Is Half life 2 week at Ars Technica! This Saturday, November 16, marks 20 years since the launch of Half life 2—a game of historical importance to the artistic medium and technology of computer games. Every day until the 16th, we will publish a new article analyzing the game and its impact.
“Well, I just hate the idea that our games can waste people's time. Why spend four years of your life building something that is not innovative and basically meaningless?
Valve software founder Gabe Newell is quoted by Geoff Keighley (yes, the Game Awards guy, then a GameSpot writer) as saying this in June 1999, six months after the original. Half life launched. Newell didn't give his team any budget or real deadline, just the task of “following up the best PC game of all time” and redefining the genre.
When Half life 2 Arriving in November 2004, the collector's edition contained approximately 2.6 GB of files. The game, however, contained so many things that would seem new to gaming, or just plain brave, that it's hard to even list them.
Except I'm going to try it right here. Some will be difficult to pin down definitively in time to Half life 2 (HL2). But like many great games, HL2 he refined existing ideas, borrowed others, and had some of his own to show.
Note that some aspects of the game itself, its status as a big Steam push title, and what it's like to play it today, are covered by other writers during Ars' multi-day celebration of the game's 20th anniversary. That includes the Gravity Gun.
How many film and video game careers were started by people who learned how to make the Scout do something ridiculous?
Credit: valve
How many film and video game careers were started by people who learned how to make the Scout do something ridiculous? Credit: valve
The original engine
It's hard to imagine another game developer building an engine with as innovative a mission as Source. Rather than simply building what will run its next game, Valve designed Source to be modular, so that its core could be continually improved (and shipped via Steam), and newer technologies could optionally be ported to games both new and old, while it doesn't break any old titles and works perfectly fine.
The font began development during the later stages of the original. Half lifebut its impact goes far beyond the series. Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Portal 1/2, and Left 4 Deadfrom Valve alone, they occupy multiple places on lists of the best games of all time. Stanley's parable, Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlinesand many other games also used Source. Countless future game developers, level designers, and mod creators have been introduced to the widely open and freely available source code tools.