Half-Life 2 Interview

Heh.

http://www.ausdod.com/images/game.gif

"And then really push the art direction. Our art team did tons and tons of prototypes and mock-ups, sketches, oil paintings of what we wanted Half-Life 2 to look like. After we started to get a good idea from the art team about what we wanted the whole game to look like and the visual feel was, we started working on technology of how do we make that visual sense come into our game. How do we get that look? How do we get that feel? And then express that in code.

That is the way games should be created. It seems that everyone is just going "So ok we got this engine, lets see where we can push it." while it shoould be "We got this idea look and feel, lets see how we can mimic it as close as possible."

I WANNA KNOW WHAT YAHN'S BEEN DOING!

Valve talks about Alyx and Barney, saying how they'll be important characters who aren't clones, but single people in the gameworld. Valve also mentions how shocked they were when they found out how much people liked the Barney character in the first game.

Personally, I liked Barney because he was expendable, repeated, and died with a loud scream. Often when I'd see Barney, I'd quicksave the game, run up to him and let him start yammering something about the aliens, then shotgun him in the face while he was in mid-sentence. Quickload, repeat. Quickload, crowbar. Quickload, machinegun. Quicload, go on with the game.

What I'm wondering is, if Barney dies early on in the game, is that it? Is he done? He sounds like he's important to some scenes in the game, so how will they preserve him? Most worrysome, is he invincible? Or if he dies, do you fail?

I guess what I'm getting at is I'd really love to be able to kill Barney repeatedly again in Half-Life2. It's one of the things I loved about HL1, luring aliens to the Barneys and scientists, then watching them get mauled.

Much like tomservo has/had decided to restrain himself from looking at Deus Ex 2 material, I have restrained myself from HalfLife 2 material. I haven't watched the movies. I've seen one screenshot and a few thumbnails. I actually downloaded some of the movies but couldn't bring myself to watch them.

I want to be surprised and I can't wait!

I might watch a trailer or movie the day before I get it, just to peak my anticipation.

SE - And how's multiplayer so far?
Josh - I don't know if we're discussing that yet.
SE - You can't give us little clues as to if it will include Capture the Flag or Team Fortress?
Josh -

Silence. It would be a huge nuclear bomb if TF2 were released with HL2.

Facial expressions have been implimented since two years ago.

Good lord, I'd say that the playtesting for that should be solid.

I beg to differ, I think there is a lot of cool new info in here.
e.g.
All of our base textures are 2 [kilobytes] by 2 [kilobytes]. All of our polygon counts are very, very high. We won't actually ship that, primarily because there's currently no hardware that can possibly [run] it. However, once hardware releases that can run it, then we might release that higher rez content.

That'll be cool to download next year.

"Upon it's (sic) release, the sequel to the 1998 hit first-person shooter will, no doubt, shatter all record sales and instantly become a must have, a classic, and become the new standard all in one fell swoop."

Ok, I think it's going to be a great game, but I think the author's tongue is firmly in Valve's ass before the first paragraph is out.

Sharky's is still around? Whoda thunk it.

Haha:

SE - And how's multiplayer so far?

Josh - I don't know if we're discussing that yet.

SE - You can't give us little clues as to if it will include Capture the Flag or Team Fortress?

Josh -

Is it just me or do those Valve guys seem like they are unable to answer the questions directly? They used the same, "well, we think that would be cool and then it's just a matter of going, yeah we can do that, and it's cool, and I seem to use the word cool alot in every one of my responses, so that's cool" phrases over and over. Just give us some interesting info and answers to the questions, and stop repeating yourselves. Also, they seemed totally defensive when Sharky's asked if they got some of their ideas (like vehicles) from other games. But even still, there was some interesting stuff in there about development times and such.

This is a good read btw...

I love Valve. Those guys are great... The anticipation for this game is killing me.