▲ 574 points
back
266 comments
My claim to fame on the 20th anniversary (84 views thus far) is to have completed Ravenholm without inflicting any deaths or receiving any injury:
I've played through HL2 and its expansions so many times as a kind of meditative relaxation thing I couldn't tell you how many times.
I could never get used to Ravenholm though. Thinking about it even now years later stresses me out a tad.
8:54 Holy shit I don't even know one could do something like that, jumping back to the room and hide in complete safety, very smart.
Also, at 0:30, turning off that living place hazard is very kind of you. And you also saved Bob and Jim from being cut in half by doing that. Father Grigori might not like it, but he's crazy too.
I watched the whole thing. Impressive!
Heh I like the 'pascifist' angle.
If you want a fun way to revisit the game but don't want to replay, the 50min "Developers React to 50 Minute Speedrun" is a ton of fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK_PdwL5Y8g
It highlights some of the architectural decisions (and how players exploit them), and has gems such as one of the commentators having their entire section skipped by the speedrunner.
> gems such as one of the commentators having their entire section skipped by the speedrunner
The day that dev looked at player time-location heatmaps, investigated outliers, and then cried...
That was hilarious, thank you
It would be nice if it was again possible to run it in current Mac OS. The original Half life still lists Mac OS but with incompatible information (newer versions of Steam require recent versions, but HL only runs on old 32 bit OSX)
It should work in Wine, although I haven't tested this update yet.
(disclaimer: I work for CodeWeavers, we sell CrossOver which should be a great and easy way to play)
edit: tested out the 20th anniversary update on M2 Pro, it works great!
I just installed* it. It run well, although I don’t recommend playing it with a Magic Mouse.
* I first installed Whisky, a Wine/Game Porting toolkit/app thingy (https://getwhisky.app). Then I installed Steam for Windows inside Whisky, then downloaded HL2. The download was a little bit hiccup-y, but it worked. Testplay of HL2 was great, apart from the mouse.
Are these new windows releases also 64 bit or still 32 bit?
Wow, seeing this made me surprisingly emotional as I realized that downloading the pre-release leaked source code for some testing levels of HL2 (which included an early version of what would become Steam, as well)
- and then debugging / figuring out how to hack together a version that would compile in Visual Studio (back when you had to have a license… in theory…) as a preteen -
had a way bigger impact on me than I gave it credit for at the time. I think seeing the sheer scope of that codebase and realizing how much I didn’t understand and still had to learn is part of what put me in my path into both the game industry and software startups. I found both Valve’s and Gabe’s stories that much more compelling after gaining an appreciation for how much there was under the hood.
Cheers to everyone who has worked on this engine, this project, and this company over the years. I suspect your influence runs deeper than you know.
I can never understand why they haven't made a HL3. Given that they could literally make approximately 3.88 bajillion dollars from it in 24 hours.
I suppose this is the very definition of developer integrity.
It doesn't seem to be mentioned here, but HL2 (which now includes the sequel episodes) is completely free to claim on Steam until the 18th, if you're new to the series.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/220/HalfLife_2/
Also try clicking on the gravity gun at the end of the anniversary page.
When Half-Life 2 came out it caused me to break a video game addiction I'd had since being a teenager. I was so awestruck by the quality and enjoyment I derived from the game that after playing through it any other game I tried later paled in comparison to the memory. It got to the point that I couldn't make it more than 30 minutes into a new game without losing interest and eventually I just stopped buying games altogether and that was it. I'm still not sure if this is a good or bad thing.
I extremely recommend scrolling all the way to the bottom of the page for this one.
In 2007 when The Orange Box was released, Half-Life 2 took forever to load on my dual-core Athlon 64 X2. It would run but the levels would take a solid minute to load. At the time I figured it was some incompatibility with the multiple cores as that was still rare and a lot of other software gave me trouble with it at that time.
I tried to play it much more recently, maybe six or so years ago on an Intel MacBook before they broke 32-bit, and once again even on modern hardware the game took FOREVER to load.
Maybe this is just my experience? I haven't heard anyone else complain about the terrible load times?
20-25 years ago a handful of companies had a weird hold on me. I’d jump on anything Google made back then. Blizzard could sell me any game they came up with. If it was from Blizzard, it was gonna be great.
Lost all of it obviously. Not a single company has my loyalty anymore.
Except if valve were to release a mystery black box with faint lambda symbol on it. I’d pay whatever they asked for it.
It's extremely rare to revisit a game like this for fear of new regressions. I'm sure every game goes out the door with 10-20 bad bugs that would be easy to fix, but it's just too late to touch.
It also sounds like the fixed a lot of art/ambience regressions introduced by newer source engines over the years.
Anyway, it's exciting to see an update like this, and a testament to their prior engineering that they can turn up all these dials without weird repercussions.
Nice, I wonder when the third documentary will be out
It makes me really happy to see old games getting remastered.
I was a Mac kid. There were a whole bunch of games that I wanted to play but didn't have access to. (At least we had Marathon!) American McGee's Alice was at the top of that list, with the Arkham Trilogy close behind.
The Steam Deck is giving me a chance to catch up on all the computer games that I didn't have the hardware for when they were popular. I've now caught up on Arkham, but I just can't get into Alice. The graphics and the controls are so bad from a modern perspective that it distracts from any desire I have to explore that world. I had to download a mod to even unlock the original Alice, because they don't sell the complete collection on Steam any longer.
Seeing that the Half Life games have been recently remastered, maybe it's time for me to give them a play through. I'm going to be spending lots of time on airplanes over the holidays!
Fixes
> Reduced chances of birds getting stuck in the world.
I really think I give it a replay. It was such a great game and truly started a new area of gaming.
Direct link to the 20th anniversary documentary: https://youtube.com/watch?v=YCjNT9qGjh4
Only three more years until Team Fortress 2 hits a similar milestone. Which is crazy to think about, because I still play it online at least once a week.
Trying to spend more time doing leisure activities again, so the developer commentary might make a fine excuse to crack this bad boy out again.
In the video doc they talk about the failure to execute on Episode 3 or even a Half Life 3. Has a weird tone to it, the whole thing ends on a depressing note.
As Gabe says, they didn't fulfill their obligation towards their customer and fan base to complete the story. Alyx is cool, but niche.
Oh well, Half Life 3 not confirmed, yet again.
For anyone who wants a creative hobby, grab the game, download the SDK and start making maps/mods. It took a lot of effort to craft beautiful map, but comparing to later engines, HL2 is still easier to learn and make maps for.
(DOOM and Quake are also good targets and both have a large community)
One of the few mainstream game companies that cares deeply about their legacy and community. Kudos.
For those living under rock (me): did they finally update the HL1 SDK to catch up with HL1 Anniversary edition? I was really anticipating lots of positive changes, but kind of lost track in the chaos of life.
Excitedly checks to see whether it has been updated yet to support 64 bit Macs.
Sadly slinks away
This would be an incredible way to stealth-release Episode 3, but I understand at this point it would be impossible for it to be not a disappointment, so I imagine nobody wants to risk trying to make it.
If there is any game worthy of a remaster or remake it's HL2, and all of its episodes. It remains one of my most memorable gaming experiences, and not just because of nostalgia. The story, writing, characters, dialogue, environments, gameplay, graphics, audio... Everything was pretty much revolutionary back then. I remember being awed by the physics in the demo, and couldn't get enough of the gravity gun once I got the game. It was so brilliantly versatile and satisfying to use.
And yet these days we get "remasters" of games that are not even 5 years old. Most of the AAA industry is just putting out lazy cash grabs and predatory live service garbage. Valve itself has profited immensely from the live service business model. I just wish they would get back to development, or sell someone else the rights to their single-player franchises. Spinoffs like HL: Alyx and Aperture Desk Job don't really cut it for me.
Anyways, this update looks alright. I'm looking forward to the new commentary.
I remember flipping through that Raising the Bar book at Barnes and Noble 20 years ago and playing HL2 with min setting on my paltry Geforce 2 Ti.
I am so getting the reissued book!
You know it's a good remaster when no one complains about it overwriting the original. (yes it is called an update, but I think that proves my point)
It looks like the Mac and Linux ports are now gone
This is awesome. I've only ever played Portal and Portal 2, so playing the games they came from finally would be neat!
Missed the chance to call it “Actinium”
I never played it. What makes it being rated so good?
Wonder if these bugfixes mean new speedruns?
Can't wait to see episode 3. There have been some rumors they might be working on it, but I'm not holding my breath anymore.
So 3 is soon?
Cool, but do I really feel like buying this game yet again?
Still holding out for HL 3. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If you tried to pick up the crowbar at the top of the page and were disappointed, scroll all the way down, pick up the portal gun thing, and scroll back up, destroying the whole webpage in the process.
Props to the webmaster (do people still say that?), I love seeing easter eggs like this.
Half life 3 ffs
The black bar means someone died. A real computer scientist.
I hope it’s not a legend like ken or something, but it’s not obvious from the front page and #1 is a video game.
Tell me we’re not handing out black bars for anniversaries of software now?