YOU CRACKED THE CODE!!! I just launched into the game, tried that, and you're right! The water level rises and reaches up to his shins. Can't believe I didn't think of that. Thank you so much.
@@PretzelYT I think it's more cool that the "Head poking" isn't even a unique animation! It's a friggen elevator that goes down when certain things trigger! That's really cool and I love the genius of doing that for more immersion.
It's hard to explain how genius the train ride of Half-Life is. Not only it is a visual feast and makes you curious. But it gives you a sense of scale, how big this facility is. Something Half-Life, well Valve games has already been good at, is making areas seem way bigger than they are. This might sound odd, but when i play a Valve game, i feel like i'm in that world and that world is bigger than any openworld game i've ever played. Valve is just so good at selling the illusion.
I talked about this in my patreon video where I went over my thoughts on the game, but I really like the MOMENTUM the game has when you're fighting your way towards the surface after the resonance cascade. And I think the tram ride helps that, because during that ride, you pass SO much and feel like you're so far away from the surface. So I know what you mean.
@@PretzelYT I used to play this game in 6th grade and the sense of scale actually blew me away back then. And it took me so long to beat the game, it was like some massive accomplishment Maybe it was because I was a kid then, but games hardly make me feel like that anymore
The machinery shown at 8:48 is one of the ionization chambers, as identified by the color-coded navigation stripes on the walls that you follow all along your way to the test lab. These colored stripes also identify the machinery at 9:25 as being plasma cells.
I like how its 2023 and there are still videos being made by a guy giving you a tour (and in an excited voice to boot) of a fictional world from a 1998 videogame most people were playing on Windows 95 at the time... an OS that was basically just a GUI and some libraries ontop of MS-DOS
The furniture in office complex always gives me nostalgia for it's 90s vibe. Company got those couches for cheap since no one bought them, the cushions get sprayed down by janitors every other month, and they have this kinda gritty wool texture that seems like it would be less comfy than it really is.
Old couches are always super comfortable, idk wtf you are talking about. And that furniture is not from the 90s, lol. It honestly looks like 70s furniture but is labeled as FIFTIES
This entire comment chain kind of gets what's going on with the design aesthetic of Black Mesa: It's a government facility, it was built with waves of funding arriving with each new major conflict, with the original stuff being from WW2, then the Cold War, then it starts getting into "modern 90's" (it still was) stuff. Lots of real military places are like this lol. Has that "places civilians never see" vibe, which to explain is exactly the same as the cheap school vibe: "How long has this temporary portable classroom thingy been here?" "Since 1993".
I love the old, brutal designs of half-life. It's something you really don't see these days - long, concrete corridors, spaces that are caught between serving a gameplay purpose and being 'realistic,' showing growing pains of past titles and premonitions of things to come. It's so unique and beautiful in a way that's ever so slightly uncanny, but feels like home. I also love your appreciation of Xen. It's widely hated, but I think the surreal, alien nature of the space is actually a fitting cap to the game. It's quite short, so I don't think it overstays its welcome.
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413 personally I think Xen plays fine. It's a major shift in gameplay, but I think the strange shift mutually reinforces the strange aesthetic shift. It's all over in about 20 minutes, if that, so I think it's better than people give it credit for
5:07 Actually at ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) the model makers were taught to never greeble/kitbash without purpose. And that every addition to the model must be made consciously even if the knowledge of each addition, and its purpose, is only ever known the model maker. They did this to avoid creating just visual noise, hopefully leading the subconscious to more likely believe the details to be more than noise. Also the reason why its called kit-bashing is that artists would take parts from different models kits (tanks, trains, planes, etc) and bash them together to make spaceships and other vessels.
Reminds me of a comment that I completely agreed with: the true main character of Half-Life 1 isn't Gordon Freeman, it's Black Mesa. Very fascinating place to explore and wonder what's behind those unaccessible areas and excellent piece of environmental storytelling.
Except thats not possible, Black Mesa is a backdrop and a setting, not a character.. its an environment and a world that the player explores and fights their way through.. the real main character is what PLAYERS make of Freeman, thats why people love his character… similar to tons of non speaking characters … its a canvas for the player to make
1:25 fun fact: the security guard pounding in the door is actually Calhoun, who eventually stars in his own spinoff and becomes a major character in HL2.
Barney Calhoun, same guy you see in the metrocop disguise in half-life 2, for anyone who wasn't aware of course And also the protagonist of half-life: blue shift, infact iirc that's exactly where his story starts, and you can spot gordon's tram pass you by
About the NPC mouth thing - the Half-Life model animation system allows for sounds to be cued by specific animation frames. Someone decided it was easier to add the sound cue to the animation rather than synching up an in-level timing script to it. This then interacts with the mouth animation system, which is done dynamically based on the amplitude of sound that the entity representing the NPC produces - and that seems to be any sound, including the animation-cued knocks, not just voicework. That's also used in some multiplayer GoldSource games to animate player model mouths based on player voice comms.
I was about to comment something similar, but i saw this. I dont know wether to be grateful that i didnt have to type something out or sad that I wasnt the one to explain. :D
You should definitely do this with more Half-Life games, especially Half-Life 2. People don't tend to realize just how idiotic and nonsensical the building architecture and planning can be in Half-Life 2, especially during the uprising chapters where they just kind of combined old beta test maps together because they were running out of time, like how there's a gigantic underground warehouse smack dab in the middle (and for some reason connected) to an apartment block. Also some houses along Highway 17 that are literally just one gigantic room with no walls and individual rooms.
My first playthrough of HL2 back in 2004 I never realized there was an ammo crate with infinity submachinegun ammo on the back of the dune buggy... really made the section a lot more challenging LOL
@@Benjamin8993agape That nearly happen to me. When the NPC said ammo on the trunk (in spanish is Maletero)I believe in the begining that your weapons will have fully ammo again when you ENTER the car. I finally understand how worked when I put the car IN THE GARAGE ON THE LIGHTHOUSE.
Well about that design of City17 is because Valve's team wanted to mix old architecture (mostly pre-'90) with futuristic one. And for a friend that born in the soviet republic of Checoslovaquia (now Czech and SlovaquiaRepublic) he tell me how weird some buildings in real life were made and for what reason. You mentioned the warehouse connected to an apartmen block, well that was mostly to be prepared to a Nuclear War or Full Invasion from an enemy nation and have ready supplies and personal ready to defend and survive. I laugh when he said the supplies, be weapons or any other equipment, have to be lifted either by a chopper or crane from the top of the warehouse surrounded by the apartments because the corridor where very narrow and they never get any chance of get close becuase was all the time locked by the authorities. So was the point to put all that there if they couldn't even see it? XD
4:46 the creators of the sets for Alien (1979), called it "Clagging". The sets for the Nostromo were a bunch of aircraft, submarine, ocean- going vessel parts.
13:40 The textures themselves are actually what decides what sound is played. What's more likely going on here is there's a tiny bit of an invisible brush meant to make walking across the pipe easier not being placed across the entire thing, making that spot where the sound suddenly shifts. I imagine the VALVe employee that was working on this realized the sound didn't line up and deleted most of the brush but forgot one.
Or maybe that pipe was originally intended to move in a way that warranted making it be two objects, the visual pipe with no collision and the invisible collision, but eventually got scrapped in favor of having a ladder to the next section. Just a couple theories since without the raw level data I have no actual idea what the reasoning is.
@@toxic_shr00m I know, just meant that it was likely kept there intentionally and not leftover. Could even be something that was added later because of that issue and the sound difference didn't get noticed that way.
It's fascinating to see how they pulled off the outdoors feeling, while also working in the limitation that no area could ever be all that big. In particular, you could only ever have a certain amount of level detail in any given area before needing to put in a hard, vision-blocking wall of some sort to split it up into different vis chunks. The engine supports fairly big maps, but HL shipped with *software* graphics support. You didn't even need a graphics card to play it, so on-screen triangle counts were a big concern.
Well the Graphics card is the Thing you connect the screen to, you didn't need a 3D-Accelerator. Also, triangle count is actually *not* the problem with software rendering, it is the pixel count that matters. A software renderer can perfectly handly a high poly count (like a smooth human model), what really kills the performance is the overdraw, that cannot be prevented well by BSP. Meanwhile Portal-Rendering (Descent, Duke 3D) does zero overdraw, but cannot display outdoor areas well (Descent uses actually a completely seperate engine for rendering outdoor areas.).
1:26 this "security guard" is Barney Calhoun from Half Life 2, you play as him in Half Life: Blue Shift, where you can see Gordon Freeman in the train while you are trying to open this door.
15:40 that's crickets. Whatever species of them live in New Mexico. Birds don't make this kind of non-stop sound, they can repeat themselves for a while, but they always make a noticeable stop between every other sound.
AFAIK it was pretty nouveau for its time-- a first person shooter where there's absolutely no shooting, or even access to *any* weapons at all, for like... the first 1/2hr or so of the game
5:30 fun fact about those random wall textures, and it’s actually something I learned from one of MarphyBlack’s videos, but there’s actually an automatic subroutine that runs to scramble to wall textures randomly to sell the appearance better. If I recall correctly and update broke it so sometimes it doesn’t scramble the wall textures but it just shows the level of insane detail Valve put into the game
23:40 Actually the "birds" are not untextured but rather the room they are in is completely unlit (apart from the few floating islands) causing them to appear completely dark. You can see their textures for a tiny bit if you look at the arch to the left at around 24:06.
I love doing this same thing, just exploring environments and slowing down appreciating the atmosphere, especially in normally fast paced or anxiety inducing games.
I think one of the best things about Half-Life, is how it manages to engage the player by grounding them into the world. All the little details you point out in the video contribute to that and is a big part of what makes the game feel so immersive.
My only experience to shooters from this era is stuff like Doom and Quake, so I was genuinely surprised at the amount of detail that went into the environments in this game. Though I guess Half-Life kind of ushered in the new era of FPSs that actually care about that stuff.
@@PretzelYT Yup, when you look at most FPS prior to Half-Life, most played like Quake and Doom, levels are largely disconnected from each other and act as these very gamey sandboxes, not that that was a bad thing, but it was certainly the norm. While I wouldn't say Half-Life was necessarily the first, it was definitely the game that made the biggest impression to the industry in regards to changing that mindset in regards to level design.
((Where is everybody? I’m spooked!!)) Source games always have the most interesting details or oddly ominous rooms; the way that environmental noises come from the NPC’s mouth has always been super funny to me though, hehe. Nice video as always!! You sharing sources for music and any references you use is always so helpful - I love this series so much! ^~^
Sneaky sneaky, I put it in my playlists but forgot to set it as private. 😭 I'll probably set it as public later today or tomorrow. Glad you enjoyed it 🙌
You can completely explore that area at 9:50 to you hearts content in Opposing Force, sometime after you get the displacement cannon thing. different maps have their own corresponding xen areas, and this is one of them.
This video made me realise how many liminal spaces original Half-Life truly had. A lot of hallways are empty because of the apocalypse, some places you would expect to have at least some people in them are completely empty. All these large, yet completely lifeless rooms give out a certain vibe. HL1 used to be the favourite one of the series for me, but now I can understand why. There are so many little details that make the world feel alive, and it's extremely impressive for it's time. Also, I just love goldsrc, it's a really quirky engine.
And the requirement for loading screen sections very easily offer themselves up to being the transitional areas that make a liminal space what it is I really like how naturally some very obviously "only here because we need to give you a quiet loading area" rooms happen to fit perfectly as just an organic transitional space that some facility architects used to connect one room to another
What you described as 'kitbshing' is in fact called 'Greebling'! Kitbashing is the act of using various model kits and bashing them together to make something new, but the textures that get created from this process are called greebles. You are completely right about it being done to add visual interest and noise to an item. Great video!
18:30 one amazing detail you might have missed in this scene, Is those mountains in the background. The moment you leave the pipe the mountains look just like the shape of Black Mesa's trademark logo. Its really amazing seeing that the inspiration for their logo is derived from a landscape the player actually sees with their own eyes. Thats just such a beautiful detail of worldbuilding that not a lot of games do. A perfect example of show don't tell :D Its the mountain thats the most in focus thats mimicking the logo and in game if you position yourself in the pipe just right you can perfectly recreate it yourself.
It's funny you bring that up, I vaguely remember hearing about that at some point in the past and actually considering mentioning it in the script. But when I actually looked at the mesa from the pipe compared to the logo, it looked too tall to mimic the logo. The mesa in the logo reaches up to half of the circle, while the mesa from the pipe reaches almost to the top. So I'm not entirely sure if it's an intentional easter egg or not.
@@PretzelYT So I booted up my old game saves and put two images up in my community polls on my channel. I do see what you are saying its much more interpretable. If you want to check it out I overlayed the images of the logo directly on top of the game so its easy to compare. I will disagree with the height being the issue as it matches perfectly now the mountain is a bit to the left and it needs its adjacent mountain as well to be long enough. But overall its a crazy close fit. And with noclip you can make the shapes perfectly overlap. I really think it might still be true. just cause I got it to line up super well wish I could just post the image in these comments or a link to it but youtube would hide this comment then :P
I adore this game and engine, so I'll have thoughts! The intro is a great candidate for this series, on purpose. That very first area ("is this a hallway?") looks to be a viewing platform/concourse for a tram station, to me! The soda machines are even on the loading platform, like you might expect from a train station. I hadn't thought about Gus in a long time. Hi Gus! NPCs speaking sound effects happens whenever audio has to be synched with the character animation - banging on a door, punching buttons, etc. The engine doesn't really let the animation system "talk to" the environmental system, so hacks are required. The rapid, haphazard changes between theme fits Black Mesa perfectly. Even in canon, it's possible that these different zones of the facility snake out to connect with the tram system, since they'd all need a way in. Half-Life was one of the earliest games to have skeleton-based animation, so the gratuitous Four-Legged Walker Robot action shot is them flexing on that. I love the random technology doodads on the walls. Not only do the devs not know what the buttons are for, neither does Gordon, and neither does anybody in that hallway. Transdimensionalborderworld Rights 10:25 Tweaker zombie is another feature flex - semi-dynamic scene lighting by swapping between pre-baked lightmaps. That's why you can walk right in next to him and mess around, I bet. The water in the dumpster is probably from the sewer pipe puzzle near there, I imagine you noclipped straight to the dumpster when getting footage rather than doing the puzzle. The huge vista reveal at 18:55 works better at 640x480 (though it's still obvious how it was done). 23:42 - those birds are actually "Boids", and are yet another feature flex for some reason? They actually have flocking AI. Just programmers being programmers.
@@Atomlxe They are textured, as can be seen if you load their models in a HL model viewer program. The area they're in in-game is simply unlit, so their textures can't be seen.
Half Life 1 has amazing art direction. I spent so many hours as a kid just hanging out in these little areas. They're so ambient and calm. Especially following an intense combat encounter
I think more people played like that, slow and methodical, back in the day, prior to speedrunning and over-abundance of games (h/t Steam market) making you want to race through a game ASAP to get to the next one. Buying games in a brick-and-mortar store was a totally different than than digital downloads
@@Benjamin8993agapeSame, that’s how I play all kinds of games, from Half-Life to Left 4 Dead 2, WoW, Skyrim, etc. I like to take my time and ‘explore everything’ Blockbuster was also amazing back in the day, I would spend an hour everyone I went there in order to look through all the rental games they had 😁
@@Benjamin8993agape I remember spending a good amount of time in that part in Surface Tension where you're going through a destroyed building with all types of metal pipes exposed.
16:25 the only thing I didn't get is why is the lab full of live alien creatures so close to the surface? you'd think that would be way, way underground.
Maybe to make it easier to kill them will airstrike, if they get out of hand and start trashing the lab. This is what HECU unit is for. Too bad they've taken an order from government as well, to clean up not just the aliens...
Actually canonically that baby picture would be of his niece or nephew, as said by one of the devs. It wasn't given much thought since it was just a little easter egg of one of the dev's baby picture.
6:06 WHOA! That laptop DOES have an infinitely small hinge! That's not even possible by 2023 standards. I know that Aperture is famous for making Magic machines but this is why Black Mesa is the best!
6:55 I think that is a blue plastic sheet over some clothes. Like another lab coat suit like the rest of the doctors have. The plastic would be put on after it is done going through a dry cleaner.
This is one of my favorite videos in a while. It's not crazy high quality or anything, it's just nice. Examining interesting textures and props. Just taking a moment to stop and explore the world of the game, thinking about what life might have been like at Black Mesa.
When I think of "favorite Half-Life areas" the Uplink demo comes to mind, with the unique vending machine secret and the gargantua cutscene. Plus it's a demo that doesn't even have a sequence form the full game... it's cut content.
8:17 "If you can read this, then you are really freakin strange.. with good eyeyes(sic)" and "I need text of internet here. no really, go ahead and picture something cool in your minds(sic) eye. make something up of what you would like for this to say" Its painfully pixelated in the original texture but I think I got it.
4:08 I love how you find this major health and safety violation only a few minutes into the game. Also, this was before the cascade, so you know there was no excuse for it. I love the idea that Black Mesa was run by incompetent knuckleheads.
Another great video! I love Half Life but never really took the time to explore it, so this tour was rather fun for me. Definitely rooting for a follow up for Half Life 2, that game has many a cool and interesting spots across it's world. I especially like it out in the wastes, stopping by the random homes you come across is a good time. Please keep up the good work! P.S. I think a world that's ripe for a tour is Zelda Wind Waker.
You know, I bet TH-cam is able to guess your age demographic, even if none or false info is provided on your Google account, just based on what kinds of videos you view and like. Pretty sure no one in GenZ or Gen Alpha is watching a lot of HL1 videos
First video of yours i've seen. Very fresh perspective on a game i thought i'd seen it all in. I liked how you focused on things easily overlooked or taken for granted, rather than the stereotypical "secrets" or something. Definitely subbed! At 15:43 those sound like frogs/toads i used to hear at night down by the creek.
Fun fact: While porting Half-Life to the Dreamcast and PS2, Gearbox decided to make some modifications for most of the maps in the game. Their first attempt was Dreamcast port, as their most notable map modification was the first Office Complex map. On their second attempt with the PS2 port, they noticed how unusual the office rooms looked in the beginning of the game, as seen in 1:57. So they decided to give them proper windows and doors so that it doesn't look like an isolation room, not only that but they also added laptops and computers for the scientist at the tables, as you can see on the video the table scientists are typing on nothing at all, it's as if they're schizophrenic. It's pretty amazing that Gearbox would take the time to give more life into the background sceneries of the maps
You know, I've always been a huge HL fan, and have played it on PC, OSX, PS2, and Dreamcast... but I never noticed the changes made... or maybe I did notice but don't remember them O_O
1:50 That's because their jaw "bone" is scripted in the engine to animate if the model itself makes any sort of sound, that's how they get the mouth movement as they talk. That also happens when a guard uses a keypad as the sound comes from them, not the object.
Actually, not to nerd out, 7:03 gordon is not actually a family, he's not even in a relationship(im pretty sure based on how eli talks to us in half life 2) but thats a photo of one of the devs daughters, who was born during production and unfortunatly had a serious disability. I think it was nice of them to put her in the game tho :D
9:56 Maybe the remake's version. The people behind making that game's maps did a great job of making Xen into an entirely alien ecosystem. Seriously felt like I was jumping and fighting through a location ripped straight from Metroid Prime.
Black Mesa Xen is easily my favourite environment in all of gaming. It’s remarkably alien, but certain parts are just so relaxing. Like, building a spa was my first thought when I saw the healing pools for the first time. If the dangerous wildlife were kept under control, I’d gladly take an interdimensional vacation.
As a 33 year old H.L was one of my first actual favorite games and yes looking back it had a very odd feel, it may just be nostalgia and age. Yet there is and was something about this game. The empty M.P maps, Training room and Demo are almost more weird. Also the ambience and music add to it.
Good to see that there are other people who pay attention to the mood and feeling of places in video games. I really like some of the places you mentioned through out the video. Especially the moody offices with the banker lamps. I also remember seeing it in the Half-Life gameplay trailer before the game was launched.
There’s an underlying eeriness to Half Life that I can’t explain…..even with some of its more goofy aspects monsters etc, and the fact the majority of it takes place during the day.
8:57 it's literally liminal space as it's used for a transition between two levels . 9:55 Sure I would, in xen borderworld, you have these special pools of water which not only heal you, but also emit a comfy sound.
7:03 You know, I just realized that almost absolutely no one ever remembers this. Not the characters in game, not the developers, and interestingly enough not even the fans. Nobody knows or cares what happened to Gordon's child.
8:56 that is the most literal form of a liminal space in gaming you're not meant to linger, its a space between A and B plus its a loading zone between levels so the backrooms vibes are spot on
@2:20 both the scientists sitting down in each "jail cell" are looking at a their very own non-existent monitor and typing on a non-existent keyboard. This gives some serious vibes of "Oh Crap! Gotta look busy 'cause the boss just arrived" and failing to do it convincingly.
1:47 you neglected to mention that this is the real Barney since we see from gis perspective in Blue Shift and you can see Gordon pass by in this section
In the final boss, threes a living scientist in one of the rooms he teleports you to. And in the final biomechanical area, there are vents that take you to a room off to the side with lots of, well, screams of the damned in the background. Surprised you didn’t cover that Great video though! I enjoyed it. You earned a sub
I found you the other day, subscribed and was convinced you're a big known channel. Today half way through the video I realized you're very under-subbed. Great quality video. Calming and nostalgic. I like how you value the viewer's time, yet still find spots of silence for reflection. Just like the game, this video is art. Keep it up
I don’t know why this was recommended to me, but this is the most relatable and accurate portrayal of what it’s like to play video games with ADHD that I’ve ever seen. This is how tediously I play every single game.
8:42 The bottom says "This is fun. I wonder if you can read this or not. Oh well." The top part I can only make out the third line and the last word of the second saying "You are lucky to have" so there's likely other text on those posters hidden that is simply not legible.
Justice for alien birds! Some developer did not spend countless hours programming boids, making sure that the alien birds fly in nice formations, only for *some guy with a youtube channel*, 25 years later, give them one star... Anyways, cool video as always. Is Portal next?
Being someone that combed through the entire game several times over this video doesn't really do anything for me but I'm glad someone decided to point out all the weird/cool stuff in Half-Life.
One of my earliest gaming memories was watching my older sister play Half-Life, and the part with the twitching headcrab zombie in front of the flashing laptop screen really stuck with me. I must've been 3 or 4 years old when that happened.
I never got to play the Decay co-op because literally none of my friends were any good at FPS games on console, so the entire thing was either me telling them every move to make, or holding my tongue when they did stupid things :(
To be fair, I know at least with prop and set makers, they / we(?) Do have stories behind a lot of details in world building and I'm sure it's the same with video game textures and stuff. If you don't have a story you're trying to tell then the object won't look... Believable. It doesn't have to be a foolproof story, and you're the only one who might ever know about it, but that's definitely a core element of creating in-world objects. I had to weather a plinth, and I added clumps of moss - but I thought where is the plinth facing, one side gets more sun, and then where the moss is more water will pool and gather, etc etc... Hope that makes sense. Details are added with some purpose or should be.
I really enjoy your calm showcasing. It’s a huge departure from the normal yt formula, but it works amazingly well. Also, the few mistakes/unprepared occourances, like the water only showing up while you were playin the game, they made the video feel very down to earth. It makes me remember how human it is to make mistakes, or just how important it is for unexpected things to happen!
23:56 The "birds" are atually fully textured its just is covered in shadows because the lighting is weird in that location. You can see its texture when it flys closer to the islands.
13:47 Oh that's interesting. That actually I didn't notice. Hard to learn something new about a game you've played so much, but something new still slips here and there in such videos. Thanks for that)
my favourite areas are those with that outdoors new mexico rock texture in between the blue and gray concrete of the facilities.. brings me nostalgia from CS 1.6 maps like Nuke and Siege
6:04 if you enter this room and turn the light out, the luther scientist will get frustrated and turn it back on. in gmod, if you remove the light switch after turning the light out, the scientist will constantly loop back and forth trying to find the switch that no longer exists.
Half Life game is amazing and in my opinoin is very long so you could be hours just analyzing each detail by doing a "noclip" walkthrough :D 1:45 just as a curiosity, that security guard who is knoking the door is Barney Calhoun and you will see the exact same scene during "Half Life: Blue shift" expansion game, but you will live it from the point of view of Barney. Also during Half life there are other moments that will connect with the other expansion games. It would be nice to see a similar video from HL2!
I wanted to give myself a little break before jumping into Half-Life 2, considering I'm playing the series for the first time. I should get on that soon though...
Bro has more imagination than everyone in Missouri combined. It is so nice to see a deep dive into every little detail in this game, you make me feel bad for not noticing any of this in my playthrough
24:30 on doom 3 there is also break room with arcade game, tv, bar and windows that can be closed. Somebody should make a video how many similarities these games have. Like even health machine, good sound design with emphasis on creating atmosphere, introductory and calm beginning...
Great video! I never played Half Life but was still very much interested by what the map had to offer. Ever played Call of Duty Zombies? There are some interesting maps in there too, might be worth checking out.
I have played my fair share of zombies back in the day. I'd love to cover the Call of Duty games at some point, zombie and multiplayer maps and all. Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops were pretty much ALL I played on the 360 back in the day.
11:04 the water level is based on the pipes you fall into. you turn the lever to raise it to get out.
YOU CRACKED THE CODE!!! I just launched into the game, tried that, and you're right! The water level rises and reaches up to his shins. Can't believe I didn't think of that.
Thank you so much.
@@PretzelYT One of many great ones.
@@PretzelYT Damn, I wonder how you completed the game without doing that. Ecckkss Deeee
@@PretzelYT I think it's more cool that the "Head poking" isn't even a unique animation! It's a friggen elevator that goes down when certain things trigger!
That's really cool and I love the genius of doing that for more immersion.
@@FR4M3Sharma well generally you see him before going into the tunnel
It's hard to explain how genius the train ride of Half-Life is. Not only it is a visual feast and makes you curious. But it gives you a sense of scale, how big this facility is. Something Half-Life, well Valve games has already been good at, is making areas seem way bigger than they are. This might sound odd, but when i play a Valve game, i feel like i'm in that world and that world is bigger than any openworld game i've ever played. Valve is just so good at selling the illusion.
I talked about this in my patreon video where I went over my thoughts on the game, but I really like the MOMENTUM the game has when you're fighting your way towards the surface after the resonance cascade. And I think the tram ride helps that, because during that ride, you pass SO much and feel like you're so far away from the surface. So I know what you mean.
@@PretzelYT I used to play this game in 6th grade and the sense of scale actually blew me away back then. And it took me so long to beat the game, it was like some massive accomplishment
Maybe it was because I was a kid then, but games hardly make me feel like that anymore
@@pyropulseIXXI A somewhat recent game that gave me a childlike sense of wonder is Rain World. Highly reccomend. That and the Souls series.
@@RootVegetabIe i mean... the souls series has their own "open world" way.
except elden ring and sekiro. those are open world.
And we get to see Gus the forklift driver
The machinery shown at 8:48 is one of the ionization chambers, as identified by the color-coded navigation stripes on the walls that you follow all along your way to the test lab. These colored stripes also identify the machinery at 9:25 as being plasma cells.
Ok
its him
the legend himself appeared
I like how its 2023 and there are still videos being made by a guy giving you a tour (and in an excited voice to boot) of a fictional world from a 1998 videogame most people were playing on Windows 95 at the time... an OS that was basically just a GUI and some libraries ontop of MS-DOS
The man, the myth, the legend; Marphy Black.
6:35 Imagine you're on the toilet taking a shit, when suddenly Gordon Freeman's face clips through the stall door and stares right at you.
I can only get so moist.
"There are fates worse than death"
at least you're not staining your pants, just dumping it all out
“D’ow Gordon, not this again!”
A similar moment happens at the start of the HLVRAI EP3 Cast Commentary
The furniture in office complex always gives me nostalgia for it's 90s vibe.
Company got those couches for cheap since no one bought them, the cushions get sprayed down by janitors every other month, and they have this kinda gritty wool texture that seems like it would be less comfy than it really is.
Fun fact, the textures used in office complex use the word FIFTIES as their title.
Its*
Old couches are always super comfortable, idk wtf you are talking about. And that furniture is not from the 90s, lol. It honestly looks like 70s furniture but is labeled as FIFTIES
@pyropulse I wasn't alive to see them in the 70s :^)
This entire comment chain kind of gets what's going on with the design aesthetic of Black Mesa: It's a government facility, it was built with waves of funding arriving with each new major conflict, with the original stuff being from WW2, then the Cold War, then it starts getting into "modern 90's" (it still was) stuff. Lots of real military places are like this lol. Has that "places civilians never see" vibe, which to explain is exactly the same as the cheap school vibe: "How long has this temporary portable classroom thingy been here?" "Since 1993".
I love the old, brutal designs of half-life. It's something you really don't see these days - long, concrete corridors, spaces that are caught between serving a gameplay purpose and being 'realistic,' showing growing pains of past titles and premonitions of things to come. It's so unique and beautiful in a way that's ever so slightly uncanny, but feels like home. I also love your appreciation of Xen. It's widely hated, but I think the surreal, alien nature of the space is actually a fitting cap to the game. It's quite short, so I don't think it overstays its welcome.
Unlike BM’s Xen which is way too long for its own good. Actually disliked it more than Halflife’s Xen
Yeah, I actually really like how creepy the original Xen is. It's a desolate alien world that feels far more hostile and unwelcoming than Earth.
noone ever said xen didnt look good, it just plays like trash
noone ever said xen didnt look good, it just plays like trash
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413 personally I think Xen plays fine. It's a major shift in gameplay, but I think the strange shift mutually reinforces the strange aesthetic shift. It's all over in about 20 minutes, if that, so I think it's better than people give it credit for
5:07 Actually at ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) the model makers were taught to never greeble/kitbash without purpose. And that every addition to the model must be made consciously even if the knowledge of each addition, and its purpose, is only ever known the model maker. They did this to avoid creating just visual noise, hopefully leading the subconscious to more likely believe the details to be more than noise.
Also the reason why its called kit-bashing is that artists would take parts from different models kits (tanks, trains, planes, etc) and bash them together to make spaceships and other vessels.
Reminds me of a comment that I completely agreed with: the true main character of Half-Life 1 isn't Gordon Freeman, it's Black Mesa. Very fascinating place to explore and wonder what's behind those unaccessible areas and excellent piece of environmental storytelling.
Except thats not possible, Black Mesa is a backdrop and a setting, not a character.. its an environment and a world that the player explores and fights their way through.. the real main character is what PLAYERS make of Freeman, thats why people love his character… similar to tons of non speaking characters … its a canvas for the player to make
@@Chuked “erm achtually Black Mesa can’t be the main character” 🤓☝️
@@Chuked what zero pussy does to a mf
Bravo Gabe
@@efuctz how would you describe what your lips taste like I’m violently resisting the urge to kiss you
1:25 fun fact: the security guard pounding in the door is actually Calhoun, who eventually stars in his own spinoff and becomes a major character in HL2.
Barney Calhoun, same guy you see in the metrocop disguise in half-life 2, for anyone who wasn't aware of course
And also the protagonist of half-life: blue shift, infact iirc that's exactly where his story starts, and you can spot gordon's tram pass you by
"Ah, I'm not the only one who's late! SUCKERRRR!"
@@WackoMcGoosegreat reference I had the same thing on my mind
About the NPC mouth thing - the Half-Life model animation system allows for sounds to be cued by specific animation frames. Someone decided it was easier to add the sound cue to the animation rather than synching up an in-level timing script to it. This then interacts with the mouth animation system, which is done dynamically based on the amplitude of sound that the entity representing the NPC produces - and that seems to be any sound, including the animation-cued knocks, not just voicework. That's also used in some multiplayer GoldSource games to animate player model mouths based on player voice comms.
I was about to comment something similar, but i saw this. I dont know wether to be grateful that i didnt have to type something out or sad that I wasnt the one to explain. :D
You should definitely do this with more Half-Life games, especially Half-Life 2. People don't tend to realize just how idiotic and nonsensical the building architecture and planning can be in Half-Life 2, especially during the uprising chapters where they just kind of combined old beta test maps together because they were running out of time, like how there's a gigantic underground warehouse smack dab in the middle (and for some reason connected) to an apartment block.
Also some houses along Highway 17 that are literally just one gigantic room with no walls and individual rooms.
My first playthrough of HL2 back in 2004 I never realized there was an ammo crate with infinity submachinegun ammo on the back of the dune buggy... really made the section a lot more challenging LOL
@@Benjamin8993agape That nearly happen to me. When the NPC said ammo on the trunk (in spanish is Maletero)I believe in the begining that your weapons will have fully ammo again when you ENTER the car. I finally understand how worked when I put the car IN THE GARAGE ON THE LIGHTHOUSE.
Well about that design of City17 is because Valve's team wanted to mix old architecture (mostly pre-'90) with futuristic one. And for a friend that born in the soviet republic of Checoslovaquia (now Czech and SlovaquiaRepublic) he tell me how weird some buildings in real life were made and for what reason.
You mentioned the warehouse connected to an apartmen block, well that was mostly to be prepared to a Nuclear War or Full Invasion from an enemy nation and have ready supplies and personal ready to defend and survive.
I laugh when he said the supplies, be weapons or any other equipment, have to be lifted either by a chopper or crane from the top of the warehouse surrounded by the apartments because the corridor where very narrow and they never get any chance of get close becuase was all the time locked by the authorities. So was the point to put all that there if they couldn't even see it? XD
@@Benjamin8993agapethere's a what?! 😂 Fml
Ok but that underground warehouse is so cool
4:46 the creators of the sets for Alien (1979), called it "Clagging". The sets for the Nostromo were a bunch of aircraft, submarine, ocean- going vessel parts.
13:40
The textures themselves are actually what decides what sound is played. What's more likely going on here is there's a tiny bit of an invisible brush meant to make walking across the pipe easier not being placed across the entire thing, making that spot where the sound suddenly shifts. I imagine the VALVe employee that was working on this realized the sound didn't line up and deleted most of the brush but forgot one.
Or maybe that pipe was originally intended to move in a way that warranted making it be two objects, the visual pipe with no collision and the invisible collision, but eventually got scrapped in favor of having a ladder to the next section. Just a couple theories since without the raw level data I have no actual idea what the reasoning is.
@@toxic_shr00m My guess is it was there to prevent the player slipping slightly down the side and being stuck surfing against the wall.
@@Yashirmare Yeah, I mentioned that in my original comment.
@@toxic_shr00m I know, just meant that it was likely kept there intentionally and not leftover. Could even be something that was added later because of that issue and the sound difference didn't get noticed that way.
do you have a source
It's fascinating to see how they pulled off the outdoors feeling, while also working in the limitation that no area could ever be all that big.
In particular, you could only ever have a certain amount of level detail in any given area before needing to put in a hard, vision-blocking wall of some sort to split it up into different vis chunks. The engine supports fairly big maps, but HL shipped with *software* graphics support. You didn't even need a graphics card to play it, so on-screen triangle counts were a big concern.
Well the Graphics card is the Thing you connect the screen to, you didn't need a 3D-Accelerator.
Also, triangle count is actually *not* the problem with software rendering, it is the pixel count that matters. A software renderer can perfectly handly a high poly count (like a smooth human model), what really kills the performance is the overdraw, that cannot be prevented well by BSP. Meanwhile Portal-Rendering (Descent, Duke 3D) does zero overdraw, but cannot display outdoor areas well (Descent uses actually a completely seperate engine for rendering outdoor areas.).
@@Ribulose15diphosphat Half Life used portals as well, that's what they were referring to by "vis chunks".
1:26 this "security guard" is Barney Calhoun from Half Life 2, you play as him in Half Life: Blue Shift, where you can see Gordon Freeman in the train while you are trying to open this door.
15:40 that's crickets. Whatever species of them live in New Mexico. Birds don't make this kind of non-stop sound, they can repeat themselves for a while, but they always make a noticeable stop between every other sound.
It's funny as someone who's replayed this countless times I feel almost like an employee with how used to the bizarre architecture I am
Employee at Black Mesa 😂
I would love to be an employee in that place. Maybe a security guard or the surveillance camera watcher
I still remember playing this for the first time as a kid. Every second of the tram ride was so impressive and exciting.
AFAIK it was pretty nouveau for its time-- a first person shooter where there's absolutely no shooting, or even access to *any* weapons at all, for like... the first 1/2hr or so of the game
5:30 fun fact about those random wall textures, and it’s actually something I learned from one of MarphyBlack’s videos, but there’s actually an automatic subroutine that runs to scramble to wall textures randomly to sell the appearance better. If I recall correctly and update broke it so sometimes it doesn’t scramble the wall textures but it just shows the level of insane detail Valve put into the game
23:40 Actually the "birds" are not untextured but rather the room they are in is completely unlit (apart from the few floating islands) causing them to appear completely dark. You can see their textures for a tiny bit if you look at the arch to the left at around 24:06.
I love doing this same thing, just exploring environments and slowing down appreciating the atmosphere, especially in normally fast paced or anxiety inducing games.
3:22 this entire outdoors area was repurposed as a multiplayer map, and I loved climbing this exact cliff in that as well!
I think one of the best things about Half-Life, is how it manages to engage the player by grounding them into the world. All the little details you point out in the video contribute to that and is a big part of what makes the game feel so immersive.
My only experience to shooters from this era is stuff like Doom and Quake, so I was genuinely surprised at the amount of detail that went into the environments in this game. Though I guess Half-Life kind of ushered in the new era of FPSs that actually care about that stuff.
@@PretzelYT Yup, when you look at most FPS prior to Half-Life, most played like Quake and Doom, levels are largely disconnected from each other and act as these very gamey sandboxes, not that that was a bad thing, but it was certainly the norm. While I wouldn't say Half-Life was necessarily the first, it was definitely the game that made the biggest impression to the industry in regards to changing that mindset in regards to level design.
((Where is everybody? I’m spooked!!))
Source games always have the most interesting details or oddly ominous rooms; the way that environmental noises come from the NPC’s mouth has always been super funny to me though, hehe.
Nice video as always!! You sharing sources for music and any references you use is always so helpful - I love this series so much! ^~^
Sneaky sneaky, I put it in my playlists but forgot to set it as private. 😭 I'll probably set it as public later today or tomorrow.
Glad you enjoyed it 🙌
hey dude, I just wanna tell you, this isn't a Source game, it's a GoldSrc game.
@@DownSpadeTF Ah, you’re right! My bad hehe; I forget that there is a difference sometimes.
Not to be pedantic, but the difference is GoldSrc is basically modified Quake 1 engine licensed from ID, and Source is a complete re-write.
You can completely explore that area at 9:50 to you hearts content in Opposing Force, sometime after you get the displacement cannon thing. different maps have their own corresponding xen areas, and this is one of them.
I didn’t know that the Displacement cannon could teleport me so I never visited any of these areas.
This video made me realise how many liminal spaces original Half-Life truly had. A lot of hallways are empty because of the apocalypse, some places you would expect to have at least some people in them are completely empty. All these large, yet completely lifeless rooms give out a certain vibe. HL1 used to be the favourite one of the series for me, but now I can understand why. There are so many little details that make the world feel alive, and it's extremely impressive for it's time. Also, I just love goldsrc, it's a really quirky engine.
And the requirement for loading screen sections very easily offer themselves up to being the transitional areas that make a liminal space what it is
I really like how naturally some very obviously "only here because we need to give you a quiet loading area" rooms happen to fit perfectly as just an organic transitional space that some facility architects used to connect one room to another
@@spartanwar1185yes, true, most of the loads have to occur over corners. And since maps had to be relatively small, there were a lot of those.
One of my favourite series to relax to on youtube right now it’s great I found you early so I can join you on your journey
What you described as 'kitbshing' is in fact called 'Greebling'! Kitbashing is the act of using various model kits and bashing them together to make something new, but the textures that get created from this process are called greebles. You are completely right about it being done to add visual interest and noise to an item. Great video!
none of those words are in the Bible
18:30 one amazing detail you might have missed in this scene, Is those mountains in the background. The moment you leave the pipe the mountains look just like the shape of Black Mesa's trademark logo. Its really amazing seeing that the inspiration for their logo is derived from a landscape the player actually sees with their own eyes. Thats just such a beautiful detail of worldbuilding that not a lot of games do. A perfect example of show don't tell :D
Its the mountain thats the most in focus thats mimicking the logo and in game if you position yourself in the pipe just right you can perfectly recreate it yourself.
It's funny you bring that up, I vaguely remember hearing about that at some point in the past and actually considering mentioning it in the script. But when I actually looked at the mesa from the pipe compared to the logo, it looked too tall to mimic the logo. The mesa in the logo reaches up to half of the circle, while the mesa from the pipe reaches almost to the top. So I'm not entirely sure if it's an intentional easter egg or not.
@@PretzelYT So I booted up my old game saves and put two images up in my community polls on my channel. I do see what you are saying its much more interpretable. If you want to check it out I overlayed the images of the logo directly on top of the game so its easy to compare.
I will disagree with the height being the issue as it matches perfectly now the mountain is a bit to the left and it needs its adjacent mountain as well to be long enough. But overall its a crazy close fit.
And with noclip you can make the shapes perfectly overlap. I really think it might still be true. just cause I got it to line up super well wish I could just post the image in these comments or a link to it but youtube would hide this comment then :P
I think you might have confused it with the same moment is the black mesa remake, where it was an intentional easter egg
@@geqoph I only played the original game to that section. They have a music note play and everything so it felt intentional even in the OG
@@tommysalami420 you must've seen this easter egg somewhere on the internet, because it's ain's the Black Mesa logo in half life
I adore this game and engine, so I'll have thoughts! The intro is a great candidate for this series, on purpose.
That very first area ("is this a hallway?") looks to be a viewing platform/concourse for a tram station, to me! The soda machines are even on the loading platform, like you might expect from a train station.
I hadn't thought about Gus in a long time. Hi Gus!
NPCs speaking sound effects happens whenever audio has to be synched with the character animation - banging on a door, punching buttons, etc. The engine doesn't really let the animation system "talk to" the environmental system, so hacks are required.
The rapid, haphazard changes between theme fits Black Mesa perfectly. Even in canon, it's possible that these different zones of the facility snake out to connect with the tram system, since they'd all need a way in.
Half-Life was one of the earliest games to have skeleton-based animation, so the gratuitous Four-Legged Walker Robot action shot is them flexing on that.
I love the random technology doodads on the walls. Not only do the devs not know what the buttons are for, neither does Gordon, and neither does anybody in that hallway.
Transdimensionalborderworld Rights
10:25 Tweaker zombie is another feature flex - semi-dynamic scene lighting by swapping between pre-baked lightmaps. That's why you can walk right in next to him and mess around, I bet.
The water in the dumpster is probably from the sewer pipe puzzle near there, I imagine you noclipped straight to the dumpster when getting footage rather than doing the puzzle.
The huge vista reveal at 18:55 works better at 640x480 (though it's still obvious how it was done).
23:42 - those birds are actually "Boids", and are yet another feature flex for some reason? They actually have flocking AI. Just programmers being programmers.
the boids also had textures in the alpha, not sure if the textures made it into the final game or not
@@Atomlxe They are textured, as can be seen if you load their models in a HL model viewer program. The area they're in in-game is simply unlit, so their textures can't be seen.
@@FlyboyHelosim In this video you can very briefly see the textures on some for a few frames @ 24:05-24:08
Half Life 1 has amazing art direction. I spent so many hours as a kid just hanging out in these little areas. They're so ambient and calm. Especially following an intense combat encounter
I think more people played like that, slow and methodical, back in the day, prior to speedrunning and over-abundance of games (h/t Steam market) making you want to race through a game ASAP to get to the next one. Buying games in a brick-and-mortar store was a totally different than than digital downloads
@@Benjamin8993agapeSame, that’s how I play all kinds of games, from Half-Life to Left 4 Dead 2, WoW, Skyrim, etc.
I like to take my time and ‘explore everything’
Blockbuster was also amazing back in the day, I would spend an hour everyone I went there in order to look through all the rental games they had 😁
@@Benjamin8993agape I remember spending a good amount of time in that part in Surface Tension where you're going through a destroyed building with all types of metal pipes exposed.
10:14 very subtle Duke Nukem line if I ever heard one, I just subconsciously accepted it before a few seconds later felt a lightbulb over my head.
16:25 the only thing I didn't get is why is the lab full of live alien creatures so close to the surface? you'd think that would be way, way underground.
Maybe to make it easier to kill them will airstrike, if they get out of hand and start trashing the lab. This is what HECU unit is for. Too bad they've taken an order from government as well, to clean up not just the aliens...
Actually canonically that baby picture would be of his niece or nephew, as said by one of the devs. It wasn't given much thought since it was just a little easter egg of one of the dev's baby picture.
That baby would be in their mid to late 20s now 😂
6:06
WHOA! That laptop DOES have an infinitely small hinge!
That's not even possible by 2023 standards.
I know that Aperture is famous for making Magic machines
but this is why Black Mesa is the best!
6:55 I think that is a blue plastic sheet over some clothes. Like another lab coat suit like the rest of the doctors have. The plastic would be put on after it is done going through a dry cleaner.
It's Gordons Blue poncho clearly
This is one of my favorite videos in a while. It's not crazy high quality or anything, it's just nice. Examining interesting textures and props. Just taking a moment to stop and explore the world of the game, thinking about what life might have been like at Black Mesa.
Its the tone and cadence of his voice that makes this video
When I think of "favorite Half-Life areas" the Uplink demo comes to mind, with the unique vending machine secret and the gargantua cutscene. Plus it's a demo that doesn't even have a sequence form the full game... it's cut content.
8:17 "If you can read this, then you are really freakin strange.. with good eyeyes(sic)" and "I need text of internet here. no really, go ahead and picture something cool in your minds(sic) eye. make something up of what you would like for this to say" Its painfully pixelated in the original texture but I think I got it.
Thanks!
10:53 the water is there so that there is a splash sound effect when he moves up and down
15:28 yes! I always liked this little area, its seems so peaceful. I would love to sit there and just soak up the ambience.
4:08 I love how you find this major health and safety violation only a few minutes into the game. Also, this was before the cascade, so you know there was no excuse for it. I love the idea that Black Mesa was run by incompetent knuckleheads.
Another great video! I love Half Life but never really took the time to explore it, so this tour was rather fun for me. Definitely rooting for a follow up for Half Life 2, that game has many a cool and interesting spots across it's world. I especially like it out in the wastes, stopping by the random homes you come across is a good time. Please keep up the good work!
P.S. I think a world that's ripe for a tour is Zelda Wind Waker.
Wind Waker is definitely on my list of things to cover sometime. There's SO much to explore in that game, I wouldn't even know where to start though.
The guard at 1:40 is implied to be Barney according to the gearbox expansion known as blue shift
One thing that I will NEVER get bored of is half life videos. Great work on the video !
You know, I bet TH-cam is able to guess your age demographic, even if none or false info is provided on your Google account, just based on what kinds of videos you view and like. Pretty sure no one in GenZ or Gen Alpha is watching a lot of HL1 videos
@@Benjamin8993agape o.O
@@Benjamin8993agape dawg I'm 15
@@Benjamin8993agape gen z here (23 years old), i get almost nothing but half-life videos lol
@@Benjamin8993agapeYou’d be surprised.
First video of yours i've seen. Very fresh perspective on a game i thought i'd seen it all in. I liked how you focused on things easily overlooked or taken for granted, rather than the stereotypical "secrets" or something. Definitely subbed! At 15:43 those sound like frogs/toads i used to hear at night down by the creek.
Fun fact: While porting Half-Life to the Dreamcast and PS2, Gearbox decided to make some modifications for most of the maps in the game. Their first attempt was Dreamcast port, as their most notable map modification was the first Office Complex map. On their second attempt with the PS2 port, they noticed how unusual the office rooms looked in the beginning of the game, as seen in 1:57. So they decided to give them proper windows and doors so that it doesn't look like an isolation room, not only that but they also added laptops and computers for the scientist at the tables, as you can see on the video the table scientists are typing on nothing at all, it's as if they're schizophrenic. It's pretty amazing that Gearbox would take the time to give more life into the background sceneries of the maps
You know, I've always been a huge HL fan, and have played it on PC, OSX, PS2, and Dreamcast... but I never noticed the changes made... or maybe I did notice but don't remember them O_O
1:50 That's because their jaw "bone" is scripted in the engine to animate if the model itself makes any sort of sound, that's how they get the mouth movement as they talk. That also happens when a guard uses a keypad as the sound comes from them, not the object.
this is an incredible video, made me think about all the tiny details in games which i havent cared to notice until now. great work!
Actually, not to nerd out, 7:03 gordon is not actually a family, he's not even in a relationship(im pretty sure based on how eli talks to us in half life 2) but thats a photo of one of the devs daughters, who was born during production and unfortunatly had a serious disability. I think it was nice of them to put her in the game tho :D
9:56 Maybe the remake's version. The people behind making that game's maps did a great job of making Xen into an entirely alien ecosystem. Seriously felt like I was jumping and fighting through a location ripped straight from Metroid Prime.
Black Mesa Xen is easily my favourite environment in all of gaming. It’s remarkably alien, but certain parts are just so relaxing. Like, building a spa was my first thought when I saw the healing pools for the first time. If the dangerous wildlife were kept under control, I’d gladly take an interdimensional vacation.
As a 33 year old H.L was one of my first actual favorite games and yes looking back it had a very odd feel, it may just be nostalgia and age. Yet there is and was something about this game. The empty M.P maps, Training room and Demo are almost more weird. Also the ambience and music add to it.
Good to see that there are other people who pay attention to the mood and feeling of places in video games.
I really like some of the places you mentioned through out the video. Especially the moody offices with the banker lamps.
I also remember seeing it in the Half-Life gameplay trailer before the game was launched.
There’s an underlying eeriness to Half Life that I can’t explain…..even with some of its more goofy aspects monsters etc, and the fact the majority of it takes place during the day.
8:57 it's literally liminal space as it's used for a transition between two levels .
9:55 Sure I would, in xen borderworld, you have these special pools of water which not only heal you, but also emit a comfy sound.
but what about the spooky evil aliens
I am not the only one person who flied to the trash-bin with a scientist, it seemed cozy for me when I was a child.
7:03 You know, I just realized that almost absolutely no one ever remembers this. Not the characters in game, not the developers, and interestingly enough not even the fans. Nobody knows or cares what happened to Gordon's child.
Ever since i was a kid, i have always loved the offices in the beginning. They look absolutely amazing in the Black Mesa game as well
8:56 that is the most literal form of a liminal space in gaming
you're not meant to linger, its a space between A and B plus its a loading zone between levels so the backrooms vibes are spot on
15:49 it's fascinating to think that the species of animal that was making that noise was most likely extinct by the events of Half-Life 2.
@2:20 both the scientists sitting down in each "jail cell" are looking at a their very own non-existent monitor and typing on a non-existent keyboard. This gives some serious vibes of "Oh Crap! Gotta look busy 'cause the boss just arrived" and failing to do it convincingly.
1:47 you neglected to mention that this is the real Barney since we see from gis perspective in Blue Shift and you can see Gordon pass by in this section
In the final boss, threes a living scientist in one of the rooms he teleports you to. And in the final biomechanical area, there are vents that take you to a room off to the side with lots of, well, screams of the damned in the background. Surprised you didn’t cover that
Great video though! I enjoyed it. You earned a sub
At 15:30 i was so tense anticipating for the spawning headcrabs to pincer attack you
I found you the other day, subscribed and was convinced you're a big known channel. Today half way through the video I realized you're very under-subbed.
Great quality video. Calming and nostalgic. I like how you value the viewer's time, yet still find spots of silence for reflection. Just like the game, this video is art. Keep it up
At 24:13, if you freeze frame, the 'bird' on the left loads some textures and appears to have depth
I don’t know why this was recommended to me, but this is the most relatable and accurate portrayal of what it’s like to play video games with ADHD that I’ve ever seen. This is how tediously I play every single game.
8:42 The bottom says "This is fun. I wonder if you can read this or not. Oh well." The top part I can only make out the third line and the last word of the second saying "You are lucky to have" so there's likely other text on those posters hidden that is simply not legible.
Justice for alien birds! Some developer did not spend countless hours programming boids, making sure that the alien birds fly in nice formations, only for *some guy with a youtube channel*, 25 years later, give them one star...
Anyways, cool video as always. Is Portal next?
They are supposed to have a texture with 8 eyes
Mirrorred texture 4 eyes ontop 4 eyes onbottom
this reminds me of any Austin's odd and unremarkable series. nice vid
You should try gunman chronicles if you like strange and somehow comfy goldsrc environments, game is a gold mine
Being someone that combed through the entire game several times over this video doesn't really do anything for me but I'm glad someone decided to point out all the weird/cool stuff in Half-Life.
I recommend reviewing the black mesa now.
For more lore in the half life series..
And more rooms also.
One of my earliest gaming memories was watching my older sister play Half-Life, and the part with the twitching headcrab zombie in front of the flashing laptop screen really stuck with me. I must've been 3 or 4 years old when that happened.
I feel like Sector D, specifically the Administrative offices are really cool. Can you take a look at some of the Decay maps?
I never got to play the Decay co-op because literally none of my friends were any good at FPS games on console, so the entire thing was either me telling them every move to make, or holding my tongue when they did stupid things :(
@@Benjamin8993agape I've never got to play Decay either, but because well lack of friends, with opposable thumbs.
22:27 on the half life fandom wiki it says that xen is a big ocean planet 7 times the size of earth with floating asteroids high up in the atmosphere
To be fair, I know at least with prop and set makers, they / we(?) Do have stories behind a lot of details in world building and I'm sure it's the same with video game textures and stuff. If you don't have a story you're trying to tell then the object won't look... Believable. It doesn't have to be a foolproof story, and you're the only one who might ever know about it, but that's definitely a core element of creating in-world objects.
I had to weather a plinth, and I added clumps of moss - but I thought where is the plinth facing, one side gets more sun, and then where the moss is more water will pool and gather, etc etc... Hope that makes sense. Details are added with some purpose or should be.
Good point, maybe I'm not giving the artists enough credit. Thank you for your perspective. I see what you mean.
I really enjoy your calm showcasing.
It’s a huge departure from the normal yt formula, but it works amazingly well.
Also, the few mistakes/unprepared occourances, like the water only showing up while you were playin the game, they made the video feel very down to earth. It makes me remember how human it is to make mistakes, or just how important it is for unexpected things to happen!
Props for pronouncing Giger correctly! Love such little things ❤
23:56 The "birds" are atually fully textured its just is covered in shadows because the lighting is weird in that location. You can see its texture when it flys closer to the islands.
14:20 ah the best ladder, snake eater
13:47 Oh that's interesting. That actually I didn't notice. Hard to learn something new about a game you've played so much, but something new still slips here and there in such videos. Thanks for that)
0:01 Albuquerque New mexico Hanks grave
Such nostalgia, not just Half Life but it's add ons too.
Phenomenal production quality!
my favourite areas are those with that outdoors new mexico rock texture in between the blue and gray concrete of the facilities.. brings me nostalgia from CS 1.6 maps like Nuke and Siege
Awesome. Just got this recomended. Keep going strong. Great quality video :)
just a quick fact: the alien birds (or boids, that's what they're called), DO have a texture, it's just that the lighting makes them look... basic
its very relaxing just watching exploration.
6:04 if you enter this room and turn the light out, the luther scientist will get frustrated and turn it back on.
in gmod, if you remove the light switch after turning the light out, the scientist will constantly loop back and forth trying to find the switch that no longer exists.
Half Life game is amazing and in my opinoin is very long so you could be hours just analyzing each detail by doing a "noclip" walkthrough :D
1:45 just as a curiosity, that security guard who is knoking the door is Barney Calhoun and you will see the exact same scene during "Half Life: Blue shift" expansion game, but you will live it from the point of view of Barney. Also during Half life there are other moments that will connect with the other expansion games.
It would be nice to see a similar video from HL2!
I would love to see you make a "Obscure and Unusual Areas in Half-Life 2" ♥
I wanted to give myself a little break before jumping into Half-Life 2, considering I'm playing the series for the first time. I should get on that soon though...
you are also late to the party huh @@PretzelYT
What an incredible video. At first i thought i was watching some youtuber with few hundred or million subs. Keep up the good work :)
Bro has more imagination than everyone in Missouri combined. It is so nice to see a deep dive into every little detail in this game, you make me feel bad for not noticing any of this in my playthrough
Love this series keep it up mate.
The alien bird actually had textures, its just lightning that makes them black i guess
i love your videos so much thank you for being
24:30 on doom 3 there is also break room with arcade game, tv, bar and windows that can be closed. Somebody should make a video how many similarities these games have. Like even health machine, good sound design with emphasis on creating atmosphere, introductory and calm beginning...
Great video! I never played Half Life but was still very much interested by what the map had to offer. Ever played Call of Duty Zombies? There are some interesting maps in there too, might be worth checking out.
I have played my fair share of zombies back in the day. I'd love to cover the Call of Duty games at some point, zombie and multiplayer maps and all. Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops were pretty much ALL I played on the 360 back in the day.
24:42 "You spend the first 20 minutes of the game walking through Black Mesa"
*quadrazid has entered the chat*