I got the Orange Box recently and after playing through Portal I'm about to start on HL2 (original) however I'm wondering I need to play HL1 first to understand HL2.
HL2 Question
- Thread starter fierydemise
- Start date
Not really. There aren't really too many references to HL1. But I'd play HL1 because it was an awesome game.
lxskllr
No Lifer
- Nov 30, 2004
- 58,425
- 8,714
- 126
I would consider it important due to the returning characters. It doesn't make much difference in the story, but there's some aspects of HL2 that become less special if you haven't played HL. And as GundamSonicZeroX said, it is a great game. I think it's important to play just to have experience playing one of PC gaming's greatest games. This is a classic that rates up there with Doom, Deus EX, Wolf3d, and Unreal.
YOU MUST PLAY HL1 first. All the refrences to Black Mesa will be moot if you do not. Plus......it was one of the best games ever. Just a great adventure from start to end and with todays hardware, framerate is not an issue 
Dave
Dave
DangerAardvark
Diamond Member
- Oct 22, 2004
- 7,559
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They make a TON of references to HL1 in HL2. Though you'll still probably be lost even if you did play HL1.
actually i played HL2 without playing HL1. i was just fine and i understood what was going on...kind of. it helped that my friend explained it a bit. later went back and played hl1. so...yes you should play HL1 first. and you must play the episodes in order. they're short and you need to play them in order to understand that story.
you can play ep 2 before ep 1 - there's a recap of the relevant information from ep 1 at the beginning of ep 2.
Not a bad idea to flesh out your understanding of the storyline, but it's designed to stand on a game as its own.
Yeah...wish they wouldn't have done that. There hadn't been a pre-rendered video cutscene in any half-life game up until then, and that completely ruined one of the things Valve was doing right - keeping EVERYTHING in the engine. Shoulda just started the game with Gordon coming to in the train. They did an excellent job of introducing episode one with Gordon and Alyx's exit from the Citadel reactor, I don't know why they couldn't have done some similar flashback type sequence with Ep 2.
If you do get HL1, make sure you get one of the bundles that comes with Blue Shift and Opposing Force. One main character comes from Blue Shift, and you'll appreciate him better if you play that before HL2.
-z
-z
Yeah, that really pissed me off too. Not having cut scenes was the #1 thing I liked best about Half-Life all these years. Not only did they introduce a new (and actually decent) way of story telling, they kept doing it, even after seven years. The only reason I think they did it is because they didn't want a lot of reviews or rants saying "It's been 1 and a half years. ValVe could've at least recapped." TS to them. A real fan would've replayed the needed games to recap.
EDIT: Forgot to mention this HL2 mod. It's called Awakening. You get to play as Adrian Shepard.
http://awakening.hl2files.com/story.htm
Episode 1 is right there on the Orange Box. There's really no excuse for not replaying it before playing Episode Two. God knows I did.
jonks
Lifer
- Feb 7, 2005
- 13,918
- 20
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It was a chore for me to play HL1, it didn't age well. I played it last year, but I don't remember if I played it before or after HL2. I think you can just wiki HL1, read up, and then enjoy HL2. But as others said above, even if you play hl1 it won't help you understand hl2.
I youtubed that. Funny, I played through the first two hours of HL1 many times (formatting, losing game saves, fucking up and needing to start over, etc.) and I never did that.
HL1 may not be the greatest game to look at (compared to graphics today), but the storyline and action make it worthwhile to play though. I just introduced a friend of mine to HL and recommended he play through HL1:Source before moving on to HL2. AFAIK, HL1:Source is just a minor facelift to the original HL1 with more detailed textures. But the gameplay is exactly the same.
I would recommend to anyone to play through HL1 before trying HL2. It's still a fun game and it will flesh out HL2 by knowing what got Gordon Freeman (and the rest of the world) into the mess they are in during HL2.
I would recommend to anyone to play through HL1 before trying HL2. It's still a fun game and it will flesh out HL2 by knowing what got Gordon Freeman (and the rest of the world) into the mess they are in during HL2.
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