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Gamasutra had an interview with Laidlaw and fellow Valve writer Erik Wolpaw. Laidlaw made some comments on Gordon Freeman's development as a lead character and how it has more to do with his external interactions rather than internal mechanisms.
So we were trying to do a thing where it wasn't about one guy who is saving the world heroically for his own reasons, You're doing it with your allies and friends. It's part of a larger effort. It's not just Gordon Freeman against the universe. It's Gordon Freeman as part of this group.
He mentioned that Alyx's actions sly smiles, concerned expressions, compliments gives Gordon Freeman an air of importance.
She gives back to you emotion, which is the only way we can tell the internal story of Gordon Freeman -- by the way the other characters treat him. So by having the characters like you and be glad to see you, you think, 'Oh, I'm an important person in this world.' Alyx was a great way of affirming that, and the things that are perilous to Alyx are going to be things that you care about.
When Gamespot's current Greatest Video Game Hero contest was first mentioned on our community forums, I ignored it. Gordon Freeman was matched against Snake of the Metal Gear Solid series and trailing by tens of thousands of votes, a slump that at the time seemed overwhelming to me. No way could the illustrious Gordon Freeman compete against Snake and his console fanboy hordes, especially not when already lost in his dust as the unfortunate mouth of Pac-Man in the vote's pie chart.
I was wrong. Today I stumbled across the competition again after checking an email in the news inbox about it, and was stunned by what I found. Despite being down by a huge amount, right now Gordon Freeman has 49.9% of the vote, trailing his adversary Snake by only a touch over 100 votes, with nearly 80,000 votes total. I couldn't let it lie - while a news post on Halflife2.net isn't close to sufficient to make up a 10,000 vote deficit, a couple hundred is nothing, and as we here on the staff are honor bound to serve the One Free Man, I had no choice but to post it.
So head on over to the Gordon vs Snake voting page, and let's help our hero get to the next round of competition.
Valve's Chet Faliszek has opened up about Valve and Left 4 Dead and more to Jim Rossignol in Jim's Ragdoll Metaphysics column on Offworld. Before you start asking, no Chet doesn't have any Episode 3 news. However he does have some other interesting things to say:
The Orange Box was weird. It reminded me of 8-bit era game packs. Three Games In One! That seems really unusual in the contemporary market. Did it seem unusual now? Did it seem totally logical to create a three-game pack like that? It still seems weird, now that I think about it.
Faliszek: Well, at the start Portal wasn't mature enough for us to be sure that we should do it like that, and Team Fortress 2 has had plenty of false starts. It kind of formed as we developed the games. There was no "this is how we do it" from the get-go, instead we're a company that can experiment and yeah, it's a throw-back to earlier eras, those ways of doing things. We experiment, and it pays off.
Doug Lombardi and Chet Faliszek have talked at length with Shacknews about Left 4 Dead, but Lombardi did drop a hint about the Half-Life series:
Shack: Most of us were not expecting Left 4 Dead 2 to show up at E3. You guys had teased more information on Half-Life 2: Episode 3 earlier in the year. Should we expect more on that soon?
Doug Lombardi: [laughs] Don't have a new date. Since we missed the last time, I'm not gonna put out another one. I've said this before, but Freeman's not done with his adventure. Stay tuned for more.
There is also a whole load of information regarding Left 4 Dead 1 and Left 4 Dead 2, perhaps the best bit of info is that 4 v 4 matchmaking will be coming to Left 4 Dead 1 sometime this month. Doug also commented on the sequel nature of Left 4 Dead 2:
Shack: What price-point should we expect?
Doug Lombardi: This is a full sequel.
Shack: So full price?
Doug Lombardi: Yeah. At the end of the day, this is going to be a bigger game than Left 4 Dead. It's five campaigns versus four, all five are playable in Versus mode, Survival mode out of the box, the new multiplayer game mode. Plus over 20 new weapons and items. It's a full sequel.
This is a really detailed interview, you can check it out here.
Who knows what is in the box, and this may be nothing but an amazing video has popped up on youtube using Half-life sound effects as well as many other Combine / Citadel like references (and LOST music). See the video below, but if you want to join the internet investigation it starts with the What's in the box? website, and this picture has been found.
Looks like most other viral websites, kotaku has done further snooping behind the scenes but no one really knows yet. Even if it isn't much interesting, the video below is superbly done.
A few emails from the community have brought my attention to Escape from City 17 - Part One, a fan-made, no-budget film set in the Half-Life universe, created by the Purchase Brothers. It features impressive melding of CG and live-action footage to make one of the most impressive and pretty fan-made Half-Life shorts ever. Check it out in high quality on Youtube here.
Gamasutra revealed Valve's Lifetime Retail Sales For Half-Life, Counter-Strike Franchises. Revealing that the studio has sold over 32.8 million games since the 1998 release of the first Half-Life.
Half-Life: 9.3 Million
Half-Life Opposing Force: 1.1 Million
Half-Life Blue Shift: 800,000
Half-Life 2: 6.5 Million
Half-Life 2 Episode 1: 1.4 Million
Counter-Strike: 4.2 Million
Counter-Strike Condition Zero: 2.9 Million
Counter-Strike Source: 2.1 Million
Counter-Strike Xbox Port: 1.5 Million
The Orange Box: 3.0 Million
All of the above statistics were described as Valve's estimates of worldwide lifetime-to-date retail sales only. Valve declining to reveal digital download numbers.
Straight out of a med journal, Gabe Newell writes to Edge that at Valve they used EEG machines to monitor playtesters with. This allows them to "know for sure of something is actually frightening the playe" as they monitor heart rate and breathing levels during a person's experience with the game...
Direct measurement of players’ arousal states and responses to the things we’re doing is super exciting. It just will allow us to be much more analytical about the decisions that we’re making and the roller coaster ride we’re trying to create for the player.
In this article, Gabe explains core elements of how they put their project Left 4 Dead together. It's a very interesting read and shows just how intricate and detailed Valve really is compared to some of those other developers.
Over on Rock, Paper, Shotgun Alec Meer has written an interesting little piece explaining why he prefers Half-Life to Half-Life 2. It is a very interesting piece, read this little snippet:
Oddly, I find HL a much more convincing journey too. Being trapped underground excuses the linearity, while HL2’s more open topography requires more uncomfortable compromises such as being unable to smash through the thin wooden fences throughout Ravenhom. (For all its spooky atmosphere, Ravenholm was the one element of HL2 I actively disliked. It was shooting for the sort of setpiece-based diversity HL1 does so well, but it felt so ghost train-contrived, especially in the maze-like layout of the level).
Personally I am with Alec, while Half-Life 2 was great from a critical perspective I much preferred the original game to play. Check out what he has to say and tell us what you think about this highly controversial issue.
The Orange Box got the fourth place in Next-gen's best 30 games of 2007, says that it's one of the best deals in gaming history.
We’re kind of glad that Valve and EA decided to put all of these great games in one package, not only because it’s likely the best deal in gaming right now, but also so we have an excuse to wedge all of these top-tier games into one slot. Everyone knows that 2004’s Half-Life 2 is one of the best examples of the FPS genre, and 2006’s Episode One was icing on the cake. New, though, is the raucous Team Fortress 2, with its comically gory style and gameplay that expertly adheres to the playing style of virtually anyone. And then there’s Portal, a mind-bending game that took the portal mechanics used in 2006’s Prey to entirely new levels. And Half-Life 2: Episode Two is the best entry into the saga yet. We’re not sure how this package could possibly be any better outside of including a free functional Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device with every purchase.
