This is a really unpopular opinion[1], so I hope I don't get a lot of flak here, but while Half-Life 1 had a lot of intrigue, Half-Life 2 felt plain awful and I'm not really sure how they could turn any of #2 into movie material unless they really de-emphasized Gordon to the point where he's a minor character.
You'll notice, after all, that most live-action stuff centered around the Half-Life universe doesn't really contain any Gordon (at least the ones I've seen)[2].
Half-Life 1 was the story of a scientist caught up in something much larger than himself. You played this hapless guy who escaped and explored worlds, with compelling confusion about who your enemies and friends were. It was dream-like and scary and mysterious and great.
Half-life 2 felt like you were being lead through a metaphorical tunnel the entire game. Literally some parts had NPCs reminding you to "go this way" for hour-long stretches. Most of the game wasn't escaping terrifying situations, instead it felt like you were merely "in transit". It's hard to have a thrilling feeling of excitement and horror as you're being nagged to get to the next plot device.
What's more, whereas in HL1 you were this scientist caught up in a mess, in HL2 you play essentially the role of a hired brute. You do zero Gordon-specific things. When you meet Barney at the start of the game, if you swapped bodies with Barney at that moment, nothing in the game would have changed at all. Congrats on that MIT degree the NPCs will remind you, now kindly plow through 6,000 bugs/zombies/cycloptic humans as we tell you what to do.
I have a inkling that the sour direction HL2 took is at least part of the reason they're having trouble with HL3 but who's to say. Most reviews say its one of the greatest games ever, so maybe I'm way off kilter.
Anyway, I think a Half-Life movie, if it covered any of the events in Half-Life 2 at all, would suffer severe problems if it tries to make a story of a mute scientist who kills his way to the 90th floor of Castle X to save the world. It's just not a very compelling story.
That makes it the #1 all-time highest scoring game on Metacritic (tied with HL1!), which seems insane to me, and several (in my opinion) better games within that genre come to mind.
I disagree. The game was absolutely fantastic. It was never about problem solving or challenging my brain etc. It was about creating an incredible experience through the atmosphere, music and graphics (along with the back-story and intrigue).
The moment I stepped off the train I got chills down my spine with the music and the deserted train station, with the voice of authority booming down. The super aggressive guards, the scared/confused people, the desolate streets, the whole thing was perfect to a point.
There were sections which were forced or not interesting (using the pheromones for example), but I can't remember other games where I had that "wow" moment so many times.
In fairness I haven't played many games for the last few years (including Portal), so maybe there are other games which have improved upon that. But at the time it was amazing.
Congrats on that MIT degree the NPCs will remind you, now kindly plow through 6,000 bugs/zombies/cycloptic humans as we tell you what to do.
That's a good point. I replayed it recently and it wasn't until close to the end (when you've had your weapons taken away in exchange fora souped-up gravity gun and you're basically dealing with puzzles and combat simultaneously) that the science-fiction feel was properly re-established. I was so sick of zombies by the time I got to the end.
I also agree about the glass-tunnel feel of the game, but that seems to be an almost unavoidable problem with FPS games.
I don't think its unavoidable but I do think its a hard problem to solve. Still I can think of a few games that did a very good job.
I haven't played these sorts of games in the past few years so most of these won't be modern, but off the top of my head I think Deus Ex 1 and Human Revolution (the new one), System Shock 2, Thief 1+2, BioShock all did well at making me forget that I was playing essentially an on-rails shooter.
Gameplay can be linear and that's fine. Novels are linear and they surprise us all of the time. When gameplay is linear you can still feel like what's being done to you isn't, and that's important and I think HL2 just plain skipped it.
All the game above are more or less linear, but they feel very different in terms of intrigue, character development, consistent pacing, and expressive emotions. Also, in every one of these examples who your character was mattered a good deal to the game.
Instead of hand-held waypoints, all of them offered an interesting world and we knew that we knew little about it, but we could feel that it was so damn large and scary.
The Thief universe for example was just plain incredible. Medieval setting with a small dash of newfangled machinery and magic, but unlike space robots or typical games with mages, both were powerful forces that are not well understood. You don't get to play badass wizard. You can't control these forces. But they're there, lumbering and wheezing.
There appear to be gods, but they are not all-powerful and somewhat stay out of the way of humans. For all we know there were once hundreds of gods, and they have been beaten into submission by mankind and no longer show their faces. You get the feeling you're not let in on everything. Moral ambiguity abounds.
You creep around looking for entrances, secrets and information. Most of the story development is gotten by way of eavesdropping. Nothing is just plopped in front of you like I felt for the entirety of Half-life 2. There's so much intrigue, and at times you really feel like you're in on something, part of this crazy, wide world filled with wonders and horrors. You get to fear it, but at least you have your shadows, so it still gets to fear you.
Half Life 2 was a joke in comparison. You're treated like a kid. You walk into a shitty house and some clown colonel (Odessa Cubbage) hands you an RPG, and lo' a gunship, go nuts kid, there's infinite ammo in the box over there. I'll wait out back.
Can you imagine storyboarding that? I hope to god it was more interesting than "well we got the car plot device out of the way. What's the next thing the player needs to check off?"
But the end result wasn't.
(all this criticizing leaves a dirty taste in my mouth. I promise to only be positive on HN for the next month.)
It's funny, but the most "tunnel" like part of HL2, which is arguably the boat journey out of the city, also had some of the most interesting side missions. Even though it was basically one long race down a river, you had to periodically get out and "do stuff" to clear the way, and that branching out helped give the world the illusion of a lot of depth.
I loved HL2 because of it's size, and varied gameplay, and it's humor and intelligence. But, to get back to the original point of this thread, I don't want a movie made out of it! Well, maybe if it has Milla Jovovich in it.
I felt so too, although Portal 1 & 2 came pretty close in that regard. There's just something about the depth of the atmosphere in Valve games that makes them unique.
Me too, I'm always surprised by the success around Half-Life 2. Let's be honest, it's a very good game. The gameplay is very well thought out, and the finish is impeccable. Maybe be a little bit too much so, If you remove the gravity gun, the game ends up as unimaginative as you can get.
And let's not talk about the story, which as you said, is pretty flat and uninteresting.
Recommendation time! If you want to play an underrated game (from circa the same period as Half-Life 2) that will rock your word, I recommend "Dark Messiah of Might and Magic" (by the creators of Dishonored). The melee combat mechanics are so good and intuitive they spoiled the combat parts of Skyrim and Chivalry: Medieval Warfare for me. The story is compelling, but linear except for two or three choice points.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution (prequel to the original Deus Ex) that came out the other year also had a story that sucked you in wanting more and if you like stealth games, it was geared towards that. I somehow missed playing the original Deus Ex, but it's almost better that way, as the story becomes more intriguing as it unfolds without you knowing the Deus Ex Universe ahead of time.
I'm currently playing the first Deus Ex now and with some modernization graphic wise[1], it plays pretty well on a present day system. There's also lots of mods out there to extend gameplay. I just like the storyline and cyberpunk universe of Deus Ex so playing just the current game was not enough.
Steam usually has all 3 Deus Ex games bundled for around $10 dollars during their seasonal sales. Otherwise, the latest one is around $20 I think.
I never thought half life 2 was supposed to be some amazing game. Rather it was made to show off the capabilities of the source engine. And, at the time, the source engine was pretty revolutionary. Hence the fanboyism.
I'm glad to see that I'm not alone in my opinion that HL2 seemed to drag on eternally. I loved HL1, but never even completed HL2 - all I really remember thinking back is
* drive boat, get out, shoot stuff, open gates. repeat. a lot.
* headcrabs
* Ravenwood is annoying and boring. more headcrabs.
* no ammo. lots of headcrabs.
I'm not joking, at some point I just stopped playing...
I suppose I should give it another chance, the story seems to be intriguing.
HL1 was definitely better than HL2 (which I still liked), which would make a terrible movie.
But HL1 as a movie? It's already been made. Half Life is Die Hard with aliens as a video game. "Fairly regular guy is put into an unpexpected situation where is is forced to kick ass and crawl through air-ducts in the ceiling." We don't need a Half Life movie.
You're not. I replayed HL2, and it was a dull experience. HL2 fellates the player way too much; part of what made HL1 intriguing was that Gordon was a nobody caught up in something bigger than himself.
In HL2 the "mysterious" aspect of the non-plot feels forced in comparison.
Well, Half-Life might work as a silent film. (Zing!)
Sorry, couldn't resist the obvious joke.
To me, a good story generally involves good characters. Are there actually any good characters in half-life? Gordon is literally a blank slate, and Alex is an extremely generic attractive side-kick. And uh, theres a scientist and barney. The only interesting character I can think of is the G-Man, but he's more interesting in terms of what he suggests about the structure of the world rather than as a character in his own right (at this point).
I just don't get where the story draws from. Half-Life was effective because it presented a great experience rather than a great narrative.
If the film began by appearing to be about Freeman and chums, but gradually was revealed to actually be about G-Man as a "chess Grandmaster" style behind-the-scenes puppet-master, they could get a lot out of that.
Love the games. But let's face it: Hollywood movies based on games are basically professionally done fanfic. They use the world to tell a story, which is really, really boring.
I mean, has there ever been a successful movie based on a game?
It would be far, far better if Abrams and Valve collaborated on a new game. Half-Life 3, perhaps? Or a massively multiplayer Portal? There's certainly no shame in doing games anymore for big names. The money is, if anything, better in games than in movies these days.
You could argue the Resident Evil movies are successful. They've made 5 of them, and most of them have made a ton of money worldwide...
Honestly though, I think video game movies right now are like Comic Book movies were 20 years ago. Back then, they all were terrible until someone came along and made one (with an appropriate budget) that took the material seriously, and now it's a massive profit engine.
I think there are many video game based stories worthy of movies, it just takes someone to do it right.
Yes, there have been some incredibly good movies based on comic books! Perhaps more than have been based on novels, actually. Comic books and games do indeed share the important quality of being highly visual. However, unlike a comic book a game is also interactive, immersive, and involves you in a (generally) non-linear story. Perhaps most important of all, a game gives you a chance to solve problems and have your answers evaluated; a movie (like a comic book) treats you as a passive participant, taking away something that you may want.
Come to think of it, there is one game I think would make a good movie: Grim Fandango!
True, they are definitely very different mediums. However, no one says a video game to movie adaptation has to duplicate exactly the experience of playing the game. Many games have incredibly deep mythology, stories, and characters all of which lends itself great towards movies.
I think video game "worlds" could be a great source for movies but maybe not necessarily any direct adaptation of a specific game to film. For example, I think a movie based on the overall storyline of assassin's creed would be good, but I don't think it would be successful to just copy one of the games and create scenes that are shot for shot from the game.
Sure. I mean, it's hard to argue that "The Matrix" wasn't inspired by computer games (Syndicate comes to mind). But that's not what Valve is talking about doing. Presumably they are going to make an action movie with a (talking?) Gordon Freeman as the action hero. Bleh.
We only watched them for Milla Jovovich btw. Literally every fan in the theater just sighs at the end and says "wow that was awful, see you for the next one."
It's an addiction. Even though you don't like it, or believe in it, out of tradition you have to keep doing it. Similar to what Catholics, Jews, and Sonic Fans do.
I thought silent hill was quite good, probably due to less rigid 'canon' allowing for flexibility in characters and story. Admittedly, this would make it the exception and not the rule. I also think this means that Half Life/Portal would not translate well into a movie.
When you're sitting in a theater watching the Portal movie, will you be able to see through the portals on the screen to see movies in the other theaters in the multiplex?
I will never forgive Abrams for the eternal clusterfuck of plot betrayal that was Lost, and intend to express this by boycotting anything he has a hand in forever.
After the first episode (and definitely after the first seasom) JJ Abrams had no involvement in Lost. You can blame Lindelof and Cuse if you hated Lost.
Your comment made me realize that the humor in mine must not have come through. Every time I use that tone online, I end up regretting it -- not that this one is a big deal, obviously, but the phenomenon is interesting. "The online comment" or even "the HN comment" is its own little genre.
Yeah. Humor on HN is a difficult thing. For the most part, I don't bother. There seems to be a different standard for top-level comments than for replies.
I've never personally watched Lost, but I've been told that in the first episode they explain the concept of a plane crash several times. "We were up there...and then the engine failed...and now, we're down here!"
If this is an accurate characterization, it says a lot of things -- none of them favorable -- about the show, the director, and the audience.
You've never watched, but been told what some characters apparently said in the first episode of a six season long show, and are happy to judge it on that basis?
I can save them a few hundred million bucks, mix in McGuffins every few paragraphs, wrap things up with a shaggy dog ending. Include gratuitous explosions, car/plane/train crashes, and rescue the chick,puppy,small children between McGuffins.
Valve could make a PG-13 rated Team Fortress 2 game, and people would love it. Make a "Magnificent 7" rip-off, or an "Oceans 11" rip-off. The thing is tailor-made for any caper/heist/action flick.
Here's part of my favorite comment on that article:
"The whole thing plays out like a video game cut scene that never ends, or a rail shooter in which the controller has stopped working; first person, limited third, floaty bits-- it seems to borrow a lot of gaming grammar for its visuals, intentional or no.
Old-timey comics used to throw around adjectives like "mindbending!" all the time. I think Enter the Void truly is, though. It ate my brain and shat it back out in my skull... and I think it gave me insomnia. It's either a weird, pretentious mess, or a goddamn masterpiece, but it's definitely worth seeing."
You'll notice, after all, that most live-action stuff centered around the Half-Life universe doesn't really contain any Gordon (at least the ones I've seen)[2].
Half-Life 1 was the story of a scientist caught up in something much larger than himself. You played this hapless guy who escaped and explored worlds, with compelling confusion about who your enemies and friends were. It was dream-like and scary and mysterious and great.
Half-life 2 felt like you were being lead through a metaphorical tunnel the entire game. Literally some parts had NPCs reminding you to "go this way" for hour-long stretches. Most of the game wasn't escaping terrifying situations, instead it felt like you were merely "in transit". It's hard to have a thrilling feeling of excitement and horror as you're being nagged to get to the next plot device.
What's more, whereas in HL1 you were this scientist caught up in a mess, in HL2 you play essentially the role of a hired brute. You do zero Gordon-specific things. When you meet Barney at the start of the game, if you swapped bodies with Barney at that moment, nothing in the game would have changed at all. Congrats on that MIT degree the NPCs will remind you, now kindly plow through 6,000 bugs/zombies/cycloptic humans as we tell you what to do.
I have a inkling that the sour direction HL2 took is at least part of the reason they're having trouble with HL3 but who's to say. Most reviews say its one of the greatest games ever, so maybe I'm way off kilter.
Anyway, I think a Half-Life movie, if it covered any of the events in Half-Life 2 at all, would suffer severe problems if it tries to make a story of a mute scientist who kills his way to the 90th floor of Castle X to save the world. It's just not a very compelling story.
[1] I was lambasted for offering this opinion on Reddit. The game also has a 96 on Metacritic, with zero negative reviews: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/half-life-2
That makes it the #1 all-time highest scoring game on Metacritic (tied with HL1!), which seems insane to me, and several (in my opinion) better games within that genre come to mind.
[2] What I was thinking of specifically was "Escape from City 17": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1UPMEmCqZo