HL2 Dev Commentary Part 1 - Point Insertion

[@sarminder4357]

It even sounds like 2004 VOIP audio. They did a great job staying authentic. Or they were just lazy and recorded it on phones in their living rooms. Both are fantastic.

[@georgyzhukov4269]

Or its ai voiceover

[@Vhryce]

@@georgyzhukov4269 its not an ai voiceover, theres justa ton of processing

[@Randarrradara]

@@georgyzhukov4269how can anyone with half a brain think it’s ai 😂

[@georgyzhukov4269]

@@Randarrradara Bro i dont have half, chill

[@julios999]

we were lazy back then

[@theengineer-dellconagher]

quite a lot of people think the voices are ai generated. i absolutely do not think this is the case. they just sound like crappy video call recordings edites with something like that dumb adobe voice enhancer, with laura and marc's at the start (and later danika's) being the smoking gun for me

[@JpAmbulante]

Maybe the dev commentary is an technology test itself, and they are testing ai generated voices.

[@wozniakowski1217]

yeah, could be that everyone recorded their own lines independently with whatever they had at hand and that usually was a crappy build-in laptop microphone or a smartphone recording in a noisy space. Shame they didn't organize it better to get studio quality sound, but it's better than nothing

[@theminecraft4202]

i'm surprised anyone thinks that, it just sounds like they were recorded at home or at their desk with whatever crappy mic they have and not in a sound booth

[@callmeb4929]

its sounds like how it did on the older voice commentaries for tf2 and the like

[@fiddlebender88]

@@wozniakowski1217 I don't understand how anyone could be bothered by it. They are audio commentary added post-release, not a new batch of NPC audio, so I think it's only better that they don't sound like they're part of the game world.

[@JmonVids]

I love the point in the box stacking tutorial that it can teach players the wrong lesson. I remember trying to stack my way out/around so many situations when I first played the game. I also remember one friend of mine got to the canals section and missed the boat. He saw two boxes and started leapfrogging them through the canals and didn't know he had missed the boat until I told him the next day at school.

[@DigitalBroomstick]

And by the end of the week, your friend was in special ed.

[@DrCranberry]

@@DigitalBroomstick his friend should be a valve playtester lmao

[@CarolinaAyancán]

Lol I did the same

[@GoldSrc_]

When I played it on the OG Xbox, right when you reach the lighthouse and have to leave the car behind, I glitched it and managed to take the car out of the garage. Then, after the gunship battle, I started to stack boxes to get on the little hill behind the garage, after I could get up there consistently, I used the gravity gun to get the car up there. I managed to get the car up to the point where you get the bugbait but I couldn't get it past the door into the resistance camp.

[@TheDrunkMunk]

"...contact me, at, Gabe N..." Is seared into my memory. I dont know if this is common because ive never seen any memes of it, but ive been referencing it with my friend since Portal

[@justpassingby298]

Gaben is a pretty big meme, yeah.

[@themightiestofbooshes9443]

He really wanted to enunciate the "Gabe-N" rather than allow it to flow like he did in the old commentary bubble: Gaben. It feels like he wanted to say "alright, that's enough" and kill the meme without addressing it. Gabe isn't the same person he was 20 years ago... And Valve isn't the same company.

[@cheeseboi588]

I really think he just wants people to clearly know where he can be reached

[@flembrane5265]

I want to believe that Gabe has a sense of humor and emphasized them separately because he KNOWS people meme that line.

[@1ukeman]

It's better than the "g-a-b-e-n" from Portal 2 dev commentary.

[@BearFOXThirty]

A few minutes in I realised why you're doing this, those commentary bubbles are everywhere, trying to listen to them all you'd have no pace playing through the game! Thanks Philip for doing what I can't bring myself to. A great listen.

[@GBlockbreaker]

eh, i did a full playthrough with dev comments and it's actually kinda funny, while the commentary runs, you are immune to non-environmental damage, i ended up treating them like stars in Mario and it was certainly a new way to experience this game

[@kamajje]

You are not meant to experience the game as intended in commentary mode 😅As the above reply reveals, you are literally immune to non-environmental damage while a node is running (read: all the time). For every Valve game that's included commentary I played through the game then started the commentary. But yes it's great to have a video that I can just watch without having to boot up the game!

[@chingming-jf8fq]

Yeah, at around the start of Ravenholm, I made the decision to hit the sv_cheats and bind noclip, ai_disable, and impulse 101 to their own buttons, and with the AI off, it definitely feels more like a museum tour, especially with the ability to toggle it with a button for specific scenes/gameplay interactions

[@helohel5915]

The commentary is ingame for context. You get to see the very thing they describe often

[@kisaragi-hiu]

14:40 Thank you for the replay there! By the time I was listening to this node in game and got to that point where he mentions the bird I've already triggered it, so cutting in a replay there is super nice

[@nutskok5394]

This is why Philip is the goat

[@theminecraft4202]

just finished replaying the whole game to listen to these lol

[@ruinfox4108]

and?

[@Loomeh]

@@ruinfox4108 and it seems like they had a good time

[@LickerOfAnuses]

@@Loomeh it seems like they're listening again to rub one out

[@rimenahi]

Half life sucks

[@Blear_Mind]

@@rimenahi your life sucks

[@DutyStalker357]

8:18 I love that the dude clarified that blocking people in with fences as a way to force them to learn something is not a common strategy in real life

[@nekrovulpes]

Gaben didn't reassure us he reads all our e-mails :c

[@WayStedYou]

He probably gets too many to read all of them now

[@loganreed23]

​@@WayStedYounah he still answers most of them, you can write him right now

[@steinkoloss7320]

@@loganreed23 Can we please stop telling everyone about this? Like ffs, the man is brilliant and busy. Dont spam him with stupid shit, because im pretty sure most emails are stupid shit.

[@loganreed23]

@@steinkoloss7320 dude he's a billionaire living on a yacht with obsession over knifes and racing cars, he can pretty much choose himself what he wants to do with his time

[@DouglasQuaid999]

He'll reply if you're very quick and concise. I just told him "I really liked the ending of HL Alyx, thanks" and he replied back with "thanks".

[@Infarlock]

You're finally back from the 3rd vacation within 2 days, CS2, now HL2

[@pizzaman11]

0:55 I like how much emphasis he puts on the 2 syllables of his email. Trying to stop a new sound bite from forming.

[@TheTechDweller]

Like that would stop someone cutting out a few ms like they did originally haha

[@pira8ted641]

imagine being someone who playtests the game and having to be interrupted by the gamedev who is trying to have as little interaction with the playtesters because you play so damn weirdly. honestly, i would be that guy

[@Jetiix]

"nailing alyx" is not the title i would have given that specific bubble lol

[@Spudstered]

Pfff

[@Content_Deleted]

i would

[@sonyviva308]

would

[@henrycgs]

it isn't. the title is "alyx", but phillip did a funny

[@3dimitrije30]

Imagine being the dumbass who thought dropping items put them into an inventory lmao

[@manuelmeyer2681]

It was you, right?

[@rokxxu]

You should play some Immersive Sim, Deus Ex and Thief 2 came a little before HL2, that should give you some context.

[@Someonew-hs8zg]

@@rokxxu thief 2 is the fucking goat of stealth games

[@CornThatLefty]

16:09

[@DrCranberry]

Or being the asshole who kept quick loading the moment they got hit by the metrocop, DESPITE it being taught earlier in the game that Metrocops CANT instantly kill you with their stunsticks. Repeated it 10 times before being BEGGED to stop by the devs lmao

[@mw42_]

thanks for subtitles ❤

[@niamh8579]

will this run on my 486?

[@KingLich451]

you will need to ask your local hive's adeptus mechanicus center for that one, citizen.

[@MolkoKillStyle]

Nice ref

[@dfshjb44]

I was hoping you'd do this! I started replaying hl2 to listen to these but I don't have the patience to stop so frequently; I just want to play the game. This way I can treat the dev commentary like a podcast

[@user-k5y8l]

You also get god mode when you're listening to one of these so it sorta like a Zen mode.

[@unfa00]

Thank you for making this, I want to listen through all of it, but I don't have the time to play through the game again. I love these insights into development of Valve games, they carry valuable lessons for aspiring game designers/developers.

[@wumborat3669]

thank you philip. i finished replaying half life 2 like a month ago to hoover up the rest of the achievements; then they dropped this anniversary update, and i dont want to replay it that soon just to listen to the dev commentary. you're a life saver buddy

[@andrewb4999]

4:35 you accidentally making the chinese food box float away 😂

[@ferreven2558]

Something familiar is used in speedrunning hl2, im not sure if philip did this intentionally or not, but if he jumped into the box at perfect angle it would start moving at speed of the earth to pluto in a second

[@pzkpfwvpanther3016]

Thank You for making this Phil

[@JoNarDLoLz]

Just played HL2 for the very first time, and I'm amazed how much goes into environmental storytelling It's definitely a fresh air to see (2 decades late lol) in the current landscape of video games, I hope we'd be seeing more of it in HL3

[@WilhelmScreamer]

Alyx was very good at keeping that aspect, so its safe to assume that Valve is very aware of how valuable it is

[@JAM0LO]

Thanks for uploading this Phil. I absolutely loved these videos for HLA, and I look forward to see the rest of these

[@iratepirate3896]

After twenty years in development, hopefully it was worth the weight.

[@peradean]

Thank you for this. I was going to try to extract the ogg audio files, so this also works so i can listen while I drive

[@suop1234]

i was waiting for someone to do this, never thought it'd be you haha

[@henrik1743]

GabenS intro sounds like a satellite phone call from his yacht in the middle of sea 😂

[@soggu6282]

3:25 laura i don't quite believe the vortigaunt is doing this willingly actually

[@mabciapayne16]

Did she say the opposite?

[@HunterDigi]

@@mabciapayne16 "someone willing to tidy up" is enough for soggu's sentence to make sense, I don't quite understand what you mean by opposite.

[@mabciapayne16]

@@HunterDigi I'm asking what assumptions he made to write the comment in the first place. Laura said "casually", not "willingly". Also these two words are the opposite in some sense. Oh, now I get it. She said literally what you cited. Although I don't think she meant to say they were the free volunteers for the sweeping.

[@zdude11]

in hindsight, when i think about first impressions of hl2 without any context, i can almost imagine that the jump from hl1 ending to hl2 makes sense. for anyone who played just hl1, you would have killed the nihilanth, been frozen in time, but ultimately the humans "won" the battle against the aliens. when we start hl2, the only thing we see are human metrocops at first bossing around other people and vortigaunts, until we start seeing striders and the citadel and it must dawn on people that this is not a world where humans simply won a war against aliens.

[@theblah12]

If you want to see someone’s actual first impressions of Half Life 2 without any context apart from playing the first game, you should check out Mapocolops’s let’s play. It’s pretty amazing seeing someone jumping into this world without any idea of the premise and trying to piece together what happened.

[@pauloricardo-wn6ps]

32:00 not the "Nailing Alyx" dev track

[@PizzaguyJeff]

Thank you for doing this. I started a playthrough and tried to check out all of the nodes, but I kept getting distracted. Appreciate you!

[@bigfin20]

I just happened to search for hl dev commentaries and I get something new, nice

[@hisshame]

This must have been a pain to make, but thank you! It’s fantastic

[@theminecraft4202]

since when is replaying HL2 a pain xD

[@doogong]

Thank you for making this video!

[@breakerboy365]

my favorite part of "pick up that can" is it works flawlessly when you load that sequence in Portal, placing a portal on the wall above the garbage can, and the can STILL falls right into it

[@kisaragi-hiu]

Thank you for this: in-game I kept wanting a speed up function (host_timescale doesn't speed up audio) or pause and rewind, and wishing you made these like you did with HL:A.

[@zulubunsen9067]

"Nailing Alyx", I see what you did there.

[@CoffeeWaffee]

Thanks for uploading this, Philip.

[@NoVIcE_Source]

kliksphilip doing half life 2 videos again like in the good ol days

[@WarkolakA]

32:25 FULLY MODELLED

[@cskiller86]

I'm guessing this is a reference to that awful mod.

[@radar._.]

Beginner's Guide really made me appreciate the little things in gaming

[@NeonBeeCat]

My first playthrough of half life 2 early this year, i didn't see the sweeping vortigaunt, so i just got jumpscared by the vortigaunt and the male citizen in the container.

[@vincepale]

My ears perked up during Randy's Reference Map's portion when I heard "scale of interiors" This stuff is amazing, as it so heavily influenced so many mods / ports / source engine games!

[@Espritviril]

This is awesome to listen to while working from home, thanks Philip!

[@johnes4882]

20:47 my long-standing suspicion is confirmed

[@3616Yimie]

Thank you so much , i'm open Developers Commentary with playing, but keep get drag in to the gameplay and forgot i open with it sometime.

[@moonmoon4537]

0:50 Nah, he spaced that out too much on purpose 😂 he didn’t want more gaben audio clips

[@biswanathsaha2208]

Love the fact Valve was inspired by ICO, the same game that inspired Hidetaka Miyazaki to get a career into game development

[@donotscantheqrcode8700]

I'm a little disappointed that people think some of the voices are AI generated

[@slobert]

You should be disappointed that the voices were recorded so badly in the first place

[@arthurpietrogarcia1057]

​@@slobertthey are devs not voice actors, it was also like this with the original developer commentaries

[@linhza501]

@@slobert nobody cares little bro. So shut the f*** up

[@SkyTreeStudio]

@@arthurpietrogarcia1057it’s also a fun thing they did for a 20 year old game They didn’t need to do anything but they did this and it’s cool

[@derbydriver]

That takeout box floating to the other side of the room, hitting the wall and falling was funnier than it should have been.

[@GnRGaming]

These commentary tracks will be studied in game design circles for decades. The design philosophy that Valve adopted in making Half-Life should be the gold standard for game development. It's what's missing in the massed produced titles by big publishers.

[@ChimpPeensRevunge]

I'm not sure if it is a bug or a cheeky inclusion by the devs, but after the "Field of View" commentary node at 25:20, my game automatically changed my FOV back to 75, even though I had increased it to 90 when I launched that game. Honestly gave me a good laugh.

[@CubanLegend561]

thank you philip, please keep on doing these until you have the entire game Dev Commentary :) I love listening to these and your gameplay is soothing and funny. :3

[@keyserxx]

Masterpiece game and walkthrough thanks :) I had a potato PC in 2004 with only just enough RAM to actually run the game and it took about a minute between each loading section and another 15 secs for the HDD to stop freaking out. This just reminds me of Valve the game dev studio! More games please Valve. I haven't got around to buying an Index but maybe if v2 comes out I will so I can enjoy HL Alyx.

[@CoreUnderscore]

Thanks for doing this.

[@lukekline9513]

I have ALWAYS wanted to eat those commentary nodes

[@Luka2000_]

Gabes welcome in the beginning was so nice

[@toothpesto]

Surprised to see you uploading the commentary but a welcome one!

[@Lemonbus]

I was hoping for someone to do these videos but didn’t know they would come out so soon 😩

[@xMcWeenx]

Yay! Now i don't need to replay it to hear these.

[@TheDiymovies]

Hopefully this is continued for the whole game! Fascinating commentary.

[@boardiesman]

Apparently there's 3.5 hours worth in the game now.

[@ZackAttackHall]

humble request for captions to be turned on for the next ones 🙏

[@kisaragi-hiu]

In game there doesn't seem to be captions… (This could also have been a bug with localization since my game is set to Japanese)

[@ZackAttackHall]

@@kisaragi-hiu most likely a bug with localization captions then, cause there's definitely captions on my end. tho i did come across a node that lacked them for some reason

[@ibnu7942]

​@@kisaragi-hiu set cc_lang to english by default it uses steam's language

[@soggu6282]

the auto captions seems mostly correct due to how pronounced the commentary is

[@gluGPU]

You can turn on the KZbin player’s caption feature since Philip manually mapped out all the captions for the commentary nodes!

[@EricMichaelLP]

I wish you had the closed captions on. Especially as they mention them in the one commentary 🥺

[@noizeuk]

"Nailing Alyx" means something different...

[@ReachTea]

I wanted to wait for the RTX mod to replay Half Life 2, so this is nice

[@MelanismSeis]

Same here. Black Mesa is heavily discounted so I'll entertain myself with that one

[@Macrossuu]

Thank you Phil!!

[@beggarsbazooka9517]

0:58 "My favourite class is the spy"

[@eljestLiv]

Thank you Philip ❤️❤️

[@truedan1]

Inventory playtester almost beats out RIght Turns playtester, almost...

[@unitariansavage8513]

3:41 I can't believe VALVe went woke in 2004. Truly gaming has fallen, billions must microtransact.

[@soctavian]

Thank you so much Philip. I'm currently suffering from the bi-annual bug of "2x everything", and after going through my daily youtube routine at a grueling speed I couldn't bear listening to all of these at normal speed in-game. This fixes everything, much love.

[@arthurpietrogarcia1057]

The brainrot is real

[@Content_Deleted]

@@arthurpietrogarcia1057^

[@alexkfridges]

Lmao dude you might need to chill a bit

[@_motho_]

25:10 someone forgot to install dev commentary: source...

[@BillyOnYouTube]

I greatly respect the developers for designing Alyx to be attractive and charismatic without exaggerating or hypersexualizing her.

[@walk312]

18:52 there were no subtitles in hl1 at all, not even super simple ones. You needed a mod for that, no?

[@lukkkasz323]

yes, but there was a text system that was used for things like credits, game over screens etc.

[@E2wqpXcGGnLtJHbVXDhS3]

Shounic gonna have a field day with this one

[@MrSHURIKENCHO]

90% of these are talking about how they play-tested the hell out of everything. I truly wonder how much collective hours of this game was play-tested before release in comparison to modern AAA games that come out fuked beyond belief like Cyberpunk or Fallout 76 etc.

[@MrSHURIKENCHO]

@@TheRadioSquare ... are you high? Half-Life 2 was rushed? ARE YOU HIGH?!

[@slav4335]

​@MrSHURIKENCHO half life 2 WAS rushed after the beta leak

[@yasno915]

​@@MrSHURIKENCHO have you listened to some later commentary nodes? They said they didnt include some mechanics cause of time constraints

[@MrSHURIKENCHO]

@@yasno915 Are people dumb or really dumb? Deadlines do not mean that the game was rushed. How do you even make this connection, are you this stupid for real???

[@kiplup3803]

If you use subtitles you cant see the 1/14 bar. Valve pls fix

[@FUJIIDEW]

Voices are not ai generated, people who are saying this have no experience with AI voices

[@TedThomasTT]

Thanks for showing what happens when your throw all the boxes :)

[@LemSportsinterviews]

plox enable subtitles(: im hard of hearing but this is very interesting to me

[@GBlockbreaker]

he already had subtitles enabled, otherwise you wouldn't be able to see the commentary's progress bar

[@faizfrez2729]

Will you do your own commentary and thoughts about the update or a special video to celebrate?

[@philipgodsworth4764]

13:08 John having flashbacks to the EP2 Antlion tunnels.

[@henrik1743]

David Sawyer has an amazing voice 😮 he should read audiobooks

[@st.paddymad7085]

Looks like BinkusTheTrinkus has new material for his Google Translated Edition mod.

[@dangdudedan8756]

gabe was very clear in annunciating the N this time.

[@metinevrenkurtulus]

Wish you had subtitles on too.

[@viperjay1]

Thank you so much for this video. How many parts are there? Will you do them all?

[@Kamil_O]

in my hl2 these comments are very quiet, there is also no subtitles or anything showing how long the comment it

[@slav4335]

he has subtitles off

[@MikeCore]

Part 2 when?

[@juvenoiachild7675]

28:03 bro please install cs:s

[@casey6556]

Gaben really hitting that Hard N

[@DEN8Y]

I want to watch this but I still haven't got around to completing HL2. I'll have to play it and then come back.

[@MBP1918]

Amazing

[@BabaSmithVideos]

4:35 Magical

[@cuubezzz]

how quick will these be released? I really like watching these videos

[@manuelmeyer2681]

"nailing Alyx".

[@cskiller86]

It would have been nice if he told us how they fixed the "NPC on elevators" problem.

[@Vincent654]

can you do a comparison of most of graphics settings of the hl2 anniversary?

[@merrida4682]

28:47 your subtitles breaks here Thanks for the video

[@spacemansquid]

Jokes on them: I turned up the FOV anyways.