Originally posted by: Via
...hyped features that didn't exist (a la free roaming gameplay)...
:thumbsup:
I've yet to find any official statement dated from before Episode 2's release from Valve which blatantly states that the episode in question would feature a free-roaming style. They did say that it would be "more open ended", but actually expecting Valve to almost get rid of scripted events and creating a world of bland plains of nothingness is like asking Bethesda to stop making free-roaming games and only do on-rails shooters. It has always been the case, Half-Life was scripted to no end, it played like an interactive movie, same for Opposing Force (from Gear Box) and Blue Shift (excellent and almost forgotten chapter of the saga). Then came Half-Life 2, let's try to reiterate a little. When Half-Life 2 was announced and presented at E3, everyone whom followed the development and media revelations regularly will clearly remember that what Valve touted H-L 2 being awesome at doing was its A.I and physics.
To this day I
still remember that infamous (then famous) presentation video in which Valve shows game-play in Ravenholm, the video starts at about half-way in the actual current level. The player moves forward, kills a Fast Zombie with I believe was a barrel with the Gravity Gun (part of their "awesome elite physics" extravaganza to the public) and then proceeded left when all of a sudden a Combine soldier pops out of seemingly nowhere (probably spawned at an adjacent building, and yes, I know the current Ravenholm level has no Combine soldiers it, you need to think pre-release content and demonstrations here). At some point the player enters the first building he can, and then the narrator showing that "tech demo" (never labeled as such, of course) talks about how dynamic and un-scripted the A.I is (you need to think that back in 2003 or so when developers used "A.I", "dynamic" and "un-scripted" especially for a shooter it had enough impact to make any fans of that genre go bunkers and pop-out a couple of veins in the process). He then says something along those lines (I need to find that video again, I don't have it anymore, but you'll get the point clearly): «
Now you'll see that Combine, he notices the player entered that building, but the player blocked the entrance with the furniture inside the room, the A.I will need to dynamically react to that new situation and somehow get to the player».
What happens next, in the context of E3, every gamers there believing it to be true (but everyone knowing enough about scripting and coding laughing their ass off in silence, which certainly must have been both mentally and physically very challenging to do), was pure perfection, the epitome of FPS A.I intelligence was reached, because then what we saw was that the Combine soldier dynamically, suddenly and "without scripts" decided by himself to break the windows of that room after apparently trying to bash open the door from the other side, and proceeds to fire blindly inside the room with half of his arm now inside the room with his sub-machine gun, firring about, and the narrator continuing on the effect and saying things like «
now the A.I saw that he couldn't bash open the door, so he decided to break those windows and try to shoot at the player inside the room».
Yeah... right.
See, the thing is Valve is a company, they need money, and like every developers they try to sell their product before its release with hype. It ain't unique to Episode 2, it's the main point of all this. It's ages-old, so that reason isn't a reason anymore, it's a standard mercantile practice, and you and I would do the exact same had we been in their shoes. I could also mention the other infamous demonstration (then famous, again) of the player walking in Kleiner's Lab for the first time and "accidentally" knocks out a PC monitor off of a desk in front of Kleiner, and then Kleiner saying something like: «
Oh please could you be more careful», with, again, a narrator mentioning that Kleiner had a freakin' dynamic dialog to react to such cases without scripting. That's just another example.
But you know what, they can show anything on video, any capabilities of scripting, and in the end
they still haven't promised it, they never said that it would be there in the final product with a hundred percent guarantee. The point being done, everything mentioned and showed during that E3 is technically possible to do with the Source engine, obviously, they've done it to show it to us, the thing is it can only be done with scripting and there's absolutely nothing dynamic or seemingly self-aware about it, they simply lied, big deal, that's a lie to us now, but it was a show back then, and most people believed in it, mostly ignorant on how much it depended on scripting to be achieved, even without knowing actually how to script (you really don't have to be a professional coder to know that things like that cannot be achieved without actual scripting at all, and that even so called dynamics are mostly all lists of decisions taken under specific conditions, making the A.I "dynamic", which in the end is still a scripting method).
I could also talk about that famous video (don't think it ever became infamous though) for Oblivion back at E3 2005, I believe. A video presentation in which you could see that great "Radiant" A.I in action, of some random magician woman living about in her house as some pure stranger enters (the player), doing her things here and there, having what seemed like an un-scripted "schedule" (a schedule by definition has to be determined in advance for us in real life, and has to be scripted in a game), drinking at her diner table, talking to her dog, eventually going up stairs and having fun practicing at casting some spells at some wooden target for that purpose, and then eventually her dog starts barking so much that she gets pissed off (apparently a feature of the Radiant A.I, cool, now we'd have A.I with human emotions!), and then she ends up casting a paralyzing (or lethal, who knows) spell at the poor furry thing and silence ensues with the narrator touting how awesome the whole thing was.
And why typing all this... well, really, it's simple, first because I like to type a lot, and secondo because I'm a little (just a little) tired of people claiming things that developers never claim, as if they promised us something specifically, and even if they did, we'd be foolish and naive enough to actually believe that it would be a "promise" in this world where money and sells for companies is all they care about? Can we just stop sleeping awake for a minute shall we? I'm just wondering here, if it can be done. In Half-Life 2 and Episode One and Two's case it's more of the same from 1998 with the original game, entirely scripted, on-rails shooter with zero re-playability unless you actually like the story and want to "watch the movie" or "read the book" again. I do pretend it, and I may be wrong, I know, in the end it's all my opinion, whatever, I thought Half-Life 2 (non-episodic part) was the incarnation of boredom until we actually get to Nova Prospekt and the Citadel, at which point it really starts to kick in (both action and story).
I thought Episode One was a better paced chapter than Half-Life 2, for sure, but it was painfully short (Blue Shift all over again). Indeed, Episode One, in my opinion, did everything it tried to better than Half-Life 2, both in terms of story telling and pure amusement from great level design and tactically placed enemies for a higher overall challenge (Half-Life 2 was a walk in the park and we all know it, what about giving us one of the most powerful weapons to have ever existed in a FPS near the end? Thanks for the wow effect and the destruction of challenge Valve, it was so extremely useful, but it was surely nice to look at). But, I'll say it again, way too short (yeah yeah, episodic stuff, it's a fail and we know it by now, but back then we had ours hopes for something that would last more than three hours), at least it wasn't expensive at all (I believe it was around $19.99).
As for Episode Two, it's what I called real Half-Life, or the actual "sequel" feel from the original game. For me Episode Two was and still is just as good as the original, but obviously much shorter (although a little longer lasting than Episode One, but not that much). Everything, again, was done professionally and with great details, and for once we had actual tangible story development ever since the ending of the first game. The story evolved at a much faster rate than in any other Half-Life games so far, the setting and context was darker, grittier (nothing like the fearful-wannabe of Ravenholm with nothing but annoyingly fast zombies and absolutely nothing to make you jump off of your seat, Ravenholm was Half-Life trying to be some sort of a proof of concept for Left 4 Dead, or simply something that Half-Life should have never attempted to be even for that short moment in Ravenholm but that's another subject).
The ending for Episode Two is arguably one of the most poignant, sudden, and un-expected to have ever been made at least for the first-person-genre specifically, it was skillfully executed, very well placed if the intention was to create complete surprise, and it was extremely meaningful for the rest of Gorden Freeman's and Alyx's actions to be taken, contrarily to the rest of the "Blah Blah Blah" (yes, that's a nod to the famous "Half-Life in 60 seconds" video on YouTube) endings we've had which never told anything clear. The action, the battles, the puzzles, the character interactions (finally better understanding and interacting with the Vorties, another part of the Half-Life saga which was still even after Episode One siting in the shadows). I mean everything, really, was better in Episode Two.
Now, to want Episode Two to be free-roaming? C'mon... it's a movie set as game, it needs a pair of perfectly aligned rails to move on, it's how Half-Life was made for. It's always going to be like that, and not only because the story telling requires it to be so, but because Valve never did any free-roaming games in their entire history, and the closet thing that comes to "randomization" (completely excluding exploration and free-roaming) is Left 4 Dead with its somewhat successful A.I Director. If they do implement that A.I director to some extent for Episode Three then I would certainly think that it would give that episode re-play value, since each time you would play it or re-load a saved game you would have enemies placed differently, and in different numbers and types, and even ammunition and health or H.E.V Suit Chargers on walls would be randomly placed, that would be refreshing from the on-rails effect we've had since the original game. But as far as wanting it being free-roaming? No way.
We've had a slight glimpse of it actually in Episode Two when you and Alyx go around in that new buggy, the terrain is much bigger, the levels in Episode Two (outdoor levels) are about twice as big as they were in previous versions of the Source engine (Half-Life 2), it's certainly bigger, and you can divert your paths more often, but there's no actual reward in exploring, there's nothing until you drive or walk or run on a trigger which spawns a couple of baddies three rooms away from you. So, anyway, enough typing for now, I guess.
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