Oh, I was wondering why HL2 was being given away for free. Added it to my brother’s account before they changed it to being dirt cheap instead.
The new commentary is really good, tbh. I had no idea how much research and R&D they did. It looks fucking amazing for a 2004 game. The characters in particular.
How they went and changed how a whole industry because it was calculating light with a bad algorithm.
Valve wrote literal research papers on player experience and level design. The stuff they came up with have just become the norm in other games. For example, Valve found that players never look up without a reason to. They came up with ways to get the player to look up without directly telling them to with level design choices. Things like rays of light coming in from above, or ropes hanging from the ceiling.
Barnacles exist just so Valve can say “haha made you look up.”
