Ok this game is looking GREAT.
Source: gamespot.com
How do you make a sequel to one of the best, most popular action games ever made? Very carefully. Just ask Valve, the creator of the blockbuster 1998 first-person shooter Half-Life. This enigmatic company has seemingly been dormant ever since the release of Half-Life, emerging only for the occasional announcement of a new patch for Counter-Strike or another refurbished Half-Life bundle for retail outlets. Now Valve has started talking again--and talking big, for a change. But it's been keeping busy all along. After all, as Valve's founder and CEO Gabe Newell is quick to point out, the sequel to Half-Life has been in the works for the past five years, ever since Half Life's release. Yet only now, with the finish line in sight, has the company decided to come forward with some hard facts about what exactly Half-Life 2 is going to be. Recently, we were fortunate enough to take a look at an early version of the game in action and speak with key members of Valve about what they've been doing all this time. So it practically goes without saying that we have some exciting details to report.
The original Half-Life brought a real sense of surprise and suspense to action gaming. As if to set us up for more shocks, Valve was quick to hit us with this little doozy: Half-Life 2 is on track for a worldwide release on September 30 of this year. We're not talking "when it's done" here. We're talking "really soon." What about multiplayer support? Half-Life is still on people's minds after all these years because of the incredible work done by fans of the game, who used Half-Life's 3D engine to produce entirely new and outstandingly good multiplayer games such as Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat. If not for these multiplayer mods, Half-Life wouldn't have enjoyed nearly the sort of longevity that it has. So the good news is, Half-Life 2 will indeed have multiplayer features out of the box. The bad news, for now, is that Valve won't elaborate any further. More details on multiplayer Half-Life 2 are forthcoming, but it has been confirmed that Half-Life 2 is being built--or rather, the proprietary technology powering the game was built--with the mod community in mind. We'll cover that later on in this preview.
In case you were wondering, the game is also being built, first and foremost, for the PC. Leading up to the official announcement from Valve that Half-Life 2 would be publicly displayed for the first time at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in May 2003, rumors spread far and wide about what the game would and wouldn't be. One of the more popular rumors was that, much like how Bungie Software moved development of its outstanding first-person shooter, Halo, from the PC to the Xbox, so would Valve switch to focusing on console development. Newell laughed this off--no, Half-Life 2 will be a PC game. At first. Newell did confirm that an Xbox version, at least, will follow suit, though there's no hard release date for it yet. At any rate, Newell emphasized that the success of the original Half-Life can be attributed in no small part to the game's huge, worldwide following of PC owners. Valve would have to be downright foolish to abandon its huge installed base when making Half-Life 2.
What about the game itself? Read on to learn more about what Half-Life 2 will play like, who's in it, and what's going on in it.
Half-Life certainly wasn't the first game of its kind. Many other 3D first-person shooters, such as id Software's Quake, had long since popularized the genre for fans of single-player and multiplayer action. What Half-Life did was refine and in some ways redefine the genre's formula, bringing it to its current high standards. Half-Life is still the high-water mark as first-person shooters go, because it was the first game to present, as Newell aptly put it, "a seamless string of surprising events." The object of the game wasn't just to reach the other end of every level. The gameplay wasn't about finding color-coded keys to match color-coded doors. The object was survival. And the gameplay was exceedingly intense, thanks to the game's excellent audio, special effects, enemy design, and artificial intelligence. In Half-Life, players became Gordon Freeman, a scientist who happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. The game's opening act is as memorable as they come: Freeman inadvertently triggers a dimensional rift, causing terrible alien creatures to pour into the Black Mesa research center--and causing government black-ops agents to come after both the creatures and any human witnesses. Fortunately for Freeman, he gets his hands on the HEV system, a powerful and high-tech environment suit that enables him to overcome incredible odds, shooting his way past hordes of aliens and commandos and eventually warping to the aliens' home turf and hitting them where it counts.
Half-Life 2 will be a traditional sequel insofar as it continues the storyline established in the original game and reintroduces many familiar characters. So in short, Half-Life 2 will be fundamentally similar to the original, both thematically and in terms of gameplay. It's going to look much better, take place in bigger and more-detailed environments, and feature a stronger cast of characters. Players will reprise the role of Gordon Freeman. In the sequel, as in the original, players will see everything through Freeman's eyes and will never be taken out of his persona. And, as in the original, Freeman will never say a word--it will be up to players to play every bit of the character's role.
According to Newell, Half-Life 2 is going to fulfill the original game's potential as a medium for first-person storytelling, as that game merely "scratched the surface." In other words, though the original Half-Life was praised for its ability to immerse players in the dangerous world of the game, the sequel promises to do an even better job of it. At the same time, it seems wise of the designers to not go out of their way to alter the parts of Half-Life's formula that worked well. We thrilled to being in the middle of an alien invasion. We grew tense at the realization that our actions in the world of the game had real consequences, such as when, early on, pressing an elevator call button caused an elevator full of scientists to come crashing down, killing them all. Half-Life 2 will rekindle these feelings, and more. Newell often referred to Valve's intention to make Half-Life 2 an "emotional" experience--the designers want to make Half-Life 2 players empathize with the game's main character.
Essentially, Valve hopes that Half-Life 2 will be exactly the sequel that the original game's legions of fans want it to be. As such, it has a familiar cast and a familiar setting--though that's not to say it's about all the same people having it out in Black Mesa again. Next we'll tell you more about the setting and some of the new characters--both friendly and unfriendly--in Half-Life 2.
The original Half-Life certainly had an epic feel to it, but the game did take place almost entirely within a cold, subterranean research laboratory--hardly the place for serious heroics. Half-Life 2 won't be confined to Black Mesa. Instead, the game will take place entirely in a fictitious European city known only as City 17--Valve implied that there would be no action on alien turf this time around. For the most part, what we saw of the city looked quaint and modern. However, some decidedly futuristic touches, such as the high-tech outfits worn by some of the inhabitants of the city, made us wonder when exactly Half-Life 2 is supposed to take place.
So as not to spoil anything, Valve wouldn't reveal specifics about the plot except that the game takes place not long after the events of the original. We do know that Gordon Freeman is back and doesn't really look any older. We know that other characters from Half-Life are back, such as the mysterious briefcase-toting G-man, who had offered Freeman the option to work for him at the conclusion of the first game. In Half-Life 2, we find out that Freeman has accepted the offer, but it's unclear how that affects his relationships with the other characters. Barney the security guard managed to survive this long, too. We know that many of Half-Life's best, most popular alien foes, from headcrabs to barnacles, are back as well. But Valve spent less time showing us these familiar faces and more time showing us Alyx, a young woman who will apparently be Gordon's comrade-in-arms during parts of Half-Life 2.
Alyx turns out to be the daughter of one of Freeman's less-fortunate colleagues, and her mother was also killed during the events of the original game. She seems to have inherited her father's scientific know-how and technical aptitude, and she's pretty good looking to boot. In the technical demonstration we were given, she also served as Valve's poster child for the work the designers have done on character modeling, animation, and lip synching. Alyx could be seen smiling, frowning, grimacing, and accurately forming every syllable of her dialogue, all in real time. The lip synching is based on wave-pattern recognition, which will not only allow Valve to more easily localize Half-Life 2 in many different languages, but will also provide benefits to mod makers to reap the benefits.
conti.....HERE
Lots and Lots and lots & lots and well lots of screens, give me a few to get them all up.
