Opening the Valve Comments by Tom Bramwell

More open space maps plz in ep2 !! ;)

I will get Episode One sometime - just doesn't strike me as "Half-Life 3" so...isn't that important to me.

I know the Airboat section introduced you to a lot of physics puzzles, but, damn, that section was dull. The encounters with the choppers were pretty cool, but all in all, the vehicle sections were undercooked, vehicle wise and over long. The buggy section wasnt all that great either.

I like it when a dev listens to the community. The Airboat levels were boring and went on forever. Did'nt like the buggy ones that much either.

I was eating my lunch when I got a mental image of Gabe Newell as a cheerleader :(

I thought the airboat was fairly cool actually, and I quite liked the slower pace of the vehicle sections - it was nice to have a genuine feel of a wider world rather than everything being cramped, fight-intensive levels. The buggy section was a bit too long though, definitely.

The thing that struck me about that interview is Robin Walker saying "They'll say [a cool, random thing happened]. How can we make sure that happens to almost everyone?"

I think that's completely the wrong attitude: what's fun about games is that not everyone experiences the same thing - it's by definition a changeable, interactive medium - if you tune games so that everyone has an identical 'cool' experience you're just turning it into a film.

The most annoying thing about the buggy section was the turbo boost. It tempted you to turbo into corners and off cliffs and I dont know who thought sensitive knight rider style turbo boost jumps were a good idea..........

gabe just got a free PC for that last comment

The airboat stuff wouldn't have been such a grind fest if they didn't chop it up with loading bits. Had the speedy adrenaline chase stuff not lost all sense of.. er.. chase and adrenaline by the first load screen, it would've been great.

I think they're completely wrong about the everybody-sees-everything approach being inherently superior. There's room for both that and more personalized experiences, as many past games have shown. The whole landscape of gaming would be a much more barren place without games utilizing either approach.

The 1% of people versus 5% of resources argument is flawed. For many gamers having the option to make (seemingly) significant choices, to shape their own experience counts for a lot more than those figures would suggest. Those resources are far from wasted. People, however, need to be aware that their choices matter for that to work.

Still, it was an entertaining read.

Thank God some wide open spaces are coming in Episode 2: loved the exploration in the Buggy levels (as craftily linear as it was) and rather than be bored, was amazed at the quality and length of the airboat section. Collapsing towers, ramps, chase sequences. Long may it continue (and it did)

The airboat/buggy sections of Half Life 2 was great, in my opinion - I liked the change of pace, the chance to 'explore' City 17 and it was a great way of enhancing the sense of place that you experience with that game. And of course, the ominous Citadel is visible from almost every location which is one of the things that I love about HL2: the first thing you see when you step out of the train station at the start of the game is where you are going to be at the end. Absolutely fantastic.

If you want a vehicle section done badly then look no further than Quake 4. Pathetic.

Also, Rooney/AHiFi:

I get the impression that this [b]is[/b] Half Life 3 in the sense that installments from now on are going to be episodic and incremental rather than one big release/tech upgrade every few years. Which is cool by me if all of those episodes are going to be of this kind of quality.

On a personal note, I also liked the epic feel of the outdoor driving levels, and that sheer sense of scale that you don't get in other areas of the game. Also, while I broadly agree that a developer should try and make sure all players get to see most of the 'cool stuff', I think there also has to be room for plenty of experimentation as well.

completed it yesterday, i LOVED running down the corridors with the energy balls flying towards you it was arcade-esque, loved it.

I vehemently disagree with Newell's disagreeing with Spector's design philosophy. I think being able to play a game 5 times through and getting different experiences everytime, like in Deus Ex, is fantastic. Of course that's 1 extreme of the spectrum, and the other extreme is a game that is 90% scripted where every player has the same experiences, which may be great but doesn't provide much replay incentive. Of course there is room for a combination of both in the same game, and I love the Half-Life games, but it seems to me like Valve, Newell especially, looks at games like a business model, talking about how developing things that not every single player may see is a waste of resources, referring to gamers as costumers... I don't know, I just don't get the feeling that he loves this as I do with some developers.

And thank god for people like Warren Spector, and for people like Newell also I guess, it keeps the games biz interesting!

Is re-playability in a single player narrative game like this a big deal? If not, then I want to see all the cool stuff that they've been working on. When the plane crashed into the roof, I thought: cool! Knowing that everyone else experienced it doesn't make the effect less so.

Funnily enough, this is one of the few games of its type that I have replayed, to go though the commentary, which was excellent.

"Gabe Newell: What we try to do is get people through as much entertainment as possible. This is an argument I have with Warren Spector; he builds a game that you can play through six different times. So that means that people pay for the game, but don't get to play five sixths of the game, which I feel is a mistake. You spend all of this time to build stuff that most players will never ever ever see, and I feel we try to maximise... I mean, I understand the exploration impulse and we try to make people happy doing that because it's an important part. Exposition, exploration, combat and so on are things that we need to make sure are present, but if only one per cent of your customers see this cool thing that takes five per cent of your development budget, that's not a good use of resources."

Becouse of this thinking hell never be know as great desiner.

OR he's already a great designer but has, *gasps* different views! Just look at this comments thread; some people loved the vehicle sections, some people hated them. Some people love the linear nature of Half Life, some love the openness and exploration of Deus Ex. Some love both. Some hate both!

But just having this variety in views is good for the industry and good for games :)

I actually liked the wide exploratory levels from HL2,the maps from episode one feel way too `this is where WE want you to go rather than where I want to go` and they are very constrictive.

There are very few instances when I can truly say I'm torn when it comes to game design - this is surely one of them.

I just can't for the life of me decide whether an open "different-for-everyone" experience is preferable over a dictated set of events that has the same woah-factor for everyone.

I play Hitman and Oblivion and I think that it's awesome that I can do these things in entirely different ways, and then I play something like.. I dunno, Gabriel Knight or Second Sight (wow, random) and I think "this thing I can recommend to someone because it's got an ace story and some truly great moments". I can't say that about Oblivion, I can't wholeheartedly tell someone to pick it up and have a great time with it, because it relies so heavily on the player to make it great.

I mean, when Final Fantasy fans unite and talk about FF7, they 'know what they're talking about' in a way that people reminicing Oblivion don't. "I joined the thieves guild and stole this thing!" "Really? I was a mage and did some crazy magic stuff!" "Oh yeah?" "Yeah." "Right." "Hmmm..." "Yes." and so on and so forth.

Anyone else gone back and re -played HL2 as a result of getting the expansion/new episode? I've just finished it again (on hard) and, if anything, it seems to have improved in relation to recent games. Oh! and I loved the river section... so each to their own.

I feel that Valve is the only company that can use scripted sequences heavily without seeming too heavy-handed. The boss battles in Far Cry, for example, were laughably arcade and incongruous with the rest of the game. That said, I prefer the virtual world approach, like those used in Oblivion and Fallout 2.

Also, I think Newell makes an error in thinking when judging Spector's design philosophy. He says that if a game can be different 6 times through it, a one-time player won't experience 5/6ths of it, but that's not how it works. At least in Deus Ex, 90% of the locations will be seen by all players, but it's the way you go about exploring those locations and solving the scenarios given to you that dictates the difference.

Imagine if in Half-Life you could upgrade different skills like hacking, lockpicking, explosives etc. This would determine how you make your way through the game, but it doesn't actually change the environments. So you can have a game with an open-ended design philosophy but still BASICALLY 'force' players through a set path. I think that's a great way to go, open ended gameplay coupled with linear storytelling like in Deus Ex, where the main story doesn't change but little facets like how some characters see you do.

Anyway enough ranting, I hope you all see what I'm trying to point out here.

The first Half-life did some of the first scripted, yet seemingly unscripted, events in the fps world. So I don't see why everybody is quite so surprised it's valve's technique still, although I do miss a bit of variation that seemed missing from episode one. And crossbow sniping, there should have been more of that too.

As good as Half-Life 2 was, it's not really a game that ever rewards the player for exploration. There were times when you could go off the beaten track and look at some deserted building - especially on the coast - but there'd actually be no reason to waste time doing that. You'd find nothing.

I know of at least one place in HL2 which would qualify. The reward is a raving mad character who has some unique things to say and enough powerups to compensate for the damage you take to get there.

Well, as far as exploration goes, I don't really want an easter egg in every corner, basically reminding me that "you're not to first to think of going here!". Sure, taking a few steps back and out of the immersion, I realise that people actually crafted this game and there's nothing really left for me to discover, but some games sort of casually let you feel like it.

Heretic 2 had some really cool spots that clearly weren't *intended* to be reachable, but you could with enough practicing the wall jumps. Now that in itself feels more like a reward than if they slapped something funny up there.