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Has any entry in the Half Life series really explained anything? We get little glimpses into certain events, some from different perspectives (like the Black Me
by justsayinyaknow 9y ago
Has any entry in the Half Life series really explained anything? We get little glimpses into certain events, some from different perspectives (like the Black Mesa incident). We never get the whole picture and what we, as the player, know is told to us by other characters or shown through events we experience.
- wbillingsley 9y agoYes, in that HL1 & 2 played on such well known tropes that it only needed to show you the scene and you knew the story. The opening was laden with every disaster movie signal (up to and including "Nothing will go wrong" said in emphatic tones). The lift doors in Office Complex open to archetypal zombie horror. The scientist getting gunned down by the military cover up in We've Got Hostiles hits any number of movie tropes while clearly signalling the next bit is Rambo-style action... It's fairly similar to the first Star Wars movie, in that because it is hitting the tropes quickly and clearly, and jumping from setting to setting, it can tell the story very efficiently.
- justsayinyaknow 9y agoMy point was there are no arbitrary narrative components like computer terminals where you read a dead guy's email that explicitly explains the set up in text format. Or whatever, that seems to be a really common (lazy) way to tell a story. I would argue that what you said is all about show vs tell. Which is a good thing for visual media.
- brianpgordon 9y agoI love those terminals and books in the Deus Ex series. They flesh out the world with much more detail than could ever be shared in cutscenes or NPC dialogue.