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--- lb:half-life [2026-03-25 19:52:46] – [I haven't played Half-Life] ninjasr
+++ lb:half-life [2026-05-09 09:58:14] (current) – [Half-Life] ninjasr
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 Seeing as I never finished it...I'm gonna comment on it from a more...top-down perspective?
-I think that Half-Life is badly designed, though whether that makes it a bad game or not is another thing entirely.\\
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-Half-Life's problem is that the game design is split between two different playstyles that are directly at odds with each-other. The first I'd identify as ‘Quake-like’ and the second I'd call ‘slow-and-steady’.\\
+I think that Half-Life is badly designed, though whether that makes it a bad game or not is another thing entirely.
-The Quake-like style involves entering a room and then quickly eliminating everything inside it...as in, running and gunning. Pretty self-explanatory.\\
-The slow-and-steady style involves carefully maneuvering thru the environment and then out-thinking your opponents...like sneaking up on them, or dispatching them in an otherwise clever way.\\
+Half-Life's problem is that the game design is split between two different playstyles that are directly at odds with each-other. The first I'd identify as ‘Quake-like’ and the second I'd call ‘slow-and-steady’.
+The Quake-like style involves entering a room and then quickly eliminating everything inside it...as in, running and gunning. Pretty self-explanatory.
+The slow-and-steady style involves carefully maneuvering thru the environment and then out-thinking your opponents...like sneaking up on them, or dispatching them in an otherwise clever way.
 The former approach is encouraged with the fast movement, the fact it's in a modified Quake engine and...that's all I can think of. The latter approach is encouraged by making the enemies quite tough, making Gordon fragile (relatively-speaking) and having puzzles thruout the game.
+</div>
 Originally, I believed that the slow-and-steady playstyle was the intended gameplay style and Valve simply failed to nudge player psychology in that direction...but since I've learned just how...//unusual//...Half-Life's development was, I'm now convinced there just wasn't a unified vision: different devs working on the game prioritized different playstyles. This then combined together into a strange mess.
-The choice of a //theoretical physicist// as the main character makes a lot of sense in the context of the slow-and-steady playstyle...since a theoretical physicist is unlikely to have much combat experience, which would make him more wary and careful when actually engaging in combat.\\
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-But there are a few issues with this. First: Gordon being a theoretical physicist is practically a footnote and barely has any baring on anything; Second: the game doesn't actually emphasize Gordon's lack of experience/fragility almost at all.\\
+The choice of a //theoretical physicist// as the main character makes a lot of sense in the context of the slow-and-steady playstyle...since a theoretical physicist is unlikely to have much combat experience, which would make him more wary and careful when actually engaging in combat.
+But there are a few issues with this.
+  - Gordon being a theoretical physicist is practically a footnote and barely has any baring on anything.
+  - The game doesn't actually emphasize Gordon's lack of experience/fragility almost at all.
 If I were in their position and I really wanted to encourage that playstyle (which I'm not sure they wanted to) I would have:
   * Made Gordon even more susceptible to damage, which forces players to be a lot more careful.
   * Given players more options for avoiding fights/dealing with fights in creative ways.
   * Made Gordon a woman.((:fn:>Yes, I'm aware there was supposedly a plan to allow the player to pick a gender but it was cut due to time constraints. I don't buy the story that they cut it due to lack of time because it may suggest that Valve didn't realize at some early stage in the game that to avoid recording the same lines twice they could have just referred to Gordon as “Freeman” instead of “Gordon”. Though considering Valve is often blind to the obvious, this may have actually been the case.))
-That last point is of import because women are generally perceived as more fragile and weaker than men.((:fn:>Which is because they are. Sorry not sorry.)) It may not seem like much, but it's something you can rely on 99% of players to think, which //will// subtly adjust their behaviors. Whereas most people probably don't have the same view of theoretical physicists. That isn't to say that people think theoretical physicists are body-builders: they just don't think of them period.\\
+That last point is of import because women are generally perceived as more fragile and weaker than men.((:fn:>Which is because they are. Sorry not sorry.)) It may not seem like much, but it's something you can rely on 99% of players to think, which //will// subtly adjust their behaviors. Whereas most people probably don't have the same view of theoretical physicists. That isn't to say that people think theoretical physicists are body-builders: they just don't think of them period.
 Something else this would have done is differentiate Half-Life from other games of the time since, to my knowledge, there //weren't// any FPS games released back then that had female protagonists.
+</div>
 Moving on from there: the story. The story is actually okay, mostly. I think that the biggest flaw is with the G-man. Though I don't think I'll elaborate on my thoughts there for quite a while. There is also a possible flaw when it comes to the inter-dimensional stuff, but that would require a lot more thinking on my part. ‘sfar as I know, it doesn't depict a multiverse, so it's fine.