The storytelling in most FPS' has been directly influenced from Half-Life 2 (Call of Duty campign modes borrow heavily from Half-Life 2, Resistance 3 is definately influenced from HL2 and Crytek have specifically stated they took influence from HL2). Then there's the physics implementations and the direct effect they have on gameplay which have now become common place (e.g. Bioshock's telekinesis). Actually Ken Levine also stated they took influence from HL2 for Bioshock Infinite in terms of the emotional impact of a characters story arc by citing Alyx Vance. Dishonored took influence in terms of world building and art style. There's a long list.

Let me get this right. You think that a game released before HL2 draws heavily from HL2....?

Physics has been around before HL2, as HL2 was simply a modified HAVOK engine. The issue with HL2 is people read into it things that aren't there. I played a medicore at best FPS which had a water-thin storyline and was riddled with cliche characters. The only reason HL2 is praised is because it plays on the "nerd fantasy" and gave PC gamers an exclusive title in a time where consoles were starting to overtake PC gaming. 

Are you trolling again? I can never tell with you.

Anyway, I'll try answering seriously:

As of December 2008, Half-Life 2 at retail (so not including Steam downloads) had sold 6.5million. Orange Box had sole a further 3 million (at retail again). So 4 years ago, Half-Life 2 had sold 9.5million at retail, not including digital downloads. If you include digital downloads, that figure is likely a lot higher and if you account for the last 4 years...

Source: http://www.shacknews.com/article/56193/valve-reveals-lifetime-retail-sales

Call of Duty 4 onwards. There's a significant and positive change in storytelling between CoD2/3 and 4.

As for physics, look at the implementations before HL2. Havok has been around for ages yet HL2 was the first (heavily modified I might add) implementation which actually made physics integral to the gameplay and consistently throughout the entire campaign. It was also a lot more natural than earlier games (and some later implementations); it gave a large variety of items that the player could interact with. Since then, a number of games have made use of physics beyond just looking "cool" and used them in the gameplay (like Bioshock or Dishonored).

As for story, the subtlties I mentioned were things like this:

That single segment image in Eli's lab explains all the backstory whilst Gordon has been in stasis.

Or segments like this showing the G-man providing help:

It isn't a simple alien invasion either as there are multiple species involved. Earth effectively becomes a place for alien refugees to escape the Combine. The events at Black Mesa eventually lead to the portal storms and numerous alien species fleeing the combine to Earth (most notably the Vortigants). This leads to a range of alien wildlife entering Earth's ecosystem like the antlions. When the Combine eventually decide to follow, they conquer Earth in the space of 7 hours (7-hour war in image 1).

Years go by and Gordon is held in stasis by the G-man throughout these events whilst the Combine solidify their hold on Earth. The G-man releases Gordon, who is none the wiser to any of these events, is in the same position as the player and has to figure out this back story based on conversations and the clues littered throughout the game. Gordon is effectively sent (by the G-man) as a catalyst to kick start a revolution as occurs during the course of the game. The extra maps/conversations/hints throughout City17 and the encampments give hints to the details of the rebel struggle and the revolution.

The G-man himself is pretty pivotal and from what I can gather, is against the Combine. The mystery surrounding his background however is one of the elements that Valve have yet to answer. I've got a bit off topic with this so I'm going to stop there. I could go on but then I'd be here all night. Needless to say, the information is in the game, you just need to notice it.

Trolololo and neogaf reference gone unnotice successful win.

There was NO story telling in HL2. Just moving from points a -> b -> c. Reading parts of paper shows 2 things:
1) Bad game design. Expecting players to inspect every inch isn't acceptable.
2) To fit the storyline into such a small place shows how thin it truly is.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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 .

Even with what you have said, the story is still incredibly thin. Aliens have invaded earth. Gordon is there to start a resistance. Woop woop. Not quite Mass Effect is it?

Rave over the physics all you wish, but I don't see why it's relevant. Frankly the vehicles handled like shit and it seemed more of a gimmick then anything vital or ground breaking. Want physics thats pertinent to games? Red Faction Guerilla. 

Leaving blanks is not good story telling if the story is already thin. If it was a mystery or thriller, okay fair enough, but what we have at the moment is a thin cliche story and a few blanks. It's like someone took nothing but the bullet points from a napkin mindstorm and never got further then that. 

I heard about the ME3 ending. It's atrocious, both before and even after the patch.

This HL2 worship is just a knee jerk reaction to Halo, the console game that shaped almost all other FPS' in the next decade. Having played many of the FPS' out at that time, HL2 is nothing special, nothing memorable, and is just the "cool" thing to like. 

Funny you mention Mass Effect. If I took your description of Half-Life 2 I could equally apply it to Mass Effect. The only difference is the scale (Mass Effect = galaxy, HL2 = Earth... actually, the scale in story terms is similar, just not during each game). I mean, if you actually think about ME2, very little actually happens in story terms; Shephard teams up with the guys that save his life, builds a team and sends them on a suicide mission to defeat the Collectors. The storyline is actually fairly generic and normal space odyssey fare (and I absolutely loved the game, so don't think I'm hating on the game).

In HL2, the guy that imprisoned Gordon wakes him up and throws him into a situation that he has to figure out for himself. In attempting to survive he discovers old friends and helps them to sabotage the Combine which sparks a revolution. During the revolution an old friend gets kidnapped/imprisoned and attempting to save him gives Gordon the opportunity to strike a fatal blow to the Combine on Earth.

The difference is in how they tell the story. Mass Effect uses a classic and direct RPG approach. HL2 tries to passively tell the story through the game world. And as I mentioned before, part of the reason you think the story is simply bullet points is because of this passive storytelling and not realising the details of the story are being revealed as you play. That doesn't make it any less valid a storytelling method, just different, and one that obviously doesn't gel with you.

As for the physics, you realise that RF Guerrilla was released 5 years after HL2? Like I said, the Havok physics implementation in HL2 was revolutionary at the time, made all the more astounding for the fact it was both integral to gameplay and was possible on such low-end hardware. To be honest, I don't see how the vehicles were much worse in handling then most other FPS' of the time, Halo included. Nearly every FPS I play with vehicles from back then has fairly crap handling.

And I don't know why you think love of HL2 is simply a knee jerk reaction to Halo. HL2 was the sequel to what is probably the second most influential FPS of the 90s (first being Wolfenstein 3D/Doom for creating the genre). All the elements HL2 introduced into the genre have influenced numerous FPS' even today (see my previous posts). That's not to say Halo wasn't influential; it found a way of bringing/popularising the FPS genre on consoles and added regenerating health. It did what both Half-Life games did in combining a lot of elements from other games along with a few of their own innovations and combined them into a single, impressive package.

Is it that difficult to accept that people genuinely liked Half-Life 2 for what I've described above and in previous posts? I don't like Halo for instance, but I can completely understand why people love it and fully accept the influence/innovations it brought to the genre.

Mass Effect has a huge backstory and a vast, diverse amount of characters whilst also not having a black-and-white morality. HL2 is short and cliche. 

HL2's story is still piss small and clich regardless of how it is told. There are bad alien invaders. You are going to lead the resistance to stop them. Nope, this is HL2, not Resistance. I don't see Resistance praised for it's story....

Yes I know RF:G was released afterwards but that's beside the point. The point is the physics in HL2 was just a bit of polish and glitz - it didn't really do anything for the gameplay as a whole. The vehicles in Halo handled brillaintly. The vehicles in HL2 handled like dodgems. Either way HL2's physics is no better then praising a game for having good graphics. It's nice, but not necessary and doesn't make up for gameplay. 

What has HL2 influenced??? Almost all the exsiting FPS' of this generation have much more in common with CoD or Halo. How many games nowadays have multiple weapons and life packs? None. Almost all have iron sights and some sort of life regen, as well as quick access grenades and melee. None of that exists in HL2. Halo was nothing like HL2....In any conceivable way. 

If you praise a game for it's good story, then you either have a very charitable idea of what constitudes a good story, or are reading into something that just isn't there. I can't see how "short and cliche" can be considered good as they generally regarded as negative aspects of a story.