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Blastinus posted:Let's also talk a bit about the timeline as we know it. Day 1 spans from the start of Gordon and Barney's respective shifts to the rocket launch at the end of On a Rail, which takes place in the late evening. Barney's knocked out for almost an entire day, apparently waking up near the start of Day 2, around the same time that Shephard and his buddies were being flown in as reinforcements, only to get shot down. Shephard wakes up as the sun's going down on Day 2, near the conclusion of Gordon's rampage across the Surface Tension level, and the radio broadcast near the end of this update places him right at the point where Gordon has to use a mortar to defeat a Gargantua and gain access to the Lambda Labs for the chapter Forget About Freeman. You're spot on about Shepard, but Barney's timeline doesn't add up. He managed to view Gordon's abduction at the end of the game, which happened in Apprehension – which was long before Surface Tension. This means he couldn't have woken up after Shepard's transport crashed.
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Mar 2, 2021 21:39
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Gantolandon posted:You're spot on about Shepard, but Barney's timeline doesn't add up. He managed to view Gordon's abduction at the end of the game, which happened in Apprehension – which was long before Surface Tension. This means he couldn't have woken up after Shepard's transport crashed. Except that Barney hears two soldiers discussing how Shephard didn't make it, shortly before exiting the canals. Considering that it's daylight in Barney's story and during Shephard's fly-in, my assumption for the storyline is that Shephard's unit was flown in during or shortly before Apprehension, crashed, and Shephard woke up hours later, close to the end of Surface Tension. This would place Barney's story over an incredibly short timeframe, lasting as long as it took for Gordon Freeman to crash a cart, fight some sharks and ninjas, and then get punched out. Granted, the writers could just be hacks, but it's fun to theorycraft.
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Mar 2, 2021 21:54
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A few years back some fellow on Youtube made a stab at charting the course of the disaster, combining the maps for all the levels in Half-Life, Opposing Force, and Blue Shift and charting the paths Gordon, Adrian, and Barney take through each. The video has Adrian's squad crashland early on in "Surface Tension", which conflicts with the HECU dialogue in Blue Shift. To be honest I doubt Valve ever came up with a rigorous chronology of the course of events during the disaster and the expansions were made by an entirely different studio, so inconsistencies are inevitable and a lot of the time we're just going to have to settle for a "good enough" timeline rather than one that resolves everything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Iu4GXUHfU0 Loxbourne posted:One fun thing that came up during Black Mesa's development is that yes, the water table of the New Mexico desert is remarkably high. If you built a huge underground rocket complex it would indeed need this much drainage. But the reason that particular vat exists is that Gordon went past it on his tram ride in! It's the one that broke and spilled goo everywhere (and Black Mesa lovingly recreated the very spot). Someone has set up worklights and a toolbox, and the side of the vat has a temporary repair patch-job on it.
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Mar 3, 2021 02:34
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Marshal Radisic posted:A few years back some fellow on Youtube made a stab at charting the course of the disaster, combining the maps for all the levels in Half-Life, Opposing Force, and Blue Shift and charting the paths Gordon, Adrian, and Barney take through each. The video has Adrian's squad crashland early on in "Surface Tension", which conflicts with the HECU dialogue in Blue Shift. To be honest I doubt Valve ever came up with a rigorous chronology of the course of events during the disaster and the expansions were made by an entirely different studio, so inconsistencies are inevitable and a lot of the time we're just going to have to settle for a "good enough" timeline rather than one that resolves everything. Wow, that's incredibly helpful. Some remarks, without spoilering Opposing Force:
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Mar 3, 2021 18:53
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Is there an interactive 3d model of whole complex? Layered maps don't kinda give same information.
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Mar 3, 2021 20:09
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NHO posted:Is there an interactive 3d model of whole complex? Layered maps don't kinda give same information. Almost certainly not, because there's no way Valve & Gearbox had continuity in mind when they laid out levels. OpFor is unusual in that it goes out of its way to show locations from Half-Life 1 (and Black Mesa slots in a few nods to places we'll see in OpFor on wall signage and so on). The Black Mesa Facility is the shape it needs to be for any given set-piece at the time.
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Mar 3, 2021 23:42
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Marshal Radisic posted:A few years back some fellow on Youtube made a stab at charting the course of the disaster, combining the maps for all the levels in Half-Life, Opposing Force, and Blue Shift and charting the paths Gordon, Adrian, and Barney take through each. The video has Adrian's squad crashland early on in "Surface Tension", which conflicts with the HECU dialogue in Blue Shift. To be honest I doubt Valve ever came up with a rigorous chronology of the course of events during the disaster and the expansions were made by an entirely different studio, so inconsistencies are inevitable and a lot of the time we're just going to have to settle for a "good enough" timeline rather than one that resolves everything. One other detail that actually makes a lot of sense from that video is when Barney teleports to Xen around 18 minutes in and the VOX delivers a notification about a large energy discharge in that area. That's obviously just an invention of the person who made the video, but it provides a very plausible explanation for why the HECU began poking around there during Power Struggle, since Rosenberg activating the teleporter put a giant target on his team's back. Too bad they only sent, like, four guys to the control room itself. By the way, while the first update was half an hour, I'm going to try shortening it up a bit in the future. I just wanted to get up to the bit where Shephard gets left high and dry, since that's effectively the defining point of his journey for the rest of the game.
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Mar 4, 2021 02:34
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The opening is of course a reference to Predator but like a lot of things Gearbox does they completely miss the point of it and just play it straight. Anyways Opposing Force has a really strong opening. I think I remember the demo actually having a "cut" of sorts that takes you from some time during this opening section to a later part but I played that demo as much as I ever did Uplink.
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Mar 4, 2021 04:12
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Opposing Force draws on some classic 80s and 90s action movie elements for its opening in general. There was - and still is - a certain strain of military action movie that centers on clueless grunts getting in way over their heads on a top-secret mission they weren't briefed on and when everything starts going to poo poo they have to figure their own way out while being interfered with by shadowy people. This is often mundane in nature, CIA officers or black ops with secret objectives that the mission the grunts know about is just a cover for, but sometimes the secret threat is more fantastical in nature. Where Black Mesa went whole hog on the G-Man clearly being an alien, where it's more ambiguous in the original Half-Life whether he's an alien himself or a human working for aliens, Opposing Force imo plays the G-Man more to the idea of the meddling CIA agent with his own mysterious agenda that may or may not be to the grunt's benefit as he watches with interest from the shadows, helping and hindering the protagonist according to his own mission. As for the 'protagonists fly in on an aircraft, start to get briefed, aircraft gets shot down,' that trope actually goes back to WW2 movies, just with a plane full of paratroopers that gets hit over France or Germany instead of a helicopter. The particularly helicopter version became popular with the Vietnam War, given how murky that war was.
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Mar 4, 2021 14:50
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Kibayasu posted:The opening is of course a reference to Predator but like a lot of things Gearbox does they completely miss the point of it and just play it straight. I remember that demo, it was the first Half-Life related things I've ever seen. It indeed was cut apart. It started at the beginning, ending just after the radioactive goo room; then it jumped to a shorter fragment we should reach pretty soon, then it finished with one incredibly short from near the end of the game.
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Mar 4, 2021 17:10
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Part 3: Missing in Action Having been abandoned by our boy in blue, Shephard decides to go through a comically hazardous side route, where he discovers that anything long and flexible can be a rope. You just have to believe hard enough. It's a good thing that every power cord, elevator cable, and other dangly bits can actually support our weight, because there won't be any proper ropes just lying around, if I recall correctly. No jungle gym enthusiasts in this research facility, it would appear. Along the way, Shephard will provide a diplomatic greeting to some brand new interdimensional tourists. While we had a brief cameo back in the second update, we weren't formally introduced to Race X until this point in the game. I don't believe we're given an adequate explanation for their existence in the game itself, but it's quite logical when it comes right down to it. Xen is known as the border world because, as I mentioned before, it's a pass-through location for anyone wishing to perform interdimensional travel. As a result, as long as the barrier between Xen and Earth remains open, any sort of nasties from beyond the stars could sneak right on through and opportunistically lay waste to the planet. More on that later. Gearbox also posited that, in true horror game fashion, there could be mutations on the classic headcrab zombie and they'd grow to be faster, deadlier, and a significantly more imposing threat. They would end up being correct on that point as well, albeit not in the way they predicted. Once again, we'll get to that when the time comes.
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Mar 10, 2021 13:30
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Companion cube: Early days. In general, we are slowly getting out of action prologue and approaching meat of the game. Opposing Force is a fun game that contains interesting amounts of Jank, Shadows of Original Half-Life and it's own, interesting ideas.
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Mar 10, 2021 15:14
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Personally, I posited the gonoms as being a further step in the headcrab -> zombie -> ??? -> gonarch lifecycle. After taking over a host, given time and food, the headcrab will steadily mutate and enlarge its host until eventually you get a gonarch.
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Mar 10, 2021 16:17
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Opposing Force is fun to watch now, I remember beating it as a kid when I first got it, but there's so much that I've forgotten, like these rope climbing things. I do remember some of the race X enemies, their visual design was interesting after N hours of shooting at vortigaunts in the original Half-life. And some of the fun guns Shepard gets later on. 
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Mar 10, 2021 16:26
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This looks suspiciously like Office Complex because it's roughly the same area, Sector B, with its offices and storages littered everywhere.
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Mar 10, 2021 17:39
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Part 4: Friendly Fire You'll forgive me for the long stretch between updates, but this one is just really, really, REALLY hard to talk about. The Black Ops, as far as foes go, are boring to look at, annoying to fight, and completely void of personality. They're faster, more prone to hit and run tactics, and throw out grenades more often, making them annoying whenever they appear and overall just...not fun. They're challenging, sure. You can see how many SMG rounds it takes to bring even one of them down. But the particular ways in which they challenge you just suck all the joy out of a level. I mentioned it in passing, but for older games in particular, they have to have some kind of hook in order to get players to try them several years later. Opposing Force's hook was its technology, the rope climbing and the nightvision and so on. Plus it doesn't hurt that it was a sequel to one of the biggest games in FPS history. And it is certainly true that the game pick ups tremendously starting with the next update. But this opening bit, this first hour of the game really doesn't get the hooks in anymore. Other games have done what Opposing Force does and so much better, and it's difficult to recommend what comes after these chapters when you consider what you have to soldier on through to get there.
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Mar 19, 2021 01:26
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By the way, since Opposing Force is sapping my will to live, the next update will be a mod showcase, though I promise you, it IS military-themed. Look out for that.
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Mar 19, 2021 01:34
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I'm more forgiving to the Black Ops because it fits the mileu that I think Opposing Force is going for. A staple of these kinds of conspiracy-heavy action movies from the 80s and 90s is that the military, however ruthless, is often generally well-intentioned in the abstract once the protagonists become privy to their motives. Black-clad deadly serious sinister commandos as hostile to the blundering soldiers as they are to the heroes are a regular feature as a story escalation, sometimes forcing the previously antagonistic soldiers into cooperating with the heroes. In this kind of story, it's also used as a message to the previously antagonistic soldiers that they've been deemed expendable and acceptable losses. Corporal Adrian Shepard, US Marine, has just been deemed kill on sight by a presumed government conspiracy.
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Mar 19, 2021 02:13
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They're very generic but they fill the gap caused by making the HECU your allies. I feel it still holds up, pathfinding aside, but that's perhaps due to nostalgia. I also recall the rocket in the warehouse being vulnerable to clumsy use of explosives, or to being stabbed repeatedly to see what happens. Lot of ways in that section to get an automatic game over.
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Mar 19, 2021 12:57
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I was very confused at the end of blue shift because for whatever reason I remembered ninja hell as calhoun's problem. The biggest issue I have with them is they just aren't fun to fight.
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Mar 19, 2021 13:09
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Mighty Steed posted:I also recall the rocket in the warehouse being vulnerable to clumsy use of explosives, or to being stabbed repeatedly to see what happens. Huh. Not only is that correct, but it's even got a secondary stage of damage to indicate that you really shouldn't be continuing to do whatever you're doing. I'm going to need to grab that for the next proper update. Thanks for pointing that out!
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Mar 19, 2021 13:27
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Also, one of the offices you passed through had a diagram on the wall hinting at one of this game's great new weapons. To me, Opposing Force takes time to get rolling, but eventually it settles on a much zanier weird science place for Black Mesa than any of the other original games and I think it works in Opposing Force's flavor - much better than the military squad stuff.
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Mar 19, 2021 13:33
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OpFor's big hook was "this time, play as the soldiers you fought in the original game!" That really is it. The big hook is "Half-Life but you play as a soldier". The original Medal of Honour came out in 99. The great WW2/Tom Clancy shooter boom was kicking off, the 90s conspiracy era was still in its last gasp. OpFor is "what if Half-Life...but you were a US marine?". The troop chatter, the change in weapon styles to more "realistic" and "tactical" gear like Desert Eagles and sniper rifles, they're all part of the Tom Clancy atmosphere. You get to shoot ALIEN SCUM with PROPER GUNS, not glowy SF nerd stuff. To their credit, Gearbox went for a very cartoony X-Files sense of what kind of marine you were, and it would have been a much uglier game if they'd gone for realism. Just look at how Black Mesa changed the tone of the original Half-Life by having you listen in on HECU radios. Budget and development time probably played a part too. An OpFor where you played through, say, Surface Tension from a different perspective would have a very very different tone. OpFor is appealing to a very different power fantasy, essentially. One with different expectations and storytelling. Sinister black-ops conspiracy dudes trying to kill you are much more a part of Shepherd's world than Gordon's. Loxbourne fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Mar 19, 2021 |
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Mar 19, 2021 15:59
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More like a triple meaning in chapter title considering how many times I remember being shot in the back by friendlies. But at least that big gun is in fact a very good big gun.
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Mar 19, 2021 20:21
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I always thought the black ops soldiers were just reskinned HECU enemies, didn't think they were any tougher.
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Mar 19, 2021 21:16
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Laughing Zealot posted:I always thought the black ops soldiers were just reskinned HECU enemies, didn't think they were any tougher. Funny actually, looking it up online, it's surprisingly difficult to get solid numbers on the Black Ops soldiers, so I did my own tests, using the SMG's 5 damage per round as a reference. Here are some facts: The Black Ops grunt appears to have 50 health, the same as a HECU marine. However, while the HECU have a specific damage zone for headshots, that doesn't appear to be the case with Black Ops, since it didn't matter where I fired. The Desert Eagle always took two rounds to drop them, headshot or not. My assumption that they were tougher is based on the fact that the SMG in this game appears to have a very significant spread at long range, so missed shots are a lot more common if you're aiming for the head, which we've just discussed is not an option. In the future, I'll just go center mass and see if that improves the experience. Behavior-wise, they do appear to be faster and more evasive, preferring to engage at long range and create some distance if they think you're too close. The Black Ops are always armed with SMG's, so you don't have any shotgunners attempting to close the distance. They use rifle grenades fairly often, and they even have a technique that I didn't see the HECU do where they'll crouch down, leave a grenade on the ground, and then try to run away, baiting you into following them. Unrelated, but I think that the folks at Gearbox just took the basic HECU marine and slapped a friendly AI onto them, because during my tests, the shotgunner accompanying the first engineer you meet ended up firing at the scientist in the hole, killing him. Apparently they're still coded to be hostile to nerds, all protests about "government coverups not being in my job description" notwithstanding. Now I feel doubly okay with killing them in amusing ways.
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Mar 20, 2021 00:06
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I wonder if the reason for their sudden burst of competence after you died is that they still try to position themselves as if you were their main enemy, but the friendly AI overrides their normal combat behavior. You getting killed freed them from their curse of having to follow you and let them fight like they normally do.
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Mar 20, 2021 01:29
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Just a heads-up, but I'm going to be taking a break for a few weeks on the LP. Been progressively feeling more burnt out with it and I think I need to take a step back and refresh for a short bit. Sorry about leaving you folks hanging for so long.
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Mar 28, 2021 02:31
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It's not leaving us hanging by locking us in a base full of ninja idiots trying to kill us, so you're still well ahead of Gman.
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Mar 28, 2021 22:28
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There's a Blueshift remake in works and they released the first chapter (the train ride): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f4WyWnTFHU
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Mar 29, 2021 12:21
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Gantolandon posted:There's a Blueshift remake in works and they released the first chapter (the train ride): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f4WyWnTFHU Interesting! There's another mod in the Black Mesa style called Guard Duty that's still in the works, so it'll be very cool to see the contrasting approaches to this game. I'll definitely keep my eye on this one.
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Mar 29, 2021 12:55
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From what little I know Black Mesa: Blue Shift is taking a page from the original Blue Shift and is made from assets from the original Black Mesa, while Tripmine Studios have said they're building all the assets for O:BM and GD themselves and not using anything from Crowbar Collective, and they're also hoping/planning on a commercial release. I've also heard that GD is going in a more survival-horror direction, but that's just a Youtube comment rumor.
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Mar 29, 2021 19:54
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So...this is going to be a rough thing to say, but I'm going to be canceling this LP. I think you probably already noticed that my schedule had been slipping even before this break. Put simply, I'm not getting any satisfaction from LPing these GoldSrc games. Black Mesa was fine, but I've been struggling to find things to say aside from "look at this", and as I'm awkward-feeling in general with voice commentary, that's made every update a chore to put together. In retrospect, perhaps I should have done subtitled commentary. Oh well, hindsight is a great thing. I'll just have to consider it for my next project if I do video again. Meanwhile, I'll be closing this thread shortly. Sorry about letting you wait for nothing.
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Apr 21, 2021 17:03
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It's been fun, go and good luck finding something you enjoy, try looking in the test chamberrrrrrrrrrrrrr
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Apr 21, 2021 17:09
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It's been an entertaining and semi-nostalgic trip.
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Apr 21, 2021 17:29
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It's been fun. Take care of yourself.
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Apr 21, 2021 18:08
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It's been fun, take care of yourself.
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Apr 21, 2021 19:19
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It was fun. No worries on stopping when it became less fun for you.
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Apr 21, 2021 21:18
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I had never played any Half-Life games at all, so it was really interesting to see the first few played - and the newer interpretation in Black Mesa made it notably easier on the eyes. Thanks for doing as much as you did!
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Apr 23, 2021 03:59
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Part 5: Vicarious Reality So it's been a couple and a half years, and I've reflected on a few things regarding the intended way to experience the Half-Life games. I've been a bit too Literature-brained regarding these things, when they're meant to be mostly fun and enjoyable shooter romps with a sci-fi horror theme. For that reason, I'm coming back to finish Opposing Force with the right frame of mind. Especially since we've only got maybe 1 or 2 hours left in the game at most. This particular update covers three chapters: We Are Not Alone, Crush Depth, and Vicarious Reality, with the general theme being that we're running through the Black Mesa habitat labs. Crush Depth is an underwater fauna research lab, while Vicarious Reality covers the Biodome Complex. Aiding us in this jaunt are a few cool new toys, which I won't spoil too much, but the game's showering us in both tech devices and alien weapons. Maybe you could call it too many weapons, but I daresay the more the merrier. And we'll need them because the Race X aliens are becoming more frequent, and they're a mite health-spongy. Speaking of Race X, we're encountering two new members of the roster: the Shock Trooper and the Voltigore. The Shock Trooper is Race X's answer to the Alien Grunt, except faster, harder to hit, and with a weapon that hurts a lot more. The Voltigore is sort of like a Vortigaunt, except considerably chuftier and firing balls of lightning. Most annoyingly, both the Shock Trooper and the Voltigore have ways to harass Adrian after he takes them down. The Shock Trooper leaves behind its shock roach weapon, which comes after us like a Headcrab, while the Voltigore straight up explodes. For that reason, any time they appear in a confrontation, they're priority targets. Stephan Bahl, developer and writer for Gearbox, acknowledged that Race X is entirely non-canon. They made a conscious decision when making games for Valve that they would introduce creatures and concepts that had nothing to do with Valve's own story so that they could create freely without going against the existing plot. It's why both Barney and Adrian's stories have only tangentially featured Gordon Freeman, more as a cameo. For Race X in particular, Marc Laidlaw has stated that Valve has zero plans to include them in later works, so this game, and this game only, will be their big show.
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Oct 25, 2023 00:39
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