Half Life 2's art direction

[Marek]

There's an article over at Planet Half Life that shows some pics used in a presentation by one of the Valve artists at the Siggraph conference. It's nice to get a small peek at the actual research and sourcing for the game. Whatever will become of Half-Life 2's gameplay, I think the art direction is already proven to be excellent. If you put some screenshots of HL2 side by side with other shooters, the color palette and lighting in HL2 is strikingly well done.

If you also stop to think about the videos that were released, the range of atmospheres is really good. You have like the night-time zombie movie stuff going on in small villages, the daytime stuff in the Prague-like city (with eerily empty streets reminding of the first scene in 28 Days Later), the dark Orwellian abandoned factory complex with crowd-control fences, the Scandinavian-style port with lots of reds and blues, the Dr. Kleiner HL1-style lab, etc.

I think overall the more recent screenshots we've seen are less detailed and complex than the first batch of screenshots released around E3 2003, but the believability of HL2's world still seems consistently high.

Left: research photo. Right: in-game shot.

(Research photo)

Hopefully the complete game will gradually offer more visual themes / locations as the game progresses. I wouldn't want City 17 to dominate the whole game. I'm betting there's a bunch of surprise locations, though you never know after all the troubles Valve went through.

I'm really hoping this game will be as good as it suggests it will be.

[Ryam BaCo]

since i saw this around 14 minutes long half life 2 trailer with all this facial expressions, physics- and graphics-stuff i'm pretty excited about it. this screenshots look like...like...wow...very impressing. only unreal engine 3 seems to beat that optically. does anybody know a reliable (hahaha!) release date?

[Marek]

The half hour video of E3 2003 had me floored. I don't think anything ever impressed me as much as that one video. Really, if I think back about all the games that impressed before that, starting with the 286 age, I don't think I was ever quite as excited.

I watched it over and over and over again. Then I watched it at work, and everyone stopped doing whatever they were doing and gathered around the monitor. Productivity dropped completely that day. HL2 was all we could talk about at lunch.

Since then, things have calmed down a lot, and I'm keeping expectations low. I actually don't expect the final game to impress me as much as the first video. Nothing near it, in fact. I expect HL2 to be flawed. But I still have very high expectations and I will be dissapointed if it doesn't provide an extremely polished and immersive experience that is at least one step ahead of Call of Duty or other recent scripting-heavy FPSes.

It's a bit crazy how much depends on this game. Everything in HL2 trickles down to Day of Defeat: Source, CS: Source, Team Fortress 2 and especially the mods. Some kind of modding gold rush is bound to happen when Source becomes available. What I've seen of the tools they've created, it's all extremely user friendly.

[BigJKO]

Late September is the best guess right now. They seem pretty much finished this time.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

I said it once and I'll say it again. Doom 3 is Doom 3 and I can wait for it, but Half-Life 2 is really what I'm saving my $50 for.

[Marek]

Are you guys planning to buy it through Steam, or retail?

[Huz]

Are you guys planning to buy it through Steam, or retail?

Haha, Steam. :~

(Not meaning to be rude, but that's the most honest answer I can come up with. )

PS. Oh man, I thought the default vBulletin :-P smiley was bad. Nice favicon though.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

I want retail. Stupid Internet connection is always unreliable, no matter what form.

[MrHoatzin]

PS. Oh man, I thought the default vBulletin :-P smiley was bad. Nice favicon though.

That is our :fellate: smiley. In fact that was the original name for the emoticon, but it didn't fly with Marek, the godawful puritan that he is.

Ahm.

Now, I am not really sure which ones are photographs and which ones aren't... Is this one an in-game image?

[RLacey]

Are you guys planning to buy it through Steam, or retail?

Why would anyone buy it through Steam when you can buy a fully boxed copy for the same price or cheaper?

[Marek]

That is our :fellate: smiley. In fact that was the original name for the emoticon, but it didn't fly with Marek, the godawful puritan that he is.

Heh.

Now, I am not really sure which ones are photographs and which ones aren't... Is this one an in-game image?

Erm yep, in-game.

Why would anyone buy it through Steam when you can buy a fully boxed copy for the same price or cheaper?

The boxed copy won't be cheaper. I think a lot of people outside of the US are going to buy it through Steam instead of wait for their local release (e.g. me). I'm not sure I even care about the box. I was cleaning out my room just yesterday and then I noticed what a gigantic pile of boxes I've gathered over the years. I really ought to sell some of that crap on eBay. (Anyone care for a copy of Laura Bow 2, still in its original shrink wrap?)

[Huz]

The boxed copy won't be cheaper. I think a lot of people outside of the US are going to buy it through Steam instead of wait for their local release (e.g. me). I'm not sure I even care about the box.

What makes you so sure? Did you see how much they were charging for Condition Zero via Steam? OK so it's $10 cheaper than on Amazon now, but it (amazingly) used to be $10 more. Madness.

Given Valve's apparent ineptitude (Steam still doesn't really work too well for me), I'd much rather pay for a 'hard copy' that Valve can't screw up (at least, hopefully not very easily), even if I do end up waiting a bit longer/paying slightly more.

And I think a $10 price difference is still too low, considering how much less you're paying for with Steam. :~

[toblix]

My problem is that I want all the boxes. I'l like that. I want the complete set! The one with Gordon, because he's the cool hero, G-Man because he's so cool, and Alyx because she's the . I mean the .

[manny_c44]

I'm not sure about buying over steam if there is no incentive....if its cheaper (which it really should be) then things might be different. The Steam feature that has me excited is that after you've purchased the game and registered with Steam, you can play it on any computer anywhere, as long as you sign into Steam. That way you'll never feel screwed if you misplace a CD.

I think the HDR lighting (an example would be the sun kind of over-taking the power lines in the light house picture) goes a long way to making everything more believable. Also, in some other screens I saw some glass deformation that looked very awesome, like doom 3's. I love the little details.

[RLacey]

And I think a $10 price difference is still too low, considering how much less you're paying for with Steam. :~

I agree. I will ALWAYS pick a hard copy over an electronic one - there's something more reliable, and also rather comforting, about being able to leaf through the manual while the game installs, and proudly waving the box in a friend's face all the time .

[Jake]

My guess is that even if you buy the boxed copy, it's going to demand you connect to the internet via Steam for anything and everything anyway, it's not going to be like picking up a copy of HL1 now where if you really want you can avoid Steam if you steer clear of multiplayer.

[RLacey]

My guess is that even if you buy the boxed copy, it's going to demand you connect to the internet via Steam for anything and everything anyway, it's not going to be like picking up a copy of HL1 now where if you really want you can avoid Steam if you steer clear of multiplayer.

I could be wrong, but I thought I read something about boxed-copy owners being able to play the single-player mode without connecting to Steam. I can't back that up at the moment, though.

[Jake]

I could be wrong, but I thought I read something about boxed-copy owners being able to play the single-player mode without connecting to Steam. I can't back that up at the moment, though.

Right, it would be a bit retarded to not allow you to play the game unless you had an internet connection, but will anything beyond 1.0 be available to you without it, etc? Eg the 1.1 patch that fixes the last minute bug that slipped in which crippled the save/load feature and also accidentally removed all monsters from the levels due to a corrupt datafile.

[manny_c44]

No, I think all patches and whatnot will be Steam based. But its better to have an automated system...if it works. And wel'll have to wait and see if Steam improves from its current shaky state.

[RLacey]

Right, it would be a bit retarded to not allow you to play the game unless you had an internet connection, but will anything beyond 1.0 be available to you without it, etc? Eg the 1.1 patch that fixes the last minute bug that slipped in which crippled the save/load feature and also accidentally removed all monsters from the levels due to a corrupt datafile.

I'd still take the potential ability to play the game without using Steam any day. What if/when Steam goes down?

No, I think all patches and whatnot will be Steam based. But its better to have an automated system...if it works. And wel'll have to wait and see if Steam improves from its current shaky state.

I'm afraid I disagree here as well. It's far, FAR harder to back up the latest version of software when patches aren't easily downloadable. I like auto-update systems, but there are other, better examples. Even the original's check-for-update system had much this effect - it let you know that it needed updating, and provided a list of mirrors for the file. This way, though, you can make a backup of the patch, and so don't need a DVD writer to make a backup of your Steam files.

[manny_c44]

Well, supposedly the changes to Source, HL2 and its mods will be far greater than most games in the past...almost like a constant update to support new graphics abilities in the old game, refinements to gameplay, etc. Of course these balancing changes are more or less for the multiplayer aspects (like Counter Strike, Day of Defeat and Team Fortress 2, if its ever released), but for ongoing updating processes (as well as the ungoing fight against piracy), steam makes sense.

[MrHoatzin]

Also, the broadband penetration is not particularly impressive; 30 or so percent in the US, less than that in Europe (and 124% in Korea). I don't have broadband, so the idea of a game having to download tons of shit in the background is quite unnerving. If I have to download a huge-ass patch, I usually go to the handy college library, download it, burn it or put it on a memory stick and I run with that. I remember I had to download the first XP Service Pack in a Mac lab. It was the only lab I could successfully argue I had the right to access (didn't have any computer classes there, ever, but it is in the art building), and the only lab I knew of that had CD burners in all machines. Took me a while to explain to the technician what in the hell's name did I think I were doing.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

But hey, it would be supremely moronic of Valve to not give out patches the old fashioned way - dowloaded from places like Gamers Hell, etc. Especially since there will be a ton of people buying the physical game anyway, and not minding checking for new patches on their own.

[Marek]

Here's some funky semi-new concept art.