Children of Doom 1998: Half-Life

[@JacobGeller]

Truly appreciate what labors of love these videos are. Grateful for the chance to hear about all these games that have vanished from the conversation

[@purebaldness]

"I have my orders, sir. Please be nice to me" - Jacob Geller, 2020

[@PurpleColonel]

If Half-Life has vanished from the conversation, I'm gonna have some real issues...

[@lobachevscki]

@@PurpleColonel honestly, despite the existence of things like Black Mesa, the conversation about the franchise is more focused in Half-Life 2 than the first one by a long shot.

[@giantenemycrab5596]

Jacob Geller comments are the seal of approval for game essay videos that Nobel prizes are for scientific studies or OSHA certificates are for dodgy skyscrapers

[@ctsnicky]

I loved that you used the term "WinAmp visualizer" like everyone would know what that means, and I appreciate it.

[@RedSntDK]

😂 yeah, that's a throwback in 2023. It's probably been over 15 years since I used WinAmp.

[@enriquegarciacota3914]

It whips the 🦙’s 🍑

[@MuteCircle]

I feel so old realising that that's not just an immediately understood reference

[@AC-hj9tv]

Hell yea

[@AC-hj9tv]

​@@enriquegarciacota3914bleating sound

[@tjmichael]

I'm so sorry to do this to you, but you need to go way past 20 to find people who were around when Unreal Tournament was the bleeding edge of graphics, 20 year olds today turned 6 years old in 2007, they were being awed by Crysis. Oh god I just made myself feel so old.

[@GhostOfLorelei]

lol, I thought the exact same thing. I'm 40 and the original Unreal and Half Life happened when I was just seriously getting into PC gaming. I think folks between 5 and 7 years younger than me prolly could have been cognizant of it. I doubt _most_ folk under 35 would really understand that point (along with some exception folks between 30 and 35...anyone under 30 I kinda doubt would remember enough _before_ 98 to really see how great HL was at the time.)

[@Jabrwock]

Riding the Redeemer Rocket across the sniper map, using the island itself to hide the rocket as you curl around the base of the tower to obliterate an entire team prepping for an assault, and hearing "MULTIKILL" blare out... Good times at university.

[@masterplusmargarita]

I refuse to believe there are people who are of age today who weren't born when the Gameboy Advance SP came out in 2003. You can't make me believe this. It's a fake fact.

[@darkerSolstice]

@@masterplusmargarita I had a coworker tell me they hadn't been born when 9-11 happen. And I have an online RP buddy who's Shrek years old.

[@yeetleslaw8529]

@@GhostOfLorelei I'm 32 and played HL1 when the orange box came out. And I can confirm I didn't "see" what was amazing about HL1. But I did have an amazing time playing, at the time, 10-year-old game. So I knew the game was good, but I didn't know the context of FPS games from back in the day. I grew up with PlayStation platformers and other family friend titles.

[@praetorfenix69]

Minor historical nitpick: the "classic" in Team Fortress Classic was there long before TF2 came out, it was not added to disambiguate it from TF2, it was added to disambiguate it from the original Quake mod

[@cardo128]

I came here to write this. Thank you.

[@HistoryTeacherSteve]

Team Fortress Classic is one of my favorite shooters of all time. Holds a very special place in my heart

[@MewBlood]

@@HistoryTeacherSteve I agree with you wholeheartedly. TFC was my childhood. The official maps have been etched into my mind like the childhood neighbourhood I grew up in: 2fort, in all its blocky goodness with battlements rife with snipers and "conc jumping" medics; Rock2, with the nerve gas and mad scramble for the protection suits; Avanti, with the church your demoman could blow a separate entry hole in; Hunted, with the hapless blue civilian armed with an umbrella. Ravelin, Crossover 2, Epicenter. The list goes on!

[@Triniwn]

Its kinda both? TF2 started dev BEFORE goldsrc TFC. TFC existed as a quick stop gap port to buy time after TF2 got its first (of many) delays.

[@cronoros]

​​@@MewBlood shout out for underappreciated cz2

[@Jekyllstein_Gray]

"No one wants a game where you stare at a map for half your playtime." Obviously. Real gamers like games where you stare at a map for ALL your playtime. Praise be to Paradox Interactive, for they own my soul.

[@SimonBuchanNz]

I always love when they have to figure out how to put crusader kings into a trailer lineup. Obviously they *should* show some ridiculous event like your child ruler pushing your regent off a tower, or you marrying a horse, or your sister wingmanning you with the hot bartender, or getting high and seeing angels, or... But instead it's "look at this army animation loop". I wonder if they added the court stuff mainly so they had something flashier to show in trailers.

[@josephhamilton5668]

Glomming onto top comment to try to reach Errant Signal: "Hey bro you might want to double check that counterstrike footage there is some colorful language at the beginning of it"

[@accountwontlastlong1]

Strategy games are for nerds. That's right, all games used to be for nerds, now it's just specific genres.

[@timothymclean]

There are games where staring at a map for >95% of your playtime is fun, and games where staring as one for

[@Alianger]

MGS1 too

[@chibikonatsu]

I can't look away from Trespasser. My mind is preoccupied coming up with ways to describe it. It's like every living thing on this island is recovering from dental anesthesia.

[@gdi69]

The Jurassic Park game's movement and aiming kind of reminds me of some modern VR games I've seen. It looks like the game had a lot of interesting ideas. It's one of those things that makes you wonder where we'd be today if instead of the canned animated movements we see everywhere today, we spent the past 25 years refining physics-based movements. There's something so much more intriguing to me about things, like that T-Rex's head popping through the doorway, occurring organically based on a set of rules, rather than a scripted event meticulously planned. The latter obviously is much more spectacular, but the former, to me, would be much more of a marvel.

[@chibikonatsu]

I was going to say that it made me think of an immersive sim as imagined by Bennet Foddy.

[@T3sl4]

Or if they had compromised their simulation vision some. I mean, it's not clear from this whether they actually achieved what they set out to do -- a literal puppet commanded by a highly complex state machine, full kinematics and all -- or if they faked it to some extent, whether by solving some of those steps in reverse (like inverse kinematics), or using pre-baked animations or whatever. I have seen very convincing results where things like limb movements are solved from relative motion of body to surroundings (floors/walls). Namely in Rain World; the dev log of which is still available online, so we know this insight straight from their minds at the time! Granted, as a 2D platformer, those kinematics are a heck of a lot easier to solve -- but presumably not much more of a challenge for a small team (less than a dozen?) in an experienced 3D studio. (RW was made by all of two people!)

[@Robert399]

The raptor animations actually look pretty good for 1998. The T-Rexes and sauropods... not so much.

[@skeletspook]

Yeah Trespasser is really one of those games where you feel the timeline splitting. First person games in the 90s are so fascinating. Yes there were about a 100 Doom clones but then there were also a few games that tried to do something completely different and might have completely changed the world of gaming had they been more successful

[@timothymclean]

Big-budget games are (in part) marketed on their flashy graphics, more than on artistry. Fancy graphics are a problem you can consistently solve with more money, while art design isn't. Canned animation is easy to throw more money at to get a more marketable result in much the same way. Even if Trespasser was the best-selling game of 1998 _and_ 1999, we would've probably wound up with the same kind of animation technology in AAA games. Indie games might be different? Not the tiny ones made by three guys, unless that timeline's Unity had such technology built-in. But the C-tier stuff, maybe.

[@messymessr]

47:30 The "puppeteering" AI in Jurassic Park Trespasser reminds me of the way other animals work in Rainworld, which has gotten a lot of praise for a very similar idea. It might have worked out better by featuring more fantastical creatures and a 2D environment.

[@atlev]

Boneworks does this same thing. Really feels like a more refined Tresspasser in general

[@josephhamilton5668]

Glomming onto top comment to try to reach Errant Signal: "Hey bro you might want to double check that counterstrike footage there is some colorful language at the beginning of it"

[@T3sl4]

Stoked seeing Rain World mentioned in top comments. I was also quite impressed with their solution to this problem!

[@stevethepocket]

_Tresspasser_ feels like a VR game. Specifically VR Chat. It's like not only are the player's hands being awkwardly IK'd from the inputs of a pair of mo-cap gloves, all of the dinosaurs are also controlled by groups of players working in tandem controlling the different parts like the world's jankiest pantomime horse.

[@PutkisenSetä]

Three-legged raptor sounds pretty fun in a moddy kind of way.

[@fonesrphunny7242]

Trespasser might have been the first 3d game to use procedural animations IIRC. Looks like drunk dinosaurs when it works. Looks like dinosaurs riding an invisible bike when it breaks.

[@FearlessSon]

Regarding SiN, back in the winter of 2005, I went to a lecture at the local Seattle-area game developer meetup given by two people from Valve about the value of cultivating a modding community for your game. One of the two was one of the co-creators of the original Counter-Strike. He said that when he and his friend were originally developing that mod, they had a big decision to make: should they build it in Half-Life, or build it in SiN? He laughed it off as seeming obvious in retrospect, but stressed that at the time it was a decision they were really wrestling with.

[@adamsfusion]

"Valve's Michael Abrash" Abrash is like that time traveler guy that shows up in all the photos of important historical events. I'm sure he also had a great quote when he was "Id's Michael Abrash working on Quake".

[@BlazeHedgehog]

Shogo's hyper energetic j-pop intro contrasted with AMERICAN SHOOTER BLOODY GIBLETS EVERYWHERE never fails to make me feel like I'm losing my mind.

[@timothymclean]

From that summary, Shogo really feels like it was made by a bunch of 90's game/computer nerds trying to follow the explanations given by the game/computer/anime nerd who mostly worked on making the engine work.

[@TerribleResults]

It's very "I know writers who use subtext, and they're all cowards"

[@Medytacjusz]

God that segue into System Shock 2 at the end gave me goosebumps. A masterpiece of audio design that game, as everyone knows.

[@liampoulton-king7479]

I thought this series had a rule against featuring immersive sims?

[@timothymclean]

@@liampoulton-king7479 Not a rule, per se, just a "I should cover a different game in case I do an immersive sim retrospective" attitude. Which means that one of three things is true: 1. Errant Signal considers SS2 so important to FPS development that he couldn't justify skipping it in favor of some other 1999 game. _(Which seems defensible; SS2 was a foundational inspiration for a lot of oughts-era shooters, and competition is weak. Medal of Honor? TF Classic? Maybe Unreal Tournament?)_ 2. He has another 1999 immersive sim in mind. 3. He has given up on releasing _Children of Doom_ episodes more than once or twice a year, and doesn't expect to still be making KZbin videos in his 50's.

[@liampoulton-king7479]

@@timothymclean the marathon video was pretty good, but it’s a bit of a shame he didn’t bend the rules for System Shock 1 in the 1994 video. Guess it’ll be discussed at length in the next video by association, so that’s alright then. Presumably an Immersive Sim series would be much shorter, right? There just aren’t as many, I’m not even sure you could make a video for every year

[@timothymclean]

@@liampoulton-king7479 That depends on your definition of "immersive sim," which is IMHO a pretty poorly-defined genre. And also on whether Errant Signal is willing to say "There weren't any important immersive sims in 2005, so here's Dark Messiah".

[@TheRealSkeletor]

That audio is from the original System Shock, not System Shock 2.

[@dontcare432523452]

That ovaries joke in Sin would've worked if they just left it at the 1-2 punch of relaying the order, but they decided to beat it into the ground.

[@timothymclean]

There are a lot of jokes that might be funny (or at least inoffensive) if they hit once and then moved on, but they didn't-whether because the writer thought they were funny enough to dwell on, or the writer didn't think you'd catch the punchline if you moved too fast, or because the writer was thinking about the joke as operating on completely different principles than it could support.

[@countchocula7985]

The longer it went on the more it just sounded like the Room

[@Bluecho4]

Reminds me a lot of modern comedy movies. Where they give the joke, then pause, then explain the joke, then pause again, then explain the joke, repeat until the entire scene runs out of steam and just lingers for a few more seconds. Whether the joke is bad or good, move on. Or else iterate on the joke. Even if it's not funny, the audience isn't left to stew with how unfunny it is. Just keep going to the next joke.

[@nic_olenomicon]

Epic's abandonment of unreal makes me so sad. The fact we live in a world where you can't just buy ut2k4, install a bunch of weird mods and blast your friends is deeply depressing

[@RedSntDK]

Oh, you think that's bad? UT2K3 has been completely wiped off the planet earth, it's like it never existed 😢 I still miss boost-dodge. Also, as much as I like Rocket League and I really wasn't a fan of what Psyonix (they were hired by Epic to add content) did by adding vehicles in UT2K4. It just felt weird.

[@LuisMartinez-ye7nc]

Hour long Errant Signal? Excited!

[@josephhamilton5668]

Glomming onto top comment to try to reach Errant Signal: "Hey bro you might want to double check that counterstrike footage there is some colorful language at the beginning of it"

[@Ramonatho]

We need Tribes now more than ever. Skiing in Tribes Ascend is still a mechanic that is unmatched in Movement shooters. Getting flickshots with your spinfusor is unmatched. The moments that have come from that game are astounding.

[@christopherwilliams6848]

I second this wholeheartedly. I wish I'd gotten into Ascend earlier. As it was, I was only able to spend a few months with the game before the servers shut down. I agree that Titanfall 2 came close to the gamefeel of Tribes, with the speed and the grappling hook and the EPG. It's not the same, though, because even if other games do large teams, fast kovement with an emphasis on momentum, and battles where there's more to do than shoot eachother, none of them combine it in the same way Tribes did. Plus, Titanfall 2 requires a mod to play these days, so we barely have that either.

[@SeattleSaurus]

I'd also add that the ability to truly customize your loadout (and switch between them as the strategic demands of the round changed) is something that no other game that I've played has even come close to. Chris touched on some of them, but the absolute variety of playstyles that were possible and valid is something I cherished about Tribes

[@Hydralysk445]

@@christopherwilliams6848 God I loved Tribes Ascend. Spent so many hours zipping around maps with Initial D's Eurobeat soundtrack playing in the background.

[@RedSntDK]

FPS-Z genre really need more love. I haven't played a shooter for years now because none really captures the spirit of games like Tribes. And no joke, but I think I spent more than 5k hours in T:A. I actually nolifed it while it was active. I only have 1k hours in the Steam version because I mostly played the version from before it got on Steam, would've been nice with a more precise number.

[@TheYeIIowDucK]

Yeah. I never played the original but I had a lot of fun with Tribes Ascend. The movement in that game is something you CAN'T get anywhere else.

[@AlexaLily]

This has gotta be the strongest pitch for Trespasser I've ever seen. I mostly see/hear "oh it's so bad and silly!!" but it seems to have genuinely cool and compelling ideas behind it.

[@SimonBuchanNz]

Everything about Trespasser has sounded to me like "wait, why are you trying to do *that* already!? You're at least a decade off that being possible to pull off!" My favorite story is that melee weapons in that game work by being physics objects that deal damage when they collide - sounds reasonable right? But they don't go away when you holster them, they still get physics applied, so if you move wrong you could kill yourself when it swings into you. Instead of the fix being that they stop applying physics, or getting a better holster, or fixing the physics equation so three inch swings don't kill people, they just completely nerfed melee weapons to do nearly no damage. Like campster, I really would like to see a solid attempt at these ideas again, with 25 more years of technology behind it.

[@bekeleven]

The Let's Play by ResearchIndicates is the best Trespasser breakdown I've ever seen.

[@quentindao6496]

Almost all the things Campster praises about jurassik park trespasser are in Rain World, except that Rain World is 2D and it actually works. If you want to see that vision realized, try it out!

[@SimonBuchanNz]

@@quentindao6496 so much of what makes it bonkers is the 3Dness though?

[@quentindao6496]

@@SimonBuchanNz That's true, and it's even more bonkers that it was made in 1998. But almost everything he said about Jurassik park Trespasser made me think: "Wait, that's in Rain World". Tha't's why I made the comparison, Rain World seemed like the closest game to Trespasser in its ideas. I haven't played trespasser though, so I might be wrong.

[@sionfel]

In 1999 I remember standing in the K-Mart games aisle with my best friend trying to decide which of two games to get, Tribes or Half-Life. I was dead set on Tribes because the designs of the heavy armor, but he talked me into Half-Life because it was the GOTY edition and it came with TFC so was basically two games. It was my first PC game I ever bought! A year or so later I remember going back and getting that copy of Tribes which. . . did not work on my PC.

[@bitvanbite]

oh no, I forgot about the horror of anticipating a PC game, only to find out it doesn't work on your computer. Not my favorite part of 90's PC gaming.

[@sionfel]

@@bitvanbite I brought my copy of Half-Life over to a friend's house to show them about this game I never stopped talking about and after installing and getting it working on their dad's computer we got like 10-12 fps tops. That's when I learned PCs were not like consoles and specs really, really mattered.

[@pavarottiaardvark3431]

I honestly LOVE the mechanic of "throwing your empty gun at a raptor"

[@timothymclean]

It's a great symbol of desperation. More survival horror games should make that a core mechanic.

[@HQ_Default]

25:47 I get where you're coming from and I think that's a valid concern, but I feel like within the context of the development goals of Unreal (and other pieces of media like it) it's really easy to fall into that trope unintentionally. Like, think of it this way: You want the player to explore an alien planet and discover a world of strange new wildlife and architecture amongst the indigenous population. But it's also a shooter, so you need _some_ kind of an enemy. The obvious solution might be to just make the player one of the indigenous aliens, but that creates a disconnect between the player's discovery and the character. If you make it a human, not only can you ground the player in normality first with more human sci-fi environments, but you can also ensure the player and the character discover all of these alien places at the same time. I suppose you can get rid of the civilian aliens entirely and just make the entire planet hostile, but tends to make the world feel much less lived in. The only way I think you could make something _like_ Unreal without accidentally having a white savior trope is to have the civilians and the enemies have no relation or beef with each other. The bad guys are just on a manhunt for _you_ and _only you._ And I suppose you do play as a prisoner in Unreal, so that wouldn't have been too outside the realm of possibility. But outside of that, if you have the dynamic of a human player character, a friendly alien faction, and a hostile bad guy faction, I'm genuinely not sure how you'd get around a white savior trope. And besides, I think Unreal manages to soften the trope for a few reasons, 1: The Nali actually have a _very good_ reason why they can't fight back against the Skaarj, that being they their religion completely forbids them from violence, even in the form of self defense. So it's not just that they're pussies, they have a very firm code of ethics that makes their situation much more difficult. 2: Your mission is never _actually_ to "liberate the Nali". Remember that the water temple labelled you as being of impure heart, and I've even heard that the actual prophesized "hero" can be found dead in a cave somewhere. The _only_ thing your character is trying to do is get off of Na Pali, it just so happens that the only working ships able to escape the planet's atmosphere are in the Skaarj mothership, defended by the Queen. So you weren't even trying to save anyone, it just sorta worked out that way. Sorry if I was rambling on there, I hadn't actually heard someone call out Unreal for doing the white savior trope so I had to take a minute to think on it. Ya got muh brain gears moving.

[@TurbopropPuppy]

"but that creates a disconnect between the player's discovery and the character" i'm not sure that this has to be the case? you can have it be as simple as the main character leaving their childhood community for the first time. Outer Wilds doesn't have any humans and it's not a problem at all it's a thermian argument, if you can't think of how an indigenous character might have a sense of discovery going out into a world in a relateable way that's a question of how the world is set up and how the premise is written, not a fault in the conceit

[@timothymclean]

It's really not. Point one, the White Savior trope is considerably narrower than "white dude saves people who aren't white". There's nuance to the trope that's easy to miss if you just hear the occasional mention of white saviors in drive-by critiques and KZbin comments and stuff. Point B, you're making a lot of assumptions about what can't or must be done in an otherworldly FPS. You could make the PC non-human; lots of games have done that, whether you play a robot, a fantasy person, or an alien. (There's a whole franchise which is 2/3rds built around playing one of two alien races, the less predator-y of which makes the Nali look positively human.) You could make the friendly aliens less helpless, make the PC not a Chosen One savior but a mere soldier who does a lot of cool stuff (a la early CoD). You could set the game in the ruins of human civilization. If overgrown skyscrapers are too mundane, throw in an esoteric apocalypse or weird technology or something. And, of course, you could...not make the aliens indigenous-coded. Which, again, is considerably narrower than "foreigner who lives in the place where adventure happens". Like, the Nali have "tribal" tattoos, Mayinatec architecture, and a cargo-cult attitude towards technology. Oh yeah, and they're pacifists who live in low-tech harmony with nature, which are pretty textbook sympathetic stereotypes about indigenous peoples.

[@vanirie434]

I would like to see Trespasser's AI-driven animation tried again, tbh, especially since Rain World had a system like that and the animals in that game are *shockingly* lifelike.

[@Ozziw162]

What amazes me about Trespasser on a technical level is the inverse kinematics, the animated dynamic textures as shown in the ripples of water and actual bump-mapping. The game is like a sneak peak of the future of technology and it's truly fascinating!

[@CheesecakeMilitia]

Chris, I just gotta say I support indulging every silly tangent - like that Team Fortress riff. Love every episode of this series.

[@purebaldness]

Shame that it was wrong lol

[@MtnSmithy]

43:48 "This felt like stopping by the parking lot where the Pizza Hut you had your 10th birthday at once stood." That analogy hit far, far, _far_ too close to home.

[@Guy4318]

I sometimes get a whiff of spices which smell exactly like the Pizza Hut we were within walking distance of. Got one of those scholastic reader prizes and my parents treated me to extra Neo Geo cabinet plays when we were there. Super strong hit of comforting nostalgia when that happens, and I do miss those kinds of simple sensory surprises.

[@levilukeskytrekker]

+.

[@Packbat]

39:30 On the subject of deliberate jank, the bit about needing to fumble through your keyring in Thief as guards patrol who could find you at any moment reminds me of needing to manipulate all the controls on your firearm in Receiver to reload as you frantically try to sprint away from a taser drone. And, for that matter, the time needed to open chests in Castle Wolfenstein, that you mentioned back in the Wolfenstein 3D episode.

[@lobachevscki]

Having the chapters in your videos would be a great addition, now in my second view Im guessing which part of the video corresponds to each game.

[@ErrantSignal]

Yeah, I'll do that when I'm off work. Apologies: it absolutely should have been done before I hit publish but this video has just dragged on and on and on in production and I wanted it /out/

[@lobachevscki]

@@ErrantSignal Dont worry man, hope you are fine. Love your work.

[@ErrantSignal]

Okay, we should be good with chapters now!

[@mantrox]

@@ErrantSignal thanks, very much appreciated!

[@jameswood9512]

As someone born in 1998, it’s always crazy to be made cognizant of this history I’m completely unaware of; while full well knowing describing it like that is soul crushing to those who very much lived through it like you. Regardless, thank you so much for your work!!

[@ajax700]

Thief was so much mature, advanced, while still having some rough edges like primitive physics and graphics, somewhat complicated controls. That not yet surpassed soundtrack and 3d audio. An hypnotic and mesmerizing experience, more than a game. Incredible that they developed it with a noose around their necks as they were about to go bankrupt. Best wishes.

[@mxt3k]

THANK YOU for including the "I have my orders, sir, please be nice to me!" voice line from Shogo, the greatest line from any game ever made

[@rickpgriffin]

I know you're not terribly impressed with Half-Life's story, and I guess on a strict scripting level it IS really cheesy, but the strength of it lies in the immersion. It's amazing how much more invested you can get in a silly B-movie plot when the game goes hard in engaging the player directly with it and limiting infodumps as much as possible--if it's possible to show, they show, and if it's possible to show with mechanics, they make the player interact with it, and everything else is limited to brief voice clips and environmental storytelling. And I feel like that DOES count for story more than just being a gimmick. Games like Marathon, while it strictly has "more interesting" story, is delivered to the player in big text blocks. It gives context, but lacks immediacy, and in video games, info that lacks immediacy is strictly less relevant to the player. Although maybe that's not as compelling and argument when you're more used to complex immersive sim games that straddle the line between both?

[@praetorfenix69]

Yeah, the great thing about Half-Life is how it tells its story through gameplay and environment. On paper the story isn't all that interesting but what makes it work is the way it's communicated through gameplay, rather than through exposition dumps or cutscenes. To this day I can maybe count on one hand the number of games that have done this well, and most of them were made by Valve

[@grogblue]

I think there's a lack of distinction between the story of the PC, the stories of the NPCs, and the world building. Half-Life's story was always engaging because it's the story of Gordon Freeman, where the player character is the main character and protagonist, covering what happens to and around them with limited exposition dumps. More and more games have less of a player character focused narrative, if they even have one. Often we see disjointed narratives jumping between characters like CoD and Gears have moved to over time. Open world games where the player character observes the stories of the NPCs, or those who left their stories behind in various audio logs or other caches of exposition to be found. Immersive sims are also often very light on narrative, as the point is usually to tell your own story with the tools or systems available. I think it's a more difficult task to tell a narrative in a first person interactive method, as the story needs to fit with all of the player's interactions, and it can be difficult to guarantee important story elements are in view without wrestling the camera away from the player. I feel like we see fewer of these today, though many use a blend of ways to inject stories into the world to good effect, many make me miss this more immersive style. I may just be old, but when I launch games, I want to play them and experience the narrative within them. When I want to read, listen to, or watch a story, I open a book, podcast, or throw on a movie instead.

[@SimonBuchanNz]

The comparison to Marathon is a bit strange, because you really have to work to get what the story is in those games (Or watch MandaloreGaming's in total movie length "reviews", which are in fact mainly decoding what the heck is happening). It's almost the exact opposite of Half Life's storytelling: a super experimental metatextual story that gets danced around and obscured and tucked away in secret areas, compared to a very stock aliens invade story continually fleshed out with a stream of little moments.

[@thefilthycasual6358]

This is what I came to say. The strength of Half Life isn't that the story is incredibly deep and original. The strength of Half Life is in how it tells its story. Everything is communicated to the player through a combination of scripted events and environmental storytelling. You're never stopping to watch a cutsxene or read a terminal, you're constantly playing the game and the story happens around you as you play.

[@stevethepocket]

It's the difference between having a plot and having lore. Both are subsets of "story", but they both have their advantages and disadvantages. Plot feels more engaging in an interactive medium because you get to actually be the protagonist of it. Whereas lore is a lot more free to be about whatever the writers want because they're not bound by the mechanics or the need to focus on a single character's perspective. There are still games that can get away with telling their story almost entirely through lore dumps-the BloodSouls metafranchise is a great example-and big-name RPGs manage to juggle both to a nearly-equal degree and probably owe a lot of their success to that.

[@JL3001]

Great series, and thank you SO MUCH for that section on Tribes! A game I absolutely played to death back in the day. Tribes was so ahead of the curve in teamplay mechanics, jetpacks, and vehicle combat, and massive maps. At its peak, I had experiences that still ranks highly as some of my fave online gaming moments 20+ years later. I feel so nostalgic. Shazbot!

[@quesa3470]

The Valve game loop is functionally the same loop in every Mario game. Minus the narrative justifications for the change. You get a series of levels built around water, then some built around moving platforms.

[@ataraxia7439]

We need more strong system based games but I do also wish more people tried to emulate valves approach to single player campaigns, especially if you can get the best of both worlds. I can’t even imagine what a half game where you have more interaction with the story or the story reacts to gameplay cons looks something like deus ex would look like.

[@tonyhell]

I came here to make the exact same point. The Valve formula he talks about is also the Nintendo formula, famously used in everything from Mario to Splatoon. It's a good and tested approach to game design, even if once you recognize it it can seem formulaic.

[@QuintessentialWalrus]

Valve has definitely been Nintendo-inspired for a long time, even if it's never obvious on the surface. There's a reason you activate Half-Life's long jump the same way as the long jump in Mario 64. I've noticed that a lot of dedicated Valve fans are also Nintendo fans, and vice versa. I think those two companies excel in a niche that's rarely filled by other studios: a gameplay-first design ethos with crystal clear audiovisual design and hidden depth below an approachable, polished surface.

[@fish_tfe]

NAM was surprisingly fun for a few reasons - 1) the brutal levels were great for co-op. 2) there were a bunch of Predator easter eggs in the jungle levels, which really made us paranoid that one was actually in the game. 3) in pvp the lethal weaponry, especially the tripwire traps, were an absolute blast.

[@Tomwithnonumbers]

The reflections and water effects in Unreal are so impressive, they're still got a wow out of me in this video. I thought you were using one of those modern lighting mods

[@noonehere8416]

SO VERY EXCITED TO WATCH THIS!! Your children of doom series has been endlessly fascinating for someone who has well, never played any of the games you’ve mentioned in your list, but loves to learn about video game history and trends/changes in the industry. Hearing someone who obviously has a passion go through and discuss how these works build on top of eachothers paints a greater picture of why the industry evolved in the way it did. Your work is meticulous, informative, entertaining and I recommend it to near anyone who has a remote interest in learning more about video games. Thank you so much for sharing your work with the world ❤

[@noonehere8416]

Just finished the video now and made an IRL :D face when I heard the voice of Shodan (my beloved)

[@RhysticStudies]

I really enjoyed this episode, and this series at large. I understand well how a small project can turn into a giant one, so I appreciate all the effort and research you put into these.

[@hidood5th]

Didn't expect to see both of my favorite video essayists in one place

[@colinmiller513]

EXCELLENT! This is truly a delight. I've watched through your 7 episode playlist of Children of Doom at least 5 times.

[@josephhamilton5668]

Glomming onto top comment to try to reach Errant Signal: "Hey bro you might want to double check that counterstrike footage there is some colorful language at the beginning of it"

[@Zeathian]

Unreal and Half-life were my first gaming experiences when I got my first computer in 1999. So this was an nostalgia filled episode. Thank you for all your hard work.

[@Redingold]

That arm picking up the weapon in the Jurassic Park game is genuinely still pretty cool.

[@SardonicSays]

Man, I hope you keep this series going. 2002's C&C Renegade and its fan remake deserve a lot more recognition than it received, either at the time or now

[@SimonBuchanNz]

I also like that game, and find the general disdain for it rather strange. I also found Tron 2.0 a pretty neat game too, though... perhaps I just have bad taste 😅

[@Riley-nq3tc]

The protags bumbling delivery during the "Bet you haven't seen anything like this" scene gives me strong if unintentional Venture Bros vibes lol

[@vanillabeans32087]

So funny how the unreleased version of HL looks exactly like a so-so shooter from the era and easily could have been just that. Really shows how they made the right choice to start over.

[@stevethepocket]

1998 was a big year for huge mainframe computers that made 1980s hard drive noises, apparently.

[@CadetSF]

I'm so glad you got this out, must have been such a monster year to cover. Cant wait for 1999, deus ex and system shock 2 together!

[@stevethepocket]

_Deus Ex_ was 2000.

[@HamidKarzai]

As a former Tribes:Ascend player I very much do want another Tribes game again, there isn't actually anything like it anymore. The high skill movement, the huge speeds, the satisfying and difficult explosive projectile duels, it was so exhilarating.

[@TheRealSkeletor]

From what I've seen, Apex Legends is a lot like that actually.

[@eeaahh]

if by a lot like it you mean absolutely nothing like it then yeah lol

[@Owlinabowl]

God I actually love this series of videos so much, and that segue into System Shock 2 at the end just clinched it definitively

[@brokensilence3268]

Can confirm Pizza Hut still has dine-in service.

[@LinoWalker]

Really loving this series! It was well worth the wait, and I can't wait for the next entry! Although it is somewhat bittersweet. As you know, System Shock was Shamus' favourite game - his very first book was basically a System Shock fanfic. He even supported the Kickstarter remake and lamented the initial direction of that project where they ran out of money, because they were trying to make System Shock into a completely different game. And it's absolutely heartbreaking that now the game's out and he'll never get to see it, because he's no longer with us. RIP, Shamus...

[@the_real_Kurt_Yarish]

_Marathon_ may technically have a deeper, "better" story than _Half-Life_ , but it's presented so obtusely that it struggles to get even close to the latter's sense of engagement. _Half-Life_ understands the concept of "show, don't tell" far better than _Marathon_ does, and it doesn't matter how "good" the latter's story is if it's difficult to engage with on an immediate level. You understand everything that's going on in _Half-Life_ because you're _there_ , it happening in front of you, you're in the thick of it and actively taking part in ways that affect things in an apparent manner. In _Marathon_ , it's largely happening in a text block you have to stop and read somewhere in the level, baring rare exceptions, and the events are largely esoteric and distant. One may reach greater heights and depths than the other, but one is certainly more immediately compelling.

[@AllurinGirl31]

It does make me curious as to what the new Marathon can look like.

[@GmodPlusWoW]

*Campster:* "I don't think we NEED a Tribes in 2023" *MandaloreGaming:* "I just wanna SKI!"

[@levilukeskytrekker]

Thanks for another one of these. I imagine they must be incredible labours to compose and edit, but the history is fascinating to a young 22-year-old whippersnapper like me. Also, I actually personally appreciate you're one of the video game critics that will call out sexism in games, whether historical or current. I can only buy the "for its time," argument so far-Louisa May Alcott was talking about sexism in novels written in the 1800s. As with any prejudice or problem, just because consciousness of it hadn't hit the "mainstream" didn't mean people were unconscious of it (I mean, in the case of sexism, just talk to any woman ever, haha).

[@GugureSux]

It's always funny to me to see the (assumed Americans) cry about "muh sexism!!" whenever dirty jokes or scantily dressed girls are brought up, while my own wife loves that shit to bits. She literally prefers 1990s' Lara Croft over the noisy teenager Laura of the 2013 reboot and up, and is a huge fan of Xena and Dark Angel.

[@fpedrosa2076]

@@GugureSux I don't think dirty jokes or scantly dressed girls, by itself, are the problem. It's how they're used and the context they're in. Take Sexy Lady From Sin, for example. She's not over the top or funny enough to entertain, she's not a good character in her own right to tell an interesting story. The only thing interesting about her is her tits. Literally. Also, dunno about Dark Angel, but feminists in general tend to like Xena. She's a full character and a badass. That's a lot more important than if she's scantly clad or not.

[@SimonBuchanNz]

​@@GugureSuxthose are not generally considered sexist properties though? There actually is a distinction between "sexy" sad "sexist" characters drawn almost all the time. Bayonetta is another example in games of sexy, not sexist design. Your Lara Croft example is notable, as while the original certainly got a lot of heat for being "for 13 year old boys" (more accurate for the marketing than the games themselves), I didn't really hear anyone use the term "sexist" about it much. In contrast, the reboot got a *lot* of heat for having an early scene (read as) a rape threat - despite this being "realistic, non sexualized" Lara. This Sin character is simply insane, like the sort of thing a 13 year old writes and then the teacher has to talk to the parents to see if they are having problems at home. Calling it sexist seems insufficient, it's like a parody of being sexist. Thinking the depiction is sexy, when every moment it has her blatantly using her sexuality as her way to control men seems bizarre.

[@TheKarishi]

1998 was the year of DragonCon where Everybody Won. I won an informal M:tG tournament using the cheesiest deck I'd ever made (or indeed ever would), my literary friend won a Pern Trivia tournament so hard she got to name a dragon that would appear in the actual series, my TV friend won an X-Files trivia tournament and got a couple books, and my video game friend was part of the team that used rocket-jumps and "skiing" to defeat their first opposing team at Tribes in just 30 seconds. I felt sorry for that team; They paid 8 bucks to enter the tournament and they were out of the running half a minute later because their enemies knew speedrunner-style movement tech?

[@lalalaLaFlex]

This is like seriously one of my favorite series on youtube. I don't mind the wait. It's crazy to think "I've been watching it for years..."

[@everydayhamburger]

Many years ago, you inspired me to make video essays, but I was pretty bad at it and now I make comedy cooking videos. I love that you're still putting out great shit after all these years.

[@purebaldness]

Like and subscribe guys!!

[@BobbyOxygen]

While Unreal had a very impressive software renderer, in practice you needed a 3D accelerator to play it. And they were kind of pricey back then.

[@alewis514]

3D accelerator... that term alone is an archaism today. Today we just say a graphics card. Back then a dedicated graphics card wasn't an obvious thing in a PC, even a gaming PC. Unreal was playable on my computer (Celeron 333 and 64 MB RAM, no dedicated gfx card), so was Half-Life or Quake II. The first game I flat-out could not play was Quake 3 Arena. It REQUIRED having a dedicated GPU to even launch. Few years down the line I got cockblocked by shaders. FEAR would not launch because my GeForce MX440 wasn't compatible with Shader Model.

[@GameDevYal]

Re "fumbling with your keys as a guard approaches" in Thief, I feel like it would be a lot easier to swallow the apparent lack of QoL if there ever was a reason to use something other than the right key at any given door - lockpicks could let you bypass any basic locked door, but at the expense of not triggering instantly (you're a sitting duck while playing the lockpicking minigame). Or you could place an explosive to bypass a door, at the cost of alerting any nearby guards. And on the contrary, you might want to jam a door to slow down guard reinforcements. Now suddenly the choice of what item to use matters, even though the key is usually the correct one.

[@orestes0883]

I think you're thinking about this wrong. Sure the correct thing to do is use the correct key on the correct door, but if you've ever had a key ring with more than a couple keys on it IRL, it's never as quick and easy as it is in games to grab the correct key. Thief's "lack of QoL" captures that real life triviality, that would very much *not* be a triviality if you were actually a thief trying to hide from guards. And that grounding in the trivialities and inconveniences of real life and physical objects was a hallmark of Looking Glass games. It is what made them immersive sims rather than shooters.

[@DreBourbeau]

the appraisal of Black Mesa is spot on, yet i'd add another thing about it that i really like - it's a self-contained space that feels appropriate to the corridor-shooting material. my pet peeve with half-life 2 is that it wildly expands the scope of the game's world (from offices and labs in a single facility to entire cities, Combine towers, railways, and coastlines) but doesn't actually let you go beyond what are basically a few extremely linear hallways. it's like the opposite of that Todd Howard "climb that mountain" meme - an entire game of "you see that thing in the distance? you can't go there or access it".

[@connla]

I hope hidden and dangerous is on the 'other games' section for 1999. unsung classic of that year!

[@Kyrkby]

I have to commend you for comparing Half-Life to other titles released in 1998 to give better understanding of its impact on design. Great stuff.

[@turingsghost]

Seeing an Errant Signal video in my feed, then seeing it's about The Big One, and it's a feature-length film. It feels like Christmas.

[@Yesnomu]

Oh man, Trespasser. I got that game for free and it really scared me to see the raptors moving around. I wasn't able to keep playing! Ran awfully too, but the idea seemed magical to me at the time.

[@Phished123]

I was wondering when Civvie was gonna end up getting mentioned in one of these.

[@BearOldcastle]

Civvie crossover when?

[@purebaldness]

@@BearOldcastle never

[@ZanderHorn]

One of my earliest vivid gaming memories is visiting my older cousins and playing Half Life on their family computer, so this was a wonderful journey to experience, thank you. I'm also surprised to see Rainbow Six contemporary to Half Life, as Half Life is to my experience, so is Rainbow Six to my wife.

[@its_miscu]

I'm a little fortunate to have had a literal basement-dwelling nerd cousin who kept up to date on the latest PC games in the late 90s. Watching him play the likes of Starcraft, Homeworld, and Half-Life was a window into a world of games that I wouldn't properly get into until building a PC for TF2 in 2009. Funny memory from around that time: when he got to the first encounter with the Marines enemy type, I asked him why the army guys were shooting at him. I can't imagine trying to explain the idea of a military cover-up to an 8-year-old child, so he went with "uh, they think you're one of the aliens," which now sounds like something out of HLVRAI.

[@OldGamerScott]

If anyone is going to make a modern day version of Trespasser, it's gotta be Bennett Foddy, right?

[@firstlast446]

Hearing the stuff about trespasser makes me really want to see you try out Receiver 2, it has a lot of the awkward weapon you can't trust survival horror you mentioned but it's a small modern indie title mostly by 1 person

[@lemmingrad]

Yeah, especially in comparison to his brief thoughts when he was on Spoiler Warning Show doing a video on the original Receiver.

[@miserablepile]

I feel the pain regarding JP:T's procedural animations. Rain World is does beautiful procedural animation, and I'm happy to see the effort made in UE5's IK tech.

[@adams3627]

I'm glad you finally got this one to a place where you're happy with it, although I admit I find myself enjoying your tangents and surveys of other games as much or more than the essay on the game du jour.

[@Jekyllstein_Gray]

But I thought System Shock-style games weren't going to be in this series... I'm not complaining, mind you. More of a pleasant surprise, if anything.

[@ErrantSignal]

A) When I said that these were like 15-20 minute videos. Short fun distractions! Maybe I'd do another list of ImSims some day! Now, though... there is no way I'm doing this again for imsims at this point B) I took a long hard look at 1999 and man, there really just isn't much that compares. The PS1 Medal of Honor? Kingpin: Life of Crime? Outcast is cool, and Unreal Tournament/Quake 3 are gonna be fun to compare, but really, I think the choice was inevitable.

[@Jekyllstein_Gray]

@@ErrantSignal I kind of suspected those sorts of things were the reason.

[@tibby7709]

I remeber the heyday of tribes ascend. was one of my favorite fps games and wish it had servers still up it was such a fun game to fool around in with some friends

[@MarkAndersonAudio]

This is a fantastic video. In the age of youtubers trying to pump out as much content as humanly possible, I absolutely love that you are still taking your time to make long-form, well researched, thorough videos. Great work as always!

[@wile123456]

Black Mesa is such a masterful remaster. It fixes the story aspect by adding a few scenes and characters from half life 2 to both properly bind the games together but also add story reasons why you are doing what you're doing

[@MK.5198]

it overtunes the soldier difficulty slightly imo but otherwise yes.

[@JINORU_]

kinda

[@GugureSux]

Black Mesa is a shitty REMAKE, made for the worst types of graphics whores. Absolutely ruins the game's pacing, movement, art-design, enemy AI, gunplay, and cuts out TONS of good stuff and areas. Not to mention Xen is now generic as fuck and lasts 10 times longer! Anyone who STARTS the Half-Life saga with BMS is not only instantly shooting himself to the foot, but also will never understand the magnificent leaps the devs made between HL1 and 2, tech and design-wise. BMS is essentially a parody of all things Valve post their Orange Box era.

[@wile123456]

​@@MK.5198by making them easier or harder? I felt the soldiers had the same tense flanking ability. Some of the best moments in gaming for me is having to think fast fighting them

[@MellowGaming]

Trespasser has always fascinated me. The amount of hype and for how long it was built up and it just came out and was instantly forgotten. It tried so much but was so alien to play that it got a drubbing. I reckon you're spot on that someone could do a refined take on its ideas today and make something neat. I'm looking forward to when you hit 2000 cos I feel you have to talk about Alien Resurrection on PS1.

[@Rosencreutzzz]

The half-life section alone (not to say the other parts don't do this) is a great exploratory video. This is a series I patiently wait for new additions to.

[@AllurinGirl31]

Thanks for these videos! I loved the concept and execution from the start and now seeing a 1h+ Children of Doom video drop feels amazing. I appreciate how you get into each game in a way that makes me excited even for the ones I haven't played (Unreal, Tribes).

[@InMaTeofDeath]

Ahhh yes, still my favorite FPS franchise of all time. So very rare to start out as early as they did in the lifetime of video games and only go up in quality each game.

[@sethh.1704]

So glad to see this new episode

[@egpNoodlez]

Day is blessed when a new ES video drops, heck yeah ~

[@belly-avrill]

bro has been saying the 'Elsewhere' segment will get shorter for the last three videos in this series and they've just been getting longer and more comprehensive lol i love it and i strongly relate to that obsessive inability to rein in your creative ambitions for the sake of deadlines or runtimes

[@Crispman_777]

To the point of gross social values I just find it difficult to treat examples like these (like Sin or boob-health) seriously. Even if they were entirely genuine, they've aged so poorly they've somehow become satirical of themselves as USA jingoistic films like Rambo have. Also I hope we get to see the Delta Force 3D sequels in following episodes. I remember my uncle playing those and my ~7 year old brain thinking it was amazingly cool.

[@orestes0883]

Fun fact: the original Rambo movie had him fighting corrupt cops.

[@Crispman_777]

@@orestes0883 Yeah it's typically the sequels of films that lose the meaning of the original

[@Sharkey007x]

RIP Tribes :( Jetpacks and momentum are definitely welcome back in games

[@diegowushu]

Man, this was just when I'd had my PC for a little more over a year, almost finishing high school. Played 90% of these (sadly pirated, as most PC games were not imported to my country). It's insane the amount of classics the short 1997-2001 period gave birth to. One of those times in history when things click just right.

[@timothymclean]

There's no shame in piracy when there aren't any legal options available.

[@axelprino]

90's shooters is one of those subjects I love hearing someone talk about it in depth, even tho as a kid in the 90's I didn't care at all about the genre and to this day I've played few FPS titles since they're just not my thing. Is one of those weird fascinations were it's only really fun if I'm not the one in charge of actually controlling the stuff going on on the screen, I had a friend I haven't seen in years who's really good at shooters and I liked hanging out with him and watching him play but every time I was offered to take over for a while I kinda dreaded it. Meanwhile, you give me a first person puzzler like Portal, a first person platformer like Mirror's Edge, or an exploration game like NaissanceE and I'll sink hours into it without hesitation.

[@GabrielGarcia-qr5wm]

I discovered your Channel in Like 2010, Just at the Same time I First played half Life. This Video is going zove aweome

[@TwiiKuuTF2]

the end actually sent shivers down my spine

[@RedSntDK]

I was a teen with a computer at juuust the right time in history. Late 90s gaming slapped super hard. I'm still under the impression to this day, that part of the brilliance was: A) Focus on gameplay B) Poor monitor resolution + low poly models somehow made my imagination "fill in the blanks" making the games more immersive Also, the hilarity of some shooters like Delta Force, being a voxel based engine and all, you could just lie totally still, and as soon as you saw a pixel move, you knew that was the enemy. That's what I remember the most playing LAN with my little brother, just waiting for pixels to move 😂 The tech wasn't all there for simulators, but boy did they try.

[@aranokchildofarkan]

Worth the wait as always. I honestly think your videos are the most informative when it comes to game design on all of youtube. Can't wait for what comes next.

[@beat1823]

Always so glad to see you still posting great videos. I've been watching you since I started my career in games and its videos like yours that really make me see my passion for games in a different light.

[@JoeKllr]

Thanks for persisting with this sprawling series, still a very insightful journey through time.

[@fuzzywuzzy843]

Really glad you stuck to this project!! Wonderful video

[@TheGlooga]

Hootin and hollerin at the ending tease

[@jasonb7330]

I'm loving this video because almost every single thing he is referencing are magazines, articles, games, and platforms that I myself consumed when they came out contemporaneously. I remember that magazine cover, hell I might still have it in some box somewhere. Good video for sure, a great analysis of what and how things went down.

[@jasonb7330]

Also this is a great video explaining why, in my view, Halo was and has always been not great. Everything in these videos is better than what Halo did and did it many years earlier. Mad about halo.

[@sarahcleary7332]

love this series, really glad you’re still doing it.

[@spinningninja2]

This is my favorite ongoing series on KZbin!

[@Aktomik]

As a devoted believer in non-hierarchical structures I have to chime in that its not the same as "no leaders allowed." To achieve complex goals you generally need someone to have a more wholistic view and to keep everyone on the same page. The way you do this without instituting a hierarchy is making that person or group of people be chosen by the team they are leading/representing and also by giving the team the ability to demote that leader back to an ordinary team member and elect a new leader at any time. To use your animal farm metaphor, since the other animals can choose to force the pigs back on to two legs at any time and there's no dogs to kill dissenters, no one is "more equal than others."

[@ShjadeNexayre]

I've never been more pleased to own an original Unreal CD. I remember being blown away by it at the time, and still go back for nostalgia once in a while mainly just to walk around the opening crash area. It feels so, so barren now, walking around such an empty open space compared to modern games that would no doubt have it littered with collectibles and materials and waypoints and so forth, but all the same, it's an interesting walk back once in a while, maybe very few years.

[@thrillhousecycling7260]

FINALLY! I can't wait to watch this. Every time you upload, I realize there is still beauty in the world. Never stop!

[@mrbigglezworth42]

The idea of THE CABAL I wouldn't call problematic, an old boys club, or whatever new PC term that's used to denigrate systems that clearly put out results fairly consistently. At the very core of the concept is getting various groups together and combining their efforts in the most efficient way possible with the least amount of waste possible. It's essentially just a leadership style like any other, and it's use is in many ways responsible for the Half-Life we have, and not the game that could've been without it.

[@ninjadodovideos]

It's not even really a leadership structure. It's an informal group consisting only of the people actually doing the work across multiple disciplines. It's more like some kind of task-focused agile/scrum approach than anything resembling a top-down "brain trust". It's literally the _opposite_ of _"thought leaders who go to every department and tell them what they'll be fixing",_ and the video completely misunderstands/misrepresents this. It's a bunch of low-level peers in the trenches getting together to coordinate on how to solve a particular problem or improve a particular thing, and then they build what they collectively decided on. For all the research that obviously went into this video, it completely misses the mark on this point.

[@orestes0883]

@@ninjadodovideos Yeah, that has not been the experience described by anyone who worked at Valve, but sure what's the harm in a little straw man on the internet.

[@cmcrawshaw]

I love your children of doom videos, im looking forward to 1999!