The Black Mesa Research Facility in Half-Life is set within a decommissioned Cold War-era subterranean missile base, so the office complex is meant to elicit feelings of dated and old fashioned furniture and architecture. The flooded chambers are the long abandoned missile silos, hence the deep and cavernous pits, which this room probably was before they stuck water in it. The other factor to consider is that all the levels were hacked up and hastily slapped together when the game was rebuilt in the year leading up to its release, rendering many of the original layouts which were specifically meant to be believable spaces into abstract and labyrinthine areas.
I love the surface areas in Half Life, they feel especially bizarre. It's like being in a little army men diorama, super closed in, little bits of rubble and craters placed here and there, like you're inside and outside at the same time. You pass through them so quickly, and before you know it you're back underground.
Yeah. Once the action dies down I almost instinctively just stop and take a look around. The surprising lack of ambient noise coupled with the knowledge of what comes after the Black Mesa incident is really haunting and eerie.
I think the real magic of the moving barrel room is that someone had to intentionally problem solve that. In a modern game, it probably would have been some objects that unloaded and reloaded. But here, to save memory/processing power, someone had to intentionally design an route for these barrels to take a perfect loop while maintaining the illusion that they’re all unique. What a neat find.
I was looking for this comment; he talks about it being a 'better way', when in reality it's how they were able to achieve the effect they wanted with the tools they had. Similar to when Doom 1 teleports a bunch of monsters to the player, those monsters exist on the map, in an inaccessible closet, with a portal... waiting for the player to let them out!
Quake 2 had moving crates on conveyor long ago (and Quake 1 also had moving platforms), however those were func_train, I am not sure but I think in half-life they are func_pushable, but the idea is the same
It's not really a limitation of processing power or memory but rather a limitation of the engine design itself. I believe the barrels are a func_pushable entity propelled along by a trigger_push entity which creates current within the water. They have to physically move the brush-based entity back to the beginning somehow because they can't just spawn/despawn that world geometry (brushes) at will in the same way that some engines can- it has to be rendered somewhere in the world first. They could have used a func_train entities too (which can teleport) but they'd have lost the physics. Actually the way they did it is probably the most resource-intensive way they could have solved the problem, but it's also the coolest.
@@DeusTex-Mex I know, used to make custom maps for all of those, I was 11 thou and quality of those maps was lacking at best, but anyway of all official HL 1 stuff Blue Shift had best levels.
Everything in then environment is totally silent and still. It's definitely benefiting in this regard from the era of design it was born in as much as from its particular "back-roomsy" aesthetic
Half-Life has a special place in my heart. I worked for a company that got early "gold" copies of the game so we could make deathmatch levels that would be available on launch day. As I wasn't on the design team (I was mostly writing documentation and testing the deathmatch levels with co-workers), I got a lot of time to explore the game while the arenas were being designed. I was really taken by the atmosphere and "odd places" in the game. :)
2:59 The lightswitch gimmick was pretty great at the time, since dynamic lighting wasn't really a thing. HL1 had to pre-compute lightmaps when the level was built (which took a long time), and each individually-toggleable light in an area increased that time. So they put it in a few rooms and distract you with things like health stations in the rest.
Oh yes, “the weird corporate brick maze”, just like in every building. Honestly though, the YMCA always seems to have a few of these… But maybe those are weird recreational brick mazes…
Yeah, most Ys were built in that same era of social spending Austin mentioned. Too bad Ronald Reagan duped people using the Red Scare into thinking such government welfare should only exist for corporations. Fun fact about Ronald Reagan: The only scientific problem with pissing on his grave is that, eventually, you will run out of piss
I love the liminal spaces you explore for this series, and also the full on hair clip decoration. Something about the professional/serious vibe with the hair full of clips is just so great.
this series is awesome man. we really take for granted these 3d worlds generated by the electric box under the desk. half life might have been the first game to get me just staring at these cozy spots. no other game before it was as "contextualized", i.e in doom or quake or duke3d you can't really call anything earthly. half life on the other hand really satisfied my gremlin desire to stand on top of the table at the back of the bank i could see because someone left the door open a bit. remarkable videos brother
As time has gone on, I've started to try and look at games how you do, admiring the inconsequential details of the illusion being presented. The bit about the calendar made me realize I still have a long way to go. That was a slice of comedy Also, I'm glad you made Gordon give us this tour in poor health. I'm sure he appreciated that
15:00 this goofy little post credit blooper actually gave me a ton of confidence to view my own irrational anxieties more objectively. just wanted to thank you for the surprisingly wholesome candid moment
The barrel carousel is actually a super common way of moving objects that repeat even in modern video games, but it's a rare treat to actually be able to follow that process as a player without even having to use cheats or fancy tricks. Glad to see the impossibly deep ichthyosaur room here because holy hell that made me feel very uneasy my first time playing the game! Especially when you end up down there while the giant monster fish is still lurking somewhere above you. The dam area has a similar depth but, at least it feels normal because it's a big ol' dam so of course it's huge. Black Mesa is full of these good vibes because it's all ostensibly functional and industrial, but also has the older FPS vibe of still not making quite perfect sense as an environment. Plus all the rampant health and safety violations of course
SourceGold and Source 1 games are the pinnacle of strange feeling rooms, I love it so much. Architecture plays such a huge role in both half life and portal to the point where black Mesa and aperture labs feel like characters in their own right.
One thing that summarizes the vibe of Aperture labs for me was my mom walking in on me playing, staring at the game for a while, and then saying something along the lines of "Who even cleans all that?"
I honestly love just falling asleep at night to this series. That weird familiarity but uneasiness feeling in these places kind of puts me at peace. But also your narration is more calm here than your other videos and it’s relaxing. Can’t wait for more half life or perhaps the gmod maps.
I absolutely LOVED the bonus content. There's something about the way you talk, your mind works diffently but in a good and calming and honest soothing way. Would love to see you in a podcast or something. Just rambling about.
Half-Life was the perfect game for this. I had the PS2 version and used to play the multiplayer with only one other player. Those maps are so weird and lonely and I think you've captured that really well. An Unremarkable and Odd Places video for the Metal Gear Solid games would be pretty interesting, since those games are packed with details to make them feel like real places, the first one in particular probably has more than a few unremarkable spots
Taking out your PS2 which hasn't been touched for ten years then playing a game on it which lots of people don't even know is on PS2 then walking around alone in a multiplayer map in a gamemode that is exclusive to the console release thinking am I the only one in the world doing this right now and how many people have even done this at all while absorbing the obscure map you're in which if you were seriously playing you wouldn't pay much attention to the details. Thinking about the fact this game is as old as you and the map is around the same age. Who made that exact map? Who made the textures? Where are they in life now? What kind of life did they live? It's a feeling similar to nostalgia. I often depress myself with these thoughts.
I think what Austin is getting at with the barrel thing is the core vibe of Half-Life: there is something more than what the player can see in front of them. More is going on, and you may never, ever see it. But it's kind of weirdly comforting to know that someone else might.
Yep I still remember as a kid on the train ride at the start of the game seeing these scientists having a conversation behind a window, a security guard going through a door and closing it, never to be seen again, a helicopter landing outside, a giant walking spider robot cleaning up a spillage of toxic waste... All these cool places and little stories unfolding and you never get to return there to explore. Just trapped in the little train peering out the window. When you finally get out of the train my first instinct was to turn around and try to go back to all those cool places. I would try to jump down onto the train tracks or find another way around but no dice. Such a cool trick though, even knowing I could turn on no clip and just fly through those walls to the other side, the illusion is still kinda there for me
I played Alyx until the monsters were too much for me, and then I watched my roommates play it a bit, and it also has a level of this uncanny emptiness to it. Even if I won’t make it thru a play thru myself the vibes really are something else.
This series is incredible. Some of these locations are so creepy in that liminal way, but all of these locations are just fascinating in trying to understand the developers.
i literally love this stuff i cant explain it at all but it makes my brain tickle, I love level design and world building graaah. I love how utterly nonsense most of the layouts are when you stop and look at them, where the utilitarian gameplay centric layouts clash with the sensible layout that would make a room feel like it has a purpose or reason to exist. You end up with this bizarre mush of uncanny architecture and i LOVE it
I never gave the maps in half life 1 any thought before this video and it made me realize how actually strange most of the facility is. Very well made video
i am SO with you on that last one especially. It's such a bizarre space to just exist in, and I know I always find myself hanging around there and.. sorta not knowing where to go next. and sort of just wanting to look around and see what else is going on. and then every so often another sniper shows up and i'm like whaaat
I've been slowly catching up on your content, loving it so far. Thanks for all of it. As someone that did play Half-Life when it came out (or pretty closely after anyway) it was definitely a special game. Seeing this kind of appreciation for the weird spaces of it gives it a new life for me too. One though; maybe No One Lives Forever would be an interesting one for this series. Same kind of era, different settings, but definitely an interesting title to look at.
Half-Life's general feeling will never get old to me. Even mods - I'd even say especially mods - that aren't necessarily set in the Half-Life world but just have that Gold Source atmosphere is a really comfortable kind of surreal nostalgia.
Austin! You are the first person I’ve ever encountered with my same obsession with odd places in video games. If you haven’t done it yet, you need to do unremarkable and odd places in Team Fortress 2! Seriously that game is the KING of that category.
That was great! And short at the same time, because I feel like there would be so much to cover in this game. Also, nice "High Life" beverage can. I see what you did there.
This channel has the attention to detail I didn't know that I wanted but immediately have fell in love with. Almost everything will have features which someone at some point had to make a decision on, or they could be there because of an accidental oversight but differentiating between a conscious or accidental choice is part of the fun.
Guess what? This was really cool! I'm playing half life 2 right now and I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for your sequel. But wow this first game really did you justice. I truly felt whimsical in all of the environment's odd and unremarkable glory. Those stairs at the end were so cursed 😰
Love seeing your videos Austin, keep up the excellent content! For future games, might i suggest ICO or Shadow of the Colossus? Both seem like they have plenty of odd and unremarkable places in them to comment on.
In Half-Life: Opposing Force there's an indoors green area in the chapter Friendly Fire that I love. The whole beggining of that chapter is very odd to me but that room specifically is my favorite. Gives Jusrassic Park vibes.
strong visual, this video gives me. Austin in the HEV, just walking around with the crowbar in hand, oohing and aaahing at stuff after having killed everyone.
Portal 2 is my all time favorite for weird spots like this. There’s so many “I can picture someone sitting down at this desk in this room” moments in that game.
i also feel embarrassed when I'm trying to practice japanese speaking out loud with myself, and suddenly I hear like my neighbor's steps around, and realize that they can clearly hear everything here
From watching your videos, I can definitely see the (conscious or not) philosophical Heideggerian analyses; It's almost like the nothings that we don't perceive in real life feel 'missing' from video games, which is so creepy to think about. For example, think about how often you don't notice a particular property of an object (a window you've never looked-out-of/noticed before, or the feeling when you notice a detail on someone's face or personality that you never realized they had), yet early (or specifically early 2000's) 3D games can look so un-nerving due to their lack of these details (flat walls, basic faces, unfinished/unpolished areas) hence your video series here.
@@roentgen519 because of the differences in the ‘nothing’ in videogames and real life. Real life has nothings that reveal themselves to us eventually yet video games have ‘nothings’ that, once noticed, induces uncanny. Its why videogames look fake and surreal. I’ve only read his book ‘what is called thinking’ though so im only really thinking about austin’s videos in regards to heidegger ontology.
My mom worked in a medical testing clinic when I was a kid in the early 'aughts, and many times I would be brought there on weekends to pick stuff up or drop stuff off, and the decor was very similar to what we see in black mesa. Burgundy carpets instead of green though.
In the context of exploring liminal spaces and the general philosophical tone of this series, shooting a gun at point blank range as a way of pointing at the missing 31st day in the calendar is genuinely the funniest throwaway moment I've experienced on TH-cam in a long while. I don't even know if it was intended to be funny, which makes it even funnier.
I'm so happy to see so many people catch onto HLs weird vibes. I've been a very big fan in the last decade and felt like a lunatic for obsessing about them, as something like this is hard to explain to outsiders
I remember spending way too much time in that rocket launch room. I would even tried to surf up that ramp at the back until the rocks and sky were drawing over the void.
Glad you're playing through this, it's a classic. I'd also recommend Valve's related games Blue Shift (Barry the security guard's perspective of the Black Mesa incident) and Opposing Force (the incident from the perspective of a soldier sent by the military). Also, loved the additional unexpected content at the end. Take the clips out of your hair already, you sexy self-sabotaging man you.
I always love games set in "real" places. I was blown away when my cousin introduced my brother and I to Duke Nukem 3D, as it took place in real(-ish) settings. There were bars, bookstores, cinemas, subway stations, restaurants, and tons of other things. And I loved Half Life because the first whole section of the game is just you cruising along in a train, watching everyone work. It didn't matter to 10 year old me that it was an OH&S (OSHA) nightmare of missing guard rails, spilled radioactive material and people wandering around next to walking automated cargo movers. It was watching the scientist get a coke from the machine, or people in meetings. And that's what I love about this channel -- someone who appreciates the mundane shit in video games.
My dad used to work at the BBC Television Center back in the 90s, so I used to hang around there on my own till late at night, while my dad was working and most of the building was empty. Still remember them being some of the weirdest, eerie and fascinating offices, corridors and rooms I've ever experienced. Thanks for reminding me of those memories!
Speaking of mid to late 90's FPS games, I think you would really like the skyboxes in Duke Nukem 3D. They are very detailed for the time and include some "3D skybox" elements (props and models outside of the map boundary but between the playable space and the true skybox) and inspire a lot of imagination of what lies outside of the boundary of the map.
The layout of Black Mesa is absolutely bizarre and full of seemingly purposeless and practically inaccessible rooms. My favorite is the enormous steel-plated room that seems to only exist so they can hang crates above a bottomless pit, with the only way out being to hop along said crates. The entire facility is like a money laundering scheme.
One of the reasons i prefer hl1 to hl2 is because of the level design. I'm a sucker for any video game that just has Rooms- i'd rather explore an abandoned building than run around in a field somewhere. hl1 fills that void for me, and i'll often boot up the game and just walk around with godmode and notarget on and just explore. plus headcrabs have the cutest idle sounds in hl1 and i want one as a pet
The vibe of this video really reminded me of the weirdness of Star Wars Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy. Something about those old shooters lends itself to things like this.
i played through half life again last september and if you try to wrap your mind around how people were supposed to actually navigate this facility, like if you were working here or whatever, it falls apart so quickly. nothing really makes any kind of sense, either architecturally or logistically. not to say it's not a good game but the space it takes place in makes me feel weird
This video, and many of the other works you have recently shared, are rare and prized and very special to me. When I see a new one I either watch it immediately or make a plan to sit and enjoy it at the earliest convenience. I dream of one day collaborating. Until then I am what some might call a big fan. Like that one part in Half Life where you have to stop an engine to pass the the rotors of a, well... you know.
I did, in fact, enjoy this video and would like to see more. Speaking of, I'm curious if you'd considered doing one of the for the Silent Hill games (more specicially 1-3). Not sure if that's exactly what you're going for, though, considering the oddness is very much intentional and an integral part of the experience there. Alternately, I'd love to see one of these for either of the Dishonored games. I love that franchise and a big part of that is due pretty to what you showed (in fact, I have to assume these games take at least some influence from Half-Life): a lot of stuff is there just to make it feel more real, and there's a lot of weird and interesting stuff that seems to exist just ebcause of what's around it, little details that show the devs went the extra mile just because they could.
I've played Half-Life at least once a year since I got it back in 2000, and this is the FIRST TIME I think I've ever seen the light switch in that office.
That's pretty much spot on as far as I am concerned. One of the main reason why I love games and why I still play them after 20+ years is exactly that: Environments and their "vibes", perhaps because of a certain kind of architecture, the way that combines with the lighting, the soundscape, the music and so on and so forth. People like to complain about it, but Xen is essentially the pinnacle of this kind of thing for me. Edit: I haven't looked at the rest of your series, but Thief Gold would be a great fit for it.
I didn't love playing Half-Life because I'm not super great at shooters to begin with, but you're absolutely right that the vibes are just incredible all throughout, and this was a great selection of them to reflect on! Awesome vid, keep it up!
In Freeman’s Mind, Gordon attributed the silence outside to the launch of the missile. Funny how Ross noticed the same thing and thought it was noticeable enough to come up with an in-story reason for it.
That tiny room feels weird to me because sitting at the desk, your back would be to the door and you would be facing nothing but a bare wall. Sitting like that would make me very uncomfortable. EDIT: Miller High Life is my favorite beer! Good taste.
I can only hope we will see more videos like this in the future! For other games such as the Half Life expansions, 2, Alien vs Predator 1999, Fallout 1&2 and maybe others!
One of my favorite places in the Half Life series is the food court that you pass when doing the tram ride at the beginning of the Blue Shift expansion pack. It's a cliffside food court with no security rails, some tables, and some fictional ads for pizza and tacos. I'm not sure if it counts as "odd and unremarkable" since it's kind of a set-piece, but I always found it to be a super cool area that you're never allowed to go into without noclipping. Really all of the offices you pass on the tram ride in both the original game and the Blue Shift expansion are such small things that really give Black Mesa the illusion of being a real place. It's so dang cool.
That green lamp vibe definitely gave me the nostalgic heebee jeebeez , love these videos. Would love to see your take on shadow of colossas. The map is so big and empty I just remember being young and thinking it had so much more depth than it actually does. There are probably a million odd places in that beautiful made static dead vibe of a game. 🤣
When Half Life 1 came out I was 14-15 and thought that it was a huge step forward in terms of realism. It was also the first fps that had no levels, no loading screens like other games, and where you easily could go back to most previous sections. As for why HL1 has almost no ambient sound I think I have an idea. I was lucky enough to have had a Soundblaster Live! sound card, that was caple of something called EAX, "Enhanced Audio Experience" or something like that, which was implemented in the game. With it enabled in the settings you had something better than ambient sound: Echos! Different surfaces made different echos - or non at all like that tiny office room you visited in the beginning of your video. That room had a carpet, which made no sound with EAX. The stone floor outside the room had wide reaching echos which added to the anciety you felt, knowing that some creatures in HL are sound sensitive (that missile silo with the three plant creatures was terrifying with enhanced echos! ("DANG-Dang-dang-ng" instead of just "dang")). Every room reflected the sound differently. Unfortunately the EAX technology never got a proper emulation, so that experience seems lost in time. I miss it.
Maybe there are so many detailed rooms is because Valve is one of the few game companies I can think of, that I bet they truly love the game engine they've made, and they just enjoy playing around and building in it
Half Life as a series, is WONDERFUL when it comes to scratching that itch for exploring places I shouldn't be. *Especially* Alyx, with those cozier, more enclosed and personal spaces that are inherent to it being a VR game.
half-life was incredible. I played it right when it came out and right after I set up a surround system for my computer. It scared the shit out of me at the time. Thought it was so incredibly realistic.
the radioactive barrel loop isn't because atention to detail (due to the radiation icon disappearing in the close-to-end section) but because goldsrc limitations
Regarding the Radioactive Barrel Loop, part of it is because on 1998 computers it'd be an unnecessary strain on CPU and RAM to be arbitrarily spawning and deleting entities ad-infinitum while the player is on that map - Just having the same objects cycling around the map maintains a static memory-footprint for the looping items instead of constantly allocating and deallocating memory for what is solely "flavor". Though, most other examples I'm aware of just Teleport the looping objects back to their starting coordinate instead of literally having a proper loop like this.
I'm playing arx fatalis atm but I want to replay half life again after watching this. I like the calendar critique. Feel like like they were going to do something with the passage way with the barrels and kind of gave up on it and left that in there
Call Of Duty Modern Warfare has some really tucked away and weird places, In All Ghillied Up there is a room at the very top of the fire escape right after you crawl past that big group of enemies that I used to love to visit
I’m not an expert or anything, but here’s my take on the barrel waterfall: since half-life 1 doesn’t really have physics for objects, the barrels must be following essentially predetermined paths. Nowhere in the game do objects spawn/despawn while the map is loaded, so it probably isn’t even an option, so they had to make a barrel circulation route. Also, since barrels flowing with a river of toxic goo makes no sense in or out of context, I think the only reason they’re even there is to clarify that the goo is supposed to be flowing, because it has no animation on its own.
I think just the mesa ground texture makes any place with it very weird. It's just so inorganic, weirdly magenta in some spots, always feels surreal, when office and engineering textures can fool you in the moment
the part about the barrels traveling in a loop genuinely made me so excited to learn about hahaha i remember being 5 years old and my dad would play half life with me and my brother watching and helping him choose where to go, needless to say my imagination was blown wide open by seeing this game and these areas so young! as boring as xen is now in hindsight, the mystique and vibe of making it there when i was really little sent me spiraling into trying to imagine vast realms beyond, cool video!
The Black Mesa Research Facility in Half-Life is set within a decommissioned Cold War-era subterranean missile base, so the office complex is meant to elicit feelings of dated and old fashioned furniture and architecture. The flooded chambers are the long abandoned missile silos, hence the deep and cavernous pits, which this room probably was before they stuck water in it. The other factor to consider is that all the levels were hacked up and hastily slapped together when the game was rebuilt in the year leading up to its release, rendering many of the original layouts which were specifically meant to be believable spaces into abstract and labyrinthine areas.
I was thinking about your videos while watching this. You are a legend man.
Hey it's The Half-Life Man himself.
Ayyy it's the one and only Marphy B!
Marpheus Blackmesaeus
Are you saying i've been surviving inside an old cold war base all this time
I love the surface areas in Half Life, they feel especially bizarre. It's like being in a little army men diorama, super closed in, little bits of rubble and craters placed here and there, like you're inside and outside at the same time. You pass through them so quickly, and before you know it you're back underground.
you put into words a feeling I've been mystified by for quite a while.
Yeah. Once the action dies down I almost instinctively just stop and take a look around. The surprising lack of ambient noise coupled with the knowledge of what comes after the Black Mesa incident is really haunting and eerie.
I think the real magic of the moving barrel room is that someone had to intentionally problem solve that. In a modern game, it probably would have been some objects that unloaded and reloaded. But here, to save memory/processing power, someone had to intentionally design an route for these barrels to take a perfect loop while maintaining the illusion that they’re all unique. What a neat find.
I was looking for this comment; he talks about it being a 'better way', when in reality it's how they were able to achieve the effect they wanted with the tools they had.
Similar to when Doom 1 teleports a bunch of monsters to the player, those monsters exist on the map, in an inaccessible closet, with a portal... waiting for the player to let them out!
Quake 2 had moving crates on conveyor long ago (and Quake 1 also had moving platforms), however those were func_train, I am not sure but I think in half-life they are func_pushable, but the idea is the same
It's not really a limitation of processing power or memory but rather a limitation of the engine design itself. I believe the barrels are a func_pushable entity propelled along by a trigger_push entity which creates current within the water. They have to physically move the brush-based entity back to the beginning somehow because they can't just spawn/despawn that world geometry (brushes) at will in the same way that some engines can- it has to be rendered somewhere in the world first. They could have used a func_train entities too (which can teleport) but they'd have lost the physics. Actually the way they did it is probably the most resource-intensive way they could have solved the problem, but it's also the coolest.
@@DeusTex-Mex I know, used to make custom maps for all of those, I was 11 thou and quality of those maps was lacking at best, but anyway of all official HL 1 stuff Blue Shift had best levels.
@@TURBOSLAYERPWNZlol teaching yourself the half life editor, I did the same as a kid. Pretty complicated shit for a level editor.
I can't think of a better game to fit this series than Half Life
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Everything in then environment is totally silent and still. It's definitely benefiting in this regard from the era of design it was born in as much as from its particular "back-roomsy" aesthetic
F.E.A.R. has a similar vibe with its environments
EXACTLY what i thought when i saw this pop up
Dark Souls
Half-Life has a special place in my heart. I worked for a company that got early "gold" copies of the game so we could make deathmatch levels that would be available on launch day. As I wasn't on the design team (I was mostly writing documentation and testing the deathmatch levels with co-workers), I got a lot of time to explore the game while the arenas were being designed. I was really taken by the atmosphere and "odd places" in the game. :)
Wow, that sounds like a pretty sweet gig! Well, at least play-testing the DM levels coworkers at least.
2:59 The lightswitch gimmick was pretty great at the time, since dynamic lighting wasn't really a thing. HL1 had to pre-compute lightmaps when the level was built (which took a long time), and each individually-toggleable light in an area increased that time. So they put it in a few rooms and distract you with things like health stations in the rest.
Of course Quake had done it once or twice as well, but yeah, it was still super cool
It was a thing unreal had dynamic lighting and i think even duke nukem 3d you can interact with the lights you even could kill some lights xd
Oh yes, “the weird corporate brick maze”, just like in every building.
Honestly though, the YMCA always seems to have a few of these… But maybe those are weird recreational brick mazes…
Yeah, most Ys were built in that same era of social spending Austin mentioned. Too bad Ronald Reagan duped people using the Red Scare into thinking such government welfare should only exist for corporations.
Fun fact about Ronald Reagan: The only scientific problem with pissing on his grave is that, eventually, you will run out of piss
I love the liminal spaces you explore for this series, and also the full on hair clip decoration. Something about the professional/serious vibe with the hair full of clips is just so great.
this series is awesome man. we really take for granted these 3d worlds generated by the electric box under the desk. half life might have been the first game to get me just staring at these cozy spots. no other game before it was as "contextualized", i.e in doom or quake or duke3d you can't really call anything earthly. half life on the other hand really satisfied my gremlin desire to stand on top of the table at the back of the bank i could see because someone left the door open a bit.
remarkable videos brother
As someone with the nearly uncontrollable desire to climb onto objects I shouldn't, I agree wholeheartedly
Deus Ex had some good stuff going as well.
Quake2 as well
Unreal had much more beautiful places and sceneries to behold
And better ambience and more interesting for this series of videos
As time has gone on, I've started to try and look at games how you do, admiring the inconsequential details of the illusion being presented. The bit about the calendar made me realize I still have a long way to go. That was a slice of comedy
Also, I'm glad you made Gordon give us this tour in poor health. I'm sure he appreciated that
15:00 this goofy little post credit blooper actually gave me a ton of confidence to view my own irrational anxieties more objectively. just wanted to thank you for the surprisingly wholesome candid moment
The barrel carousel is actually a super common way of moving objects that repeat even in modern video games, but it's a rare treat to actually be able to follow that process as a player without even having to use cheats or fancy tricks.
Glad to see the impossibly deep ichthyosaur room here because holy hell that made me feel very uneasy my first time playing the game! Especially when you end up down there while the giant monster fish is still lurking somewhere above you. The dam area has a similar depth but, at least it feels normal because it's a big ol' dam so of course it's huge. Black Mesa is full of these good vibes because it's all ostensibly functional and industrial, but also has the older FPS vibe of still not making quite perfect sense as an environment. Plus all the rampant health and safety violations of course
SourceGold and Source 1 games are the pinnacle of strange feeling rooms, I love it so much. Architecture plays such a huge role in both half life and portal to the point where black Mesa and aperture labs feel like characters in their own right.
One thing that summarizes the vibe of Aperture labs for me was my mom walking in on me playing, staring at the game for a while, and then saying something along the lines of "Who even cleans all that?"
That little carpeted “living room” is such a realistic detail to add to a cold, soulless industrial office building
I honestly love just falling asleep at night to this series. That weird familiarity but uneasiness feeling in these places kind of puts me at peace. But also your narration is more calm here than your other videos and it’s relaxing. Can’t wait for more half life or perhaps the gmod maps.
I absolutely LOVED the bonus content. There's something about the way you talk, your mind works diffently but in a good and calming and honest soothing way. Would love to see you in a podcast or something. Just rambling about.
I love how Austin always courteously asks for our permission at the beginning of these videos before proceeding
Half-Life was the perfect game for this. I had the PS2 version and used to play the multiplayer with only one other player. Those maps are so weird and lonely and I think you've captured that really well.
An Unremarkable and Odd Places video for the Metal Gear Solid games would be pretty interesting, since those games are packed with details to make them feel like real places, the first one in particular probably has more than a few unremarkable spots
I was thinking I’d love to see him talk about Half Life Decay! That game is a fever dream.
Taking out your PS2 which hasn't been touched for ten years then playing a game on it which lots of people don't even know is on PS2 then walking around alone in a multiplayer map in a gamemode that is exclusive to the console release thinking am I the only one in the world doing this right now and how many people have even done this at all while absorbing the obscure map you're in which if you were seriously playing you wouldn't pay much attention to the details. Thinking about the fact this game is as old as you and the map is around the same age. Who made that exact map? Who made the textures? Where are they in life now? What kind of life did they live?
It's a feeling similar to nostalgia. I often depress myself with these thoughts.
Austin I am taking advantage of my earliness to say that you should do a Shadow of the Colossus video and/or an Earthbound video
Earthbound definitely
I think what Austin is getting at with the barrel thing is the core vibe of Half-Life: there is something more than what the player can see in front of them. More is going on, and you may never, ever see it. But it's kind of weirdly comforting to know that someone else might.
Yep I still remember as a kid on the train ride at the start of the game seeing these scientists having a conversation behind a window, a security guard going through a door and closing it, never to be seen again, a helicopter landing outside, a giant walking spider robot cleaning up a spillage of toxic waste... All these cool places and little stories unfolding and you never get to return there to explore. Just trapped in the little train peering out the window. When you finally get out of the train my first instinct was to turn around and try to go back to all those cool places. I would try to jump down onto the train tracks or find another way around but no dice. Such a cool trick though, even knowing I could turn on no clip and just fly through those walls to the other side, the illusion is still kinda there for me
I played Alyx until the monsters were too much for me, and then I watched my roommates play it a bit, and it also has a level of this uncanny emptiness to it. Even if I won’t make it thru a play thru myself the vibes really are something else.
i recommend trying to push through Alyx, gets spooky, it does feel rewarding when beating it
I got to the part where the guard guys take you into the elevator and I just couldn't take it anymore, they were freaking me out to much lmao
This series is incredible. Some of these locations are so creepy in that liminal way, but all of these locations are just fascinating in trying to understand the developers.
i literally love this stuff i cant explain it at all but it makes my brain tickle, I love level design and world building graaah. I love how utterly nonsense most of the layouts are when you stop and look at them, where the utilitarian gameplay centric layouts clash with the sensible layout that would make a room feel like it has a purpose or reason to exist. You end up with this bizarre mush of uncanny architecture and i LOVE it
I never gave the maps in half life 1 any thought before this video and it made me realize how actually strange most of the facility is. Very well made video
Unremarkable and odd places in super Mario Galaxy? I think that would be cool
i am SO with you on that last one especially. It's such a bizarre space to just exist in, and I know I always find myself hanging around there and.. sorta not knowing where to go next. and sort of just wanting to look around and see what else is going on. and then every so often another sniper shows up and i'm like whaaat
I've been slowly catching up on your content, loving it so far. Thanks for all of it. As someone that did play Half-Life when it came out (or pretty closely after anyway) it was definitely a special game. Seeing this kind of appreciation for the weird spaces of it gives it a new life for me too. One though; maybe No One Lives Forever would be an interesting one for this series. Same kind of era, different settings, but definitely an interesting title to look at.
Half-Life's general feeling will never get old to me. Even mods - I'd even say especially mods - that aren't necessarily set in the Half-Life world but just have that Gold Source atmosphere is a really comfortable kind of surreal nostalgia.
Austin! You are the first person I’ve ever encountered with my same obsession with odd places in video games. If you haven’t done it yet, you need to do unremarkable and odd places in Team Fortress 2! Seriously that game is the KING of that category.
I love these videos they are so calming for lack of a better word, they make you slow down and appreciate the little things and I appreciate that
The most weird thing about this video is you considering Sunday the start of the week
That was great! And short at the same time, because I feel like there would be so much to cover in this game. Also, nice "High Life" beverage can. I see what you did there.
Please make more of these! Your FPS videos and Unremarkable Places are my faves.
I was waiting for this one! Now all I need is you to look at the Halo bulletin board and this series is perfect! Great job thank you
that transition at 9:30 is sending me, it's perfect
This channel has the attention to detail I didn't know that I wanted but immediately have fell in love with. Almost everything will have features which someone at some point had to make a decision on, or they could be there because of an accidental oversight but differentiating between a conscious or accidental choice is part of the fun.
Guess what? This was really cool! I'm playing half life 2 right now and I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for your sequel. But wow this first game really did you justice. I truly felt whimsical in all of the environment's odd and unremarkable glory. Those stairs at the end were so cursed 😰
Love seeing your videos Austin, keep up the excellent content! For future games, might i suggest ICO or Shadow of the Colossus? Both seem like they have plenty of odd and unremarkable places in them to comment on.
In Half-Life: Opposing Force there's an indoors green area in the chapter Friendly Fire that I love. The whole beggining of that chapter is very odd to me but that room specifically is my favorite. Gives Jusrassic Park vibes.
strong visual, this video gives me. Austin in the HEV, just walking around with the crowbar in hand, oohing and aaahing at stuff after having killed everyone.
Portal 2 is my all time favorite for weird spots like this. There’s so many “I can picture someone sitting down at this desk in this room” moments in that game.
I was 9 years old when this game came out. I scared me shitless, on my 11th I took on the challenge, it felt like playing through an hbo series.
loved this video. the barrels doing a loop is so surreal and adds so much
i also feel embarrassed when I'm trying to practice japanese speaking out loud with myself, and suddenly I hear like my neighbor's steps around, and realize that they can clearly hear everything here
From watching your videos, I can definitely see the (conscious or not) philosophical Heideggerian analyses; It's almost like the nothings that we don't perceive in real life feel 'missing' from video games, which is so creepy to think about. For example, think about how often you don't notice a particular property of an object (a window you've never looked-out-of/noticed before, or the feeling when you notice a detail on someone's face or personality that you never realized they had), yet early (or specifically early 2000's) 3D games can look so un-nerving due to their lack of these details (flat walls, basic faces, unfinished/unpolished areas) hence your video series here.
How does it connect to Heidegger?
@@roentgen519 because of the differences in the ‘nothing’ in videogames and real life. Real life has nothings that reveal themselves to us eventually yet video games have ‘nothings’ that, once noticed, induces uncanny. Its why videogames look fake and surreal. I’ve only read his book ‘what is called thinking’ though so im only really thinking about austin’s videos in regards to heidegger ontology.
My mom worked in a medical testing clinic when I was a kid in the early 'aughts, and many times I would be brought there on weekends to pick stuff up or drop stuff off, and the decor was very similar to what we see in black mesa. Burgundy carpets instead of green though.
In the context of exploring liminal spaces and the general philosophical tone of this series, shooting a gun at point blank range as a way of pointing at the missing 31st day in the calendar is genuinely the funniest throwaway moment I've experienced on TH-cam in a long while. I don't even know if it was intended to be funny, which makes it even funnier.
YESSSS THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED! thank you so much man i love this series and i love half lifew so much these go together sooo well
I'm so happy to see so many people catch onto HLs weird vibes. I've been a very big fan in the last decade and felt like a lunatic for obsessing about them, as something like this is hard to explain to outsiders
Presenting a real good case for me to relay HL1 rn…
Seriously, nice vid. Probably gonna binge your other ones now
Nice video! You seriously have a lot of potential my friend! I wish you great amounts of happiness and success! :)
What's interesting is that there is an outdoorsy cricket sound effect in the outdoor area right before that missile silo section
black mesa created the liminal space as a science experience and it escaped containment and they couldn't do anything about it
good video, good game choice, looking forward to 100 skybox appreciations for the 100k special
I remember spending way too much time in that rocket launch room. I would even tried to surf up that ramp at the back until the rocks and sky were drawing over the void.
Glad you're playing through this, it's a classic. I'd also recommend Valve's related games Blue Shift (Barry the security guard's perspective of the Black Mesa incident) and Opposing Force (the incident from the perspective of a soldier sent by the military). Also, loved the additional unexpected content at the end. Take the clips out of your hair already, you sexy self-sabotaging man you.
I always love games set in "real" places. I was blown away when my cousin introduced my brother and I to Duke Nukem 3D, as it took place in real(-ish) settings. There were bars, bookstores, cinemas, subway stations, restaurants, and tons of other things.
And I loved Half Life because the first whole section of the game is just you cruising along in a train, watching everyone work. It didn't matter to 10 year old me that it was an OH&S (OSHA) nightmare of missing guard rails, spilled radioactive material and people wandering around next to walking automated cargo movers. It was watching the scientist get a coke from the machine, or people in meetings.
And that's what I love about this channel -- someone who appreciates the mundane shit in video games.
My dad used to work at the BBC Television Center back in the 90s, so I used to hang around there on my own till late at night, while my dad was working and most of the building was empty. Still remember them being some of the weirdest, eerie and fascinating offices, corridors and rooms I've ever experienced. Thanks for reminding me of those memories!
Playing the game in non-widescreen with HD models is a bold and powerful move and I appreciate that.
I love this series, hoping for one on Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie one day
Damn that water filled chamber in apprehension surely invokes a hefty chunk of thalassophobia
Speaking of mid to late 90's FPS games, I think you would really like the skyboxes in Duke Nukem 3D. They are very detailed for the time and include some "3D skybox" elements (props and models outside of the map boundary but between the playable space and the true skybox) and inspire a lot of imagination of what lies outside of the boundary of the map.
The layout of Black Mesa is absolutely bizarre and full of seemingly purposeless and practically inaccessible rooms. My favorite is the enormous steel-plated room that seems to only exist so they can hang crates above a bottomless pit, with the only way out being to hop along said crates. The entire facility is like a money laundering scheme.
One of the reasons i prefer hl1 to hl2 is because of the level design. I'm a sucker for any video game that just has Rooms- i'd rather explore an abandoned building than run around in a field somewhere. hl1 fills that void for me, and i'll often boot up the game and just walk around with godmode and notarget on and just explore. plus headcrabs have the cutest idle sounds in hl1 and i want one as a pet
Fabulous video sir! Definitely want to hear about more unremarkable spaces in video games ❤❤❤❤
The vibe of this video really reminded me of the weirdness of Star Wars Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy. Something about those old shooters lends itself to things like this.
i played through half life again last september and if you try to wrap your mind around how people were supposed to actually navigate this facility, like if you were working here or whatever, it falls apart so quickly. nothing really makes any kind of sense, either architecturally or logistically.
not to say it's not a good game but the space it takes place in makes me feel weird
This video, and many of the other works you have recently shared, are rare and prized and very special to me. When I see a new one I either watch it immediately or make a plan to sit and enjoy it at the earliest convenience. I dream of one day collaborating. Until then I am what some might call a big fan. Like that one part in Half Life where you have to stop an engine to pass the the rotors of a, well... you know.
I did, in fact, enjoy this video and would like to see more. Speaking of, I'm curious if you'd considered doing one of the for the Silent Hill games (more specicially 1-3). Not sure if that's exactly what you're going for, though, considering the oddness is very much intentional and an integral part of the experience there.
Alternately, I'd love to see one of these for either of the Dishonored games. I love that franchise and a big part of that is due pretty to what you showed (in fact, I have to assume these games take at least some influence from Half-Life): a lot of stuff is there just to make it feel more real, and there's a lot of weird and interesting stuff that seems to exist just ebcause of what's around it, little details that show the devs went the extra mile just because they could.
I've played Half-Life at least once a year since I got it back in 2000, and this is the FIRST TIME I think I've ever seen the light switch in that office.
That's pretty much spot on as far as I am concerned. One of the main reason why I love games and why I still play them after 20+ years is exactly that: Environments and their "vibes", perhaps because of a certain kind of architecture, the way that combines with the lighting, the soundscape, the music and so on and so forth. People like to complain about it, but Xen is essentially the pinnacle of this kind of thing for me.
Edit: I haven't looked at the rest of your series, but Thief Gold would be a great fit for it.
I didn't love playing Half-Life because I'm not super great at shooters to begin with, but you're absolutely right that the vibes are just incredible all throughout, and this was a great selection of them to reflect on! Awesome vid, keep it up!
In Freeman’s Mind, Gordon attributed the silence outside to the launch of the missile. Funny how Ross noticed the same thing and thought it was noticeable enough to come up with an in-story reason for it.
That tiny room feels weird to me because sitting at the desk, your back would be to the door and you would be facing nothing but a bare wall. Sitting like that would make me very uncomfortable.
EDIT: Miller High Life is my favorite beer! Good taste.
You are the reason I stay on TH-cam. Thank you for your content.
Love you
I can only hope we will see more videos like this in the future!
For other games such as the Half Life expansions, 2, Alien vs Predator 1999, Fallout 1&2 and maybe others!
A level designer put a lot of love into that one little room.
The weirdest room is that tower thing with the fan blade going around it and a very dangerously placed ladder, clearly not designed for human use
(2:50) Since it doesn't even have weekdays, maybe it starts on a Monday?
One of my favorite places in the Half Life series is the food court that you pass when doing the tram ride at the beginning of the Blue Shift expansion pack. It's a cliffside food court with no security rails, some tables, and some fictional ads for pizza and tacos. I'm not sure if it counts as "odd and unremarkable" since it's kind of a set-piece, but I always found it to be a super cool area that you're never allowed to go into without noclipping. Really all of the offices you pass on the tram ride in both the original game and the Blue Shift expansion are such small things that really give Black Mesa the illusion of being a real place. It's so dang cool.
The functioning light switch completely dumbfounded me. Kinda makes it more eerie.
That green lamp vibe definitely gave me the nostalgic heebee jeebeez , love these videos. Would love to see your take on shadow of colossas. The map is so big and empty I just remember being young and thinking it had so much more depth than it actually does. There are probably a million odd places in that beautiful made static dead vibe of a game. 🤣
When Half Life 1 came out I was 14-15 and thought that it was a huge step forward in terms of realism. It was also the first fps that had no levels, no loading screens like other games, and where you easily could go back to most previous sections. As for why HL1 has almost no ambient sound I think I have an idea. I was lucky enough to have had a Soundblaster Live! sound card, that was caple of something called EAX, "Enhanced Audio Experience" or something like that, which was implemented in the game. With it enabled in the settings you had something better than ambient sound: Echos! Different surfaces made different echos - or non at all like that tiny office room you visited in the beginning of your video. That room had a carpet, which made no sound with EAX. The stone floor outside the room had wide reaching echos which added to the anciety you felt, knowing that some creatures in HL are sound sensitive (that missile silo with the three plant creatures was terrifying with enhanced echos! ("DANG-Dang-dang-ng" instead of just "dang")). Every room reflected the sound differently. Unfortunately the EAX technology never got a proper emulation, so that experience seems lost in time. I miss it.
damn this is a really nice video, first video i've watched from this channel, very endearing
Maybe there are so many detailed rooms is because Valve is one of the few game companies I can think of, that I bet they truly love the game engine they've made, and they just enjoy playing around and building in it
That light switch really shows the level of polish Valve is known for.
Half Life as a series, is WONDERFUL when it comes to scratching that itch for exploring places I shouldn't be. *Especially* Alyx, with those cozier, more enclosed and personal spaces that are inherent to it being a VR game.
half-life was incredible. I played it right when it came out and right after I set up a surround system for my computer. It scared the shit out of me at the time. Thought it was so incredibly realistic.
the radioactive barrel loop isn't because atention to detail (due to the radiation icon disappearing in the close-to-end section) but because goldsrc limitations
Regarding the Radioactive Barrel Loop, part of it is because on 1998 computers it'd be an unnecessary strain on CPU and RAM to be arbitrarily spawning and deleting entities ad-infinitum while the player is on that map - Just having the same objects cycling around the map maintains a static memory-footprint for the looping items instead of constantly allocating and deallocating memory for what is solely "flavor". Though, most other examples I'm aware of just Teleport the looping objects back to their starting coordinate instead of literally having a proper loop like this.
I love how you make the mundane interesting.
bro what was that,
i got such introspectiveness from this. i love it
I'm playing arx fatalis atm but I want to replay half life again after watching this. I like the calendar critique. Feel like like they were going to do something with the passage way with the barrels and kind of gave up on it and left that in there
Call Of Duty Modern Warfare has some really tucked away and weird places, In All Ghillied Up there is a room at the very top of the fire escape right after you crawl past that big group of enemies that I used to love to visit
We need more linear 3D games
I’m not an expert or anything, but here’s my take on the barrel waterfall: since half-life 1 doesn’t really have physics for objects, the barrels must be following essentially predetermined paths. Nowhere in the game do objects spawn/despawn while the map is loaded, so it probably isn’t even an option, so they had to make a barrel circulation route. Also, since barrels flowing with a river of toxic goo makes no sense in or out of context, I think the only reason they’re even there is to clarify that the goo is supposed to be flowing, because it has no animation on its own.
I think just the mesa ground texture makes any place with it very weird. It's just so inorganic, weirdly magenta in some spots, always feels surreal, when office and engineering textures can fool you in the moment
The video is amazing the calendar hurts my brain
the part about the barrels traveling in a loop genuinely made me so excited to learn about hahaha i remember being 5 years old and my dad would play half life with me and my brother watching and helping him choose where to go, needless to say my imagination was blown wide open by seeing this game and these areas so young! as boring as xen is now in hindsight, the mystique and vibe of making it there when i was really little sent me spiraling into trying to imagine vast realms beyond, cool video!
Legend for playing this in 4:3 and in software render mode.
Your videos make me so happy. Thank you.
Your comments make me happy too. Thanks!