Worst intro to a HL game ever?

ríomhaire

ríomhaire

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Dec 31, 2004
Messages
20,876
Reaction score
435
Note: I'm not including Decay, as I can't remember the intro for it.
Other note: By intro, I'm taking it to mean everything up to when the combat kicks off, not just the first scene.

Half-Life
Black Mesa Inbound. Anomalous Materials. Unforeseen Consequences. Brilliant. You start in the tram, and have a very atmospheric journey to the AM labs. You get to have a look around, meet the staff. You get to have Barney owe you a beer, you get to destroy Magnusson's casarole, you see the g-man arguing with a scientist and you get to hear Eli nervously discuss the upcoming test. There is great tension building up "Gordon doesn't need to hear all this", "Any thoughts on that cascade scenario we discussed?", "I'm noting a small discrepency in...no...it's well within acceptable limits." The sample emerges dissaster. Explosions. Xen. Vortigaunts. Test chamber. People dieing, strange crab creatures everywhere. It's just brilliant.

Opposing Force
You're a soldier, you're gonna kick some ass. Oh, there's the cliff scene in the background! And another helicopter...and a manta - OH SHIT! You're revived by a scientist and you get your vest. A zombie chases you and you're unarmed (That will always stick out in my memory because the OP4 demo was the first HL game I ever played. I had no idea what a headcrab was and the zombie scared the living crap out of me).

Blue Shift
Elevator scene. everything else is good but the elevator scene is the icing on the cake. I think this is the best display of the chaos that the resonance cascade caused. You see everything going haywire, a tram crashing, aliens appearing and a lovely scene where a confused Vortigaunt curiously inspects a scientist, until the scientist screams and startles the Vortigaunt. The Vortigaunt gets scared and attacks.

Half-Life 2
The g-man speach. The train station, the appartment raid, Dr. Kleiner's lab. It's all great and I'm not going to say any more because I'm getting a little sick of typing.

Episode One
"Tell me Dr. Freeman, if you can: You have destroyed so much. What exactly is it you have created? Can you name even one thing? I thought not."
"We'll see...about that!"
Great sequence followed by great exploration of the citadel.

Episode Two
You wake up on the train, Alyx gets you out. Some nice effects as the portal storm destroys the bridge. You go through a few tunnels and then Alyx gets stabbed by a hunter. It just doesn't seem nearly as great as the others. Sure it's the most emotional, but I never really liked Alyx that much :p
 
I don't know, they all seemed like really brilliant openings to me.
 
Being as the three episodes will comprise one whole, it could be that the beginning of Episode 1 should be considered the only beginning; i.e., the beginning of 'The Episodes.' Which would give the start of Episode 2 a pass.
 
I thought the Episode 1 sequence it kicks off with was pretty contrived and crappy (here's what happened, slide by slide); the base of the Citadel stuff was fantastic, though. Episode 2's opening has trouble because it's the "middle" half--how do you kick off with that? Personally, I thought the train climbing and the music was very atmospheric. The mistake it made was sending the player into the tunnels just after Alyx was injured.
 
The beginning of HL2 was the best, you got the feeling the earth has changed and there's hiding places everywhere..

If BlackMesaSource would be released now i'd say Half Life wins with the intro, Black Mesa is so awesome :cheers:
 
The episode beginnings were good, along with the HL2 and HL1 openings.
 
Half-Life 2 opening wins by a mile: atmospheric, detailed and engrossing. If episode two had an intro like that, it would probably have taken up half the game. It's "the middle child of the series", so I didn't really expect it to have the same great pacing in terms of plot and atmosphere for the beginning and end. It just wasn't going to happen.
 
You guys miss the point of the thread, he wanted your opinion on the worst one.

I vote Blue Shift, generic BM train for the lose.
 
Iron_cube said:
You guys miss the point of the thread, he wanted your opinion on the worst one.

I vote Blue Shift, generic BM train for the lose.
Click to expand...
That's not the point of the thread. That's not the point of the thread at all!

The question would be better worded as "[Do you think Episode Two has the] worst intro to a HL game ever?" given that it is in the Episode Two section rather than Half-Life Series or Single Player Mythology sections, and the way his post establishes not his opinion but a factual (although potentially bias) explanation of each intro culminating in Episode Two's lacklustre intro summary, rather than simply asking a question to those who would post after him. I could be wrong though.

I haven't played blue shift, largely because the premise of the game didn't seem all that interesting, so I'm not surprised the intro didn't live up to the standards of the other games.
 
Perfect for me too, I would say all Hl2 intros were better than all HL intros
 
Half-Life's is now a big block of unplayability, even if it was impressive in 1998 when such things hadn't been done. Now it's just tedious, and it still would be even if it was running in source in full sex-o-vision. My friend played it recently and found the game entirely impenetrable when he didn't save and had to replay the entire sequence. You've seen it once, and it's never going to be too different...

Decay doesn't really have an opening, but it's probably the worst of the lot. A lot of waiting for dull AI and in-world machines to do their stuff. Blue Shift loses points for just being a Half-Life retread. Opposing Force probably has the best GoldSrc opening.

I think they got the balance perfect in Half-Life 2. You're bombarded with new information from the beginning, you have things intelligently introduced to you, and certain scenes peak the tension in ways that Hazard Suit Fetching missions could never do in Black Mesa. Episode's One and Two are handled well for what they are: segments of a story that don't need much introduction.
 
And they autosave in just the right places. :D
 
HL1's, while being great for atmosphere, gets tedious to go through again during replays because it's so long.
 
The episodes are not a new game. Why would they have an intro? They're episodic for a reason.
 
Worst I would say episode two's recap intro... it was very unnecessary
 
Operational said:
You are in a helicopter. It crashes. Its nothing compared to the opening of Half-Life.
Click to expand...
There's banter and it's over in half the time of any other opener. Just being over with is a virtue among the goldsrc openings.
 
First recap scene was quite good. But they're episodic, some things must.... be sacrificed
 
For Episode Two Valve catered for people who hadn't played Episode One, that is why the recap is there and why you start off with no weapons. Not sure why, surly people would play Episode One before Episode Two, especially since it comes with the Orange Box.
 
Operational said:
But it had very little atmosphere compared to Half-Life's intro, also I found the banter more annoying than anything else.
Click to expand...
It only has less atmosphere than Half-Life's because it IS Half-Life's atmosphere. How were they supposed to set it up any different? But for what there is there, seeing the Surface Tension cliff-face was a nice touch, because it immediately allied the game with the heavy combat sections of Half-Life, which is arguably what Opposing Force was aiming to be like. Op4 pulls up its sleeves and gets to work and avoids the tedium of 'oooh, isn't Black Mesa really big and isn't it cool working here before it goes to shit!' that ALL the other games have. It's also the one place in Half-Life that someone makes a yo'mama joke. So BAM!
 
kupoartist said:
Half-Life's is now a big block of unplayability, even if it was impressive in 1998 when such things hadn't been done. Now it's just tedious, and it still would be even if it was running in source in full sex-o-vision. My friend played it recently and found the game entirely impenetrable when he didn't save and had to replay the entire sequence. You've seen it once, and it's never going to be too different...

Decay doesn't really have an opening, but it's probably the worst of the lot. A lot of waiting for dull AI and in-world machines to do their stuff. Blue Shift loses points for just being a Half-Life retread. Opposing Force probably has the best GoldSrc opening.
Click to expand...
I still love sitting through the intro every time I replay HL1, but that's probably because I RP in the game so much.

On Blue Shift's intro: The tram sequence isn't as good as HL's, and the wandering around to get your stuff is pretty much the same sort of deal, but I really love the elevator sequence. I think that it showcases the resonance cascade better than any other part of the GoldSrc games.

Oh, and it's not that I didn't like EP2's intro, I just thought that it wasn't as good as the others.
 
riomhaire said:
I still love sitting through the intro every time I replay HL1, but that's probably because I RP in the game so much.
Click to expand...
Well yes, I go into nostalgia overload when it's going on, but my friend's misfortune on the PS2 version was an eye-opener. For anyone that the sequence means nothing to, who just wants to get into the game, there really isn't enough being revealed in the sequence to make it worth a second playthrough.
 
True. That's why Valve stuck chapter options into Half-Life: Source.
 
Or you could just type "map c1a1" in the console for vanilla HL1.
 
I absolutely cant see how recaps are making people angry. What the EFF is wrong with you people?

You're just seeing what you've done so far in the series. Jesus christ.

:sleep:
 
I agree with Iron_cube, why so much hatred of the replays?

Personally I think they gel pretty well. I like having a little recap of 'the story so far', it sets the mood for the upcoming game and it's a heck of a lot more interesting than just having Gordon open his eyes and stand up.

Although I did think the Ep1 intro was by far the better. That looked more like a 'Gordon Freeman hallucination sequence', which you could probably expect to see after getting a facefull of explosion. The Ep2 recap was more like a movie trailer... much better than no intro at all, but I would agree the 'least good' out of the HL series.
 
riomhaire said:
Episode Two
You wake up on the train, Alyx gets you out. Some nice effects as the portal storm destroys the bridge. You go through a few tunnels and then Alyx gets stabbed by a hunter. It just doesn't seem nearly as great as the others. Sure it's the most emotional, but I never really liked Alyx that much :p
Click to expand...

Nooooooeeeees!

I hasn't boughts it yet D :
 
Yeah, I don't think the recaps themselves are that good (too long), but there's pretty much no reason to be angry if there's another one. It's a bit too far.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

B
Dr. Rosenberg's cut appearance in Half-Life: Blue Shift
Replies
0
Views
5K
Barnz
B
bbson john
Hi everyone. I am new to this forum!
Replies
11
Views
6K
Tollbooth Willie
Tollbooth Willie
MFL
Fascinating look at the ongoing psychological evolution of flat hieirarchies.
Replies
2
Views
2K
Tollbooth Willie
Tollbooth Willie
B
Half-Life's unused cutscenes
Replies
0
Views
7K
Barnz
B
B
Marc Laidlaw talks more about his Half-Life 2: Episode Three ideas
Replies
3
Views
21K
Tollbooth Willie
Tollbooth Willie
Back
Top