Lightknight said:
It has an excellent story
What story ? Can you explain the story, its premise and conclusion ? You cannot, because nothing is ever explained and nothing is ever resolved. I dont think story was even in the plans. Its not that it makes HL2 a bad game, but talking about its superb story is simply laughable.
Was Laidlaw involved in the second game writing at all ? Because the first game actually HAD a story.
Gordon comes out of stasis and finds the world's been conquered by the combine. He meets up with his former colleague Morgan Freeman, but the combine track him and assault the building they're in. Gordon escapes, but Morgan is captured, so once Gordon learns of that he heads to Nova Prospekt to bust him out. Gordon raids Nova Prospekt and that ignites a rebellion against the combine, which eventually leads Gordon to the Citadel. Gordon fights his way through the citadel and eventually destroys the portal at the top.
Compare this to the "story" of Fallout 1 (minor spoilers):
The Overseer inexplicitly decides to send a single person on a quest to find a water purifier which if not found would doom everyone in the vault. Already there are glaring holes in the plot. First of all, an intelligent person would've sent a team out to find such an important device, and secondly that device, if so valuable, shouldn't of been so hard to replace. The entire premise of the plot is illogical and only serves as a pig trough to feed the player's ego and convince him that he's some kind of hero.
Next you head out into the wasteland to complete the overseers ill-concieved tasks, and one of the first things you notice is that you have a time limit. Now, I get that the time limit is there to instill the player with a sense of urgency and everything, but it's simply another cheap, incongruous ploy to dazzle the player. First of all, everything else in the game is fairly open ended and there're multiple awnsers to a lot of the quests, so why is it that the main plot is so fucking linear and shoehorned? The awnser is that the devs thought up the whole water chip thing and decided it was the most "epic" approach possible, and so they adamently refused to change it even though it was restricting and conflicted with so many other areas of the game. Second problem with the time limit: it suggests that everyone else in the vault is too incompetant to find a solution (temporary or permanent) to their water problem and are reluctant to even try. And not only is the time limit out of place, but it's completely inconsequential as well since there's no way you couldn't complete the stupiud water task in 250 days.
Moving on, so now that you've gotten the quest and seen the timelimit you head out into the wasteland to complete a series of inane, stereotypical RPG quests in what could only be described as the worlds edgiest take on post-apoclyptic America. Eventually you find the purifier, kill some idiotic mutants and then return home. Now, this brings us to the finale. The devs, in their drive to be edgy and hardcore, decide that a happy ending would be too lame for their X-TREME audience and so they shoehorn an illogical plot twist where the overseer kicks you out of the vault on the grounds that you might inspire other vault dwellers to leave. First of all, you just defeated an army of supermutants and shit, you'd be the vaults #1 asset and could pretty much guarentee it's safe existance throughout your lifetime, this pro sure as hell outways the con of tricking a few retards into leaving. Secondly, why would people be leaving anyways? No normal human would venture out of their comfy little pre-war vault into some barren desert full of incredibly dangerous shit. If people listen to your story of how giant rats tore off hunks of your legs the moment you stepped outside and then decide that they want to relive that experience, I'd say it'd be beneficial to get rid of them. Thirdly: why does the overseer not just tell you to keep your exploits toned down? There are plent of more logical ways the overseer could've handled your return, and yet he inexplicitly takes the "dark humour" approach of exciling you for such weak reasons.
So in summary, HL2 had a pretty mature and logical story compared even to the best of it's competition. Many video games shoehorn stupid retarded bs in to exploit the player's tenuous grasp on reality and juvenile appetite for edgy, hip and "epic" content. A less mature person would fail to appreciate HL2's seamless storyline and fantastic ingame narrative. Sadly those people are unavoidable casualities of modern gaming, and they will not be missed.
