My favorite is definitely the location of City 17
I love how every time a country is mentioned in a Half-Life 2 related conversation it just descends into people pulling out screenshots of in-game signs in different languages and fighting over which one of their home countries City 17 is supposed to be in
(Legend being that it's strictly located in Bulgaria, but in reality all that Valve wanted to show when designing it is that it's just located somewhere in Eastern Europe with many different languages and locations from the different countries)
I do not share that thought as it would probably be around St. Petersburg or Kaliningrad as cyrilic is everywhere in the game, and as far as i know those lands are way colder than it appears in the game.
Theory: a short drive down from city 17 is new little Odessa. A city named Odessa already exists in ukraine.
The land around the two Odessas is different (but they are both on the coast) so it’s likely not in the same location but still nearby. So going back along the coast Gordon probably drove the first country that speaks a language with cryllic is Bulgaria.
However the distance you drive is no where near enough to go all the way from Bulgaria to Ukraine, so it’s possible city 17 is just in a western region of ukraine. Or Odessa is somewhere else completely.
Either way I still think the nearby along the Black Sea,making city 17 in either ukraine, Bulgaria, or another cryllic-using country
It's also cool to note that Varna (Bulgaria's largest coastal city and the 3rd largest in general)'s old name was Odessos which might be a stretch but still interesting
Nah i wouldnt count the distance between levels as being accurate. The physical in game distance you travel is not consistent with the new backgrounds of how far away city 17 is after changing levels.
I doubt city 17 is set i eastern europe, when its architecture was directly inspired by sofia and its pretty close to a byzantine monastery, not may of which (or rather none) are in eastern europe
brother Bulgaria is literally a part of Eastern Europe
(also fun fact the Half-Life: Alyx loading screen City 17 map perfectly fits the layout of Sofia)
Pretty much if it’s Slavic in the balkans then it is both. Except Slovenia and maybe some people think differently with Croatia idk. They’d be in Central Europe I think.
[xccr.com](https://xccr.com)
in hl2, right after you exit the building from the "pick up that can" cop and take a look to the left, there's a billboard that says "XCCR"
inconspicuous enough until you relate it with the website of the same name.
Website's strange, opened up around the same time as HL2 launched. There's a lot of videos that have better info than what I can give.
Apparently it may have been intended as a tie-in to the 2004 tv series "Lost"
I think it's too odd to instantly rule out. It most likely has to do more with Lost than HL2, but the fact it shows up in HL2 at all is more than nothing.
One of the codes from Lost shows up on a CRT monitor model in HL2 and it's episodes, I'm replaying through to see if I can find where. The code is:
\>: 4 8 15 16 23 42
I can only assume the domain name XCCR was chosen over ХССГ to romanize it for HL2's English audience, alongside ICANN only adding internationalization of domain names in 2010.
The timer is actually a time limit, when the creator started the challenge in 2006, it was a competition between two coding forums. Sadly, neither of them completed or solved the challenge. They were supposed to put in a set of codes before the timer ran out. The functionality of these codes were removed long ago.
I’ve been researching this for a couple years now, after looking at the meta data, I can confirm this had SOMETHING to do with half-life, everything was added a day after hl2 released, and the website was never active until 2006, and the ability to participate in the challenge it held was removed in 2016, when it went down for a few days. And two months ago, the top of a QR code got added. This amazes me that whoever made it after all these years has decided to start another arg.
Some people think it had to do with a promotional challenge for the show lost, called “the lost experience” which would make sense, due to all the connections, but since all the assets were added a day after hl2 released, I doubt it had anything actually to do with that. It could’ve been someone who had the idea, and saw xccr in hl2, since it’s one of the first things you see. However, it does not explain why they waited 2 years to begin the challenge.
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Besides the audio of the dying astronaut i would say that its the unknown source of the facemaps of the cut child worker npcs and why did the train séquence originally have the hollowed out shell of a those one eye fire shooty things from the first game near the train tracks
And who was used as the face model for the headcrab zombie
Classic zombie's face texture is an edited male_09, iirc. What I want to know is, what's the corpse01 guy's story? I don't buy that he was this one specific dude (whose name I've forgotten) who had his face torched off by the mob. I seem to remember someone posting pics of that guy's burned-off face and he looked nothing like the corpse01 photo.
That is literally *not* the different photo I'm talking about. That photo is the corpse01 guy. There was a totally different photo, of the guy the mafia story refers to, and it was *not* that one.
edit: trying to find some proof I'm not crazy, but Reddit seems to have memory-holed most of the threads discussing it. truly, there is no justice in this world.
I am *not* crazy! I *know* someone posted those pics. Totally different cadaver, as if I could ever make such a mistake! Never! *Never!* I just couldn't prove it. Reddit covered their tracks, they got that idiot in the Half-Life sub to lie for them. You think this is something? You think this is bad? *This*, this chicanery?! They've done worse...
there's a reason that all the beta revival projects go nowhere. there's a reason that recreations are bloated and poorly-designed - valve knows what is best for their games. if you read raising the bar you can see that everything had loads of thought put into it, and they didn't just cut ideas for no reason.
A big part of why hl2 is so timeless is because valve opted for a cold white concrete aesthetic over the city. Had they stuck to the original plan it wouldn't have felt like a step in the future but a distinctly of the time title. Doom 3 had a very similar aesthetic and despite some debate at the time doom has aged like ass white hl2 is still a fairly gorgeous game, even without the engine improvements.
My favorite is definitely the location of City 17 I love how every time a country is mentioned in a Half-Life 2 related conversation it just descends into people pulling out screenshots of in-game signs in different languages and fighting over which one of their home countries City 17 is supposed to be in (Legend being that it's strictly located in Bulgaria, but in reality all that Valve wanted to show when designing it is that it's just located somewhere in Eastern Europe with many different languages and locations from the different countries)
I think it is most likely around the Black Sea.
half life 2 is located in Northern turkey confirmed
Laz metrocops are unnecessarily violent :(
[give them this they'll let you go ](https://imgur.com/gallery/V5iicUx)
uyyyy this will work
another reason to hate laz ppl
https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/bcznql/i\_might\_have\_found\_the\_lost\_coast/
proved
Judging from flora it’s a slightly colder region. Baltic probably.
I do not share that thought as it would probably be around St. Petersburg or Kaliningrad as cyrilic is everywhere in the game, and as far as i know those lands are way colder than it appears in the game.
Hl alyx maps of city 17 have a very similar structure to sofia so its probably meant to be bulgaria
Theory: a short drive down from city 17 is new little Odessa. A city named Odessa already exists in ukraine. The land around the two Odessas is different (but they are both on the coast) so it’s likely not in the same location but still nearby. So going back along the coast Gordon probably drove the first country that speaks a language with cryllic is Bulgaria. However the distance you drive is no where near enough to go all the way from Bulgaria to Ukraine, so it’s possible city 17 is just in a western region of ukraine. Or Odessa is somewhere else completely. Either way I still think the nearby along the Black Sea,making city 17 in either ukraine, Bulgaria, or another cryllic-using country
Odessa is on the coast, I was there, there is a big port there
Yeah that was my bad
Odessa is one of the biggest if not the biggest Black Sea city what the absolute hell are you on about Literally take 2 seconds to look at a map
Oh crap my bad, for some reason at certain zooms on google maps it looks inland. I’ll fix that
It's also cool to note that Varna (Bulgaria's largest coastal city and the 3rd largest in general)'s old name was Odessos which might be a stretch but still interesting
Nah i wouldnt count the distance between levels as being accurate. The physical in game distance you travel is not consistent with the new backgrounds of how far away city 17 is after changing levels.
My guess is that c17 is a bunch of cities over multiple countries combined into one super city making up most of eastern europe
It's not even that big 😭
I don't think it's that big
I doubt city 17 is set i eastern europe, when its architecture was directly inspired by sofia and its pretty close to a byzantine monastery, not may of which (or rather none) are in eastern europe
brother Bulgaria is literally a part of Eastern Europe (also fun fact the Half-Life: Alyx loading screen City 17 map perfectly fits the layout of Sofia)
isnt bulgaria southern or southeastern?
Pretty much if it’s Slavic in the balkans then it is both. Except Slovenia and maybe some people think differently with Croatia idk. They’d be in Central Europe I think.
Isn't city 17 based of the city Sofia in Bulgaria?
Technically it is, but not only as there are many other buildings/languages in the game that are from other countries
valve is working on hl3
The guy you play as in Half Life 1 is the same guy you play as in Half Life 2
Idk if I can buy it, this theory is really out there
Dude it’s real Source: trust me bro
Cap the player models in both games are soooooo different?
Nuh uh you just have bad eyes
FYM nuh uh
dude one of 'em literally has a ponytail and the other doesn't
Was that a ponytail? Or was it a mini Barney Clone
o
Obviously it was doctor breen that's how he made it out of Black Mesa
Oh shit that makes sense dude
Source: source
Sure, and next you’re going to tell me that Gman doesn’t actually work for the government
Proof?
[xccr.com](https://xccr.com) in hl2, right after you exit the building from the "pick up that can" cop and take a look to the left, there's a billboard that says "XCCR" inconspicuous enough until you relate it with the website of the same name. Website's strange, opened up around the same time as HL2 launched. There's a lot of videos that have better info than what I can give. Apparently it may have been intended as a tie-in to the 2004 tv series "Lost"
that kind of makes 0 sense tho considering it's supposed to say ''HSSG'' in cyrillic script (ХССГ), so might just be one big coincidence
I think it's too odd to instantly rule out. It most likely has to do more with Lost than HL2, but the fact it shows up in HL2 at all is more than nothing. One of the codes from Lost shows up on a CRT monitor model in HL2 and it's episodes, I'm replaying through to see if I can find where. The code is: \>: 4 8 15 16 23 42 I can only assume the domain name XCCR was chosen over ХССГ to romanize it for HL2's English audience, alongside ICANN only adding internationalization of domain names in 2010.
There was that really weird Lost reference in Episode 2..
Also iirc I think a character in one of the season 1 episodes of Lost was playing HL1.
And JJ Abrams was (is maybe still?) working on a movie set in the Half-Life universe.
they're waiting for the baby they hired as an actor for alyx to grow up
Wonder what happens when that timer runs out, 60min left now
The timer is actually a time limit, when the creator started the challenge in 2006, it was a competition between two coding forums. Sadly, neither of them completed or solved the challenge. They were supposed to put in a set of codes before the timer ran out. The functionality of these codes were removed long ago.
What happens, just loops back around? Showing ~90 minutes for me rn
Ah yea it seems to have done that for me too
I’ve been researching this for a couple years now, after looking at the meta data, I can confirm this had SOMETHING to do with half-life, everything was added a day after hl2 released, and the website was never active until 2006, and the ability to participate in the challenge it held was removed in 2016, when it went down for a few days. And two months ago, the top of a QR code got added. This amazes me that whoever made it after all these years has decided to start another arg. Some people think it had to do with a promotional challenge for the show lost, called “the lost experience” which would make sense, due to all the connections, but since all the assets were added a day after hl2 released, I doubt it had anything actually to do with that. It could’ve been someone who had the idea, and saw xccr in hl2, since it’s one of the first things you see. However, it does not explain why they waited 2 years to begin the challenge.
wasn't something similar in the mann vs machine trailer for fortress defense team second?
“Use the crowbar!”
Gordon Freeman actually has perfect eyesight, but is a hypochondriac and believes he has shit eyesite
Gordon got two ribs removed, so he can... You know...
Don’t be such a baby ribs grow back!
(whispers) No zhey don't
r/suddenlytf2
r/unexpectedtf2 is better
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Fit into a smaller dress
You can't smell your own [knees...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JzfKiGJ5jE)
Besides the audio of the dying astronaut i would say that its the unknown source of the facemaps of the cut child worker npcs and why did the train séquence originally have the hollowed out shell of a those one eye fire shooty things from the first game near the train tracks And who was used as the face model for the headcrab zombie
Gargantuas you mean. I think it was a pitched idea might have had scripting but I never say any geometry or textures for it
Classic zombie's face texture is an edited male_09, iirc. What I want to know is, what's the corpse01 guy's story? I don't buy that he was this one specific dude (whose name I've forgotten) who had his face torched off by the mob. I seem to remember someone posting pics of that guy's burned-off face and he looked nothing like the corpse01 photo.
Valve edited the photo lol, it'd be weird if they hadnt
Let's be honest, it's weird no matter which way you put it
There's a difference between "edited from the original" and "literally just a different photo"
[FUCK YOU. I WIN.](https://imgur.com/a/p3kYhPt)
That is literally *not* the different photo I'm talking about. That photo is the corpse01 guy. There was a totally different photo, of the guy the mafia story refers to, and it was *not* that one. edit: trying to find some proof I'm not crazy, but Reddit seems to have memory-holed most of the threads discussing it. truly, there is no justice in this world.
you are indeed batshit insane because the corpse01.mdl story IS the mafia story.
I am *not* crazy! I *know* someone posted those pics. Totally different cadaver, as if I could ever make such a mistake! Never! *Never!* I just couldn't prove it. Reddit covered their tracks, they got that idiot in the Half-Life sub to lie for them. You think this is something? You think this is bad? *This*, this chicanery?! They've done worse...
\*ominous staring\*
The hev suit jerks gordon off
Major… arousal… detected…
Gman is gordan from the future
Makes sense, actually
not really
Interloper!
that was a good video. I so wanted to believe it
Freeman got a diaper under the HEV suit
no that's the thing.. he doesn't.. he just goes in the suit and it's all sloshing around while he's fighting
the legend that if half life 2 were released with the original ideas (beta content) it would have been even more succesfull (spoiler: no)
there's a reason that all the beta revival projects go nowhere. there's a reason that recreations are bloated and poorly-designed - valve knows what is best for their games. if you read raising the bar you can see that everything had loads of thought put into it, and they didn't just cut ideas for no reason.
A big part of why hl2 is so timeless is because valve opted for a cold white concrete aesthetic over the city. Had they stuck to the original plan it wouldn't have felt like a step in the future but a distinctly of the time title. Doom 3 had a very similar aesthetic and despite some debate at the time doom has aged like ass white hl2 is still a fairly gorgeous game, even without the engine improvements.
There were alot of games around that time that were "dark and griddy" so HL2 wouldn't really stand out that much
Blink animation was there at first but some dev broke the code and its broken ever since xd
Whats the blink animation
when your eye is blinking
There won't be a Half-Life 3
Hydra
Interloper probably is the most popular one.
What ever happened to that cat?
What cat?
They've made major strides since then. Major strides.
What cat?!
That Gman is Freeman from the future
Where the sequel is
HL3.
that half life 3 will come out
i'm sure there was some theory that the tv transmission showing gman on the boat was him travelling to borealis or something.
That Gman was Gordon Freeman from the future
the blob npc would have been really interesting to see in game
The most famous has to be that almost everyone it seems thought G-man is Gordon from the future, only because of G-mans "name" 🤣
My nonexistent child’s nutsack is in the game.
Freeman is Gman from the past
that valve is making the third episode
half life 3
I remember all the talk about the reversed zombie scream back in the day
The Interloper series
it's believed it will have a third entry in the series. But it's just a rumor
That there’s a Half Life 3 coming
That Half life 3 would come out shortly after
How to unlock gman
Nice one, it reminds me of that infamous legend "L is real" from Mario 64 and "how to unlock luigi"