Triple Click - Beanscast: Half-Life 2, Episodes, and Alyx

Episode Date: December 23, 2021

The Triple Click Trio discuss the entirety of the Half-Life story so far. Back in September, Maddy, Jason, and Kirk recorded a spoilercast about the entirety of Half-Life 2. Here in December, they're taking this week off for the holidays, so they decided to drop this bonus episode in the feed. As always, if you'd like to become a Maximum Fun member and get many more bonus episodes like this one, go to maximumfun.org/join.Original show notes follow. Hope you all are having a happy holiday!SHOW NOTESJason and Maddy have finished both episodes of Half-Life 2, so they sit down with Kirk to talk through the entire City17 saga, from the inbound train, to the outbound train, to the rocket ship. They then talk some about the “Epistle Three” that might have been, and what the ending of 2020’s Half-Life Alyx says about the possible future of the series.LINKS:"Epistle Three" by Half-Life 2 writer Marc Laidlaw: https://www.marclaidlaw.com/epistle-3/The ending of Half-Life Alyx (start at 12 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVzEiVcVq3YHunter Sound Effects via: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDqhw04BjWcJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/  Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Hello everyone, it's Kirk Hamilton here in December of 2021, recording a little extra opening for this episode. What you are about to listen to is a special bonus beans cast that we released on September 26th of this year. It was our September monthly beans cast, and as you probably know from listening to the show, we release those every month for members of maximum fun. It's a little bonus for folks who support us making this show. So we're off this week for the holidays, and we thought that instead of that, we would just, drop this as a little surprise for everybody in the feed. So you can now get to listen, even if you weren't a member.

If you'd like to become a member, of course, you can go to Maximumfund.org slash join. We really, really appreciate all of our members. It makes us possible for us to do this show. So yeah, that's what this episode is. This is going to be full beans spilling or full spoilers on Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2, Episodes One and 2, and also Half-Life Alex. So we kind of get into the current state of the half-life.

Half-Life universe and where things might go. This was a really fun episode to make, and of course was the result of me tying with Jason on our predictions bet last year. So we played through Half-Life 2, which you heard as a regular episode. But just in case you miss that one, there is also just a regular triple play of Half-Life 2 in the regular feed, which you can find if you scroll back. So anyways, stick around for that. Thanks so much to all of our members. We hope that you're all having a happy holiday. And we'll be back next week to put a bow on 2021 with our picks of the best games of that.

the year. All right, take it away, past Triple Click hosts. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Schreier. And I'm Kirk Hamilton. And it's time. It's time. It's finally time. To talk about. Here we go. Even more Half-Life 2. All the rest. Oh, man. Half-Life 2 and the Half-Life

stuff. I guess, first off, though, this is a bonus episode, and if you're listening to this, that means you're a member, and we appreciate you. We really do. You're the best. So thanks so much to everyone listening to this. You make it possible for us to make this show. Yeah. man I played a lot of Half-Life over the last few days

I played through I can like I close my eyes and I see just like You see the G-Man's face Like his huge face and his eyes No you know what I see those ant-lions Just constant ant-lions You know I was kind of said I didn't get to rule an Ant-Lion army

In either of the episodes That's true I wanted to do that again That was really really cool Ruling over the Ant-Lion Army In Half-Life 2 Yeah it was one didn't really bring that back. I mean, there was a whole ant-lion thing, I guess, but you didn't

get to drive them again. In general, there aren't a lot of new guns. I don't think there are any new guns. Well, there's the Magnuson device, but we'll get into that. But no, I know. I remember being disappointed by that, though being really psyched about the new enemies, especially in episode two. But for starters, let's rewind, rewind, rewinding. I just am curious what the two of you thought of, let's just put the two episodes together. Jason, what did you think of episode one and episode two. Yeah, I really enjoyed them. They are so different. Episode one is just like, we got to get out of the city and it's just kind of like a chasing, like a train movie where you're just like constantly on the move and it just feels like you're, there's no story really. It's just

a lot of banter between you and Alex. And I really enjoyed that. Actually, I really enjoy just just getting to know Alex and like appreciating her as a character in a way that I never really got to in the first game because she's just kind of in and out a little bit in the first game. and this one she's with you the entire time, which I thought was really cool, just really enjoyed having her hang out. And then episode two, obviously critically acclaimed for lots of reasons.

There were parts that, like, I was just like, I do not want to do this anymore. Like the spider part and like the driving a car again after people listen to the triple play, we'll know that that was my, by far my least favorite part of the first game. Having to go around in a car again was not very pleasant,

although not as bad, I would say. I was like the first game. They improved the car handling. Yeah. It felt like that is a big thing. Yeah. There were some moments that I didn't care for. But go on.

I appreciated some of the little tweaks. Playing them all at once, you like really notice all the changes. Like suddenly the flashlight is on its own battery instead of on your sprint power, which I thought was really interesting. Just seeing little tweaks like that was really, really interesting. And yeah, I dug both of them. It's kind of hard to separate them because I played. all of these games in such a short period of time that it's hard to really be like,

oh yeah, this episode was better than the other. But it just felt like one big journey. And overall, I enjoyed the experience, I would say. They've aged well. Maddie, how about you? Yeah, I agree. It aged well. So I also played episode one and two right in a row. And they really are running together for me. And I think if I were quizzed on it, I would not be able to tell you where one ended and two began, but it's fine, this is not a quiz show, no one's going to ask me that. I will say I liked Half-Life 2 better than Episode 1 and 2, which I did not expect to happen. There are a few things about Half-Life 2 that I was just super impressed by. Like, I mentioned the sound design a lot and the music cues, and I just didn't like the music

cues as much in the episodes. I don't know if you two noticed that, but some of the timing of the action sequence songs, And some of the, like, little bespoke hits felt a lot more, I don't know, corny and, like, expected. Whereas in Half-Life 2, they always felt really subtle and cool. And, like, I'm sure that that game was just worked to death in a certain way. Like, it feels like a jewel in so many respects, whereas the episodes were a little different. And the other thing, the writing of it just felt different. It is written by different people, which we're about to talk about.

Yes. And yeah, it's true you get to know Alex a little better. There are just some other tone shifts that happen that aren't bad or good, but were very noticeable to me having like just played Half-Life 2 and then, you know, wait a couple weeks and play these. Like, I would say the implied romance between Alex and Gordon, not really there in Half-Life 2. In the episodes, it's there. It's still just an implication, but it's hard to deny it. Like there's a few really specific lines where people talk about the two of you. and that is just not like I didn't ship it and then I was kind of like oh I guess I guess I'm supposed to ship it

it's I don't know I had to kind of like wrestle myself on board for that and be like okay this is actually a long slow romance I did not know that was what this was okay cool and so that was something that I think I just was surprised by and again I don't think it's a bad thing and I'm also like whatever How many couples cosplayers have I seen in my life cosplaying Alex and Gordon? Why was I surprised? I just thought they were interpreting it as such

as opposed to the game. My read on that stuff, which I think is also just kind of awkward and whatever, is just that they're like, people probably have a crush on Alex, so we're just going to like make this. Because Gordon's not a character.

He's just this like empty avatar. That's part of why it's so strange because I'm like, I can't really ship Alex with anyone because Gordon is not a person and we don't really see her in her act with anyone else. Well, and that's what makes it feel awkward to me, is that it's like they're not saying

that they're saying you love Alex. So, like, wouldn't it be cool if everyone was talking about how you and she should hook up? Like, because Gordon is such a player avatar, which is also awkward, but awkward in a different way. I thought you were going to say because Gordon is such a player. And I was like, really? Interesting. Okay.

Yeah. I didn't know that about him. But you know how you find all those journals, all of his little black books of all the people he's been getting it on with? Yeah. That was some cool lore. you stumble across the office. Yeah, you find his Tinder profile on various computers. Hey, we just wrote HalfLife episode three. So I was definitely struck by the evolution of the

series this time playing through all of these. I've played episode one a few times. I played Half-Life Two a lot of times and I never, I've only finished episode two a few times. Did I say episode two? I've played episode one a bunch of times. I've played Half-Life Two a bunch of times and I've only finished episode two. These titles, man, they're not good. Can we just say the titles are not, like they should have called it Half-Life Aftermath or whatever they were going to call it as opposed to Episode 1 and Episode 2 and all that. Anyway, it's fine. Given that they released them so quickly, you can kind of see that it went 2004, 2006 for episode 1, 2007 for episode 2. They came out really quickly, despite the fact that I actually

really sense a dramatic shift over the course of those three games. Ironically, the whole idea of that was that Half-Life 2 took six years for them to make, and Game Newell said publicly, like we're not going to let that happen again like six years is too long but it's funny back then six years seemed like a long time to make a game now it's like standard but they were like it's too long so we're going to do these episodic chunks as a way to release a new one every year or two and the idea was like to have episode three come out just like a year after episode two and of course that did not happen it did not happen so i agree mattie i really noticed the different writing which is which is true mark laid law wrote the original half-life two episodes one

and two were both written by Chet Fallasek and Eric Walpaw, who also wrote Portal, incidentally, and they were kind of the main writing crew at Valve through that period of time. But Layla didn't write it. And they're just more written. I was really struck, especially episode two, there's just more writing. Like there's more going on, you know, Eli Vance is taking you aside to talk about backstory and to acknowledge the existence of the G-man as a character rather than having him just be this weird, you know, thing that maybe only you see and just appears to you at various points,

he is definitely a character that, like, exists and has motivation, which winds up being cool, I think, in the end, and I understand why they made those choices, but definitely by the end of episode two, I was like, wow, like, this is starting to feel more like a modern video game, which is cool in some ways, but also it feels a little less special and a little less distinct now than Half-Life 2. Like, episode two is distinct for me because I think it's like one of the best designed first person shoot, like five hours of first person shooting that exists in video games just from a like encounter design perspective. It's like amazing. But narratively it feels way more mainstream where Half-Life 2 still feels of that earlier era.

Like it feels more like a turn-of-the-century PC game, which I like those games. So I like that Half-Life 2 feels that way. It's funny you say that because to me that's why I enjoyed Half-Life episode 2 more than the other two. in some ways. Even though I said they all blend in together, I distinctly remember certain parts of episode two just saying, oh, okay, this feels like a real story. I know where I'm supposed to go and why I'm supposed to go there,

as opposed to the original game where it just feels like you're kind of being just sent around places and you have no idea why. See, that's what I like. It's like that chilly tech demo feeling of the first game. And I don't mean I don't like episode two. I love episode two. I really love all of these games in the story.

Well, I hate it. No, I'm just thinking it and hate it. But it is different. They're different and I like them in different ways. Yeah. I really liked not knowing what was going on in Half-Life too. Like I mentioned that on our triple play. Just the fact that you don't know what the teleporter is or why they're making it.

And like who even are the Combine exactly? You never really understand them or like what their motivations are. And they're always creepy. And there are so many parts of it that you're just like, I guess we're fighting these guys now. And you don't even have the chance to kind of keep up with how strange the world is. And yeah, episode two, I did understand what was happening a lot more often. Right. Well, that's the thing.

Exciting. It just didn't feel like Half-Life II had much of a story. Like, the story was just kind of like you being reasons for you. Like, there weren't even reasons for you to just be shepherded from place to place. Episode two, I really enjoyed the actual conflict and story and tension they stuck in there. Like, Alex is heard and you have to like protect a bunch of Ortegans so they can heal her. You have to go and get to the white forest to warn them about this upcoming invasion. There's just a lot of stuff in there that was so much more interesting to me personally than any of the stuff, any of the lore in the original game or even episode one.

It's well-executed basic story stuff, right? Like have a clear objective. Insert, you know, tension and challenge in these ways. Like, it just feels like the writers of that game were like, well, here's how we like put this kind of story structure on it and make it work. and they do really well. I mean, they don't go too far, I don't think. Like, I don't think there's too much defining of the combine, which I really am glad for.

Like, there's a little bit more, you learn what an advisor is, basically, and the advisor winds up being this kind of large looming figure over the episodes, and then winds up, of course, being the thing at the end that kills Eli and is, like, this shocking thing. And if you were watching throughout the game,

the advisor almost functions like the G-Man in the episodes, where there are a couple of times where you'll see it. Like, it'll fly by, or fly away from you because it's kind of following you after you first encounter it in episode two and then it shows up at the end

to deliver that stinger. Well, you also kill one that's the most important part of this whole thing. Well, you injure that one and then it gets away and then it comes back later. Right, right, you injure it.

You don't actually kill it. You go for it and then, yes, it wants its revenge. But I'm glad they don't say, you know, the advisors are the whatever, you know, the governing council of the combine. The advisors are super scary. Watch out for those.

guys if you see one of them, oh boy, that's going to have a weird sticky tongue and it's going to poke your neck in like a bad way. Right. It's a big weird slug in a bag. Well, that's what's cool about it. So what's good about it is that it takes what works about Half-Life 2,

like the lore and the mystery and like leaving a lot of stuff to the imagination. But it gives you just enough to like keep you grounded. Like it's nice to know exactly why I was going to each place instead of just being told. All right, Gordon, now got to go over there because these guys are

here and you have to follow them for some reason. Yeah, it's also cool that they build on the things they developed in Half-Life 2 because remember, Half-Life 2 starts and there's like, it's like you're dropped in in Medius Res with characters who were technically at Black Mesa but weren't actually characters in the first half-life.

So it isn't like when Dr. Kleiner is talking to you, he's this guy that you remember from the first game because he was like a character model, but he wasn't a character where now they've got Judith Mossman doing the like Star Wars thing on the screen at the beginning of episode one and leaving this kind of fragmented message

and you know who she is and she's kind of this whole character that isn't even really in either of the episodes but you know her from the original from Half-Life 2 I should say not the original but the first game. Oh she's the one who betrayed me but then didn't betray me Right exactly. Yeah she was like a double

double agent yeah that stuff is clever and like you're going to see Kleiner and Eli and you really know them at this point and it's like oh I really can't wait to get them so when you finally to see you know, Dr. Kleiner and he's there with... He's got his little pet headcraft, Lamar. Yeah. But most importantly, you really get to know

Alex, and I don't think Alex, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, correct, since you played this when it came out, but like Alex would not be the character who's as beloved as she is today, if not for the two episodes, just like really building her as a character and letting you get to know her. You think? I feel like people already thought she was cool even

before that. They did. I don't know. I didn't pay attention to Half-Life Discord after it came out. Discourse after it came out. But like playing it to me, it didn't feel like Alex mattered until the episodes. And like she was definitely a character in the original game. Part of this I should say is it's all blended together. Right. You played them all in once.

Well, yes. I feel like what's so memorable about her to me, though, is just how unusual a character like that was at the time that Half-Life 2 came out. And also at the time that the episodes came out. Like you've got this like Blasian cool chick who is able to carry her. her own, like she can shoot dudes with, like, infinite ammo and help you out whenever she is around as opposed to, like, you know, dragging you down or just being a voice in your ear or like a secretary character or like a Cortana or like in Anya in the early Gears of War games.

Like all of these female characters in these other games, action games, were just not presented the way that Alex is where it's like, yeah, she's not around in Half Life too because she's busy doing other stuff, which like even the fact that that's the case is pretty wide. And I feel like I remembered that as being really cool. It's just being like, oh, there's an action chick in this game. But like that's not the purpose of her character. Like she isn't here to just be there for you. And then they build on that by being like, okay, now it's the two of you alone against the world.

And you're going to hang out and do the Last of Us thing where you're like climbing around together. But you don't have to protect her the whole time. She can still do her own thing up until she gets stabbed. Well, that from a technical perspective, is I imagine pretty revolutionary for that time, having a companion run around. It was. And I remember talking to people who worked at Irrational Games

about modeling Elizabeth as being inspired by Alex in the sense that they wanted her to seem just as helpful and cool and crushworthy as Alex is. And like there is definitely like the follower character needs to not be annoying like Ashley and Resident Evil and needs to be cool like Alex or Elizabeth because otherwise you hate them. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't even go farther than that

and say that a lot of the most interesting design in both episode one and episode two, but especially in episode one, uses Alex mechanically to reinforce that idea. Like, I was really struck by episode one replaying it. I always think of it as the lesser episode. Because, you know, it kind of is. I mean, when you play episode two,

episode two is like much bigger and kind of higher production value and more exciting and has all this really memorable shit that happens. And it's beyond the hunters, 17 is that just all setting. Exactly. The setting is so huge for episode two, just being in that kind of like alpine whatever setting. But episode one is really good. It kind of drags at the one part like a third of the way in when you're just kind of doing zombie stuff. There was a point where I was like, okay, I thought this wasn't going to, I thought we were going to do this and we were going to get

to the train part. But it kind of, that's the only place where it drags. But I was struck by how at the beginning you don't have a weapon for so long in both of them. But in episode one, they do this very cool thing where you have to use the flashlight to light up zombies for Alex to shoot them. And so she's the gun and you're the light. And there's so much stuff like that in these episodes. Every single sequence is sort of designed to be something interesting, to be something a little bit different than just, okay, now you're in a room and there's some guys

coming at and you have to kill them. And that's why there is kind of some of that in episode one. And that stuff just feels boring because everything else is so interesting. Yeah. I like how much of a puzzle game the episodes still were. I mean, that was my favorite part of Half Life too. And it was also just the strength of the episode. was the fact that it doesn't just feel like a shooter.

You're not just mowing down guy after guy. And even when there are different enemies, the point of it is the puzzle of it all, like figuring out how to kill people at certain environments or how to outsmart different situations. And that's fun. And some of that means using Alex and some of it means using the environment

or other people around you. It's just neat. I like that aspect of it. And I feel like I don't play that many games that are as much of a environmental puzzle as a shooter as this game is and that's kind of too bad that there aren't more things like that. One part

that was really memorable to me I believe it was episode two is that part where there's like a turret or something or another that's going after you and you have to kind of navigate through the cars and crouch. That part was really cool. Yeah, there's some mechanics in both episodes that I thought were really interesting. I actually

I expected them both to be a little bit more innovative like I expected some new weapons. I expected some new more newness than I got but I was impressed with some of the new stuff that was there like having Alex cover you with a sniper rifle or the most obvious one is taking down all those striders at the end well with the grenade things that I would say as a legitimate new mechanic I think it's interesting that there are no real new mechanics in the game until the Magnuson device at the end which is just a cool combination of things you could already do throw something with the gravity gun shoot something with your pistol.

But they kind of go the opposite way where they just go deep into the existing systems that they have. And so you get stuff like, okay, well, what if we took the flashlight that you already have, and you have to use that in a limited battery to illuminate things for Alex to shoot?

So you're using your flashlight in this completely different way. And then, you know, it keeps going. Like, what if you're, right, Alex is covering you with one of those dart, like those, you know, crossbow sniper rifles. and you need to clear her shot so that she can kill enemies. You have to take the pieces of metal off the roof so that she can get in. And so you're like running around and you need to not fall in because there's a bunch of zombies in there.

So you have to like climb around. Yeah, it's fun. It's a fun way to think about every environment as being a playground. And I dig that. Well, so I think part of that, by the way, Kirk, is like from a practical perspective. It's their goal, like I said before, was to release these games a little bit more quickly. And so the way to do that is to take advantage of all the assets and mechanics you've already made and find new ways to use them. There's so this thing about Half-Life as people will derisively refer to parts of it as feeling like a tech demo.

But I think that like the technical aspect of Half-Life is such a crucial part for why it is the type of game that it is. Because this, the source engine like Gary's mod is just everything that's in Half-Life as this, you know, big sandbox like play set that you can just play. around in so you can get the car and you can get all the different types of combine and you can just set them up like little toys and and have them do stuff because it's a very easy toolkit to work with. And Valve clearly designed it to be that with the goal of making these games really quickly. And it's so cool to play a game where I really understand all the possibilities of the source engine. Like so much of the physics stuff is just, oh yeah, I'm like, oh yeah, right. Okay, there's that metal thing. I know I can pick that up with the gravity gun. It's over the roof. So if I knock that out,

then she'll be able to see. I know that gun she's using. Like, I know all the rules of the universe, and they're so smart about arranging situations for me to have to navigate them in interesting ways and problems solve my way through them. And I just don't feel like I see that in other games, where I'm like, I'm made so aware of all of the possibilities

of the game engine, of the technology that is happening. And then the game, like, uses that knowledge to challenge me, rather than it just being like, oh, this is just supposed to be like real life, you're in a room, a guy's shooting at you, you know, get behind the wall. Like, there's a different layer on it with Half-Life where I'm thinking, well, I'm in the source engine, so like what is possible here? Yeah. Yeah, that's an interesting way to think about it. I mean, Portal is another example of exactly what you're talking about. It's kind of a brilliant, brilliant way.

Yeah, but they put the goo in Portal 2, and there's no equivalent of the goo in this game where you can, like, suddenly slide around or go to the moon or anything. There isn't, like, some huge elevating aspect. Right. You could argue that there's some elegance in that. I was thinking this conversation got me thinking about the canceled Half-Life 2 episode 3s that we've heard about over the years. One of them was going to be by arcane. Another one was going to be by Junction Point, Warren Spector's Studio, aka the makers of Epic Mickey. And I think both of those were supposed to be set in Ravenholm and you were supposed to get something called the magnet gun that would let you like magnetize metal surfaces and use that to solve puzzles and like attract enemy. and stuff. And I was thinking about how interesting it would be and I wonder how that would have worked if it would have been successful to see a new episode that just added a totally new

gun that was like the gravity gun but just totally different. It's interesting to think about a non-like kind of on that source engine tip to think about a non-valve studio making a half-life game where like Titanfall 2 is a good example of a game that feels very much like a Valve game and is actually made

in source engine but is not like it doesn't doesn't have that same feeling of, okay, I understand this engine. There's all this, like, destructible physics. There's all these things that can happen. So let's see what's going to happen in this room. It's way more of just a really well-designed first-person shooter, like a really good Call of Duty game, which I, the section you talked about Jason with the auto cannon where you're crawling through the ditches and under the cars trying to get around to turn this cannon off. Made me think of Call of Duty. Like it feels like a set trenches, Crenching Warfare. Right. And you're

getting shot and you're crawling through it, but it feels different because of that source engine knowledge where I know, I know all these cars. I've seen these cars before. I know what all the zombies are going to do when they're crawling because their legs have been blown off, like, how fast they move, what it means to hear one over there. And it's like, it's hard to even articulate how interesting that is or like how distinct that is, that feeling of like just the knowledge of the technology underpinning the game informing how it feels to play it. Yeah. And also you know what you can and can't step on. I feel like that is another good difference

from Half Life 2 is that in this game there were fewer moments when I was like, I'm jumping on this and I guess it's where I'm supposed to go, but I don't really know. I feel like the technology came a little further here where it's always more clear where you're supposed to go. And like in the car maze, for example, or in the under the radar

chapter where you're like hunting around or you stop somewhere and you're like, oh, I guess there's going to be a supply cache somewhere here. It's much easier to figure out where those are because you can just look around and be like, oh, that's a weird rock or like, oh, why is that car there? That's interesting. What's that, what's that balancing there? I'm going to blow it up and see what happens. And it does feel, again, like a puzzle playground that is much easier to navigate than Half Life 2 was.

Right. It's more polished in that way. Like Half Life 2, it has, it's that same kind of old PC game energy where there are just times where you're in a weird gray room and you're not really sure where to go, where an episode 2 is much more like, okay, this just feels like, you know, it's kind of a lot of things that people stole from Valve, but all of these tricks of like having a light on a thing or having something look weird. Yeah, and like having the road look really specific. Like that was one of the things about the driving that made it easier for me was that it was a lot more obvious where to go this time around.

Like, there were so many times in Half Life too, okay, it's great that Gabe Newell didn't want to give me a map. I understand it. It's like this whole thing. No real, no maps, whatever. But I never knew where I was going in that freaking game. And I was constantly getting lost. I'm glad that you give credit to Gabe.

I'm sure it wasn't his idea. But like, come on. I don't know. He doesn't want to direct his employees and he doesn't want to direct me. Gabe Moore. Call me. Anyway, there's no map. And there's no map in episodes one and two, but I didn't get lost for whatever reason. Like the sign posting must have just been better because the few times I did get turned around, I'd be like, oh, I got turned around. This doesn't look right. Or I was just here. This is visually distinct. And I know that because I was just here and I just saw this as opposed to the classic video game problem of getting turned around.

walking for like 20 minutes and then being like, is this where I already, this looks identical. I mean, yeah, that happened to me. There's this part of Half-Life 2 near the end when you're on the roof and you've just fought like two helicopters, I think. And you're supposed to go to the horse.

It's like there's like a horse statue. Yes. Did either of you see this? And then the guys are like, the NPCs start saying to you, go to the horse statue. And I was like, what? And then I looked over and I was like, go to the horse.

The horse. I don't know how to get to the horse. Mr. Freeman, the horse. And I'm like, what the, Fuck, am I supposed to ride a horse? This video game, man. But even the statue is hard to get to. And it's just, it is a classic example of like, they were like, people don't,

I'm sure we're playtesting it. And they're like, people don't know where they're supposed to go. And it was like a pretty clugee fix where episode two never has that feeling. Like it's always very, episode one as well. No, there's no go to the horse moment, exactly. I want to talk a little about the new enemies because there are new enemies. And I think the zombie combine, which is the zombie combine, Episode 1. Those are cool. They make those zombie sections feel scarier because it takes so many more shots to bring down. But the hunters amaze me. Just speaking personally, they're like the most amazing addition to the game because every fight in episode 2 where the hunters turn up and these are, for anyone who hasn't played this game in a long time or something, they're the big kind of mini striders or these tripods. They make a really cool new sound. They are terrifying. They're the thing that actually impales Alex.

and leaves her almost dying, so they're kind of introduced in this really terrifying way where they attack you out of nowhere. And they're so cool. Like, I can't think of another new enemy that's been introduced to a game that completely overhauls the feeling of fighting. Like, I was having so much fun in the second half of episode two.

Just in those, like, you know, there's like each encounter feels really distinct. The radio tower, there's the part where you're in that big house, and then the combine shows up outside, and they begin, like, coming in through, the windows and you're running through this crazy house and then hunters like start coming in. I was like fighting one down the stairs and it's like advancing on me down the stairs because they're really hard to kill. And I was like laughing my ass off just being like this rules.

Like this is such a good fight. Whatever, 14 years after this game came out and it's very rare for a first person shooter to push me around that much. And it's totally because they introduced those enemies. So I don't know. What did you, what did you think of the hunters where he was into them as I was? I was into them for sure. I feel like part of that is just their staggered animations are so weird and creepy and they do this thing where they'll almost lean over you like I can picture it coming down the stairs towards me because they'll kind of lean and then sometimes they'll be like shooting at somebody else and then like you'll shoot at them and then they have this like turn around really quick and look at you a moment where they're like bzzt or whatever and

you're like okay go it's it's it's it's cool there's just something about that combat animation they have that makes them feel scarier and yeah I really liked using the double barrel shotgun attack on those guys. It was super satisfying. The right click shotgun. Just four of those and they're dead. It's perfect. Yeah.

Or the rocket launcher was a good one to use. Oh, well, obviously. Once you get that, yeah. Yeah, I remember when you first had to fight one, I thought it was going to be like a cutscene where you're supposed to get killed or something because of what had happened in the beginning of the game where Alice gets stabbed by one of them.

So I remember when they popped out and it was like, oh, we're going to have to fight these now. Oh, well, oh, okay. Hello there. Yeah, they're fun enemies for sure. I don't know. I wasn't as blown away as you, Kirk, I suppose, because they just looked to me like mini striders,

so I wasn't like, oh, man, this is a cool, new, amazing new thing. They just kind of look like the other aliens. I just really get into how they affect the flow of combat, because you get pretty used to fighting the Combine soldiers in the main game, who do come in a few different varieties, but just adding that, like, bully-type enemy that can just take a ton of damage. Yeah, you have to be on the move a lot more. you around, right.

It just, and the levels are so well designed for it. They start in these kind of open areas where you can like circle buildings and get it to chase you. But by the end, when you're down in that like the rocket facility and you're like up close with them and they're chasing you around. And then I don't know if the two of you figured this out, but I, in that final fight, the final fight against all the striders, if you, it's so hard. I remember the first time I did that.

It was like the most stressful and ultimately satisfying fight I'd like ever done in a video game. This time around, I kind of kicked. its ass because once you figure out that you can just drive them down with your car and it just kills them, it kind of makes the whole thing. Oh, you can. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. So you probably had a harder time in that fight, which is a valid way to do it. No, I actually found, I was going to say, one of the reasons that I wasn't super impressed of the hunters is that I found Half-Five 2 episode 2 very easy as a whole.

Oh, interesting. I found it much easier than the base game where I, like, actually struggled on a couple of parts. This game I found very easy. Now, could this be because you now are able to sprint and you weren't, you didn't know how to sprint in the basement. Yeah, it could be that. It could be that. Although I actually think, I think health upgrades are just a lot more prevalent in this one. Like usually the house you mentioned, for example. The house you mentioned there, it's just like health on every corner.

Everywhere. And there's just health everywhere. As opposed to the first game where it felt like a lot of times I had a save file where I was like 10 health and so I couldn't do anything. I had to like meticulously like inch by inch crawl through enemies and not get hit or else I would be restoring an old save. In this game, I never had that moment. I don't know if one of those,

if I prefer one of those approaches over the other, they're just different. But I actually found that I did that strider thing the legit way with every single strider. I killed with a grenade thing. And yeah, I found it the perfect balance. Oh, sorry, to be clear, you can't kill the striders with your car.

Like, you can kill the hunters with your car. Because if you get out to shoot at them, it takes forever and then the striders just roll past you and blow stuff up. The striders, you've got to do the thing. Yeah, so I actually, I used all of my ammo and I had to be like running around frantically trying to get ammo and stuff like that. But fun. That's a fun way to play it.

Yeah, no, it was fun. I really enjoyed that final sequence, but I didn't find it. Like, I only had to play it one, like, I beat it on the first time. I didn't have to play through it multiple times or anything like that. So I didn't find it super challenging. I did find that, like, when they got to the base, they gave you enough time that you could just go back to the base and take them out. So you weren't really that worried about them, like, conquering.

Right. Where this time, I, like, they never, I think I got the base warning once right before I killed one. They didn't even get close. Well, if you were running over all this. So I started playing it the other way where I'd jump out of the car and I was, like, using all my magnum ammo and killing the hunters and then finally getting the thing. And then I was like, God, I'm really running low on ammo. This is going to get hard.

And then I was like, wait a minute. I think I can kill these with my car because I just remembered that. I do remember the first. time I played it, the feeling of near the end where there's like three or four of the striders coming and there's so many hunters everywhere, being like, I am down to like the crowbar and like one thing, like just trying, you're like three bullets trying to kill a hunter and it being a very frantic but very exciting fight. So I did die and then beat it on the second try that final strider boss fight. But if you two didn't die, then you didn't get to see the extremely

funny death screen that happens if you die and you let them get to the thing. What is it? It says something like, what's the name of just the asshole scientist whose bombs you're using? Magnuson. The Magnuson. It says, I'm going to misremember it, but it says something like, you have failed. Magnuson was right to not trust Gordon Freeman. That's awesome. And it's hilarious.

It's like he was right to have doubts about you and think you couldn't do this because you couldn't. And I was like, okay, that's really, really funny. That happens if you die or if they blow? up the base. If they get to the base. Because he keeps saying the whole time where he's like, I don't really see what's so special about you, TBH. Like, I don't really like you and I don't think you can do this. And I'm worried about my rocket. So whatever. And it's very snorred. I actually, and I really enjoy, it's, I guess it's not technically nagging, but I really enjoy how Megison is always kind of dissing you just because the sequence with the Vortigon where you're

going and like going through the Ant Lion, like trying to get the thing to heal. And the Vortigon is like, oh, Raymond. God, you're cool. You're freaking obsessed with you. You're God. I love you. Look, I did these drawings of you. Can you, what do you think?

Like, it's so, like, he's just so constantly. I sewed a tapestry by hand. And then meanwhile, the Vordogon himself is, like, all-powerful. Right. The Vordogon is what you should be worshipped. And I think that that's totally meant as a joke, that the Vortagans are like this all-powerful, you know, species of amazing, like, space gods. And that your guy is this, like, kind of not-talking dork.

I guess, but, like, you're also. pretty freaking amazing. Like you're like, what, a PhD candidate and you somehow figured out how to like blow up a trillion dudes per second? Like, what is up with Gordon Freeman? Like, it doesn't make any sense. He's a physicist and he's like really good with a lot of different kinds of guns. I guess when I say it's a joke, I mean that like they're making a joke about that, like, about the fact that you are this. I'm not sure they are. I mean, I would like to give them the credit, but like I really don't know because the era that this game came out was also a period of time were playing as a super cool badass guy was not at all unusual.

So I don't really know if the joke is supposed to be on the player at any point in these games. I think it's supposed to be kind of arch. Like I think that the constant vortagon praise is meant to be just slightly not like the joke is on you and they're making fun of themselves, but just that it is deliberately like ridiculous how he's constantly praising you and being like, wow, you're so great. Even though he's also making you feel good because like you just did something cool or solved a puzzle.

And he's like, good job. You solved a puzzle. Yeah. I mean, it is funny when he comes. You for like being good at climbing and vents and stuff. Like there are points where you're like, really, I'm getting a compliment for this? Well, and some of those jokes are... Maybe he just sees me as a toddler.

Like I, he's like, oh, good job, Freeman. You got onto the crate. I love that for you. Like, I don't know. He may have been mocking. Some of those lines, like, there are totally meta jokes where Alex is like, I've heard about you and Vince, you know, stuff like that. Yeah.

They're talking about the series and how like you're always going into Vince and Half-Life games. Like, that is very much a meta-joke. That's part of why, though. feel like the writing stands out to me more because it just it feels more joky. I mean, I guess it's more because it's the portal writers so it has a more tongue and cheek vibe. Like the idea that Alex even does the zombie and portmanteau and then kind of looks at the camera and is like, we won't call them that. And of course, like you know for the rest of the game, that's what you, the player,

are going to be mentally referring to them as. Like it's very, like it's very, Wiki will call them that. Yeah. Yeah, looking directly into the player's eyes and saying, this is what this enemy type is called. Get it? I don't know. It feels more video gamey and just every sense of it.

It's more designed like a video game. You know how I mentioned before how I knew exactly what you were supposed to be doing and like where you're supposed to be going, et cetera, et cetera, and episode two? One thing I still don't know. One thing I still don't know is why there was a rocket and what the Borealis is and any of that stuff they were talking about towards the end of the game. No clue what they were talking about. Alice was just teased. But yeah, so let's talk about the ending. The rocket is trying to get a

broadcast to atmosphere that can counter the like whatever broadcast or frequency or dimensional magic, whatever the combine is using to open that hole because the combine is trying to open the portal back up, which was initially how they were going through the citadel to invade the world. And they want to open this huge portal so their massive army can come through. And it can be the seven-hour war, which they always refer to, I think, is a wonderful bit of writing, the seven-hour war, just because, like, it says it all right there. And like, it's going to be, like, Alex says at one point, this will be the seven-hour war all over again. If they get that thing open, it's over. Like, it's, like, millions of them just come through and were lost. I think

Eli or some other characters, like, more like seven minutes. Like, they really explain to you how bad it's going to be if this portal opens. But, you know, I didn't really understand why the data that Alex stole is what they are able to use to counteract it. I think they're reverse engineer it in order to, I think it's like a frequency code that they can reverse it. It's a little bit. It's a MacGuffin. It's basically just Alex's little USB drive that she's carrying on her hip for the entire game. She gives it to what Steiner? Is that his name? And then he plugs it into his laptop. Kleiner. And then he's like, okay, cool. I got this. I just took everything and I put a negative sign in front of it. And we just shoot that in his face. And that's going to stop the portal. It really is. I mean, it really is the battle of Endor. It feels like, the Battle of Endor. It's just like, we're down on this, like, green area and up in space,

there's this thing, and we have, like, the thing that could stop it. And what really matters is that it's that kind of a double-scale fight. But it's a little vague. And the Borealis is totally just a tease. I was actually really struck by that because, like I said, I've only finished episode two once or maybe twice, like right around when it came out. And I was like, whoa, they really talk about the Borealis and, like, show the Aperture Labs thing. And, like, Dr. Kleiner talks about aperture and like it's explicitly linked. The two things are explicitly linked that Portal and Half-Life exist in the same world. And this is absolutely setting up episode three in this we are going to make episode three kind of way.

I just for some reason remembered it being more vague than that. But I think it's meant to be kind of ambiguous, probably because they were still writing episode three and weren't even totally sure. Like they didn't want to overly commit to anything. But also just to keep it mysterious, I think. Yeah, I think so. It's also very MCU to be like, and now Portal is entering the fray and there's like going to be a post-credit scene

where Shell wakes up and looks in the mirror. That doesn't happen. But it does, I am sure it was very exciting at the time for people to see aperture science in there and speculate about it. But the borealis, that's never mentioned in Portal. Is it the borealis? No, but the aperture science aspect of it.

No, obviously aperture. And then so, and then there's this warning like Eli gives you at the end of it. Well, that the G-man gives you. And Eli is like, oh, no. no, we can't do this. And it's just kind of, yeah, it's set up for something that just never happened, which is kind of wild.

Bing. Kirk from the future here, I just wanted to chime in and say, even when we said that the Borealis didn't appear anywhere in Portal, I was like, you know, this is one of those things where you say a negative on a podcast, and then it turns out that there's some little exception that you didn't remember. And that is true. In Portal 2, you visit the Dry Dock for the Borealis, so you see the ship's name in a couple of places in Portal 2.

So they did keep that connection going into Portal 2, not something that any of us remembered. So yeah, I just wanted to mention that because there really are all these little links between those two series. Okay, back to the show. Bing! The Aperture thing is interesting

because I think part of it is that I played this for the first time before I played Portal. And I think a lot of people who played it when it came out, like Portal didn't quite become a super phenomenon for a little while. And it wasn't until, like, you know, Portal 2 that it was really like, oh, Aperture Labs is this whole thing because Portal 2 goes into the whole history of Aperture Labs, and it was this way bigger sort of backstory thing.

So playing it now and seeing Aperture Labs feels very different than it felt when it came out. When it came out, I don't think I even clocked Aperture at all because I didn't even know what it was because I hadn't even played Portal. And even if I had, I would have been like, oh, funny, they like tied it into that little mini-game they made or something. Like Portal had not yet become its own whole cinematic universe

that was, like, it's much more meaningful now to consider that the two exist in the same world. And I guess in Half Life Alex, which is recent, there is, I don't believe, there may be like an Easter egg, but there's no mention of Aperture or anything there. So it might be that I don't know like how much they're really going to do with the Aperture, Black Mesa crossover stuff in the future. Yeah. I mean, I don't know when we're going to talk about the Epistle 3 entry. So let's do it.

Let's get into it. So the game ends. Eli gets killed. It's a crazy ending. It's so crazy that it ended in them for 13 years. It's so sad. She's just like sobbing over her dead father. And then the credits were...

That's the credits. I know. So, she's like, oh. Unbelievable. She's like, don't leave me. Like, I was like, wow. Like, and then there's no half-life game for 13 years, which is nuts. But in the interim, Mark Laidlaw releases, he leaves Valve and quite a while afterward, he puts out this thing, this blog post called Epistle 3.

That is extremely cute and cutesy, like the way that it's structured. And I just reread it. We'll link it and show it. No, it's totally worth reading if you've played these games. The whole thing, it gender swaps and changes the names of all of the characters. So, like, Ellie, Ellie Vaunt becomes, you know, the mother of Alex, who is Alex Vance, but is now male Alex, and Ellie Vaunt is the mother. So everyone just kind of gets flipped in, like, Mr. X is the G-Man. Your Gertrude.

And so it's, it's, like, very obviously coded, and you can just read it. And it's basically the story or at least a version of episodes. three that could have happened. And it's pretty cool. Let me recap it really quick. For anyone who hasn't read it, let me know how I do here. It's basically they get on the helicopter. So Eli did die. They get on the helicopter. They go north. They discover the Borealis, but it's not really there. There's this whole like kind of weird research facility, which I'm assuming is maybe an aperture facility in the Arctic. And then they get captured by the combine. There's like a whole thing where like Dr. Breen is still alive, but he's an alien now. He's a grub guy. In a slug. Yeah.

He's in a kind of advisor suit and you kill him. And then it turns out the Borealis is like there and not there. And there's this whole like portal thing going on, which makes sense given aperture. And it's kind of been like unstuck in time and space. So it's warping back and forth between an area and Lake Huron and the Antarctica and the Antarctic where you are. And then it's also unstuck in time. So it's like currently in the past, but it's coming to the present. And the coordinates were actually like coordinates for a time and place where it would be, not just a place.

And there's a whole thing. You meet up with Judith Mossman and there's this ongoing debate about like do we use this technology in the fight against the combine or do we destroy it. In the end, Mossman wants to use it. Alex is like my father's dying wish

was not to use it. And she kills Mossman. And you wind up being like, okay, we're going to take this thing and turn it into this like weapon and launch it at the combine command center. If you do that. But it's a suicide mission.

It's a suicide mission. And you can imagine this, right? If you've played a lot of Half Life too, like you're on the, she looks at you and it's like, I guess this is it, Gordon. And then, of course, the G-man walks in, time stops. And he takes Alex and is like, basically is like, you need to come with me.

Like, we're leaving. And she's like, okay. And they go through one of their little doors and just manage and you're left alone. And then they, he implies at the end of this that it kind of, the ship comes out and you realize the total futility of this action. That the combine are like so huge. He says you come upon a Dyson sphere, which, you know, is like, if you've watched your Star Trek, it's like a huge. metal structure built around a star to harness its energy. Like it's like the

combine is so powerful. You'll never do anything. And then right before your futile gesture kills you, the Vortigans show up and whisk you away. And presumably that sets up the next episode or something. So personally speaking, I can just completely imagine this as being a game and I wish I could have played it because I think it would

have been pretty good. Yeah. So I want to note that like everybody assumed that that was the plan for Half Life Episode 3, that it never happened for whatever reason. But in an interview later. Robin Walker, who was a designer, Valve, told Nathan Grayson or former colleague at Katakaku that he read that and was like, oh, I don't remember this being our plan for

Half-Life Three at all. And he just thought it was like something Mark just like had written and came up with just like one potential idea. So there are any number of ways that have I think. Which is like what is any unpublished story, right? We can only imagine it as a possible future that never came to be. Possible. But it would have been a cool, pretty cool a game. It would have been.

I could imagine it as a game. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting that Half-Life 3 just never happened. Episode 3 just never happened. It's part of like a long-running joke that Valve can't make games with 3 in them because it just stops every series and 2.

That's true. Left for that as well. And it just became, it became the ultimate piece of vaporware and now clearly it's not going to happen. But there might be new Half-Life in the future. Kirk, take a side. So now we're going to talk about Half Life Alex, and I want to offer spoiler warning here inside the Beanscast, only because I know there are people who, like, don't have a VR rig, but would like to play Half Life Alex at some point.

So this is like Beanscast Half Life, Colon, Episode 1. Yes. Exactly. Beans cast Half Life episodes. Colon Alex, Colan Afrovas. Beans cast, the beans. So like there's little beans within the beans. Anyways, we're going to pretty much just talk about Half Life Alex and like the implications.

of the ending of that game for the rest of this Beanscast. So you can probably just check out if you want to play that at some point and don't want to know what happens. Because the ending of that game is like a big deal and really, really cool to see on the spoiler, at least it was for me. So that's your warning. Okay, let's talk about Half Life Alex.

So the two of you didn't play this game for various reasons. I did play it, played it unspoiled. Pretty much the same reason. Yeah, it's pretty straight. Forward reason. We didn't want to throw up. Oh, I didn't know it made you nauseous, Jason. But okay, so you both didn't play it.

because of VR, totally understandable. And we never will. It's very sad, because it looks cool as heck, according to his cutscene, you sent us. It's an amazing game, and what's really remarkable about it, which I've said before on podcasts, is that it is a Half-Life game. It feels like the games you just played, that same kind of rhythm, that same sort of technology system stuff, that same feeling of being pushed and prodded, but in ways that are fun and make you feel smart and engaged.

But in VR, like, it's just the same people, kind of design. Etha's underlying this 17-hour VR game that's like just as long as Half-Life 2. Like it's, you do the whole thing, you get all these cool weapons, you fight against Ant Lyons, you meet a Vortagon who's really cool. You have like a fun friend on the radio with you played by a, what's the name from Flight of the Concord's, their manager, Murray. And he's really funny. It totally stays in terms of the writing in, in that kind of vein of where it's like still

funny. There's a lot of sort of cutting the tension with jokes. Alex's very, very funny character throughout. it's a scary as hell game like I've mentioned it's a horror game so there's a lot more sequences where Alex will kind of be on the radio and she'll be like hey can you just like tell me a story about what Earth

used to be like because I'm really freaked out right now and then you kind of have a fun conversation while you're literally moving through a terrifying environment so it's a cool game it's a half-life game it's kind of amazing that it exists the narrative of this game is that the whole time you're trying to get to this prison and it's this prison complex where you're going to rescue

this person who is like very valuable to the combine that's going to help you overthrow them. And it's assumed that it's Gordon Freeman. Though if you've played Half-Life 2, you know that Gordon Freeman kind of gets pulled by the G-Man onto a train. So it's like, well, he didn't get broken out of a prison.

But I didn't think about that that much and actually didn't really think about who it might be. But of course, as you get closer and closer, it is revealed that it is, in fact, the G-man, who is the prisoner. And the combine and the G-man are not the same at all. The G-man is like something completely else.

aside from them and kind of much bigger and more powerful than them. So you finally get into the prison. There's this amazing final level where you go through this house. You can watch all this on YouTube, by the way. We'll link it in show notes and you can see what happens. It's not the same as in VR, but you can see it. This really cool house where, like, gravity and time and space are all messed up. And finally, you reach him.

And he is, like, gives you a typical G-man speech, but he's, it's in VR. So he's, like, all around you and duplicating himself. It's so freaking cool. He, like, appears behind you at times and is, like, and he talks to Alex basically about this whole thing that comes up at the end of episode two as well about how when she was a child at Black Mesa he like interceded in her life basically and it was known because he exists outside he's like a time lord he's kind of a time lord the Gman is kind of Dr. Who he exists outside of space and time and he was like she is super important she is going to play this

crucial role I'm here like I've always had my eye on you because when even when you were a child like I argued against my employers and others, like it's all very vague, to keep you alive, because I knew how important you were. And then he says, if there was something I could do for you, like a nudge, I could tweak things maybe. What would that look like? And Alex is like, take the combine off of Earth. And he's like, that's a pretty big nudge. Can't do that. Too big, like too many things in motion to do that.

And then he's like, what if I fix something for you that you don't know about yet? Because remember, Alex and Half Life Alex is 19 years old. And this is when I begin screaming. I imagine you just shooting himself, yeah. Yes. I'm in the room and I'm like, ah, because I'm assuming that the end of this game is going to, in some way,

deal with the cliffhanger, but I don't know how. And so then, of course... That was one of your 2020 predictions. It was. Oh, that's right. And I'm also thinking, yes, I'm going to win, and everyone's going to play Half-Life, too, which here we are.

Yeah. So then he shows Alex, Eli dying. You get to see that scene again. And she's like, oh, my God. And he says, yeah, this is going to happen. seven years of the future, your father is going to die. Not just see that scene again, see that scene with, like, new graphics, like, modern day, look at, like, Eli.

Yes, very updated. And I think a different actor for Eli, and, of course, a different actor for Alex as well. But, you know, basically the same scene in the hangar. He's dead. And so he gives you the power to kill the advisor, which you do. You kind of zap him with your cool gravity gloves that you have in that game. And then he's saved. So you save Eli.

You basically undo the ending of episode two. and then the G-man is like, okay, cool, well, now you work for me, and he just walks away, and Alex has kind of left in this like nether realm outside of space and time, just like Gordon was at the end of half-life, and it just says she's been hired by the G-man, and he's like, oh, well, I'll find a use for you, you're going to be useful because Gordon isn't useful to me anymore. So then at the post-credits, final little stinger is that you are put into back into Gordon's feet, and Eli wakes up and Alex is gone, and he's like, where is she? She's gone. They've taken her.

You need to find her and he gives you the crowbar. And then you're like, are holding the crowbar in your VR hands. And it's the coolest goddamn thing ever if you're a huge nerd like me. And then the game is. So, okay, what does you two think? You just watched this. What does you think of it? It looks really cool.

It didn't make me wish I could play a VR game. The part where the G-Man was like blipping all around and there were a billion G-men and he was surrounding you, I was like, I bet this would be really cool in VR. It was. It was. It definitely looks good. I mean, it raised a lot of questions. It does.

So is there an alternate timeline now? Is Half-Life 2 no longer canon? Or the episodes no longer canon? Or does that timeline continue? What was going to happen? Is Gordon going to meet another version of Alex who never met him? Who's like 19 and I don't know, like on assignment? That'd be weird.

Here's my theory. So I do have a theory about this. I think, so first off, I think that they're going to be more Half-Ly. games. I think Valve is making more Half-Life games than that. I mean, maybe anything can happen. Yeah, I mean, they wouldn't do that episode if they didn't know, like, okay, we're doing something next. The only question is whether they'll

be in VR or not. Well, so that, and so my theory ties in with that. What I think has happened is that 19-year-old, so there's 19-year-old Alex, and there's like 27-year-old Alex or whatever, however old she is in Half-Life 2. 19-year-old Alex has been put into like a sort of parallel

timeline, but I think that there are actually two Alexes now. And it wouldn't surprise me if the one Alex undid the ending to Half-Life 2 and changed the past, so they can basically just write a whole new story. And there's going to be a 2D game, like a screen-based game where you play as Gordon Freeman, that will be Half-Life 3. And in that game, Alex has also gone missing, and who knows where that version of Alex is, but also there's a 19-year-old Alex who has been hired by the G-Man,

and she stars in VR games that they also will make. I think there are going to be two different Half-Life games because I would be surprised if all Half-Life becomes VR now, I guess it could happen, and I've seen a lot of people think that. But I don't know. I kind of, I think it would be really cool if there were two different worlds, and there was a Half-Life 3 that was on screens. So I interpret you getting the Crowbar and Alex is like them saying,

this is like in the next VR game, you're going to be smashing with the crowbar. I think that's a fair interpretation. Which is too bad, which bums me out. Yeah, and that you're going to play Gordon Freeman as opposed to continuing as Alex on her assignment. Maybe. There's so much in Half-Life Alex that's like her tools, the gloves she has that are all designed for VR. And nothing in actual Half-Life really works that well with VR. Like it's all just kind of specific to Half-Life.

I don't know. I could see them giving you the crowbar and it just being like a fun little thing, but then the next game isn't a screen. But I do understand that read of it, that they're just implying that it's all VR from here on now. So the other thing is that I think one of the reasons that they made this VR game is because, well, first of all, they always say that like HalfLife is like the intersection of art and technology and we want to have these technology technologies. But more practically speaking, Valve had a lot of money invested in their own VR headsets and this is a way to sell VR headsets. If you look at the other hardware they're coming out with, they have the steam deck coming this holiday season, which is their handheld steam machine type thing.

And it's easy to envision them wanting a HalfLife game that plays on that or some piece of software that plays on that. So maybe the next Half-Life is on that. Maybe the next Half-Life is not VR for that reason, so you can play it on the Steamback. I wonder how much Valve cares about making. I mean, I know they like making money off of everything, but like the thing that really made VR take off wasn't actually Half-Life-Falix. It was the Oculus Quest, too. And that isn't made by Valve.

And I would say the best way to play Half-Life-Falx is on Facebook's VR device. Like, I wonder how many indexes or whatever that $1,000 thing is that, I think it's the index that Valve makes. Like how many of that really sold. But regardless, it's not necessarily like a practical dream. It's more that they think of themselves as a hardware slash software companies and maybe their whole idea is that like we want to make software that's attached to this hardware. But I don't know. This is all speculation.

I don't know what their plans are. Next. Yeah, I'm curious. I really want more of these games. I want like it's kind of a drag. Like a thing I noticed in the Discord was that how hard of a time some people had playing Half Life 2, which hadn't occurred to me just because I've had a gaming PC forever. but it is hard to play the games. Like they're not on a lot of consoles.

And as a result, I think their influence has, like, it's like a second order influence now. Like people are being influenced by games that were influenced by Half-Life. But going back and playing them has really made me think, more modern games should be directly taking ideas from these games from 13 years ago

and using them. And I would hope that if this series comes back, there's definitely an institutional knowledge at Valve where they would be drawing ideas from Half-Life, and it would kind of bring some of these ideas back up, like just this style of like just first-person shooter combat or like this mix of puzzles and gameplay, the way they use their tools to like kind of delight you as a player.

I'd love to see that kind of just come back in a big way and then other people to be like, oh yeah, this is possible. Like, let's do more of this because I want to play more games like these. Yeah, I agree. I hope they stick with it. I just assume it'll take another eight years, 12 years? I don't know. We can talk about it then.

Obviously, the show will still be going on. But I just, I don't know. I don't know how. I'm not going to look forward to it because I'm just assuming it's not going to happen anytime soon. But it was cool to go back in time and check out half-life. Cool, cool games in my opinion. So it's interesting, Kirk, when I think about before I played these games this year,

when I think about like Half-Life Inspired games, I think about stuff like Stalker or not Stalker, Sorry, Metro, the stuff like Metro. Or other kind of shooters that are kind of dystopian, sci-fi-ish, that sort of thing. I guess I always thought of the Half-Life Influence as being that part of it. Yes. And then obviously there's the set pieces, which is another big thing, like the Call of Duty kind of branch of the Half-Life Influence is the big explosive, like things in the background blowing up and you see them and blah, blah, blah. Or you're in firefights with soldiers, like that sort of thing.

but the one thing that I don't think has been like carried on from Half-Life is the physics part of it and the gravity gun part of it. And that's sort of mechanic. Like you don't see a lot of that. And maybe in Titanfall, there's a bit of that. But like, I don't know. I didn't play Titanfall too. But you don't see a lot of that in like the shooters that are influenced by Half-Life as far as I know. And so one thing that Half-Life could have going for it is that it could be like the first game in a long time that does all that.

half-life things, including like having this sweet new mechanic that involves physics that can manipulate the world with that is just like unlike any other shooter. So looking forward to that if it happens. Yeah, yeah, me too. And I'm sure we'll still be making triple click when the next Half-Life game comes out and we'll talk about it. And we'll do a triple play then. Yeah. I will just say that I'm very happy that you both played this game. This was really fun for me. And it was fun for me to go back and play it as well. It's just cool to have, I don't know, more shared frames of reference because I really do still love the series and I still do after playing them, which is kind of a nice thing. So yeah, thanks to all the listeners who played along with us.

This is the end of our bets for this year. My God, what a saga. We did it. Just in time to do it again. Yeah, just in time to get into our 2022, that's. Who will win? We're just, we're going to find out in a few short months. Hope you guys are ready for more JRPGs. Yeah, we'll see. But Until then, this is a lot of fun. Thanks again to all of you for being members. And yeah, see both of you soon. See you later. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products

we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. And if you're listening to this bonus episode, it means you're already a member, so thank you. We really appreciate your support. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpodd, send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned, audience supported.