Here’s the final Black Mesa episode of Freeman’s Mind! This one has been about 98% done for a couple weeks, but there were some complications with some of the final aspects of it. Some things that people may find interesting: 1. The volume of the last scientist is as it sounded in-game. I was kind of amazed how quiet it was. Otto was going to increase the volume to it, but I decided it worked better with Freeman shouting that he couldn’t hear him at the original volume. 2. The slipping wasn’t planned, but I thought it was a great addition to the episode, plus I’m never in a rush to redo a gameplay sequence if I don’t have to. 3. My thoughts reflect Freeman’s regarding the teleporter in that I couldn’t imagine any scenario where Freeman is still alive after being teleported if momentum isn’t preserved.
The footage for the next episode is done, though I haven’t made progress on the voicework yet. I doubt there will be another FM episode before Halloween, but we’ll see. Expect more in November!
Here’s the next episode of Freeman’s Mind. This one contains the most shouting there’s been in an episode in a while, but Freeman has some legitimate grievances. I originally considered skipping this area for FM since I felt like it was one of the more contrived areas, next to the giant fan room, but I saw some comments of people saying they had been looking forward to this part, so people will get the full experience instead. In any event, I’m happy with how this episode resolves the previous one. As a bit of side information, the very last part of this episode was literally played and recorded in slow motion. It was the only way I was able to preserve the motion blur AND not have the game glitch during the demo playback. Something about the one of the teleporters the demo system in Source simply did not like.
The voicework for #61 has been recorded, although it will take a little longer for the editing than this one did. In the meantime, I’m likely taking on more than I should and I plan for the next video to be another Game Dungeon. I’m aiming to have it by the end of the month, but I’m not promising anything. More videos coming one way or another!
Freeman’s Mind continues! This episode got delayed more than I intended, but I’ve been working ahead as well. I hope #60 isn’t too far behind.
I made some adjustments to this episode based on how the last one went. The first is I increased the field of vision, something I should have done in the last episode, but didn’t notice it being a problem until it was a little too late. For some reason, it never registered in my brain, even though I knew something was wrong. This episode has been adjusted from the default 90 degrees for Uplink to 106, so it should more closely match the previous ones from HL: Source.
The other big change made is based on the feedback from the last episode, I decided to drop Freeman’s morphine tripping as many people were finding it annoying. While I try my best, I see no reason to adhere to consistency if it hurts the overall impact of the show, so this episode is much more the standard Freeman you’re probably used to. Afterall, it wouldn’t be the first inconsistency. Speaking of which, this episode has another consistency shortcoming because of an invisible wall, but I didn’t want to re-record the whole episode because of it, so you can think of it as an easter egg. While I never plan to sacrifice the writing or voice acting quality, in general my attitude towards bugs and other errors in the show is to just keep moving forward.
On that note, more Freeman’s Mind is coming, though I may try to squeeze in some more Game Dungeons if I can, it will be a bit of juggling act. In the meantime, this episode has one of my favorite endings in a while.