Cars and Design in Half-Life 2

[Cdti]

Well... Although Half Life 2 is generally works great at the environment design, there's a huge flaw in urban vehicle design (I'm talking about the car wrecks, that are scattered throughout City 17, and the outskirts).

First - Why they are all damaged like this, and still parked at the garages, like no one ever touched them.

Ok, that's the minor part, you could argue about that. Here comes the worst part: Half-Life Xen accident takes place somewhere in 2000's, and after a decade or two of chaos on earth, we are back to some eastern european city, presumably Sofia (Bulgaria). Nevertheless, all cars you can find in the game are from Soviet era. I mean - there are no vehicles from 1990's and 2000's.

C'mon Valve, where's the cheap Korean hardware at least?

 

[Drackard]

I can see where your coming from, but then again your not looking out for a lambourghini or ferrari in the middle of playing hl2 are you ?

 

[Cdti]

Yep. But some mid 90's Volvo, or Volkswagen would do the trick.

 

[Dekstar]

I would have thought it's because essentially you're not on Earth, you're in a fantasy universe. For most people, seeing a car they may recognise would draw them out of the experience of being in a scenario like that.

 

[Drackard]

"Wow look at that V12x5 920zxc Engine :O"

 

[tehsolace]

I think the cars are very obvious and don't draw attention in the least, which is exactly the intention that valve wanted. They're not car designers, nor are their modelling designers, and I think their cars do just fine.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

Even though I am sure a HL2: Re-vamped car mod would be very well received by the Half-life -playing car fanatics (which I'm sure number somewhere among the fifties), I probably wouldn't bother installing it...

 

[bbson john]

Eastern Europe = pre-USSR

And behind the mini-lorries which loads ammo have a lambda icon behind.

 

[Cdti]

No, it just makes no sense - It is on Earth, and vehicles should represent 2000's and 90's. And the ones in Half-Life 2 are from mid 80's.

Well then, what if City 17 was full of 30's cars?

Honestly, I think the problem is in stereotypes. Valve thought - like if it's going to be in eastern europe - it should represent the famous old and outdated Soviet vehicles.

For me it doesn't feel quite right.

 

[Tyguy]

did you happen to notice that the cars are minor compared to the rest of the enviroment....IE the buldings, clothing, guns...etc

 

[Cdti]

I don't see any trouble in that. The only thing that doesn't fit is vehicle design.

Well, maybe TV sets are little outdated too... but there aren't much of them
anyway.

 

[Remus]

did you happen to notice that the cars are minor compared to the rest of the enviroment....IE the buldings, clothing, guns...etc

Have you ever been to Eastern Europe? I live here and I can say that the they nailed the architecture perfectly. There are plenty of buildings like those you can see in City17 even in my home town. However I do agree about the cars, WTF? There still are old cars around here like from the 60ies or 70ies, but the majority are new cars from the 90ies or 2000.

 

[Drackard]

Life would be a lot easier if everyone stopped comparing models and details of a fantasy game to reality

 

[Leonidas]

There must be a reason for this, since making a modern-looking car design shouldn't be too hard. I can understand Valve not wanting to pay real automakers to license their designs, but generic modern car models would have, I think, increased the immersion. As it stands, you can almost believe City 17 is not a real place, not even on Earth. But the realistic architecture suggests Valve do want us to believe this is the new state of the earth, and new car models, at the cost of extra polygons to make the curvier, aerodynamic designs, would help.

 

[Catachan]

Well they couldn't get too close to real cars I imagine due to licensing issues that would arise from it.

 

[Drackard]

There must be a reason for this, since making a modern-looking car design shouldn't be too hard. I can understand Valve not wanting to pay real automakers to license their designs, but generic modern car models would have, I think, increased the immersion. As it stands, you can almost believe City 17 is not a real place, not even on Earth. But the realistic architecture suggests Valve do want us to believe this is the new state of the earth, and new car models, at the cost of extra polygons to make the curvier, aerodynamic designs, would help.

But then after the war for humanity you can't expect them to keep their natural state can you.

 

[victor]

Valve wanted to contrast the advanced combine technology with the crap we have. And 20 years into the future todays cars would seem old, but now they seem new, and because they seem new to us the effect wouldn't be the same.

 

[Citadel]

I think the cars aren't too bad in themselves but I suppose you could argue they are all damaged because of when the combine attacked there would have been carnage as they didn't have overwatch soldiers as they were only established when the combine had conquered the earth. But they had synths and a strider is a synth, so they probably used their warp cannon throughout the city and it has immense power. So that probably accounts for all the cars wrecked throughout the city. From the 7 hour war. If they could conquer earth in 7 hours then they probably would have had to wreak immense wreak carnage annd smash all buildings in their path (and cars). The same accounts for the war through City 17, citezens probably wanted to escape or were determined to escape, as the oppurtunity to had arisen. And as for the cars being parked in the garages destroyed but virtually untouched. Well when you are shot by a striders warp cannon you aren't sent flying through the universe so why should a car much heavier than Gordon Freeman (even in that dratted HEV suit lol).

That is assuming you are actually on earth............... As someone has suggested, this is a fantasy universe so they aren't going to all the trouble of signing licensing agreements for a miniscule purpose in the game. But it would be appreciated if anyone made a mod to change the cars to more LIKE, real life cars.

Anyway thats both reality and story theories out of the way so there you have it lol.

 

[Przemek]

The only thing that troubles me in HL2's cars is that the Trabant Combi is metal. In reality, this car was plastic and paper (no, this is no joke, it really was that way)

Anyway, Cdti - I haven't really payed attention before, but you are right, there are no modern cars on the streets of City 17. I believe this was done on purpose, just like someone said in this thread, to increase the contrast of human tech and combine tech.

 

[Petergeist]

I don't know the Half Life story very well, is the HL world even supposed to parallel our real world? Is a specific year even mentioned anywhere, to suggest that the HL world is an alternative version of our real world (as it is/was during the period of said year)? If not, then they obviously took the liberty of creating an almost completely new world, which doesn't need to reflect our real world with any degree of accuracy (as far as fashion goes, and cars and stuff like that), and this discussion is pretty pointless. To give an example of something similar, the movie "Brazil" comes to mind, which is vaguely placed "somewhere in the 20th century", in a world which has cars that look like they're from the 40s, mixed with relatively modern trucks, 80s computers, and stuff that doesn't resemble anything from the real world as far as I can tell.
Anyway, in my opinion, the cars in HL2 do a good job of conveying the eastern europe atmosphere, along with the architecture and other stuff. It would not have been the same if they used a generic modern car design, because that is not something that is specific to eastern europe. Those who know what a LADA looks like, will instantly recognize the HL2 car design and immediately associate it with eastern europe, which I think is why they used it in the first place.

 

[Cdti]

Maybe you're right about the atmosphere. But then again Half-Life 2 tries to stick with reality. Even PCs (found in Half Life 2) are modern and not some Bulgarian spectrum clones.

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

I scrutinized the vehicles trying to figure out what engines they were. :|
The dune buggy and hydrocraft, and what not.

 

[Apocalypse89]

I think Valve just took some artistic license to keep modern cars out of the game. The whole "Eastern European dystopia" atmosphere would be lost if you suddenly see a ruined Honda Civic in the middle of the street.

 

[Canadian Gunner]

To be fair, not all of the cars are old soviet vehicles. Look at these ones:

They're not exactly new, but look like they're from the late 80's and early 90's. This car (which was included in the game)

was apparently made until 1994, so they're not all that old. Also remember that the portal storms started what, 2000ish? so we could assume that they didn't make too many new cars after that. Therefore it's feasible that such older models (the hatchbacks from the 80's, not so much the old soviet cars) would still be around. But yeah, it would have been nice to see newer cars...

 

[Cdti]

Well, you do have a point here, though the car on the screen shot is one of the latest Soviet produced vehicles.

And the picture you just showed us - is a typical eastern european setting.
Note that majority of background cars are from mid 90's to 2000's.

 

[Drackard]

I don't know the Half Life story very well, is the LADA looks like, will instantly recognize the HL2 car design and immediately

I do .. horrid little cars, mum used to drive one for a short time while her's was being repaired .. most embarrassing moments of my life driving round in that thing lol

 

[A Big Fat CoW]

Let's see...

The MP7 has grenade launcher, which IRL they do not (also, said grenades are larger than the barrel that fires them.)

They also hold 45 round with no sign of an extended magazine, whereas IRL they fire only 20 (or 40 if extended)

The pulse rifle reloads in a way that makes no sense (especially compared to the ammo pickups for it)

The SPAS-12 holds 6 shots instead of 8, and can "double-blast", something which modern shotguns can't do without a second barrel.

Grenades have a bright red light on them and make sounds before they explode.

Gordon seems to have an infinite amount of bugbait.


I'm sure there's a lot more, too. Really, though, the average player isn't going to notice, or care, about any of these (including the cars). It's just a design decision that strays slightly from reality in order to achieve a goal of creating the sort of atmosphere the game was aiming for.

Really, I'm more concerned about Vortigaunts having no visible reproductive organs or any "waste outlets". How do they make babigaunts, and where does their food go? :O

 

[Que-Ever]

Can you imagine a vortigaunt walking around with a huge flopping wang waving around between it's legs? Hawt.

 

[Cdti]

Weapons are futuristic since they are in use by the combine.

 

[Sulkdodds]

They're not ALL that old, but I take your point about people thinking 'ah! Eastern Europe! Scuzzy!"

Alternate theory: it's supposed to be evocative of eastern europe under Comecon and the Soviet Union. Throughout the game there are echoes of both the Nazi and the Soviet regimes. Seems to me that it could have been a conscious decision to sacrifice a modicrum of realism in favour of creating the right ambience.

 

[bat_lyubo]

By the way, didn't anyone notice that there is a Volkswagen GOLF in the game as well? The rest of the cars are real models from the Soviet era and in some of the apartment blocks you can see posters advertising them (LOL)
So maybe these are the best cars you could get in that place. And anyhow,a contrast is being made between futuristic technology and opressive life. Plus, it really adds to the atmosphere having those old skips.