HALF-LIFE2

RAISING THE BAR

HALF-LIFE2
RAISING THE BAR
By Valve

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CONTENTS
f Foreword by Gabe Newell 05
| .j1 Investigation 1: Anomalous Materials_
.01 Half-Life: A Nonstandard Specimen 08
.02 E*tra Life: The Mod Movement 44
,j3 Investigation 2: Unexpected Interference_
.03 Half-Life 2: Creature Discomforts 70
.04 Half-Life 2: Digital Drama 118
.05 Half-Life 2: Welcome to City 17 160
.00 Half-Life 2: Final Sequence 254
FOREWORD BY GABE NEWELL
As I write this, i Save the world’s worst case of stage fright. After six years and tens of millions of dollars,
after break-ins and lawsuits, after marriages and children and divorces and deaths, we’re about to ship
Half-Ufe 2. You, the reads, know how the launch of Hill-Ufe2 went. You havB read the reviews, seen the
sales figures, hBard about awards (or the lack thereof), and best at all, you’ve played the finished game.
We've done none of these. Did we create a worthy successor to rtsff-Dife? Did we live up to gamer's expec¬
tations? Did we ftall it off? You know, and I don't, and that seems terribly unfair to me right non.

What also seems terribly unfair to me is the disproportionate credit I receive for Valve's success. I am part
of a team, and part of what I do is act as a public (ace for the corporation (for example, writing forewords).
One thing I hope you take away from this book is a clearer sense of just bow much work is involved, how
much creativity is required to build a game. There may be some games that are created by auteurs, a
single driving vision surrounded by an army ot obedient servants, but I don't think a game like Half-Ufe 2
can be created that way. For anyone on the team, I can list all of the things that would have been lost if
they hadn’t been part of the creation of the game. There is a myth that gets told about the solitary writer,
the autocratic director, the Napoleonic CEO that just doesn't ring tree to me anymore, having been part of
the collaborative process at Valve.
We are also part of the larger game community. One of Hie unique characteristics of games as a medium is
that you have to create it in cooperation with the audience. A multiplayer game is only as tun as the other
people you are playing with. A single-player game is really a movie that you create in cooperation with the
player, where the lead actor doesn't have a copy of the script. A game engine is not just the platform for the
game itself, but a platform for all the MODs that come along to extend the life and enjoyment of the experi¬
ence. While you'll see little evidence of this larger community in Half-Ufe2: Raising the Bar, he aware that
eveiyone at Valve is acutely aware of our rale in that larger community, the contributions that community
makes to the success of our endeavors, and cur deep gratitude for their support over the years.
Gabo Newell
8,11,04
Bellevue, Washington
 Investigation 1:
Anomalous Materials ■

Building a world from the ground up is not a task to be taken lightly, but in a sense, that was the challenge
facing Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington in 1996. Retired Microsoft developers, Gabe and Mike shared a vision
of the future of gaming, but neither of them could have known how far their dream would lead. From the very
beginning, their approach relied on maverick risk-taking and a foundation of solid business planning. It was
a sound, easily justifiable decision to license the robust Quake engine from Quake and Doom creators, id
Software; it was a sensible decision to proceed to work quietly, without any hype whatsoever, in the small
Seattle suburb of Kirkland, Washington; and it made perfect sense to start building what was essentially a
fast-paced First-Person Shooter with a simple intuitive interface, and plenty of combat with alien monsters.
What was not so obviously safe and sane was to hire many of the company’s first employees from the
excitable ranks of Quake's own mod community: young programmers and level designers who spent their days
delivering pizzas and their nights cranking out monster-infested nightclubs and rule-bending deathmatch
maps. From the very beginning, Valve tapped info the essence of the gaming community, encouraging direct
creative input from those who loved games so much that they couldn't help but make their own.
 Half-Life:
A Nonstandard Specimen
 Half-Life Foes
I Chuck Jones
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Four early Half-Life enemies: The Assassin, Braintoy with a
mind-gun. Butter, and the Female Soldier
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"When choosing a name for the game, we tried to establish criteria: it needed to
be evocative of the theme, avoid cliches in the genre, and have a corresponding
visual mark. We brainstormed some ideas, and then picked Halt-Life. We wanted
to communicate the science fiction feel, toe more mature sense that we were
going after a game that was not just a shooting gallery. There was going tn he a
richer experience and a more tfiought-provnking one...and so Half-Life. We
thought about that, and that seemed cool, and we tried to look at Halt-Dead. We
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went through hundreds of different names, Half-Life was one that stuck out fairly
quickly.1' - Gabe Newell I
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 Investigation 2:
Unexpected Interference

malf-Ufe had not been long on store shelves when Valve set to work on Half-Life 2. The “only” requirement was
»at it had to be the best game ever made, surpassing Half-Life in eveiy way possible. Fortunately, while the
designers had given their all to the original game, they had no problem coming up with a long list of things they
wished they coold have done better. But building Half-Life 2 was not to be merely a matter of improving on the
pprevious game, continuing the story where the first left off, or increasing texture resolution. It would involve an
Erverhaul of every single element of the game, beginning with the most basic: The engine. Piece by piece, the
prate-derived Half-Life engine was discarded as Valve began developing something all is,pwn, the proprietary
[■engine technology now known as Source, in the meantime, a call went out for programmers, level designers,
artists, and animators who had seen the promise cf Hal! Ute and wanted to push the medium of games into
truly new terrain. As a new team formed around the Gore of original designers, they discovered that the lessons
Ibf Half-Life didn’t always apply. Half-Life 2 turned out to be an entirely new beast, and the path to
completion proved to be much rockier, and far longer, than anyone initially expected.
 Half-Life 2:
Creature Discomforts
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 Half-Life 2: 11^1
Digital Drama ■ W ■

The enttiusiasttc response to the very fe«v, very primitive dramatic scenes in Half-Life convinced Valve that
devetoping the technology tor better acting arid animation should be a top priority in creating Half-Ufe 2.
Whereas in Haff-Uk’% era, it was revolutionary for characters to simply move their mouths when they talked,

As developers set to woib on a powerful animation system, other designers couldn't help hut dream up
ambitious scenes, and a plot that depended on characters as much as on combat Drawing on lessons of
radio, stagecraft, and cinema, Valve's choreography team pushed the limits of in-game dramatics, hoping to
hasten the day when “acting” in a game would no longer mean “horrible voiceovers."
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THE VOICES OF HALF-LIFE 2