Odessa Cubbage took credit for Gordon Freeman's work

[Xendance]

I think this may have been discussed before, but anyway...
I was browsing Episode One's sound using GCFScape, and came to 'cit_youknowodessa.wav'

and he says,

Hey Dr. Freeman, I heard you were there when Odessa Cubbage took down the first gunship. That must have been a real honour for you. I am proud to say I have met someone who knew Odessa Cubbage.

 

[Asknoone]

I recently read a great Marc Laidlaw article on Cubbage, and how the name came from a spam email or something.

 

[ríomhaire]

Link please?

 

[Kevin]

Stupid gloryhogging british man.

 

[Shift]

Dont go being stereotypical now, its ok though, I crowbar'd him a few times before leaving, I did feel better.

 

[Godron]

I recently read a great Marc Laidlaw article on Cubbage, and how the name came from a spam email or something.

Yeah, I remember that one. It was about using characters to do important stuff for you. I think it said something about Lazlo and Sandy too.

Stupid gloryhogging british man.

Yes, I agree. Damn those stereotypical British bastards... they're everywhere :|

 

[Adabiviak]

I figured he'd do something like that when he asks someone else to carry the rocket launcher into battle. He's a post-apocalyptic great white hunter, complete with phony big-game hunting stories.

 

[Nitre]

The phony big-game hunting stories become even phonier(?) when you start talking about how you shot down a huge flying alien spaceship that shoots laser beams.

 

[Polaris]

Link please?

The Hypermodern Muse

Colonel Cubbage inhabits the seacoast town of New Little Odessa. He exists solely to give the player a rocket launcher. That was the extent of the original design for the guy, and for a long time he was known simply as rocketman.

Well, okay. In the old days, you would just put that rocket launcher in the middle of a room, maybe give it a spin, and expect the player to run over it and pick it up automatically. The underlying goal has not changed at all. We?re about to bring out a big monster. It?s time to give the player a weapon that can handle it. But once you?ve made the decision not to simply leave the rocket launcher in the middle of the floor, well, the sky?s the limit. In this case, we found ourselves with an opportunity to create a character, and a scene. Odessa Cubbage is a name I found in my spam filter, and it seemed to carry quite a bit of character with it. He was initially a random citizen in the town, but one whom all the other citizens looked up to for some reason.

Initially, Odessa was rather a tough guy. When gunships show up to attack his town, he rushes out and takes a few shots, demonstrating to the player exactly how to bring one down; but then he was to die, leaving the player to carry on. However, ultimately, the issue of Odessa dying became a sticky tangle. It proved necessary to have him remain in his basement, giving orders but never straying outside. From that point, it was a fairly small step to decide that Odessa Cubbage was actually a royal coward. He ordered his starry-eyed contingent about but never exposed himself to any actual danger. We gave him a fake English accent to make the player suspicious, and in the final detail work, we put a little dye in his hair. Everything about him reeks of the dubious. In some ways, the legend of Odessa Cubbage is as much fun to create as the legend of Gordon Freeman. And yet essentially he is one step up from taking that rocket launcher and sticking it in the middle of the floor just as a gunship shows up.

But I like to think that the group tasked with handing out that rocket launcher and faced with the dry task of training the player how to use it enjoyed their days a little more because they got to spend them with the utterly unreliable Odessa Cubbage.

As a footnote, a year or so ago when I googled ?Odessa Cubbage? to make sure I wasn?t using someone?s actual name, I was able to find one entry, distantly related to that original spam mailing I had received. In preparing this talk, I tried to track down that entry. I discovered that, among many other references, Col. Cubbage now has his own Wikipedia entry.

 

[Ridge]

Haha thats cool!

 

[Shift]

Awsome.

 

[Planetary]

Things like that really make me wish they'd go back and add a commentary feature to HL2. RTB just can't cut it, though there's some damn fine art in there!

Maybe it will be a surprise, like HL2DM was. Not just adding HDR to the Orange Box version and calling it a day.

 

[Xendance]

I'm going to post another thread later on things I've noticed in Episode One.

Im playing it with the commentry on, and its brilliant!

 

[Rapstah]

Alyx has a lot of unused voice files too. There's a couple that are about meeting naked Combine Soldiers, and one about fidning a duplicate of the Nova Prospekt teleporter in the Citadel.

 

[ríomhaire]

And one about finding a room full of treasure or artifacts or something.

 

[soulslicer]

great, you can make it just like the half-life 2 thread that was stickied..

 

[magiolle]

yes, and something about a shrine to Dr Breen, and Citadel giftshop... pity these aren't in the game, I even noclipped all citadel chapters...

 

[Xendance]

Can you tell me the path to these files?

 

[Ridge]

I think the Citadel gift shop was just a gag in the Frohman stories...

 

[Tuskin]

And one about finding a room full of treasure or artifacts or something.

Yeah she talks about you guys finding a place with all sorts of Info about Human history, then a wall or roof collapse.