swedish site / paper called GameReactor (from now on known as GR). Keep in mind, this is my first translation & I'm tired 
English aint my primary language either. Swedish is. So bare with me (don't think that will be neccessary) okay?
The text is hereby courtesy of GR I guess:
By Petter Engelin (translated by me)
Gordon rules
Mr. Freeman returns by the end of summer when the world?s most wanted follow-up premieres. Gamereactor visited the developers...
The footsteps echoes muffled inside the marble dome. The light from the chandeliers reflects in the bright stone. An impressive view, taken from a lost, a little more elegant age. The room radiates power, a residence, city hall or a cout of law building perhaps? In the middle of the grandness, Gordon Freeman stands & looks around. He is tightly watched. Cameras & guards at every corner. A big videoscreen looms on the eastern wall of the dome, an elderly man talks with a calm, almost hypnotising voice.
?The world we live in changes, the people develop?. Some frases are repeating more than others, almost like a mantra. The man talks about genetic immortality, order & harsh justice ? He talks about City 17. The echoes of history roars soundless through the marble hall.
Two men from the local population are standing in front of one of the receptiondiscs in the hall. They are wearing white, numbered overalls & look like a couple of model inmates from the nearest prison. Gordon stands behind the two men, without knowing whats happened, happens & what?s coming. Completely set to zero. The window closes when the two men have been served & Gordon looks around himself once again. The man on the screen keeps preaching his mantras & the hall is empty except for four masked guards who guards an exit. Gordon moves towards the west part & towards one of the guards. The guards raises his baton, which sparkles of 50k Volt, muscleparalyzing currents, & takes two quick steps forward. Gordon retreats calmly, while the guards yells commands about complete obedience towards him through the breathingholes on the mask that resembles a skeleton. All of a sudden, the doors swing open & the sun?s ruthlessly bright beams dances across the shiny marble floor. Gordon is dazzled by the sunlight when he steps out on the stairway & gazes across a square. Welcome to City 17, Mr. Freeman.
The questions are many, the answers seems to be few. What really happened to Gordon Freeman after the first game?s final sequence? Did Gordon accept the job offer that the mysterious G-Man offered on the way away from the crisisstruck Black Mesa? What is City 17? How did we get there? Who are these guards with batons & why are they guarding every alley, every street & every door in the city that we just arrived to?
Gordon walks over the square. A repressed, numbered, citizen asks if they haven?t met before when a huge mechanical eye stops in the middle of the air above my head. The eye buzzes slightly & blinks before it takes a photograph of both of us & then floats away across the square. Gordon must be careful, somebody is listening to everything that happens in City 17. The citizens are under severe surveillance & the stench of fascism & nazism oozes through the screen.
I back up, pull the mouse backwards & look up above the lightbeige, grey & yellow stonehouses that surrounds the square & the centrally placed, emptied fountain. The buildings are old & tall, beautiful in the morningsun?s strong beams. They remind of a more beautiful & a more free past. The atmossphere breathes Eastern Europe, the beautiful drowns by the anxiety & the suspiciousness. If it weren?t for the hissing guards hi-tech uniforms & the floating eye, I might?ve been in Warzaw, 1940. Nazi Germany have invaded Poland, the polish jews are transferred to the center of the city core. Where they are watcher over by german soldiers, an extreme oppression, genocide, the death of socialism. First then, I notice the huge, black tower that rises above the horizon. Like a monster, it has wriggled down the streets, swallowed entire blocks & occupies large parts of the eastern part of City 17.
The gaze is again broken by the mechanical eye, two new pictures are taken. I head towards an alley to perhaps get a better view of the black, enormous citadel when a huge, mechanical, spider appears. In an alley on the other side of the brick wall, it climbs over a smaller rooftop, stamps over the carwreaks, to then disappear in the morning fog. Where am I? What was that? The feeling of grandness just like mystique & foreign objects is just as strong as it is welcome. I shudder & feel how the will to explore struggles with the fear for the unknown in my mind. Welcome to City 17, Mr. Engelin (The original author).
After the first hour inside the world?s most wanted game, I understand why Valve have been so extremely quietive about the game?s story. I understand that since the first game?s manuscript was written down on paper, there have been plans for a grand sequel with a much deeper message.
I arrive at Valve?s office just before lunch. It?s a hard working, much larger team than five years ago that I meet after I have taken the elevator to the wrong floor once or twice. Valve have half a floor to their own in one of the higher companybuidlings in Bellevue, 15 minutes outside Seattle. I am greeted by a enormous park of cups that decorate the companie?s reception wall where all the prizes Half-Life have won are located. Then Doug Lombardi, Valve?s Cheif of PR shows up & shows me to a isolated testroom where the start-up screen for Half-Life 2 already is on display on one of the screens. After a while of wanderng in City 17?s apparently huge city core, the first test session of the day is interrupted when Valve?s founder & producer, Gabe Newell, enters the room. Gabe have managed to spill some sort of sauce on his lightred T-shirt that he tries to wipe off as he introduces himself. He talks a little bit about the primary mission in the beginning of the game & about how much time they have spent on trying once again to tell a story that really make the player take an active interest in.
Doug reaches forward & enters a command in the game?s console that loads a chapter called ?The Graveyard? (might be The Semitary too... Don?t know). Gordon is in a dark ravine, it?s night. In front of him, a bald priest is standing with a machine gun, he spits & swears with an Italian accent. His face is very detailed & it looks very believable in the way he moves his eyebrows, chinmuscles, wrinkles his forehead & blinks with his eyes while he curses something, what I never understand. The priest runs off towards what looks like a shed further into the night. I gaze forward & see how a whole horde of zombified, archtypical Half-Life enemies rises up through the ground. The priest have already begun emptying clips after clips in the corpses. They all carry the same headgear like the scientists i the first game. A lightbeige, very hostile facehugger that has always lead my thoughts to the Alien-movies. After shooting a couple of half-living enemies, I run out of ammo. The panic comes crawling. Unlike the first game where you could meet up to a maximum of four zombies at a time, I now have more than 15 hungry, grunting enemies in front of me. Gordon takes out his faithful crowbar, the most distinguishing feature of the entire series & already a cultclassical weapon. But despite eager wavering, the horde of living dead is unstoppable & to the tones of the priest?s wild swearing, Gordon dies a far too early death. Doug Lombardi turns to me & says: ?The only thing that counts in this map is some creativity?. New try. The priest barks, the corpses crawls up through the ground & the whole situation reminds more of a mixture between Serious Sam & Resident Evil than something Gordon would be part of, but hte pulse is high & purely graphical, the scenario is quite delicious. Even this time, my ammo runs out quickly but now I have discovered that there is something large lying over by the bushes.
Its form reveales it instantly, the anti-grav gun that became the big topic after last year?s cheered E3-showing of the game. Beside me, fittingly enough, there?s a pile of sawblades. A smile spreads across my face. Next second, I have loaded the anti-grav gun with spinning, razorsharp, sawblades & start firing it shortly thereafter towards the even larger horde of enemies which has almost sent the priest to his maker. The first blades chops four zombies in half, whose torsos start crawling on the ground. The sawblades run out, but with them at least 10 enemies have lost important organs & the situation seems to be under controll for now. Gordon stumbles over a few grenades on the way to teh graveyard?s farther half where the wild priest have taken shelter behind a altar. With his back against a larger tombstone, he continues to shoot while the ground once again opens up for a new horde of zombies. This time I lack both ammo & sawblades so I take out the grenades I recently found & aim well justt in front of the first group of grunting zombies while the priest empties his 20th clip. The grenade lands about a meter in front of five unknowing deadies who climb over the still moving torsos. Bang! A handful of zombies is blown to pieces while at least as many catches fire. A classical gaming moment stays in my memory when 20 burning zombies including a collection of burning torsos light up the nightblack graveyard.
End of part 1.
English aint my primary language either. Swedish is. So bare with me (don't think that will be neccessary) okay?The text is hereby courtesy of GR I guess:
By Petter Engelin (translated by me)
Gordon rules
Mr. Freeman returns by the end of summer when the world?s most wanted follow-up premieres. Gamereactor visited the developers...
The footsteps echoes muffled inside the marble dome. The light from the chandeliers reflects in the bright stone. An impressive view, taken from a lost, a little more elegant age. The room radiates power, a residence, city hall or a cout of law building perhaps? In the middle of the grandness, Gordon Freeman stands & looks around. He is tightly watched. Cameras & guards at every corner. A big videoscreen looms on the eastern wall of the dome, an elderly man talks with a calm, almost hypnotising voice.
?The world we live in changes, the people develop?. Some frases are repeating more than others, almost like a mantra. The man talks about genetic immortality, order & harsh justice ? He talks about City 17. The echoes of history roars soundless through the marble hall.
Two men from the local population are standing in front of one of the receptiondiscs in the hall. They are wearing white, numbered overalls & look like a couple of model inmates from the nearest prison. Gordon stands behind the two men, without knowing whats happened, happens & what?s coming. Completely set to zero. The window closes when the two men have been served & Gordon looks around himself once again. The man on the screen keeps preaching his mantras & the hall is empty except for four masked guards who guards an exit. Gordon moves towards the west part & towards one of the guards. The guards raises his baton, which sparkles of 50k Volt, muscleparalyzing currents, & takes two quick steps forward. Gordon retreats calmly, while the guards yells commands about complete obedience towards him through the breathingholes on the mask that resembles a skeleton. All of a sudden, the doors swing open & the sun?s ruthlessly bright beams dances across the shiny marble floor. Gordon is dazzled by the sunlight when he steps out on the stairway & gazes across a square. Welcome to City 17, Mr. Freeman.
The questions are many, the answers seems to be few. What really happened to Gordon Freeman after the first game?s final sequence? Did Gordon accept the job offer that the mysterious G-Man offered on the way away from the crisisstruck Black Mesa? What is City 17? How did we get there? Who are these guards with batons & why are they guarding every alley, every street & every door in the city that we just arrived to?
Gordon walks over the square. A repressed, numbered, citizen asks if they haven?t met before when a huge mechanical eye stops in the middle of the air above my head. The eye buzzes slightly & blinks before it takes a photograph of both of us & then floats away across the square. Gordon must be careful, somebody is listening to everything that happens in City 17. The citizens are under severe surveillance & the stench of fascism & nazism oozes through the screen.
I back up, pull the mouse backwards & look up above the lightbeige, grey & yellow stonehouses that surrounds the square & the centrally placed, emptied fountain. The buildings are old & tall, beautiful in the morningsun?s strong beams. They remind of a more beautiful & a more free past. The atmossphere breathes Eastern Europe, the beautiful drowns by the anxiety & the suspiciousness. If it weren?t for the hissing guards hi-tech uniforms & the floating eye, I might?ve been in Warzaw, 1940. Nazi Germany have invaded Poland, the polish jews are transferred to the center of the city core. Where they are watcher over by german soldiers, an extreme oppression, genocide, the death of socialism. First then, I notice the huge, black tower that rises above the horizon. Like a monster, it has wriggled down the streets, swallowed entire blocks & occupies large parts of the eastern part of City 17.
The gaze is again broken by the mechanical eye, two new pictures are taken. I head towards an alley to perhaps get a better view of the black, enormous citadel when a huge, mechanical, spider appears. In an alley on the other side of the brick wall, it climbs over a smaller rooftop, stamps over the carwreaks, to then disappear in the morning fog. Where am I? What was that? The feeling of grandness just like mystique & foreign objects is just as strong as it is welcome. I shudder & feel how the will to explore struggles with the fear for the unknown in my mind. Welcome to City 17, Mr. Engelin (The original author).
After the first hour inside the world?s most wanted game, I understand why Valve have been so extremely quietive about the game?s story. I understand that since the first game?s manuscript was written down on paper, there have been plans for a grand sequel with a much deeper message.
I arrive at Valve?s office just before lunch. It?s a hard working, much larger team than five years ago that I meet after I have taken the elevator to the wrong floor once or twice. Valve have half a floor to their own in one of the higher companybuidlings in Bellevue, 15 minutes outside Seattle. I am greeted by a enormous park of cups that decorate the companie?s reception wall where all the prizes Half-Life have won are located. Then Doug Lombardi, Valve?s Cheif of PR shows up & shows me to a isolated testroom where the start-up screen for Half-Life 2 already is on display on one of the screens. After a while of wanderng in City 17?s apparently huge city core, the first test session of the day is interrupted when Valve?s founder & producer, Gabe Newell, enters the room. Gabe have managed to spill some sort of sauce on his lightred T-shirt that he tries to wipe off as he introduces himself. He talks a little bit about the primary mission in the beginning of the game & about how much time they have spent on trying once again to tell a story that really make the player take an active interest in.
Doug reaches forward & enters a command in the game?s console that loads a chapter called ?The Graveyard? (might be The Semitary too... Don?t know). Gordon is in a dark ravine, it?s night. In front of him, a bald priest is standing with a machine gun, he spits & swears with an Italian accent. His face is very detailed & it looks very believable in the way he moves his eyebrows, chinmuscles, wrinkles his forehead & blinks with his eyes while he curses something, what I never understand. The priest runs off towards what looks like a shed further into the night. I gaze forward & see how a whole horde of zombified, archtypical Half-Life enemies rises up through the ground. The priest have already begun emptying clips after clips in the corpses. They all carry the same headgear like the scientists i the first game. A lightbeige, very hostile facehugger that has always lead my thoughts to the Alien-movies. After shooting a couple of half-living enemies, I run out of ammo. The panic comes crawling. Unlike the first game where you could meet up to a maximum of four zombies at a time, I now have more than 15 hungry, grunting enemies in front of me. Gordon takes out his faithful crowbar, the most distinguishing feature of the entire series & already a cultclassical weapon. But despite eager wavering, the horde of living dead is unstoppable & to the tones of the priest?s wild swearing, Gordon dies a far too early death. Doug Lombardi turns to me & says: ?The only thing that counts in this map is some creativity?. New try. The priest barks, the corpses crawls up through the ground & the whole situation reminds more of a mixture between Serious Sam & Resident Evil than something Gordon would be part of, but hte pulse is high & purely graphical, the scenario is quite delicious. Even this time, my ammo runs out quickly but now I have discovered that there is something large lying over by the bushes.
Its form reveales it instantly, the anti-grav gun that became the big topic after last year?s cheered E3-showing of the game. Beside me, fittingly enough, there?s a pile of sawblades. A smile spreads across my face. Next second, I have loaded the anti-grav gun with spinning, razorsharp, sawblades & start firing it shortly thereafter towards the even larger horde of enemies which has almost sent the priest to his maker. The first blades chops four zombies in half, whose torsos start crawling on the ground. The sawblades run out, but with them at least 10 enemies have lost important organs & the situation seems to be under controll for now. Gordon stumbles over a few grenades on the way to teh graveyard?s farther half where the wild priest have taken shelter behind a altar. With his back against a larger tombstone, he continues to shoot while the ground once again opens up for a new horde of zombies. This time I lack both ammo & sawblades so I take out the grenades I recently found & aim well justt in front of the first group of grunting zombies while the priest empties his 20th clip. The grenade lands about a meter in front of five unknowing deadies who climb over the still moving torsos. Bang! A handful of zombies is blown to pieces while at least as many catches fire. A classical gaming moment stays in my memory when 20 burning zombies including a collection of burning torsos light up the nightblack graveyard.
End of part 1.
