FREEMAN’S MIND 2: EPISODE 7

What was the bug that held back the episode?

Interesting to hear other voices.

I'm surprised City 17 has tacos, but hey, how else are you gonna motivate Civil Protection?

Tacos!

Seriously an awesome episode and as usual I love the attention to detail.

If I may offer one small bit of constructive criticism: Having Gordon spend minutes pointing out the absurd architecture gets a little draining. Route Kanal makes no sense from an engineering standard, but I think FM episodes are great when there's a lot more variety. Thats all.

Also, if there's one thing I really want to see in FM2 is "original content" like, for example, if in FM you animated Freeman capturing a soldier and interrogating him for the reason why they were shooting him, and thats how he found out instead of him being in the dark for a good part of it. The Mike and Dave reference was great, more stuff like that pls In FM2 you could have Freeman capture a random CP unit and get some actual answers. because once Freeman finds out just how fucked Breen is it's gonna be really fun.

...Does that mean our favorite CP duo is dead? Dammit, Freeman

Nah, they ran somewhere else, they didn't fight Freeman.

If I may offer one small bit of constructive criticism: Having Gordon spend minutes pointing out the absurd architecture gets a little draining. Route Kanal makes no sense from an engineering standard, but I think FM episodes are great when there's a lot more variety. Thats all.

 

Also, if there's one thing I really want to see in FM2 is "original content" like, for example, if in FM you animated Freeman capturing a soldier and interrogating him for the reason why they were shooting him, and thats how he found out instead of him being in the dark for a good part of it. The Mike and Dave reference was great, more stuff like that pls In FM2 you could have Freeman capture a random CP unit and get some actual answers. because once Freeman finds out just how fucked Breen is it's gonna be really fun.

Freeman's Mind has always been about picking apart how illogical the game world is. The Black Mesa facility made no sense from a design standpoint, and neither do City 17's sewers. If you were running from the cops in a sewer, and found no reasonable way to move forward because everything was caged off for no reason, you'd spend a little bit contemplating how the design makes no sense.

I'm fairly certain Ross plans to stick to the game's story and isn't going to do anything extra, and I don't think Freeman capturing a civil protection unit would be in character.

Yeah, Freeman was pointing out constantly the design choices from the developers. Which make sense, kind of, from a video game design standpoint but make no sense in real life. However, once he gets to the airboat, things should start making more sense. Route Kanal was always the weakest, IMHO, part of the game.

Is it Taco Tuesday already?

Good to see another video being pumped out. Even with the time it took to come out, it really did get me excited and as always, did not disappoint.

It seems like doing a series like this has a different flow to it than HL1/Half-Life: Source. I really wonder how the Ravenholm parts of the series are going to be like.

The fast zombies definitely seem like they're on drugs, that's for sure.

Yeah, Freeman was pointing out constantly the design choices from the developers. Which make sense, kind of, from a video game design standpoint but make no sense in real life. However, once he gets to the airboat, things should start making more sense. Route Kanal was always the weakest, IMHO, part of the game.

What's your favorite part? I loved the water hazard level as a kid, and ravenholm is a classic, but I'm starting to really appreciate nova prospekt a lot more from my replays. Sending in the antlions to fuck up the combine at the entrance and backing them up with crossbows was really fun

Also as to my original point, having freeman stare the answer to the puzzle in the face 3 times was just a massive cocktease for me wanting to see the next part. I hope Ross doesn't make him waste anymore time there.

I really enjoyed the piece by piece analysis of Combine society, such as it is ^_^

What's your favorite part? I loved the water hazard level as a kid, and ravenholm is a classic, but I'm starting to really appreciate nova prospekt a lot more from my replays. Sending in the antlions to fuck up the combine at the entrance and backing them up with crossbows was really fun

It's a toss up between infiltrating Nova Prospekt and just driving along the roadways of Highway 17.

Ah, there's the crossover we've been expecting.

And here I was thinking just last week that a Black Mesa style remake of Half Life 2 would have to be a lot less ambitious and focus only on raw graphical improvements because the original visuals weren't nearly as abstract and ridiculous as the Box Crushing Room. Clearly I haven't been paying close enough attention. But that's what you're for!

Personally I hated much of HL2's design, and it won't get old with me if the cracks get pointed out. It has a few good sections, but about half the game is so rigidly linear it's a borderline rail shooter. The physics engine and atmosphere are what saved the game for me.

Other things I found annoying:

NPC allies not obeying "stay here" commands.

The airboat, due to motion sickness.

Enemies popping from cover with such predictable timing it was like a metronome.

The infinite rocket crates + pathetic rocket storage capacity. "Here is the spot where you have permission to fight the helicopter." That crap in particular really took me out of the game.

As for HL1's design flaws...sure it had a million, but be fair for the time period. Much of the reason HL1 was beloved was it had extremely plausible design compared to previous games. Useful stuff is placed near corpses, outposts, and storage areas. Compare that with ID's games, where you encounter rows of power-ups on the ground and illuminated shrines dedicated to...a suit of body armor.

Mike: Let's go they've got tacos!

Dave: TACOS!!!

Gordon: Guess it's their lunch break.

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

 

 

 

Here's the next Freeman's Mind episode, at long last! I never meant for there to be this long a delay since the last one. Being sick accounted for a significant portion of it, I also lost a bunch of time related to legal paperwork I had to take care of (which is still ongoing), the rest I'm still not sure what happened. This one definitely had some more behind the scenes work on it than usual I originally thought about making this a shorter episode, but seeing as how it was so long since the last one, I decided to make it a longer one instead. Work will resume soon on the next one!

 

COMMENTS

I hope you feel well soon for episode 8