If an Expansion was set in place....

Expansion

  • Continuation right after Barney escapes from Black Mesa.

    Votes: 12 22.6%

  • Something with Adrian Shepherd.

    Votes: 13 24.5%

  • Average Citizen during Portal Storms/7 hour War.

    Votes: 20 37.7%

  • Something related to Aperture.

    Votes: 2 3.8%

  • Other.

    Votes: 5 9.4%

  • Hate Expansions.

    Votes: 1 1.9%
  • Total voters
    53
M

MJ12

The Freeman
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By a different company, what would you want it to be about?

I'd go with the first, seeing as though Barney would probably fight during the Portal Storms/7 Hour War. Although seeing it through the eyes of an average citizen would be cool.
 
General Macho and his crew of Android assistants are told by the resistance to clear out an old zombie-infested town called 'Horrorville' during the seven-hour war.

Na, but I voted for 'Average Citizen during Portal Storms/7 hour War.'.
 
Speaking of which, if it were through the eyes of a random citizen there could be a part where they experience the Ravenholm bombing while trying to hide. That would be awesome.
 
Yeah, something to do with refugees. Too lazy to think of anything else.
 
The Barney option should be the missing week of HL2 A direct Blue Shift continuation is just a little too broad, and gets us no further in the story since there's an entire 20 years missing there. By saying 'Something with Adrian Shepherd' you've shown why there's no specific reason to bring him back.

The Average Citizen during Portal Storms / 7 Hour War option is two very different things really. The changing of Earth's rural areas / urbanisation versus all out catastrophic war. Both are interesting, but I kind of like the 7 Hour War remaining a mystery, especially at this point in the HL saga, when we don't really know what the Combine could throw at the uprising, who seem to be winning against weaker caretaking forces than those that must have subdued the planet in the first place.

'Something related to Aperture' should be the focus of the Portal games, there isn't really anything a Half-Life FPS can do there that's particularly interesting that a Portal game can't.

What I really want though, is a true Opposing Force 2. Not a sequel to Adrian Shepherd's happy-go-lucky good guy antics, but a Half-Life 2 era game played from the perspective of a combine soldier or Elite. I think the worst thing Valve has ever done Half-Life 2 wise is make these guys evil labotomised grunts apparently incapable of humane thought. I think it would be a lot more interesting to see them as Breen type-men and women who instead put their weapons where their mouths are (get your mind out of the gutter!). They fight alongside the combine because they know how hopeless it is to fight against them, and you see this all. Because you'd have an (ultimately incorrect) code-of honour, the game could contrast the soldiers against the Metrocops, who're just simple sadists who're incapable of the same vision as Breen and the higher ranking combine. The expansion (or series of expansions) could be about fighting the City 17 or another parallel rebellion, but it would show that the resistance perhaps go a little too far to get the combine out.
 
My two cents:

I voted for other; I think it would be extreamly interesting to play from the Combine PoV. One of the things I liked about the original HL was that when you fought the Marines, there was always that slight feeling of guilt, seeing as how you had killed a fellow human. Not a human under mind-control or zombified, but a Human fighting of his (mostly) free will.

Now picture you taking the role of a Combine soilder during, I donno, a large Rebel uprising. (Before Gordon) You would be doing somthing that seems wrong, and when a game makes you feel like that, it's a big differnece than shooting faceless aliens.
 
Create a Character and fight with the resistance.

Every game could use a Create a Character:thumbs:
 
Ennui said:
7 hour war would be awesome.
Click to expand...

Maybe. Or maybe not. The way I see it is that if you did that, you would have to either sacrifice "realism" or gameplay to make way for the other.

Think about it, the Combine most likly had HUGE amounts of "Synths 'n Soilders", so to get a "probable realism" factor you would need large amounts of Combine. That brings up a few problems with a single player similar to the HLs. One would be framerate. With many things happaning at once it might really hurt it. Second is gameplay. To make it balenced enough but still giving the "realizm" factor you would need large amounts of Human forces also. That would mean a few things. One is that that many units doing stuff would make you seem much less important and might just seem like you were "tagging along". That is what I didnt like about CoD4. You were just another soilder, but the whole advancement of you would have to happen before your buddies would go.

What I think might be intersting is a BattleField aproch to it. The Combine would be specilized, each player chosing a class (Soilder,Hunter,ect) and going to fight. The Humans would get a class that can do everything the other (human) classes can do, but better at one or two skills. It could operate like a "attack-defend" style, with the Combine "unlocking" more classes as the match goes on.
Example:

Start of match: Combine have Soilders and up to three Hunters.
Capturing 25% of map: Unlock dropship, 5 hunters max
50% of map: 2dropships,1 strider, 3 Combine Elite
75%of map:2 striders, 5 CE
Less than 5 mins in map:gunship.
 
I'd go with some form of citizen/rebel/armed force in the 7 hour war.

As to seeing life in the eyes of a combine... I don't think Valve did anything wrong with making them "evil labotomised grunts". The marines in Half-Life were human, and as seen in Opposing Force, they had their own agenda. But they were in the shit as much as everyone else, simply fighting to get out.

The Combine are far worse, and by making them seem so far off and inhumane, Valve stops you trying to empathize with them and start to hate them. The combine are evil. It's highly likely that anyone who becomes a combine undergoes some form of brainwashing. There ain't no humane side left.

I wouldn't mind seeing life as a Metrocop, however.
 
I wouldn't mind an expansion with Barney in it.

Though also, maybe an expansion with Gina Cross and Collete Green (HL: Decay)?
 
Druckles said:
As to seeing life in the eyes of a combine... I don't think Valve did anything wrong with making them "evil labotomised grunts". The marines in Half-Life were human, and as seen in Opposing Force, they had their own agenda. But they were in the shit as much as everyone else, simply fighting to get out.
Click to expand...
I strongly disagree. The Grunts in Half-Life are as one-dimensional as the Soldiers in Half-Life 2, probably worse because no-one has ever done nasty things to them to make them slaughter hundreds of unarmed people, whereas the Combine Soldiers are Guinea Pigs for Human advancement who are seen in the game only engaged with people who're pointing weapons back their way. This is the main reason why Opposing Force 1 is a lesson in storyline mediocrity: they don't humanise the grunts at all, they wipe the slate clean and make you 'Gordon Freeman mark II' precisely because the HECU never had a good enough justification for their actions.

Blue Shifter said:
I wouldn't mind an expansion with Barney in it.

Though also, maybe an expansion with Gina Cross and Collete Green (HL: Decay)?
Click to expand...
It'd be cool to see them come back, but I wonder if they'd bother doing with them as Player Characters. As NPCs though, Gina is supposedly the Hazard Course Hologram lady, so she's as much of a place in Half-Life 2 as Eli, Kliener, Barney and Magnusson even if not specifically as the 'Decay Gina'.
 
Pssshhh, look up 'Necrotics Inbound', my currently hiatus'ed mod. Now that's an expansion.
 
I don't want the old characters (including the protoganists) back or something about 7 Hour War. We need something completely new like Portal.
 
Barney after escaping black mesa.. or half of the expansion could be inside black mesa ? That would kick arse!
 
I'd like to see an expansion where you can play as a Vortigaunt lol :dork:
 
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