Half Life 2 COVER ART!

[Bob Gnarly]

 

BEHOLD!

[Largo-LaGrande]

Sweet Half life 2!

[BCanr2d2]

Looks like another sequel to make it squared, and not 2!!!

[ShockV1.89]

I wish they wouldnt make Gordon Freeman look like such a pansy. But I guess that envirosuit makes up for it, huh?

 

Cant wait for it!

[XERXES]

that face for gordon just looks....dumb.

[C'jais]

The game should be called "Quarter Life"

 

And no, Gordon is cool as hell. No anonymous testosterone-freak for me, no sir. Average people rock.

[XERXES]

Originally posted by C'jais

The game should be called "Quarter Life"

 

And no, Gordon is cool as hell. No anonymous testosterone-freak for me, no sir. Average people rock.

yeah I know...but not average people who are about to cry. He seriously looks like hes holding back tears.

[C'jais]

Originally posted by XERXES

yeah I know...but not average people who are about to cry. He seriously looks like hes holding back tears.

 

Huh?

 

I think you're reading too much into that picture, man.

 

Just relax, he'll look different in-game, and besides - I don't think you'll see much of him as its an FPS.

[Largo-LaGrande]

all they need to do is take off his glasses and he wouldnt looks such a pansy

 

__________________

[XERXES]

Originally posted by C'jais

Huh?

 

I think you're reading too much into that picture, man.

 

Just relax, he'll look different in-game, and besides - I don't think you'll see much of him as its an FPS.

the girl looks like an alien.

[Phizzle]

The girl looks like a tan Winona Ryder

[taekwondo joe]

*mouth falls open and hits the ground* HOLLY MOTHER OF GOD is this pc gammer avalibel in the US yet???? if ti is please tell me, i am gonna go buy it right now!!!!! half life 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! JA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! reviews!!!!!!!!!i cant breath, oh, aahhhh.... there toned down, lol. but is it out for the u.s???

[The_One]

Originally posted by taekwondo joe

*mouth falls open and hits the ground* HOLLY MOTHER OF GOD is this pc gammer avalibel in the US yet???? if ti is please tell me, i am gonna go buy it right now!!!!! half life 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! JA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! reviews!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! oh i cant breath, oh, oh, oh, aahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

*Gets behind sand bags*

 

N00b alert!

 

[Darth Homer]

This is really weird...Gordon looks like one of my Professors...his name is Dr. Brown...lemme see if I can find a pic of him...

 

here:

[Bob Gnarly]

Originally posted by Death_Jedi

all they need to do is take off his glasses and he wouldnt looks such a pansy

 

 

i could say the same about that Neo in your pic, i wear glasses, just like Gordan Freemans

[Tequila]

Posted Earlier by me

 

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/h...ws_6025376.html

 

http://www.pcgameplay.com/ (let site load, it will come up)

 

http://www.gamez.nl/grafx/art/sc552.jpg

 

http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~view/images/crowbar.jpg (notice the shape it makes with its shadow)

 

http://forums.gamespot.com/gamespot...essage.id=87837

 

http://gamerxf.8m.com/halflife2pics/ (the real cooker link!)

 

And i just found this on a website, someone typed up the PC Gamer article, enjoy, and dont say i never did nothing for you.

 

 

HALF-LIFE 2

By Chuck Osborn

 

THE MOTHER OF ALL SEQUELS IS REVEALED AT LAST!

 

For the first time ever, Valve is unveiling its biggest secret to outsiders - a sequel to Half-Life, one of the most lauded and best-selling games of all time. We know you have questions, as did we. So we're answering the most pressing ones right upfront.

 

A SEQUEL? ON THE PC? Yes, the title is simply Half-Life 2 (no subtitles, no colons), and it’s been in secret development ever since the first Half-Life shipped out the door in October 1998.

“Basically, we took every dollar we made on Half-Life and put it into Half-Life 2,” says Valve’s founder and managing director, Gabe Newell. Count up the sales of the original game and its multiple near-yearly new iterations (including Game of the Year Edition and a Platinum Pack), and you’ve got a pile of cash that would make most movie studios green with envy.

That’s more than 8 million copies sold worldwide, only 500,000 of them the PS2 version. Which means Valve is defiantly developing Half-Life 2 where its core success and fan base resides: exclusively on the PC.

 

WHEN IS IT COMING OUT? Sept. 30, 2003. That is not a misprint: In less than six months, before Doom III and long before Duke Nukem Forever ships, you’ll be playing Half-Life 2. Or so we’re told.

“We decided we’d do the whole ‘when it’s done’ stuff first,” crows Newell, alluding to the stealth development of Half-Life 2. Unlike other big-name projects we could mention, Valve’s philosophy has been to make the game first, with the job of publicizing it – a process that starts right here – a distant second.

 

AND? HOW DOES IT LOOK? Better than we dared hope. Read on, and see for yourself!

 

Before you lies the interior of an unfurnished apartment. Its hardwood floor is uncluttered except for two desolate chairs on the lefthand side of the room. To the right is a smaller enclave that inexplicably ablaze; the glow of the flames creates a flickering chorus of dancing shadows on the dark wall. Directly ahead of you is a row of windows. Upon closer inspection, a minute detail catches your eye – particles of dust float gently through the air, captured in the beams of sunlight bursting through the glass panes. Particles of DUST.

For a brief moment, I’m not looking at a game engine, It’s a PLACE, as wholly authentic as any I’ve seen in the real world.

 

THIS IS THE FIRST GLIMPSE anyone outside of Valve’s close-knit team of designers, artists, and programmers has had to the world of Half-Life 2. It’s not even a scene from the game: this level is part of a demo of the graphics engine’s capabilities, built as what Newell describes as a “proof of concept” project that ended in September 2002 when development proper began on the core game levels. These visuals are simultaneously aweing and starkly reminiscent of the original Half-Life. Gordon Freeman isn’t anywhere to be seen… but he will be soon.

Come Sept.30, 2003, Valve will release Half-Life 2 both at retail and via Steam, its proprietary Internet-download service that lets you purchase software content online. (Not that it’s planning on competing with bricks-and-mortar stores for profit: Valve is in negotiations with retail outlets to host Steam servers.)

 

THE RETURN OF GORDON FREEMAN

OF COURSE, HALF-LIFE 2 WILL BE full of surprises – most of them due to Valve’s currently tight-lipped attitude toward revealing any actual gameplay of plotline details – but the basics are pretty much what you would expect. As before, it’s a first-person shooter with you resuming the pivotal role of former Black Mesa research associate Gordon Freeman. It’ll have a massive single-player linear storyline composed of 12 chapters, each with a rough estimated length of three to four hours, providing a minimum of 36 hours playtime – and making Half-Life 2 even longer than its predecessor.

In the game, an indeterminate period of time has passed since the events of Half-Life (though judging from Gordon’s picture on page 49, not too much time), and you’ve abandoned your research duties to go work for the G-Man. Who’s he? That’s The Man in the suit aka Cigarette Smoking Man aka That Annoying Weirdo who offered you a job with the government at the conclusion of Half-Life. Aren’t you glad you didn’t opt to teleport back to Xen instead?

This time, you’re partnered with the lovely Alyx Vance, a non-player buddy sidekick who is the daughter of one of those generic balding scientists that populated Black Mesa. You’re holed up somewhere called City 17, a quaintly Eastern European municipality; there’s been another invasion by a new crop of scarier, more organized aliens; and…well, that’s about all Valve will tell us. The rest of the story – scribed by novelist and Half-Life writer Mark Laidlaw – remains for you to uncover yourself.

“[While] making Half-Life, we learned a lot about telling a story in a narrative mode,” says Laidlaw. As in the first game, there will be no mission briefings or cut-scenes. All cinematic-style scripted sequences will happen inside the game engine so you’ll never feel as if you’ve been taken out of the story, or that you’re anyone other than Gordon Freeman.

Adds Laidlaw: “The goal of all our scripting techniques is to keep the player immersed in the story, completely caught up in the events as they unfold.”

This time out, even big scripted set-pieces – jokingly termed “money shots” by Gabe Newell – will be interactive in some way. “Many times in Half-Life, it was fairly obvious that you were witnessing a ‘scripted sequence,’ ” describes Laidlaw.

“A good example is the falling-elevator sequence at the beginning of the game, which happens the same way every time. [in HL 2] we’ve used our tried-and-true devices as springboards for jumping into new kinds of scripting where the borders between ‘scripted’ and ‘unscripted’ aren’t so obvious.”

Scripted or not, expect to encounter plenty of familiar faces, including the creepy G-Man; an assortment of Xen aliens (some of whom, like the Vortgons, are now on your side); Alyx’s scientist dad, Eli(who’s tragically lost a leg between games); those damned headcrabs; and, of course, Black Mesa’s loveable security guard Barney. (See our tribute on page 56.) The original cast of voice actors from Half-Life also return to reprise their roles.

 

THE SOURCE IS WITH YOU

HALF-LIFE 2 IS POWERED by Valve’s proprietary Source engine, an astounding accomplishment that’s eaten up the largest chunk of HL 2’s development cycle. In fact, the core technology at the heart of the game has been in place only since last September. (At that point Valve “cut anything that wasn’t ready… to be used in Half-Life 3,” Newell told us. You heard it here first, folks.)

More amazingly, HL 2 will not only take advantage of the next-gen capabilities of a P4 3Ghz-level system running the newest DirectX 9-powered 3d cards from NVIDIA and ATI, but it’ll also reportedly be fully scalable all the way back to a mid-range PC running a DX6-compatable TNT card. (We’ll take Valve’s word on it: we didn’t witness HL 2 running on one of these puny systems, nor do we really think we’d want to.)

“We knew, given the strength of our fan base, that we’d be successful with Half-Life 2,” says Newell. “So we said, ‘Well, let’s take everything we can and see how far we can push it with the next generation of technology, gameplay, and character design.’ ”

HL 2’s engine will support normal mapping à la Deus Ex: Invisible War and Doom III, using diffused and specular bump-mapping to create impossibly detailed characters, objects, and textures that wont bog down your processor with unwieldy polygon counts. (Not that it’s a slouch in that category, either; Expect an average of 5,000 polygons per character model.)

A powerhouse particle and lighting system add to the mix, allowing for the aforementioned floating dust specks, real-time luminescence and mirroring effects, and objects that alter depth, color, and reflectivity depending on the position of your eye – like the reflection of the sky and a cityscape in water puddles on the street, for example.

“We spent a lot of time on lighting,” adds Newell. “Getting a natural drop-off and [light] bouncing off surfaces…are crucial in rooting [characters] in scenes.”

The engine has also been improved to render large outdoor scenes convincingly – a feat that the first Half-Life engine couldn’t do, much to the chagrin of the development team. HL 2’s powerful terrain system uses bump-mapping to make flat ground surfaces appear uneven, or underwater objects appear refracted and distorted. “It lets you make organic spaces as complicated as you want them to be,” explains Newell, “without costing any rendering time.”

 

ALL VERY NICE INDEED… but why did the engine take four years to complete? Look in the mirror.

It’s not enough that Half-Life 2 look stunning; it needs to be stunningly easy to manipulate, too. A hurdle that needed surmounting in the creation of the Source engine (never mind the slow-as-molasses technical intricacies involved in coding an all-new graphics engine from the ground up) was simplifying the toolkit to nurture the same audience that drove Half-Life’s surprising sales endurance: the mod-makers.

“Not only are we validating our requirements, but we also have a lot of confidence that we’re building a platform for mod authors that’s going to be much more robust [than Half-Life’s],” boasts Newell of the Source toolkit that’ll ship with the game. While the old system required its fair share of technical know-how, amateur modders are now promised the chance to focus on content and gameplay flow rather than the nuts and bolts of programming.

Take intuitive texturing, for example. Each level in Half-Life 2 starts as an “orange map” – a prototype of the final map so named because of its orange-hued, barren, untextured, un-arted architecture. Designers can bang out and test levels in orange mode – making changes as needed – before turning them over to artists for texturing.

Material textures in the Source engine are tagged to automatically replicate the aural and physical properties of they represent (including lighting effects and collision detection). Slap a metallic texture on a door, for instance, and bullets will ka-chink ka-chink against its surface, creating minute pockmarks; a brick texture will make a very different sound, with much more pronounced bullet holes.

On the fly, the team demonstrated for us how a metal barrel that is scraped against a tile wall will spark and kick up dust, generating an irritatingly realistic screeching sound. Changing the material properties of either the barrel or the wall alters their interaction – an effect accomplished merely by assigning a new texture.

 

CAUSING HAVOK

NOW, WE WOULDN’T SPEND so much space describing texture techniques if they weren’t important. In HL 2, physical properties will have a direct effect on gameplay.

For example, while playing a game, everyone’s come across an impenetrable wooden door. It might as well be steel. Or concrete. It wont break or burn, no matter how many incendiary grenades you lob at it. But wood in the Source engine will.

The team demonstrated how wooden planks can be shot to pieces by shotgun fire, splintering into smaller strips with each blast. Offensively, you can blow away the wooden supports holding up a pile of pipes causing them to drop on an enemy below.

In-game physics will play a huge part in devising innovative solutions to the problems you’ll face in Half-Life 2. Because every object in the game will have its own weight and mass, you’ll be able to pick up nearly any item that you could in the real world – say, a chair or a box – and toss it as a weapon or hold it in front of you as a shield.

In one demonstration, Valve senior development engineer Jay Stelly showed us how to outwit an auto-turret that had his avatar pinned down in a hallway. First, he grabbed a metal grate lying on the ground next to him, protecting himself by using it to deflect the hail of incoming bullets. The he inched closer to the turret, covering himself with the grate. Once close enough, he flung the grate at the turret knocking it over. The turret, now firing wildly into the ground, was neutralized.

Of course there are numerous ways to get past this turret, and that’s the beauty of Source’s physics engine (a modified version of Havok, the physics engine at the heart of Deus Ex: IW): it encourages creative problem-solving.

In yet another demo, the valve on a gas canister was shot off. The result: a potentially lethal high-speed metal rocket propelled by a burst of quickly escaping gas. Not to mention a danger to kneecaps everywhere. When shot dead-center, the canister explodes.

The world of Half-Life 2 will be full of such small touches. Power cables will sway in the wind. A wrench dropped into machinery will stop-up gearworks. Better yet, 50-foot Striders – aliens that bear an uncanny resemblance to the long-legged invaders from War of the Worlds – can crumble elevated walkways. Okay, maybe that last one’s not too small, but the planned effect is a truly immersive, realistically responding game world.

 

CREATURES FEATURED

WE SAW ONLY A HANDFUL of the creepy crawlies composing the new alien race in Half-Life 2, but the few we did glimpse left us cowering in something akin to terror. Most impressive of the bunch was the Strider, a towering three-legged creature that, during our demonstration, was loosed on City 17.

Kept upright by a positioning technique using true Inverse Kinetics (the force by which masses move and balance themselves), the Strider is able to run or stand on uneven surfaces. It lumbered forward, until suddenly its path was blocked by a walkway bridge. The creature’s AI, considered the world around it, attempted to smash the bridge but ultimately failed. Finally, it kneeled all its legs to limbo underneath the obstacle. Problem solved!

“One of the best things about our AI is that it understands context,” says Stelly. “NPCs use information about the world and the story to help choose appropriate behavior.”

Another example is the Ant Lion, a pug-faced insectoid beast that runs in packs and uses scent to distinguish enemies. Initially when you encounter them, they’ll go agro at the sight (er, smell) of Gordon. But later on, after the lab has whipped up some Eau de Ant Lion for you to wear, they’ll consider you one of their own, leave you alone, and attack your not-so-alien-smelling enemies. In this way, they could become temporary sidekicks.

Human sidekicks and NPCs in Half-Life 2 will also be smarter than they were in Half-Life. Says Stelly; “Ally characters have different dialogue depending on the current setting and the player’s current actions. They know about interesting things in the world to notice, or even point out to the player.”

Sidekick characters will likewise vary their combat techniques based on the situation and threat level. “In Half-Life, Barney always ran into a fight with guns blazing,” compares Stelly. “In Half-Life 2 he behaves very differently.” And hopefully is less suicidal.

In-game actors like Gordon’s partner, Alyx, will be some of the most lifelike virtual thespians yet seen in a videogame due to Valve’s technical achievements in character design. Each NPC has a musculature that you can see flex beneath their clothing. If Alyx lifts her arm, for instance, her breasts raise and flatten because of all of the muscle effects are in the right place. (Watch closely…we know you will.)

Room lights reflect off Alyx’s corneas. Move, and her eyes will naturally, without jerking, follow you around the room. When she looks at an object you’ll know that it’s probably important.

Valve incorporated the work of psychologist Paul Ekman, a renowned expert in emotion expression recognition, to help make NPCs’ facial movements as authentic as possible. During one demonstration, Alyx experienced a gamut of emotions, ranging from glee to rage to psychosis. Each feeling can be scripted or triggered by an occurrence in the enviornemt.

And when she talks, it’s with flawless lip-synching. The speech system has been built to integrate the vocal sounds of, say, a .wav file into realistic lip movements. For mod-makers, that means no-hassle lip-synching. Just record it, and your virtual actor mouths the words without any extra programming.

 

I’m facing a long hallway. There’s a beast in the shadows…I can’t quite make it out…and it’s coming toward me. In fear, I rush into the nearest unlocked room and curl up in the corner, staring at the metal door, hoping it’s enough to keep me safe. A roar. It knows. BAM! Its fist slams the metal entry, buckling it slightly. CRUNCH! The fist explodes through the tiny window. A tentacled eye slithers through the hole, fixing its cold mechanical star on me. WALLOP! The metal door caves under the force.

 

THE LAST DEMO is over, and it’s the scripted sequence to end all scripted sequences. Or…was it scripted?

“We’re going on this ride with the player,” says Gabe Newell assuringly. “And we intend to scare the crap out of you.”

.

.

.

.

.

 

SEPARATE INFORMATION BOXES

 

SECRETS AND SPECULATION

WHILE HALF-LIFE 2 APPEARS to take place on Earth – a hefty portion of the game is set in a fictional metropolis called City 17 in a region that resembles Eastern Europe – Valve is cagey about revealing too much information. Even how much time has passed between games is a deep, dark secret, largely because Gordon’s whereabouts and activities during the break are part of Half-Life 2’s series of surprise twists.

Pressed for details, Gabe Newell would confirm only that if there is any jaunts off-planet in Half-Life 2, they “won’t be as jarring” as Half-Life’s concluding Xen levels, which had you hopping around the planet’s surface in an improbable string of jumping puzzles.

Armed with few, or at best sketchy, real facts, we’ve revved up our sleuthing skills to fill in the blanks.

 

THE PLOT

VALVE SAYS: There is a new alien invasion and some of the Xen aliens are your allies.

WE SAY: Theory 1 – The new aliens are a threat to both species, forcing them to unite against a common foe. Theory 2 – G-Man has achieved an alliance with the Xen, partly brokered by Gordon Freeman. (Which explains what he’s been doing between games.) The new aliens invade to break the alliance and you’re all in a massive fight for Earth’s resources.

 

 

THE SETTING

VALVE SAYS: Half-Life 2 is set in a region with a “strong resemblance,” as it was described, to Eastern Europe. It will not take place in the U.S.

WE SAY: Theory 1 – The U.S. has been destroyed or overrun by the alien invasion and the resistance has holed up in Eastern Europe. Theory 2 – (The longshot) The twist is that the entire story takes place on another planet that resembles Earth. You’re actually helping to invade the other world, and the hostile aliens you’re combating are the innocent inhabitants. Naturally, Gordon switches sides midway through the game.

 

THE WEAPONS

VALVE SAYS: They’ll be traditional Earth Weapons and a few experimental and alien weapons.

WE SAY: Expect the usual assortment of pistols, rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, and grenades. (And, of course, the familiar crowbar.) Valve’s presentation also showed off an updated sickly-looking barnacle creature, so could Opposing Force’s barnacle gun be far behind? The coolest new weapon that we hope makes the cut is the “gravity gun” – an energy beam-shooting device that can move or fling heavy objects. It was explained away as part of a test of HL 2’s innovative physics engine, but we reckon it has to play a role somewhere: its ability to let you shift objects around is simply too much potential fun, and too valuable in puzzle situations.

 

MULTIPLAY

VALVE SAYS: Only that it will be included

WE SAY: Wouldn’t it be cool if Team Fortress 2 ended up being Half-Life 2’s multiplayer component? We’re not saying it’s likely…but it sure would make up for the long wait.

 

THE MAN, THE MYTH BARNEY

HALF-LIFE’S BIGGEST BREAKOUT character was a happy accident says Half-Life’s writer, Mark Laidlaw. Nobody on the design staff ever expected the lumpy sentry sidekick with the personality of cheese to capture America’s heart, but he did, even starring in his own spin-off, the HL expansion Blue Shift.

“Characters that were throwaways for us when we started working on Half-Life turned into this thing that people really responded to,” describes Laidlaw. “We constantly heard stories about people taking Barney into a turret by accident and feeling horrible when he was killed. We just realized we had this great way of getting emotion out of a gamer [through an AI character].”

Fear not, Barney-lovers. The doughty gumshoe has survived and made it to Half-Life 2, and judging by the slimmed-down character design shown above (right), he’s spent his sabbatical at Jenny Craig. His role in the story – and whether you’ll get to lead him into turrets – remains to be seen.

[Phizzle]

The only words that stuck in my mind were BARNEY IS BACK.

 

*runs off to play Half-Life and kill Barney*

[C'jais]

Originally posted by Tequila

[Holy scripture snipped]

 

...

 

I... I...

 

...

 

 

 

 

I'm not worthy.

[ckcsaber]

So it's finally come.......

 

 

Yay!!!

 

 

btw, Gordan Freeman is awesome te way he is, and the specs' just make him look cooler:xp:

[RpTheHotrod]

JUNE 2003 edition?

 

 

hmmm...strange.

[C'jais]

Originally posted by RpTheHotrod

JUNE 2003 edition?

 

 

hmmm...strange.

 

Some game mags are way ahead of their time

 

 

 

Still, it doesn't sound just as fishy as GonkH8ers ploy...

[X-Vector]

Gordon looks cool, calm and collected in the cover artwork posted above.

 

And yes, that PCG article Tequila posted is the real deal (look out for Darth Lawya!).

[Tequila]

I didnt type the article up some guy copied it, im jus the messenger...

[Lunatic Jedi]

Originally posted by ShockV1.89

I wish they wouldnt make Gordon Freeman look like such a pansy. But I guess that envirosuit makes up for it, huh?

 

Actually, I believe Gordon's pansyness is what makes him such an endearing character. He's a personality that people can relate to: your run-of-the-mill lab geek turned-alien-killer/world-saver. He doesn't use berserk strength or huge weapons. He goes by his wits, utilizing whatever he can to tear aliens up.

 

He's a character whom the average person can relate to, and that's why he's such a popular video game personality.

[Pedantic]

Originally posted by XERXES

yeah I know...but not average people who are about to cry. He seriously looks like hes holding back tears.

 

I agree with ya there--he does look like he's taken a dose of the onion.