Honest Opinion on Half-Life 2

[schru]

If i wanted to play devil's advocate, i would say the combine are not the actual force that conquered earth, but just the peace keeping occupation troops that were left behind. The problem with that of course is that Gordon fights his way towards the heart of their power and no other kind of army shows up to stop him so i guess that was it lol.

Well, quite obviously what you fight for the most part is not the extra-terrestrial conquering force, but the 'transhuman arm of Sector Seventeen Overwatch', i.e., modified human forces left in place to maintain the occupation, with assistance from some adapted synths. Moreover, forces which probably were never tried in very demanding conflicts.

It's not really the case that Gordon fights his way to the heart of their power, as if he and the resistance beat them. The player is pursued for most of the game and has to scramble like a prey, while events eventually escalate around him, with his role being like that of an agent provocateur, as Dr Breen points out in a speech in Nova Prospekt. In that same speech he also says that their 'benefactors' are getting tired of their ineffectiveness and threatens them with being made redundant, whole the Overwatch announcer has funny messages about 'mission failure resulting in an off-world assignment'.

The street war goes on for a week without Gordon's involvement, and again it's more the case that Gordon slips through the chaos towards the Citadel, rather like in 'Surface Tension' and 'Forget about Freeman', with just two bigger confrontations taking place near the walls, giving the player just enough time to get inside.

As you go through some parts of the Citadel, it's obvious that the Combine is mobilizing much bigger forces. Dr Breen and the Advisers are not even that concerned with Gordon, seeing as they just pull him all the way up for an audience. I always thought that the view from above that you get of the city was supposed to feel bittersweet more than anything, after seeing the 'living' machinery and enormity of the Citadel.

The ending isn't even heroic—you blow up a reactor risking killing everyone, seemingly in accordance with some other scheme Breen was alluding to, seeing also as the G-Man takes you right out of the action then and there.

When you're back another week or so later in Episode One, the city around the Citadel is obliterated, presumably not because the resistance were effective at taking down the striders.

While blowing up the Citadel portal's reactor did leave the Combine cut off, they decide to sacrifice the whole thing to re-establish contact to their overworld. They end up obliterating the whole city, killing whoever's left. Episode Two is about preventing that design from succeeding, with the implication that whatever is left of humanity won't stand a chance otherwise.


All this aside, apart from the overly positive and polite attitude of the NPCs, which is just Valve's style, I think it's fair to say that Half-Life 2's plot is quite grim and has that nice thrill of being trapped in the midst of a desperate situation.

 

[masterridley2]

It was very good for its time. Don't know about now. I remember that I liked the "journey" very much. The experience.

People were so thirsty for episode 3... I don't remember anyone complaining

 

[Average Manatee]

If i wanted to play devil's advocate, i would say the combine are not the actual force that conquered earth, but just the peace keeping occupation troops that were left behind. The problem with that of course is that Gordon fights his way towards the heart of their power and no other kind of army shows up to stop him so i guess that was it lol.

The problem with that is that all the combine you fight are pretty clearly human (I think? Not sure if this is clarified). So... what did they invade earth with before they were using humans as foot soldiers?

Not that Half Life 2 lore really is something anyone should be concerned about.

 

[schru]

Adding to the above, conversely to what you, Lyric Suite and Hell Swarm write, the exact thing you charge Half-Life 2 with actually applies to the first game. Gordon goes to the alien home world (particulars of the back story aside), blasts his way through it head-on, and kills the alien mastermind in his base.

It's the misplaced nit-picking about things like this that make the tirades against Half-Life 2 on the Codex look emotionally charged and driven by some complex. These threads mostly fail rationally to express what the problem with the design of the game and mechanics is, or how the setting could have been even more interesting, instead coming up with childish contrarianism supported by poor recollection of the thing.

 

[Average Manatee]

Adding to the above, conversely to what you, Lyric Suite and Hell Swarm write, the exact thing you charge Half-Life 2 with actually applies to the first game. Gordon goes to the alien home world (particulars of the back story aside), blasts his way through it head-on, and kills the alien mastermind in his base.

There's a bit of a difference between "Gordon beats an important alien on first contact" and "Gordon fights up to the top of the capital building of a military empire that supposedly defeated all of Earth's militaries in ohmygosh 7 hours".

Like, obviously some allowance has to be made for the player having above human capabilities (partially explainable by the suit), but from everything we see in HL1 the HECU marines are pretty well able to shit on the invading alien species. The invasion beat the Black Mesa facility because they are staffed by mall cops and scientists, not by some extreme technological or military advantage. Hell their fucking wildlife does half the work. If you take Opposing Force as canon then a particularly good team of marines can also shit on an even more advanced alien species and kill their big bad boss.

We don't know their capabilities but 1. We can assume they are just as surprised at the Black Mesa Incident as we are, and therefore aren't prepared, and 2. They aren't a hyper advanced spacefaring civilization that so effortlessly outclasses the entire united militaries of Earth like the Combine did.

 

[seco]

Adding to the above, conversely to what you, Lyric Suite and Hell Swarm write, the exact thing you charge Half-Life 2 with actually applies to the first game. Gordon goes to the alien home world (particulars of the back story aside), blasts his way through it head-on, and kills the alien mastermind in his base.

It's the misplaced nit-picking about things like this that make the tirades against Half-Life 2 on the Codex look emotionally charged and driven by some complex. These threads mostly fail rationally to express what the problem with the design of the game and mechanics is, or how the setting could have been even more interesting, instead coming up with childish contrarianism supported by poor recollection of the thing.

What do you expect from /v/ crossposters?

 

[ColonelMace]

I enjoyed F.E.A.R more than Half Life 2.
I think F.E.A.R is dramatically underappreciated.

F.E.A.R

A bit scuffed. Aged a bit. Still good.

 

[seco]

I enjoyed F.E.A.R more than Half Life 2.
I think F.E.A.R is dramatically underappreciated.

F.E.A.R

A bit scuffed. Aged a bit. Still good.

More like overrated by ecelebs
The AI is not that good.

 

[ColonelMace]

overrated by ecelebs

Is it ? I haven't heard of F.E.A.R in more than ten years tbh.
Last time someone mentioned it was an old pal of mine who I played AvP2 with, bunny jumping online, recommending me the game.
I had a very good time with it. I don't remember the enemy AI being relevant, you just trigger Max Payne's bullet time and see ragdolling corpses fly around.

Good times.

 

[Hell Swarm]

I mean the combine are a multi-dimensional conquering force and yet 90% of the time the ones you are fighting look less futuristic or alien than some paramilitary outfits in modern times. Even City 17, why does it have to look like some old eastern European city. Because of muh WWII references?

If the original plan was implemented there's no reason for the combine to build a new city on top of the old one. They're mining the planet then leaving so who the fuck cares what's left on the dead rock?

You never feel you're fleeing the combine. The cops aren't very dangerous and neither are the manhacks. When you're "on the run" the head crabs are the most dangerous enemy and everything else folds to the pistol or the explosive barrels next to it.

It's the misplaced nit-picking about things like this that make the tirades against Half-Life 2 on the Codex look emotionally charged and driven by some complex. These threads mostly fail rationally to express what the problem with the design of the game and mechanics is, or how the setting could have been even more interesting, instead coming up with childish contrarianism supported by poor recollection of the thing.

Could you not be a faggot like this? When you accuse people of over emotional responses and how you're teh enlightened atheist who's only ever rational you just sound like a twat.

I played up until the air boat yesterday. I found the pistol to be inaccurate making fights annoying at range while the general game kept grinding to a halt to smash planks of wood or jump over barrels. Incredibly tedious to say the least. I have multiple complaints about the game design, including the stupid decision to make your sprint, oxygen and flash light the same meter for some reason. Drowning twice as fast because you used a torch is FUCKING STUPID. The physics puzzles lack essential object manipulation functionality so you're having to drop barrels on ledges and hope they don't land on their side again. Most enemy encounters are pretty bland or are physics puzzles waiting to happen with barrels placed to show you how cool the wood breaking is.

I am more than willing to give my time to Half-life 2. It was one of my favourite games when it came out and I enjoy the whole HL franchise (not played Alyx yet, Sorry VR fags but I don't want to be a VR woman). But returning to it with a decade or more since my last play through the only word that comes to mind is "Jank". Not an insult, just an incomplete physics engine and too many encounters built around it. I would still recommend the game but I wouldn't call barrel tilting to solve puzzles anything less than jank.

 

[schru]

Personally, i thought the combine were lame because they weren't aliens. They used humans with human weaponry as their foot soldiers and that shit just annoyed me. You gonna go with a war of the worlds style of plot let us fight some cool aliens not a rehash of the marines from Half Life 1 that were worse than the latter in every way.

I mean the combine are a multi-dimensional conquering force and yet 90% of the time the ones you are fighting look less futuristic or alien than some paramilitary outfits in modern times. Even City 17, why does it have to look like some old eastern European city. Because of muh WWII references?

There's just so many strange hair brained ideas in Half Life 2. I don't know how Valve managed to lose the pulse of the first game in the time it took them to make the sequel.

I think the Combine are interesting precisely because they're not just hammy, cartoonish space aliens; or even if they were done in a very unusual and creative way.

War of the Worlds is just one of the inspirations that contributed to the game, and it's the combination with the more 'grounded' five-minutes-into-the-future techno-totalitarianism taking hints from Nineteen Eighty-Four that creates something relatively unique.

The setting is explicit enough about the alien presence from the beginning, yet it keeps you wondering about its exact nature, giving more subtle hints of transhumanism at first and showing the more alien beings and structures little by little. There's a nicely organic impression to the arrangement with the collaborating human government on the one hand, and the impersonal side of the seemingly animate machine of the walls that devour the city and the monumental Citadel, with its crude efficiency, on the other. Then there's the desolation of the land outside, the decay and occasional body horror of the zombies.

As for City 17's being Eastern European, it's another odd complaint. One might not care about in-setting details like relocations to keep the population mixed up and uprooted, but post-Soviet surroundings were a very good thematic match for the Orwellian dystopia. The contrast between the inhuman, alien technology and the older, not entirely modernized cityscapes was also a nice touch.

I don't think Valve was trying to allude to the Second World War, the Nazis, or the Holocaust in particular, if that's what you have in mind. There's a bit of that there, like the APC bearing a vague resemblance to the Sd.Kfz. 251, round-ups and street executions, or literally dehumanized slave labour; but if anything, the negative connotations lean much more towards progressive-scientific totalitarianism, what with the post-Communist background, transhumanism, and overcoming human nature to 'turn its eyes towards the stars'. There's even the motif of concentrating humanity inside mega-cities.

Adding to the above, conversely to what you, Lyric Suite and Hell Swarm write, the exact thing you charge Half-Life 2 with actually applies to the first game. Gordon goes to the alien home world (particulars of the back story aside), blasts his way through it head-on, and kills the alien mastermind in his base.

It's the misplaced nit-picking about things like this that make the tirades against Half-Life 2 on the Codex look emotionally charged and driven by some complex. These threads mostly fail rationally to express what the problem with the design of the game and mechanics is, or how the setting could have been even more interesting, instead coming up with childish contrarianism supported by poor recollection of the thing.

What do you expect from /v/ crossposters?

But I like Lyric Suite senpai. I want to see how far I can mellow him when it comes to the game.

Also, I liked F.E.A.R.

 

[Morenatsu.]

I mean the combine are a multi-dimensional conquering force and yet 90% of the time the ones you are fighting look less futuristic or alien than some paramilitary outfits in modern times. Even City 17, why does it have to look like some old eastern European city. Because of muh WWII references?

If the original plan was implemented there's no reason for the combine to build a new city on top of the old one. They're mining the planet then leaving so who the fuck cares what's left on the dead rock?

You never feel you're fleeing the combine. The cops aren't very dangerous and neither are the manhacks. When you're "on the run" the head crabs are the most dangerous enemy and everything else folds to the pistol or the explosive barrels next to it.

It's the misplaced nit-picking about things like this that make the tirades against Half-Life 2 on the Codex look emotionally charged and driven by some complex. These threads mostly fail rationally to express what the problem with the design of the game and mechanics is, or how the setting could have been even more interesting, instead coming up with childish contrarianism supported by poor recollection of the thing.

Could you not be a faggot like this? When you accuse people of over emotional responses and how you're teh enlightened atheist who's only ever rational you just sound like a twat.

I played up until the air boat yesterday. I found the pistol to be inaccurate making fights annoying at range while the general game kept grinding to a halt to smash planks of wood or jump over barrels. Incredibly tedious to say the least. I have multiple complaints about the game design, including the stupid decision to make your sprint, oxygen and flash light the same meter for some reason. Drowning twice as fast because you used a torch is FUCKING STUPID. The physics puzzles lack essential object manipulation functionality so you're having to drop barrels on ledges and hope they don't land on their side again. Most enemy encounters are pretty bland or are physics puzzles waiting to happen with barrels placed to show you how cool the wood breaking is.

I am more than willing to give my time to Half-life 2. It was one of my favourite games when it came out and I enjoy the whole HL franchise (not played Alyx yet, Sorry VR fags but I don't want to be a VR woman). But returning to it with a decade or more since my last play through the only word that comes to mind is "Jank". Not an insult, just an incomplete physics engine and too many encounters built around it. I would still recommend the game but I wouldn't call barrel tilting to solve puzzles anything less than jank.

Yeah, Half-Life 2, the game from 2004, when the only example of a physics-heavy game was Trespasser, totally has shit physics 'cause you gotta tilt a barrel to get that one super-secret battery.

Trespasser did have rotation, but that game is a excellent argument against physics manipulation. THAT is jank.

 

[schru]

I mean the combine are a multi-dimensional conquering force and yet 90% of the time the ones you are fighting look less futuristic or alien than some paramilitary outfits in modern times. Even City 17, why does it have to look like some old eastern European city. Because of muh WWII references?

If the original plan was implemented there's no reason for the combine to build a new city on top of the old one. They're mining the planet then leaving so who the fuck cares what's left on the dead rock?

You never feel you're fleeing the combine. The cops aren't very dangerous and neither are the manhacks. When you're "on the run" the head crabs are the most dangerous enemy and everything else folds to the pistol or the explosive barrels next to it.

It's the misplaced nit-picking about things like this that make the tirades against Half-Life 2 on the Codex look emotionally charged and driven by some complex. These threads mostly fail rationally to express what the problem with the design of the game and mechanics is, or how the setting could have been even more interesting, instead coming up with childish contrarianism supported by poor recollection of the thing.

Could you not be a faggot like this? When you accuse people of over emotional responses and how you're teh enlightened atheist who's only ever rational you just sound like a twat.

I'm just saying that some people here have a grievance against the game to the point that it clouds their mind and they latch onto certain things in a childish way. Or they just can't be bothered. But I do like how the Codex is actually critical of things, but with HL2 it's more like a biannual bashing festival, which hurts a little.

I played up until the air boat yesterday. I found the pistol to be inaccurate making fights annoying at range while the general game kept grinding to a halt to smash planks of wood or jump over barrels. Incredibly tedious to say the least. I have multiple complaints about the game design, including the stupid decision to make your sprint, oxygen and flash light the same meter for some reason. Drowning twice as fast because you used a torch is FUCKING STUPID. The physics puzzles lack essential object manipulation functionality so you're having to drop barrels on ledges and hope they don't land on their side again. Most enemy encounters are pretty bland or are physics puzzles waiting to happen with barrels placed to show you how cool the wood breaking is.

I am more than willing to give my time to Half-life 2. It was one of my favourite games when it came out and I enjoy the whole HL franchise (not played Alyx yet, Sorry VR fags but I don't want to be a VR woman). But returning to it with a decade or more since my last play through the only word that comes to mind is "Jank". Not an insult, just an incomplete physics engine and too many encounters built around it. I would still recommend the game but I wouldn't call barrel tilting to solve puzzles anything less than jank.

Yes, I'd basically agree with most of the above. I'd keep the pistol inaccurate because I don't think the player is supposed to be very effective in combat in this sort of game, but the encounters are just so plainly easy early on—basically a shooting gallery. Some of it is fun, when the enemies line up next to barrels or on collapsing planks, but it shouldn't all have been done so rigidly.

The suit energy thing is an oddity. I wonder if Valve would just explain their reasoning now, if someone wrote them.

I wouldn't add object rotation, as I think Valve's approach of keeping everything very straightforward and seamless is right for the sort of games they make. It can be a hindrance in a few cases, but the puzzles generally don't require it and there are many generic objects lying around to pick from.

The barrel explosions and ragdoll effects are among the best to this day, but yes, it's just too cheesy the way they made them all identical and extremely easy to recognize, and then placed them around that much in perfect spots too.

I've played the game so many times that I'm quite sick of it myself, but I still respect it on the basis of the initial few plays. I wouldn't ever describe the game as janky, as I think it's quite the opposite, but regardless of its polish, it just lacks depth or challenge much of the time. The set pieces make a nice early impression, but there's so little dynamism and reactivity in those early parts. The physics puzzles are tiresome once you know them, and it is a shame that Valve didn't really try anything very elaborate with them.

Those old E3 trailers of the game presented a more interesting vision of something like a survival-action game, and it is a shame the final version isn't really like that.

 

[Average Manatee]

Honestly can't remember a time when you had to achieve a specific rotation with objects in HL2, unless you are trying to boost to some secret area or skip something.

 

[schru]

Adding to the above, conversely to what you, Lyric Suite and Hell Swarm write, the exact thing you charge Half-Life 2 with actually applies to the first game. Gordon goes to the alien home world (particulars of the back story aside), blasts his way through it head-on, and kills the alien mastermind in his base.

There's a bit of a difference between "Gordon beats an important alien on first contact" and "Gordon fights up to the top of the capital building of a military empire that supposedly defeated all of Earth's militaries in ohmygosh 7 hours".

He doesn't do that, though. He stumbles through circumstances beyond his control, like in the first game, and then, after causing some havoc, gets invited to the main office of an outpost.

In the first game he actually faces up against something like the core of the invading alien forces, though granted, they probably weren't planning to invade and weren't really in their home world.

Like, obviously some allowance has to be made for the player having above human capabilities (partially explainable by the suit), but from everything we see in HL1 the HECU marines are pretty well able to shit on the invading alien species. The invasion beat the Black Mesa facility because they are staffed by mall cops and scientists, not by some extreme technological or military advantage. Hell their fucking wildlife does half the work. If you take Opposing Force as canon then a particularly good team of marines can also shit on an even more advanced alien species and kill their big bad boss.

The Marines can hold their own to an extent, until they can't. After all, there's a whole chapter about their withdrawal because they can't handle the situation.

The events of Opposing Force are more low-key, but in all the games the protagonists succeed against greater odds because they're protagonists. The framing is what matters and I think it's appropriate enough in all these games.

We don't know their capabilities but 1. We can assume they are just as surprised at the Black Mesa Incident as we are, and therefore aren't prepared, and 2. They aren't a hyper advanced spacefaring civilization that so effortlessly outclasses the entire united militaries of Earth like the Combine did.

1. They're probably not as surprised, because they're there to retrieve the crystal used in the experiment, among other possible reasons.

2. They have developed psychic faculties, to the point that they can use them to fight and teleport, so it's more fitting to say that they function in different ways and don't need technology so much. Their being established in Xen, with it being referred to as the 'border world', also implies something more than the usual science fiction tropes, I think. It's still filtered through the current, or perhaps now passing, lens of rigid physicalism, but with Laidlaw's Buddhist inspirations, the allusion to Zen, the 'flower-heads', the spiritual disposition of the vortigaunts in the later games, and what-not,that world is probably a stand-in for the 'intermediary region' or 'subtle modalities' of existence. Since the Nihilanth was able to flee there from the Combine (I think as much was confirmed by Laidlaw in his responses to fan email), he and his forces are something else entirely. Then there's also the Combine connexion, in the end.

Personally, i thought the combine were lame because they weren't aliens. They used humans with human weaponry as their foot soldiers and that shit just annoyed me. You gonna go with a war of the worlds style of plot let us fight some cool aliens not a rehash of the marines from Half Life 1 that were worse than the latter in every way.

I mean the combine are a multi-dimensional conquering force and yet 90% of the time the ones you are fighting look less futuristic or alien than some paramilitary outfits in modern times. Even City 17, why does it have to look like some old eastern European city. Because of muh WWII references?

There's just so many strange hair brained ideas in Half Life 2. I don't know how Valve managed to lose the pulse of the first game in the time it took them to make the sequel.

The setting is explicit enough about the alien presence from the beginning, yet it keeps you wondering about its exact nature, giving more subtle hints of transhumanism at first and showing the more alien beings and structures little by little. There's a nicely organic impression to the arrangement with the collaborating human government on the one hand, and the impersonal side of the seemingly animate machine of the walls that devour the city and the monumental Citadel, with its crude efficiency, on the other. Then there's the desolation of the land outside, the decay and occasional body horror of the zombies.

I meant to add here that, as the game goes on, the intrusive Combine architecture in places like the prison, culminates in the alienness of the interior of the Citadel nicely.

As far as aliens in popular culture go, I think the synths like striders and gunships, with their movement and the noises they make, are something memorable. Then there's the Advisers, who, while mysterious, of course don't feature in the gameplay itself.

Valve already did a bit of a pulpy take on aliens in the first game, so at least the tone of the sequel would have called for something more elaborate. I can see, though, how one would expect some more surprises later in the game, given the expectation created around it.

It seems like Episode Three was going to have something more alien in it, judging by the concept art:

Spoiler

https://combineoverwiki.net/images/9/9b/Ep3_xen_islands.jpg

https://combineoverwiki.net/images/a/a7/Ep3_xen_advisor.jpg

 

[Hell Swarm]

Yeah, Half-Life 2, the game from 2004, when the only example of a physics-heavy game was Trespasser, totally has shit physics 'cause you gotta tilt a barrel to get that one super-secret battery.

Trespasser did have rotation, but that game is a excellent argument against physics manipulation. THAT is jank.

When it came out isn't important. The physics hinders the game in many ways when you play it now.

Honestly can't remember a time when you had to achieve a specific rotation with objects in HL2, unless you are trying to boost to some secret area or skip something.

There's a room full of explosive barrels and a water raising puzzle. You need to turn a barrel upright to reach the ledge to proceed. No boxes in the room and you can't use a laying down barrel. It's mandatory progression.

 

[foxyscooter]

you will not convince me that this game is worth $40 ,nope.....

 

[seco]

You should kys already.

 

[ind33d]

HL2DM is the best half-life

 

[orcinator]

The problem with that is that all the combine you fight are pretty clearly human (I think? Not sure if this is clarified). So... what did they invade earth with before they were using humans as foot soldiers?

Not that Half Life 2 lore really is something anyone should be concerned about.

HL2 is an allegory for the war in Afghanistan where the Taliban killed more U.S. "trained" Afghanis than the U.S. killed Talibans

 

[schru]

Yeah, Half-Life 2, the game from 2004, when the only example of a physics-heavy game was Trespasser, totally has shit physics 'cause you gotta tilt a barrel to get that one super-secret battery.

Trespasser did have rotation, but that game is a excellent argument against physics manipulation. THAT is jank.

When it came out isn't important. The physics hinders the game in many ways when you play it now.

Honestly can't remember a time when you had to achieve a specific rotation with objects in HL2, unless you are trying to boost to some secret area or skip something.

There's a room full of explosive barrels and a water raising puzzle. You need to turn a barrel upright to reach the ledge to proceed. No boxes in the room and you can't use a laying down barrel. It's mandatory progression.

You don't need a barrel there, neither to reach the valve nor to get across.

 

[Morenatsu.]

There's a room full of explosive barrels and a water raising puzzle. You need to turn a barrel upright to reach the ledge to proceed. No boxes in the room and you can't use a laying down barrel. It's mandatory progression.

No, you need it for the secret battery. Seems like you're half-remembering that and confusing it with the main path?

 

[Hell Swarm]

There's a room full of explosive barrels and a water raising puzzle. You need to turn a barrel upright to reach the ledge to proceed. No boxes in the room and you can't use a laying down barrel. It's mandatory progression.

No, you need it for the secret battery. Seems like you're half-remembering that and confusing it with the main path?

There's a ledge on the left side of the room you need to climb. There's multiple barrels under it and no other obvious path. If it's not madatory the other path is much less obvious than the one presented to you.

 

[Morenatsu.]

There's a room full of explosive barrels and a water raising puzzle. You need to turn a barrel upright to reach the ledge to proceed. No boxes in the room and you can't use a laying down barrel. It's mandatory progression.

No, you need it for the secret battery. Seems like you're half-remembering that and confusing it with the main path?

There's a ledge on the left side of the room you need to climb. There's multiple barrels under it and no other obvious path. If it's not madatory the other path is much less obvious than the one presented to you.

Just use the ladder bro

 

[Hell Swarm]

Just use the ladder bro

There isn't one bro. And if you think HL2 ladders are remotely usable to jump off of onto a pipe from the main one you're an idiot. Ladders barely work, they don't work enough to make jumps like that.



57:30. He jumps on a railing and then along a pipe to get up there. So it is possible without physics shit but it's not the obvious solution when they put barrels under the ledge as I said.