| Mazty said: 1. There was NO story telling in HL2. Just moving from points a -> b -> c. Reading parts of paper shows 2 things: 2. Havok had been around but it was far more to do with computational power. Taking what was a demanding PC game and saying "it did something with physics" is just testament to the PC being more powerful then consoles. Nothing more, nothing less. 3. G-Man? Who the **** is G-Man? I saw him multiple times throughout the game and it was bs to say the least. A guy in a suit following you and it doesn't explain who he is etc etc. Not immersive, just bizarre. 4. Well that refugee stuff is good, but wtf is it in the game? Want storytelling? Look at Mass Effect. Want lazy pretentious storytelling? HL2 is the game for that. 5. Thanks for elaborating on the storyline, but it just goes to show how poorly told the story is. ME was for me one of the most immersive and probably best games (1 & 2, never bothered with 3) I've played in terms of story. HL2 was forgettable &cliche . |
1. The players get out what they put in. If you don't want to go heavy into the story, you can just play through the game and shoot stuff. Want to pay attention to the story? Then you listen out during conversations (something I can't convey during screenshots but a lot of the stuff I mention above is also said or implied in conversations throughout the game), look for clues and read stuff around the safer areas. You effectively are Gordon Freeman (and he knows as much as you), so if you miss details, then Gordon misses details.
2. Half-Life 2 also ran on the original X-box and even for the time, only needed a very weak PC to run (I had a horrible single core AMD Athlon, 512Mb RAM and a cheap budget GeForce GPU and that ran it perfectly, physics n' all). It had nothing to do with how powerful the PC was at the time as a 3-4 year old PC could run the game. The implementation is actually very selective and efficient. Only the most pertinent items that relate to gameplay display useful physics. Like I said, look at Havok implementations in other games before and even some after. There are games that use a lot more computer power but don't implement physics as an integral part of the gameplay. It's literally for show, unlike Half-Life 2.
3. Good stories rarely tell you everything and often leave elements of mystery to keep the narrative going. The G-man is the Half-Life series' mysterious figure. For large sections of the game you're not even sure if he's just a figment of Gordon's imagination (he's not, Eli talking about him tells you that much). Stories that hand everything to you on a platter are usually the most generic. The stories that stick with you tend to be the ones you ask questions about later.
4. It's neither lazy or pretentious. The devs have worked hard to make the storytelling an integral part of the gameplay/campaign but have gone to great lengths to make it seem effortless. All those NPC conversations, broadcasts and in-game clues take time, thought and good game design to implement. They take advantage of the video game medium to tell a story in a way that's only possible in a video game; through exploration and traversal of the gameworld (or as you call it moving from point a > b > c). It's not going to gel with everyone, especially as it's a different way to tell a story that hasn't and can't be done in other mediums.
5. Like I said, you get as much of the story as your attention allows. This might not be great for everyone with such a long game (for an FPS) which is probably why they started to go the episodic route with Eps 1 & 2. Oh and give ME3 a go, you'll probably like most of the game and maybe even the ending 
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