User:WehKings

God save us

People claim Viktor Antonov was inspired by Lebbeus Wood

I remember seeing a interesting Quora answer on Google by Steve Theodore about how either Greg Coomer or Ted Backman had Lebbeus Wood artbook circa 2002, the year when Theodore left. It doesn't seem Lebbeus Wood was an intentional main inspiration by Viktor or anyone else, and it's not the two people he says he followed on his Reddit AMA. The two artists he mentions are far closer to his stuff anyways. Problem is that Quora sucks, and I can't copy the link to source it, so help me please. Early HL2 concept art show a very clear Bladerunner and urban inspiration. Somebody must've looked it up for it to appear on Google anyways. I have to find the search result or something for the link to actually work. Unless I really do just need to join Quora. I believe Marc Laidlaw vignette about 'razor sharp door' or something was a reference to this, I assume that was the year of inspiration. Marc Laidlaw has only like one or two vignettes dated and it's 2000. Man, I really have to find a way to squeeze that Reddit AMA somewhere as it's interesting. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4txenv/hey_reddit_i_am_viktor_antonov_halflife_2s_city/

Bladerunner

You can see these Bladerunner-like buildings still in e3_industrial and other City-17 maps, but they're just like textured over or grayed. Viktor definitely painted them over to have the bladerunner look with the glow 'n' stuff. E3 2002 Citadel almost definitely is inspired by Bladerunner.

There's no way HL2 started in July 1999.

I believe this is an estimate based on when Kingpin: Life of Crime was released, a game that Viktor Antonov worked on. But how was he hired on the same month, the game released and why would that start a project right away? It wasn't probably that financially bad despite releasing during Columbine as boomers still remember it and it has a remaster. I think it's far more possible HL2 started late 1999, it would explain why Marc Laidlaw vignettes are so strange and why 2000 is seen more than 1999. I bet the Borealis seen in Brotherhood of Arms was also fairly late, pretty sure the archives go from like April to November, it's also used because Dario Casali worked on both Team Fortress and the Borealis. Marc Laidlaw I think accidentally dates himself when he revealed how he got Barney's last name by saying he had just watched Ravenous, a film released in March 19, 1999. Marc Laidlaw is very interesting as he claims this was before HL1 hit gold, which Raising the Bar doesn't help make too clear when it hit gold, but it took a while lol, and that a lot of the weird choices were to avoid "creative suicide". Anyways these have been my crack theories. I think these people would just be too busy or enjoying their lives to do HL2 at this time, but also because I assume development is way more sporadic and crunched than that. This makes the Borealis kinda funny, because I doubt they were doing anything at this time. Marc Laidlaw just asked him to make it as he was one of the few people with a production going on. Wat I'm talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life_2#cite_note-:0-5

The vain of my enemy: Interviews

Interviews are the #1 sole cause of things that go unsourced with bizarre information, also the wiki was young at this time. I 100% believe that's where people learned "Avalon" inspired HL2's Beta. You see, I was on Valve Cut Content wiki, there's this interesting information about how Alex Gembe had a copy of Invasion, but apparently it was from a interview that was deleted, god damn. Now this isn't a big deal, Alex Gembe hangouts around comments sections, but wherever that "Avalon" comment came from, I will find. Probably Marc Laidlaw, he's like a kinophile who watches obscure Polish films. Or what, you think people would just like tell like weird lies? What was Marc Laidlaw doing back in the old days, was he having podcasts or something? There must be like lost media from him. The worst thing is that they're still here but they probably all forgot about this.

And don't even get me started on Raising the Bar citations. Seriously, go to the back of the book and try to wrap your head around about these interviews cited. It all has to be paraphrasing or hearsay, there's no way this is accurate. Raising the Bar: Uncorrected Proof have several different quotes than the one seen in the final about the same things. Viktor must've told them that it was July 1999 to the IGN guy behind Final Hours of Half-Life 2, or maybe that was a interview 3 years ago where a dozen people were interviewed on THE SAME DAY. Because that's how the citations work on the book, I'm not joking. Geoff Keighly is lucky that he makes articles and not a book where he needs to cite things like this. If they're not paraphrasing, they're combining sentences together from even different interviews I'm pretty sure. But how do they got this recorded? DDDUDE THEY EVEN CITE EMAILS. U even see email archives in the book, who gave them email archives? U know what's crazy, how did these people scan the images on the book? I swear, they literally take a camera and snap whatever they have. You know the white shirt rebels? Zoom out, and you'll notice they took a photo OF THEIR BOOK!!!!!!!!

Videos

I notice videos and media are very obscure on this wiki, why? I think I should experiment a little bit. I will add a video section to Episode 2, and if warranted with enough information, their own pages. It also be nice for people to upload the highest actual quality there is of these. Here's the videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0l5N6Exjz0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZl1s_Tl_5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuD_boVOl54