Mazty said:
Hahahaha. Right, so HL2 is more influential then Halo: CE, the game that shaped almost every FPS this generation. Okay, if you say so... |
Halo CE "shaped" some console shooters. PC FPS games are a race of their own, Halo is not as important as you would have it. CoD has regenerating health, yay, influence! There is nothing "edgy" about talking about and loving HL2, it has sold tremedously well and is not a hipster product. The difference lies in the direction and ambition it holds, not in sales numbers. You're simply trying to disarm the entire argument by claiming we enjoy niche gaming and thus have no voice in the concerns around stories and gaming, a pretty shallow and childish techique in my opinion. And really, really far from the truth as well.
HL2, from a technical perspectice, has breed every single highly interactive shooter ever since and showed and taught that an environment that you could actually use and be a part of adds tons to the gameplay and immersion, the Source engine has laid the foundation of Cryengine, modern Unreal Engine, Aurora engine, FrostBite engine and most other huge, important and game-changing engines of this generation.
The main reason HL2's story is celebrated is because of the way it is told, which is direct and damn near perfect, it is also down to the point and lacks hours and hours of uniteresting cutscenes with glossy character models and embarrasing dialogue. You are always in the middle of the story and you drive it directly, this is the genius of HL2, along with physics, visual superiority (at the time of release), AI and incredible art direction/level design.
The Source engine still produces impressive images today, Left 4 Dead 2 looks pretty damn good on max settings, and that's on a modifed version of an engine that was born nearly a decade ago! There is simply nothing to compare it to. As far as comparing RPG and FPS games storywise, that's just grasping for straws. You want to compare the driving physics of Gran Turismo to Burnout while you're at it?
I also maintain that Mass Effect 1 and 2, even despite being "RPG's", have pretty standard and bland stories, I much preferred the character side-quests in ME2 before the main story and that kind of speaks volumes... ME's side-quests were dowright bad and had no story at all and the main story is cliched and drab, allthough the some of the dialogue is fairly well written.