HL2's 20th Anniversary - Everything I Learned about Half Life 2

[@9another632]

9:50 You telling me that VALVE had to convince the GPU makers, that there was a problem with their math on it, and then launched an updated driver? chad

[@benismann]

yea what a time it was

[@-dash.]

AND he come from an art background so they didnt trust him at first

[@SalesmanWave]

Watch the documentary.

[@HeyKyle]

⁠@@SalesmanWaveI don’t think this was mentioned in the documentary. It was mentioned in the node in ravenholm only

[@ark_knight]

@@HeyKyle it was mentioned in the documentary

[@enonibobble]

I'm so glad you mentioned the developer commentary turning off at the sniper section! i'd only realised once i got to the entrance of the citadel, glad it wasn't just me.

[@Roamer17]

Yeah I had to start a new game with commentary on from that chapter and replay it after I realised I hadn't seen any commentary nodes in a while - But this can be fixed with the console command "commentary 1".

[@QuintessentialWalrus]

Throwing my hat in to say it happened to me too, same chapter. I'm embarrassed to admit I beat the entire game from there before I realized the commentary was broken 🙃

[@MusicChannel-yd6ws]

Yeah this was frustrating for me ngl. Although an easy fix, it happened again at another level and wasnt apparent, causing me to just have to redo almost an entire section to hear the commentary

[@nx2528]

I ran into that bug too! I don't remember this issue occurring in other Valve games. Hope they patch it soon.

[@3DFella]

I got this bug too and I was confused at first but I just assumed the developer commentary was over LOL

[@StrikeWarlock]

The one takeaway I had from this besides seeing Kelly Bailey being more than a sound engineer (a lot of his input was the basis on how the airboat sequences SHOULD feel) and Mike Shapiro loving his job as the voice of the G-Man is that man, Vivendi was far more evil than the gaming companies we know now. Finding out later that Activision even had to buy itself out of Vivendi makes them look like Super Satan in terms of corporations.

[@unquestionableexistance8704]

Damn this is not just evil anymore Its advanced evil

[@ark_knight]

@@unquestionableexistance8704 advanced warfare, if you will

[@QUINTIX256]

Makes me wonder what happened to smaller developers around the same timeframe - devs without Valve’s resources who published through Vivendi, who managed to catch the worst parts of their avarice and vicious spite.

[@NickJerrison]

Kelly Bailey and (I believe) John Guthrie were also the ones who pretty much made the entire Resonance Cascade sequence basically overnight. Dario Casali talks about it in his personal developer commentary playthrough for HL1 on his channel, noting how Gabe Newell himself was impressed with what can be done with level design. Kelly Bailey is a fucking hero (as well as pretty much everybody else at Valve really)

[@j.trades9691]

It's really funny, because even the Wikipedia page for Vivendi makes them sound awful. There's a section talking about how they got caught earlier this year conducting a misinformation campaign about Reporters Without Borders (AFTER being told to quit being scummy about the news by the French government, to boot).

[@brokencat2662]

Imagine if Humanity just told Combines : "Yo, there is water on a moon of Jupiter, its called Europa" and everyone would hug it out and work together.

[@varvarvarvarvarvar]

Yeah, it's better they never elaborated that part out loud

[@MentalParadox]

That wouldn't work because the combine aren't JUST after our water. They want US, our biology, to enlist us into their forces. We are being harvested as a species

[@eclipserepeater2466]

The impression that I got is that the combine are much more dimension-hoppers than space-farers, so they're probably extracting resources on earth because earth is already habitable for them and all their synths and human pawns. Europa has water, but it's a pain to get to from earth, while earth already has a portal.

[@demivideos8887]

The combine are not only there for the resources. The combine canonically have inter-dimensional travel, but not localized teleporting. The humans (specifically aperture science) created the best, fastest and most energy-efficient localized teleportation; The portal gun (which no one is aware of) and a larger scale technology of teleportation; the Borealis. HL WIKI: "Dr. Mossman explains that while the Combine can teleport or 'tunnel' from one universe to another, they do not know how to teleport between different locations in the same universe, and are instead reliant on far less powerful means of local transportation." The resistance in HL2 also has a means of local teleportation which uses Xen as a 'sling-shot', but is generally considered less effective than Aperture Science's tech. Essentially: the Combine is on earth to obtain localized teleportation to further fuel and speed up their colonization and search for resources on other planets and in other universes. This is not explicitly said, and is only a popular theory - although, there *are* in-game references to the Borealis, Combine's lack of teleportation tech, and we also know the combine is searching for the Borealis so its a pretty well-rounded theory as to why the combine are here.

[@hem9483]

​@demivideos8887 I like this theory, but how would the combine not have managed to find aperture science or the borealis by now? they dissolved any semblance of human operated statehood in like a few hours but it's taking them decades to find a fuckin boat? idk man

[@Horrorz95]

Still can't get over how that final part of the documentary is not just Gaben personally admitting his failure with Episode 3 but also outright teasing a new Half Life as well. Considering Alyx, Source 2 datamines (which have been 3 for 3 so far), and a bunch of other smoke billowing everywhere I'm inclined to finally believe it.

[@CRT_YT]

it went from thinking someone was crazy for believing in hl3 to thinking someone was crazy for NOT believing in hl3. unless it gets cancelled again.

[@TMCharly]

we might have watched a different documentary

[@figeon]

@@CRT_YTWhich will release first? HL3 or GTAVI?

[@CRT_YT]

@@figeon probably GTA 6

[@kakokapolei123]

There’s a dev talk somewhere out there with a few Valve employees who straight up admitted to adding suspicious lines of code on purpose to tease dataminers about their next project. It’s Valve’s way of gauging audience reactions cuz they know dataminers are going to make videos on it. The fact that these HLX “leaks” are becoming more common suggests that they may actually have something in the works right now. I don’t remember what the specific talk was called, but I remember them talking about CSGO and how they do updates

[@sarminder4357]

6:01 The show not tell works well for HL2 considering the statis jump between 1 and 2. Gordon was put into stasis for 20 years and every character he comes across will just assume he was always on Earth and saw it all. Wouldn't make sense for someone to drop a random history rundown for the last 20 years to someone they "know" was here to experience it all with them.

[@QuintessentialWalrus]

I actually think HL2 is a rare example of taking "show don't tell" too far. For me the problem is just that SO MUCH happened between the two games and SO MUCH is left vague or unexplained. I think adding some more concrete information on the lore as optional content would have added depth without hurting the pacing.

[@mabciapayne16]

When? Gordon was just sprinting for like 3 days from one place to another.

[@forple8930]

@@QuintessentialWalrus Honestly, I feel like HL2's storytelling is a mess. Like, if you're not being locked into a "playable cutscene" ("Tell don't show") where you screw around with props as unskippable exposition happens (think Black Mesa East, the teleporter bit in Red Letter Day, or some of the parts in Nova Prospekt and the Our Benefactors chapter) the game basically tells you absolutely nothing about what happened. Sometimes this is actually kind of cool in a way (eg: finding out what happened to Ravenholm yourself), but in others, it's quite frustrating since there's just a bunch of stuff that happens and exists with little to no real explanation or exposition on how or why it's even happening in the first place (eg: why almost every single rebel "outpost" on the coastline is either completely vacated or contains a dead body. Some are clearly Combine raids, others not so much at all, or why the Overwatch Nexus has this super powerful mortar but you never see anything like it again outside of this single instance)

[@ghoulbuster1]

@@QuintessentialWalrus Eww no

[@mabciapayne16]

@@forple8930 why should you see a second "mortar"?

[@jonny-b4954]

1:00 Makes sense why Valve eventually said "F publishers, we're going to make our OWN publisher software.... how about that?"

[@hanshotfirst4266]

Kind of amazing how 5-10 years after they were almost bankrupted by their own publisher Vivendi, Valve ended up becoming the largest games publisher on the market. Virtually every other publisher today needs to show deference to Valve and pay them in sales revenue, just for the privilege to be featured on Valve's storefront. Despite their efforts to circumvent Steam's influence, no other publisher has been able to create a competitor capable of replacing it. Incredible how a last minute decision by Gabe fundamentally changed Valve and games distribution forever, and in a way that delivers some sort of poetic justice for what Valve went through in those early days.

[@DaRealBruner2]

With blackjack! and hookers!

[@Br4v010]

When I listened to the dev commentary, I couldn’t believe the sheer attention to detail and rigorous design iteration that went into this game. So many of the little things that make HL2 just “work” were intentionally baked in by the developers. So much respect to those guys.

[@Gxaps]

I think what I love most about the commentary is just how critical the devs were. A day one commentary wouldn't have that kind of hindsight, and while we're certainly missing out on some details and nuance that were simply forgotten in the 2 decades that have passed, it's really interesting to hear the developers identify where they have succeeded and where they have failed, and the thought process behind it.

[@QuintessentialWalrus]

Agreed, my favorite commentary tracks by far were the ones where they talked about why they're not happy with something and wish it was better. I'm a hobbyist game dev who also happens to think HL2 is overrated (but still good) and that kind of introspection was a breath of fresh air.

[@Nando_Prime]

​@@QuintessentialWalrus Why do you think its overrated?

[@QuintessentialWalrus]

@@Nando_Prime I'll spare you an essay but the jist is that it's less fun to replay than HL1 for a variety of reasons. 1. HL2's weapon and enemy variety sucks. Valve thought the physics simulation would be interesting enough to make up for that loss but IMO it isn't. 2. Vehicle controls, implementation and QOL are bad compared to, say, Halo's vehicles. 3. The number of unskippable scenes for dialogue, tutorials, transport etc. is aggravating after your first playthrough. HL2 is a good game that's more than the sum of its parts but I see more flaws with every replay.

[@flake.tv.]

@@QuintessentialWalrus HL2 is for sure a flawed game but I wouldn't say it's overrated, HL2 and the source engine in general were hugely influential to the PC gaming ecosystem and for that alone it deserves the praise. If you were to argue that Halo was more fun than HL then sure I could see that but idk even now Half Life 2 is such a unique game in the way that it approaches it's visual storytelling it kind of begins to bridge the divide between standard FPS and Immersive Sim while still very much being a shooter. In fact I think Halo and Half Life are good series to contrast against each other HL2 was kind of a more "traditional" shooter at the time and Halo represented the future the rest of the industry would go in thanks to the console market, think health regen, 2 weapon loadout, more cinematic and less diegetic storytelling both series though did have a strong focus on combat being a more sandbox combat experience and enemy AI that would believably react to player aggression. Interesting to think both were being made in the same city at the same time just about. Shame 343 happened though haha.

[@40wink]

Mike Shapiro busting out the G-man voice acting at the drop of a hat was super cool and seriously uncanny.

[@StrikeWarlock]

Barney too! Although it saddens me how it surprised him that Barney actually made it all the way to Half-life 2. He clearly thought he was too good and stupid to last as long as he did.

[@MartinHerchel]

It's kinda funny a company, which has problem with counting to 3 found a problem with graphics card calculations, but I'm glad they did.

[@DaRealBruner2]

No commentary was in the Overwatch Nexus because Valve didn't want to admit that the floor turrets that pop up out of the ground are complete and utter bullshit.

[@valiantviktor]

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING???

[@QuintessentialWalrus]

Don't you just love it when you throw a grenade perfectly into the hole and then it defies the laws of physics and rolls back out somehow? 🫠

[@ark_knight]

@@QuintessentialWalrus you thought the turret was gonna sit back and take it?! take back your lemons!

[@mabciapayne16]

What's wrong with them?

[@awsomebot1]

You're right about the enemy variety. It becomes much more apparent when you start mapping for HL2. In Doom you can make a room and fill it with monsters and it'll play well. Not so much with HL2 maps where the enemies alone won't carry the map, so you have to add scripted events and setpieces.

[@QuintessentialWalrus]

Bingo, and this is why I replay HL1 a lot more than HL2. Sure, HL2 has better level design and setpieces, but the simple act of fighting enemies is a lot more engaging in HL1.

[@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413]

​@@QuintessentialWalrusi dont think hl2 has better level design, its all either huge open spaces or tiny cramped hallways. no combat arena in hl2 is as good as anything in weve got hostiles or surface tension, not even the ep2 barn

[@Peb02497]

​@@QuintessentialWalrusHL2 level design was one of the weakest of all the Main Valve HL games. Episode 2 levels are more refined and better executed versions of HL2 base levels

[@sirduggins]

That joke on the mortar commentary node about "Maybe we'll put the usable mortar in a future half life installment", despite being a joke confirms that they're making a new game to me

[@QuintessentialWalrus]

Eric Smith also has a joke in a Nova Prospekt commentary node about how unfortunate it is that the Half-Life series will never have a conclusion, which would be in extremely poor taste if they weren't actually working on HL3 lol

[@finnyjam8252]

Having played through the developer commentary mode, I really wish that everyone had recorded it all in the same studio. It kinda sucks that some of the mics are so low in quality. That being said, it’s still an awesome experience

[@YoYoBobbyJoe]

Gabe couldn't be bothered to step off of his yacht.

[@runninggames771]

Does that really matter? You can still understand them all.

[@dugl]

maybe something happened to the HDD with the original recordings and they were able to retrieve only low-quality versions and fix with AI

[@stevethepocket]

@@dugl These are not, to my knowledge, vintage recordings from 2004, if that's what you're suggesting. Since they didn't even plan the commentary feature until they started using it in expansions.

[@dugl]

@@stevethepocket sorry I meant they recorded it this year but something like a small disaster/corruption happened to the HDD with the recordings and they needed specialists to recover what's left and often while recovering corrupt data the quality degrades. Or with someone like audio engineer: the project file/folder of final mix of recordings was almost done and his HDD died or OS crashed and corrupted data, and only he had original files

[@h4ngman]

I am so glad you mentioned the AI enhancement in the voice. I thought that they sounded like AI voices which didn't make sense for a developer commentary thing so I was kind of questioning my sanity.

[@Grampa_Swood]

The examples sound more like mistakes than AI enhancement though, Valve has plenty of mistakes in previous developer commentaries too, it just sounds like they had bad microphones or made a mistake when speaking.

[@QuintessentialWalrus]

They might just be mistakes (recording flubs or typos) but if not then it's pretty likely that some of the former employees recorded their lines over Zoom and had the audio "enhanced" in post. I think it's understandable considering how many of HL2's lead developers no longer work there.

[@stevethepocket]

@@QuintessentialWalrus There are other, higher quality ways to send voice recordings over the internet than piping it through a real-time voice chat app optimized for minimum bandwidth, and as a software company Valve ought to know that.

[@Grandmaster-Kush]

The woman in the first level sounds the worst, sounds liike voice labs clone

[@protocetid]

They replaced Gordon's silence with AI generated silence, I can't believe Valve would do Gordon's voice actor dirty specially after he passed away. Valve has proven to be incompetent and I hope they never make HL3.

[@awsomebot1]

The story is cool in that there's an element of Lovecraftian horror. Not in Gman (though him too of course), but the Combine. Xen is the border-dimension between all dimensions. The Nihilanth was hiding there as his home was invaded by the Combine. We never see who the Combine are. Their soldiers are augmented humans, with higher ranks being considerably less human. Their ships and striders are augmented aliens from other conquered worlds with no free will. Even the advisors are just lowly handlers, and indeed the Ep 3 draft implies they're a conquered species as well. The Combine are an interdimensional empire ravaging through everything in existence. Earth is only able to resist because they don't care too much about it, and also they haven't mastered teleportation in this dimension yet. We know nothing about them, who pulls the strings, what their end goal is, etc.

[@holben27]

The combine could be a hyper-advanced ai with a singular purpose to control everything living in existence. It's powered by Dyson spheres and resource stripping of planets. My guess is Gman is on a different dimensional plane of existence. He's basically an immortal energy being. The combine figured out some way of limiting his power (and the power of his employers) in the 3-dimensional physical space, so he picks and prods at the remote edges of the combine empire to attempt to limit its growth.

[@MaisieSqueak]

You don't make an ice gun and amorphous blob monster and then just leave it on the shelf... Aye aye aye

[@StrikeWarlock]

Deadlock now utilizes both.

[@neo_bellic]

well, the blob eventually found its way into Portal 2 albeit in a different form and function

[@helicalhalo379]

Thanks a lot for the dev commemtary node videos Philip! Funny, informative AND very time efficient for those who are too lazy to experience it ingame.

[@averagegamingplayer]

Glad to hear even you didn't notice a lot of the details, like especially the birds. If I were looking in their direction then I just thought ok there are birds and then takes me a while longer to see that there is a puzzle to be done.

[@realENGY]

Man... HL2 is such a legendary game. I just wish other big developers cared about their old games (and gamers) as much as Valve does.

[@LegionIscariot]

Its amazing how an update, or a documentary, or commentary for a 20 year old game could get me excited. But thats the power of Half Life.

[@JerryKid72]

11:37 agreed, it was crazy sparse after the commentary bug too but its 20 years later i would imagine if it was made when everyone who worked on it was still around it would be much more packed.

[@alexanderkhodos]

Nice summary, Philip! I watched the documentary and played HL2 with developers commentary, and it was eye-opening

[@eggboy9126]

In my opinion, limiting the amount of weapons and enemies in HL2 allows the game to more consistently put new ideas and concepts in front of the player. The set pieces and level design are really the stars of HL2 and would go on to influenced a lot of modern singleplayer games. You see it everywhere. Especially "prestige" games have taken a lot of lessons from it.

[@QuintessentialWalrus]

I don't think "combat variety versus setpiece novelty" is a one-to-one tradeoff, but even if it was I think it'd be the wrong decision. HL1 is much more replayable than HL2 and IMO that's partly because it has greater variety in its standard moment-to-moment gameplay. HL2's setpiece pacing is great but each setpiece tends to play out the same way each time, whereas HL1's more robust combat is often more dynamic and surprising.

[@forple8930]

@@QuintessentialWalrus HL1's combat and the variety in weapons and their behavior allows you to essentially experiment with encounters every time you replay them, meaning you can approach the same HECU encounter with different weapons most of the time and still do well, sometimes better or worse than the "standard" way due to how you are to apply the resources you have. HL2's is pretty much "solved" the minute you get a single gun; there's no real reason to muck around and try something different, just take the two most powerful weapons in your arsenal and shoot at the guy damaging you. Any other option is quite literally objectively just either an intentional handicap or is a worse decision on the end of the player. It's not like HL2 intentionally deprives the player of ammo either; you kind of just shoot everything, run to a supply crate if needed (or just let a citizen give you ammo/health) and continue shooting.

[@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413]

setpieces are lame and so are gimmick chapters

[@QuintessentialWalrus]

@@forple8930 Exactly! HL2's combat is fun but I can only replay it once every few years, otherwise it just feels like I've "seen it all." It's almost TOO polished - needs more friction.

[@aaron_ow]

Free TV!!!

[@carbondogma7388]

Definitely my favorite part from the commentary nodes was the explanations behind the "choreo" sequences. They were always some of my favorite moments because of how immersive they felt, and hearing about the technology behind making them work made me even more impressed. Definitely something I wish more games included.

[@E2wqpXcGGnLtJHbVXDhS3]

My guess is that they covered everything they wanted to in the documentary and were just adding even extra content over in the game, the only thing that is still left unsaid is the bank section of the game as you said in your video.

[@benismann]

yea i didnt play the game i just watched philip's videos on commentaries and i did feel lie smth was skipped. Weird that there was no commentary

[@CssHDmonster]

its crazy how much of the 2002 demo feels like dark messiah of might and magic

[@Randarrradara]

The last dev commentary was really anticlimactic, but then you have the episodic commentary, which kinda makes it more coherent.

[@Darwinator]

Love the content Philip. Would listen to all the episode 1 and 2 commentary too if you uploaded them even if it's been done before.

[@AJSCATMAN]

3:00 Look Out Gmem😢

[@HeyKyle]

He ded 😔

[@mabciapayne16]

The bank level feels like a missed opportunity to show "something important" there.

[@JuanGamer0202]

It warms my heart that even the devs back then had the running joke of the combine combine

[@Lykrast]

I was so excited to replay half life 2 after the documentary (I did it like years ago) only to be immediately get huuuge motion sickness for the airboat and be like "damn that didn't happen when I was younger"

[@Aelfraed26]

The combine is interdimensional. They didn't arrive from somewhere in our universe let alone our galaxy.

[@SlavaThereshin]

Did you know, when Gman asks "Time?" at the end, he continues Alyx's unfinished sentence?

[@trisfaleel]

Plus later when he’s about to say time he switches it up and says I’m not at liberty to say

[@dougler500]

It's very clear after the 20 year anniversary content as to why HL2 is one of the best games ever made, Valve employed some of the best and most intelligent game devs that have ever existed. Truly brilliant.

[@Espritviril]

I watched the last commentary and as you said it was weird that there was no monologue or any grand talk about the ending, it was just a random shader talk. Loved you sharing all these and this video. Anniversary videos were awesome!

[@illusionmann2650]

3:21 isn't that the clock prop on the photo?

[@AriinPHD]

im mostly saddened by the lack of commentary and insight into the singing/all-knowing vortigaunt :( i was so excited to hear their thought process and maybe learn a little secret… only for there to be commentary node about it at all 😢

[@hem9483]

there's nothing for game developers to comment on, that's writer territory. the entire dialogue chain that vort vomits at the player is lore for people who care about hl lore, not a gameplay feature or design quandary they'd have insight on the free man, Eli vance, Alyx vance, the g man, and the vortigaunts share a future - that's basically the essence of the vorti's ramblings

[@jcdenton4911]

@@hem9483 Yeah, you tell him.

[@Grampa_Swood]

@@hem9483 Writers are also game developers, but there is plenty to talk about the decision of why they did it, what they possibly cut, why they chose to do it this way, etc.

[@OrangeGenerator]

@@Grampa_Swood it's an easter egg.

[@QuintessentialWalrus]

​​@@hem9483The lead writer of Half-Life 2 (Marc Laidlaw) has plenty of developer commentary tracks talking about his contributions to many aspects of the game's narrative, big and small. Writers are developers - especially Laidlaw, who knows how to use Hammer and did a lot for the game beyond just writing dialogue.

[@lunchbox997]

I too was also surprised that the HL2 commentary had nothing to say about the fights in and around the Citadel after the snipers.

[@checker297]

i felt the citadel was the worst point of the game as it was fun for like 30 seconds, but went on for too long. Portal really showed what would have been possible. It should have been a boss fight similar to glados with the super grav gun being the tool you use.

[@Jetsetlemming]

I'm almost certain the Combine were slightly involved in HL1 since the last boss is all chained up just like the Vortogonts and I think it has dialog mentioning its slavers? Pretty sure they're the Combine. The plot isn't directly involving them, just one of the planets/dimensions(?) they've conquered, but that's how they found out about Earth. It is genuinely really interesting though that somehow that plot wasn't in mind at the start of HL2's development though, because like.... the chains and the dialog of that giant brain baby thing are obviously already there in HL1. They established a big greater evil empire in HL1, and then it took them a couple years to remember they did that and connect it to their next game somehow? That's really funny to think about tbh

[@MeatThrasher]

GET YOURSELF A TV!!

[@TedThomasTT]

glad you made this

[@michixinqq]

I am surprised so few people, or even none for that matter, talk about it, but at least for me the coolest thing was the VA for G-man talking in his voice. Just felt soo goood

[@skylx0812]

Lugging that damn garden gnome around was hilarious. At one point I accidentally launched it at a strider then had to go searching for the friggin thing.

[@Ogaitnas900]

ha that "combine ball and ball training" sounded oddly redundant to me, if anyone was going to figure out why it was famously AI generated channel 2kliksphilip

[@lonergothonline]

the best thing about the birds thing? at near the beginning of the game, the game tutorializes that you should look for birds and watch them. by having one take the fall for you for an upcoming barnicle. basically, you follow the bird with your eyes as it flys from the ground and into a tongue, and then the barnicle eats the bird. from this point on in the game birds are now something you should be looking out for specifically because they 'guide' the players 'eyes'. without the sacrifice of that one bird, you wouldn't think to look at birds. ever since I learned this for my 14th play through I've been keeping a watchful eye out, and its impressive how many times I completely missed out on them over the years. like we are talking triple digit missing out here. birds are everywhere in hl2. my 20th anniversary play through really cemented this in my mind. y'know, the twentieth time I played through the game, obviously.

[@Dynamonic]

It's clear to me that the Half-Life 25th Anniversary and Half-Life 2 20th Anniversary events, which both involved free game giveaways to attract new players, and 'new incentives' to draw old players back to the series, had one purpose...Get people invested in the series again. There's only one reason why you'd want to do that! I have not been this excited as a Half-Life fan in a very long time!

[@SonicChaocc]

The Ice Gun and the Blob-like enemies would be so fun to use against eachother. I like to imagine a section of the game where you are constantly running away from the blob, but then you acquire the ice gun and freeze the blob thing and no longer fear it. It'd also be used as a voiceless tutorial. Like before you learn how to kill the blob, you go through sections of the game where you freeze water and make your own platforms using the blob gun.

[@CubanLegend561]

the attacking vs shooting at you part for enemies was an AMAZING thing to learn! :D I agree Edge friction was BRILLIANT! The show vs tell storytelling was nice to learn about, the receding of the oceans from the Combine taking water was amazing to learn lol, it all made sense in retrospect. OH YES, the creation of the Valve Hardware Survey... such genius. Learning how the Gman voice actor figured out how to NAIL the G-Man cadence and it being sourced from the idea that he's multidimensionally experiencing moments, was Mind blowing to learn, it made perfect sense. :) I wonder what Valve will do for the 30th anniversary of the game? Surely they can't top this!?

[@WelcomeToDERPLAND]

That slime enemy is unironically the most advanced looking enemy I've ever seen in any game ever- and it didnt even make it into anything... for shame.

[@ibuprofen-noodles]

i always thought they extracted resources as a side-objective and were focused on teleportation tech

[@ybeeqs]

I, like many others, grew up playing this when it first game out. The commentary and the documentary ignited a new, deeper level of love for the game within me. It's crazy how they paid attention to nearly every facet to ensure the game could look and be it's best.

[@phnkrzs]

I had no idea about the graphics cards shaders part where they contacted the manufacturers. I appreciate the developers much more by that level of dedication

[@the_anomy]

maybe the real Half Life 2 were the friends we made along the way

[@ThePhantomnaut]

My friend Airboat is out there… somewhere…

[@Nezzen-]

*3

[@Randarrradara]

On Steam? 😊

[@Tenneyson]

Shut up no we didn't and we need hl 3

[@FacepalmInteractive]

Failed to make good friendships the people I met online gmod and other were bad unlucky

[@ieatpaper]

My favorite part of the commentary nodes was near the mortor when they mentioned a "future release," and then i remembered it was recorded in 2024 :O

[@skylx0812]

Can't see game now without hearing Frank from Gorgeous Freeman saying "How the 'FRICK' are ya!!"

[@detectivesunshine1760]

Gaben is looking so slick these days

[@dycedargselderbrother5353]

One aspect that always stuck out to me as a hint of the budget problems was the recycling of voice actors. They obviously prioritized and got the leads in place, but the NPCs have "male voice" and "female voice". Even in 2004 it wasn't unreasonable to have like half a dozen actors doing those parts.

[@stevethepocket]

I think the main reason for that was so they wouldn't have to keep track of which lines belonged to which models, and could swap either of them out any time they wanted to without having to make every voice actor record their own take on every line.

[@MrSongib]

They hint some HL3 as well in the commentary section.

[@Galacticbraindentist]

One of the things I find fascinating about game design is how much of it is just lying to the player and half life 2 is absolutely full of it and it’s so cool

[@AndrewDasilvaPLT]

Thank you for your work.

[@forslos8756]

10:00 you can use close caption or subtitle instead of a progress bar to see the whole commentary. edit: also i turn on youtube auto generate subtitle and it heard wall too.

[@halo7372]

10:16 I definitely heard "wall and balls training"

[@robinrai4973]

This video has a 2015 kliksphillip vibe and I dig it

[@_kennykennykenny]

yooo new video , day saved🔥🔥🔥

[@pyrojinn]

seeing HL2's development makes you appreciate the limitations of creativity and resources, rather than having 'limitless' of either of those things like in say GTA VI or Star Citizens

[@G7ue]

Oh man, I thought there was a surprising lack of commentary nodes near the end of the game, I cant believe I missed out on so many because of that bug.

[@MattiCore]

They LEFT ep. 3 to (FOR) work on a game with DEAD. So they LEFT 4 DEAD and named their game exactly like that :D Holy genius Valve!

[@deathdoor]

9:50 Is this related to Nvidia (specially) and ATI "cheating" the color precision to achieve higher scores on benchmarks? Some of those "optimization" also worsened the image quality, some times visibly.

[@dragonsdogma2062]

''No regerts MR. Freeman''

[@herald1953]

i am convinced Half Life 3 is gonna be neuron controlled VR stuff

[@iceman78772]

10:09 Whats funny is KZbin's auto subtitles read your mind and somehow captioned it "combine wall"

[@andresbravo2003]

Life is how we enjoyed it of a masterpiece.

[@Hirakashii]

I like to think that Gabe watches your videos.

[@DrCranberry]

"The time is right for more half-life content in the future" Jokes on Phil, this was filmed in 2018 and the content was HL:A.

[@AustinH7]

Is this actually true?

[@YellowSabre]

​@@AustinH7na but it'd be really funny

[@Kamil_O]

played it myself, very interesting. it is funny how some they made to make player aware of something, but still I did not realized it. like shooting helicopter in the water section, It never realized you can shoot helicopter before final boss fight.

[@TheOneEpicplayer]

TV! FREE TV!

[@MorrrisEk]

i think u would learn a lot of those things u say you've never noticed/known them from yt channel pinsplash and his series where he covered probably every detail ,bug, and fact about game that anyone found before 20th aniveraary.

[@denifnaf5874]

3:06 combine combine 🤯

[@Jarethenator]

I also felt the commentary ended on an odd note and had some weird elements all the way through. Not one to complain about a cool, free thing I didn't really linger on it much, but yeah...I hope they add a bit more...they probably.......they won't, but I can hope.

[@LiamQuantum]

3:28 Don’t do that… don’t give me hope…

[@1Tasteless]

I also noticed the AI processing in the commentary nodes!

[@BMXaster]

Imagine if Valve would ever look back, and deicde to remaster HL2 the way it was intended. With all the performance you could ask for, all the bells and whistles of todays graphics, all modern animation techniques. No time or budget constraints. Surely it would again be one of the best games (re)created?

[@stevethepocket]

I just want Barney to actually wince and shudder when he goes "Gyu-u-u-u-uh" after Alyx jokes about him not being an animal person. It felt like that's what Mike was going for and the animator just ignored it.

[@Jouvental]

it seems most people online talk about it being 20 years old now

[@Jouvental]

archived the video there you go, james?

[@Foster-l8s]

The bank bit is bugged, use commands to manually enable the commentary nodes and you'll hear em

[@OnurOzalp-personal]

Record Ep1 and Ep2 aswell Philip!

[@ClayMann]

I think what is most frustrating for me isn't that we didn't get HL3. It was that Valve clearly showed the industry how all these little details always in game, never shown in cut scenes where you have to just sit twiddling your thumbs while the game plays itself through the cut scene. Valve showed all the story you needed as you played it. When you actually think about it, that's amazing. And when you see all the little set pieces and how they worked backwards to get you to them. Why the flip didn't the games industry follow any of that?

[@thebigsam]

Simply comes down to how Valve learned to make games. If you watched the documentary on the first game, you know how rocky everything was and they had to rebuild the entire game because of mistakes done early on. Second game had it own set of issues, but they at least could go back to basics and create enviroments around most fun gameplay set pieces. Something they learned from when they were cutting levels from original Half-life

[@pariah87]

I think the commentary turning off is a bug.. someone else mentioned this in a video too.. there's a console command to turn it back on... commentary 1 or something like that

[@keyserxx]

yup, more HL would be nice.

[@MentalParadox]

There's a node in Ravenholm (the final roof defense) where they heavily imply there isn't going to be a conclusion to Gordon's story. Which would make HLX a spin-off, like HL: Alyx, featuring a side character

[@Peb02497]

Or maybe HLX/HL3 we can play as Gordon, but at least his story arc won't be closed

[@eurybaric]

Ok I'm back after watching the 2 hour hald life 20th anniversary 😅

[@saltierdongs7760]

I thought I was going crazy when I thought some of the nodes were AI lol

[@GPAKOS_GR]

7:25 song name?

[@kavemanjones3650]

hl2 soundtrack - triage at dawn

[@GPAKOS_GR]

@@kavemanjones3650 thank you

[@primtve_dope9568]

should i replay hl2 (for my second time ever) with the commentary parts on or off?

[@Dirtblokje154]

8:38 hey its cave johnson

[@AustinH7]

It’s very disappointing the commentary nodes are deep fried by AI…

[@all41tja]

At this point I don't believe in any new HL games/episodes until I can play it for myself. No hype, no brain energy wasted on that. If anything comes, I might hear about it, but I won't look for it.