Stolen Pixels #89: Left 4 Dumb: Part 11

[Avatar Roku]

I always thought they just pretended it was a completely new survivor who happened to be hiding in the closet, who coincidentally looks and acts exactly like the dead survivor. Not such a stretch for the company that attempted to cover up the plot hole that in the entirety of Eastern Europe, everybody speaks with a North American accent.

Except Grigori, but yeah, point. I always assumed that the Combine just transplanted a lot of Americans there, maybe so they'd be out of their element. Maybe the Europeans are in America, who knows?

For a species intent to suck the planet dry, that would be pointlessly wasting a lot of resources.

They were also trying to subjugate humanity and make everyone stalkers (or soldiers, I guess). That would take a lot of time, so doing what's necessary to limit the possibility of rebellion would be, from their perspective, a good thing (although it didn't quite work out).

And wouldn't work out, under any circumstances, cause settings don't mean shit if you don't seperate the people. Don't leave all the people who worked on Black Mesa within spitting distance would probably have come up in brainstorming.

And it would be a lot more fuel efficient to just take them to Mexico or something, instead of Russia.

Big. Gaping. Plot hole.

Fair enough. Although I'm willing to bet that the Black Mesa scientists (Eli, Kleiner, Magnusson) all kind of migrated there, seeing as how that's where the main Citadel is and that only one of the three was actually in City 17.

Even if it is a plot hole though, you can't deny that it's a cool setting, especially in EP2 where you saw the old buildings with Cyrillic on them.

 

[Avatar Roku]

I always thought they just pretended it was a completely new survivor who happened to be hiding in the closet, who coincidentally looks and acts exactly like the dead survivor. Not such a stretch for the company that attempted to cover up the plot hole that in the entirety of Eastern Europe, everybody speaks with a North American accent.

Except Grigori, but yeah, point. I always assumed that the Combine just transplanted a lot of Americans there, maybe so they'd be out of their element. Maybe the Europeans are in America, who knows?

For a species intent to suck the planet dry, that would be pointlessly wasting a lot of resources.

They were also trying to subjugate humanity and make everyone stalkers (or soldiers, I guess). That would take a lot of time, so doing what's necessary to limit the possibility of rebellion would be, from their perspective, a good thing (although it didn't quite work out).

And wouldn't work out, under any circumstances, cause settings don't mean shit if you don't seperate the people. Don't leave all the people who worked on Black Mesa within spitting distance would probably have come up in brainstorming.

And it would be a lot more fuel efficient to just take them to Mexico or something, instead of Russia.

Big. Gaping. Plot hole.

Fair enough. Although I'm willing to bet that the Black Mesa scientists (Eli, Kleiner, Magnusson) all kind of migrated there, seeing as how that's where the main Citadel is and that only one of the three was actually in City 17.

Even if it is a plot hole though, you can't deny that it's a cool setting, especially in EP2 where you saw the old buildings with Cyrillic on them.

Meh. The setting itself never managed to give any real impression of where it was, to the point where it honestly felt relatively generic in the sense of sci-fi, if not the genre itself. The world of London in the Year of our Ford 632 gave a sense of a world overhauled after disaster, a true new world order and new eyes to gaze at it from. Half Life 2 just felt like someone slapped some tubing and boxes from Doom 3 around Soho and called it a day.

I see what you're saying. It's odd though, even before I heard that City 17 was modeled after Eastern Europe, I always had a vague feeling about the setting. I couldn't place it, but I could tell it wasn't an American city, if nothing else. Seeing the Cyrillic writing in EP2, and then hearing Valve say it was modeled on Europe, in that order, came as such a shock (although not a surprise) to me, to finally have some idea where they were. Maybe it's just me and my fanboyness (although I felt that way the most when I first started playing HL2, which was the first Valve game I'd ever played), but it never really felt generic to me. Maybe I don't have proper context though. For example, what is "London in the Year of our Ford 632"? It sounds interesting.

 

[Avatar Roku]

I always thought they just pretended it was a completely new survivor who happened to be hiding in the closet, who coincidentally looks and acts exactly like the dead survivor. Not such a stretch for the company that attempted to cover up the plot hole that in the entirety of Eastern Europe, everybody speaks with a North American accent.

Except Grigori, but yeah, point. I always assumed that the Combine just transplanted a lot of Americans there, maybe so they'd be out of their element. Maybe the Europeans are in America, who knows?

For a species intent to suck the planet dry, that would be pointlessly wasting a lot of resources.

They were also trying to subjugate humanity and make everyone stalkers (or soldiers, I guess). That would take a lot of time, so doing what's necessary to limit the possibility of rebellion would be, from their perspective, a good thing (although it didn't quite work out).

And wouldn't work out, under any circumstances, cause settings don't mean shit if you don't seperate the people. Don't leave all the people who worked on Black Mesa within spitting distance would probably have come up in brainstorming.

And it would be a lot more fuel efficient to just take them to Mexico or something, instead of Russia.

Big. Gaping. Plot hole.

Fair enough. Although I'm willing to bet that the Black Mesa scientists (Eli, Kleiner, Magnusson) all kind of migrated there, seeing as how that's where the main Citadel is and that only one of the three was actually in City 17.

Even if it is a plot hole though, you can't deny that it's a cool setting, especially in EP2 where you saw the old buildings with Cyrillic on them.

Meh. The setting itself never managed to give any real impression of where it was, to the point where it honestly felt relatively generic in the sense of sci-fi, if not the genre itself. The world of London in the Year of our Ford 632 gave a sense of a world overhauled after disaster, a true new world order and new eyes to gaze at it from. Half Life 2 just felt like someone slapped some tubing and boxes from Doom 3 around Soho and called it a day.

I see what you're saying. It's odd though, even before I heard that City 17 was modeled after Eastern Europe, I always had a vague feeling about the setting. I couldn't place it, but I could tell it wasn't an American city, if nothing else. Seeing the Cyrillic writing in EP2, and then hearing Valve say it was modeled on Europe, in that order, came as such a shock (although not a surprise) to me, to finally have some idea where they were. Maybe it's just me and my fanboyness (although I felt that way the most when I first started playing HL2, which was the first Valve game I'd ever played), but it never really felt generic to me. Maybe I don't have proper context though. For example, what is "London in the Year of our Ford 632"? It sounds interesting.

Brave New World

Ah, I've been hearing more and more about that book, I'll have to try it.

 

[Shamus Young]

I agree that C17 is an interesting setting. If nothing else, I'm glad we finally have a game which ISN'T based around the aliens taking over (sigh) New York or LA. Nothing against NY, but they've had their share of alien subjugation / destruction. Save some for the rest of us.

 

[Brett Alex]

I agree that C17 is an interesting setting. If nothing else, I'm glad we finally have a game which ISN'T based around the aliens taking over (sigh) New York or LA. Nothing against NY, but they've had their share of alien subjugation / destruction. Save some for the rest of us.

What game had that before? To the best of my recollection, there haven't been any games set in New York after it was taken over by Aliens. All other times, it was ussually a cruel dictatorship set in London.

The Duke Nukem series features New York heavily if I recall, as does Alone in the Dark (technically not aliens), off the top of my head, and any Superhero game will usually have an alien turn up to destroy New York.

I'm sure there are more featuring 'aliens' specifically, but if you leave at as "New York gets invaded by [blank]" then you'll have even more. Include movies and you'll have dozens.

As for the American accents in Eastern Europe, I don't think Valve have officially tried to justify (I think they have better things to do) but as the beginning makes it clear, lots of people are being transported to City 17, making it plausible that whatever large cities or resource gathering centers the Combine have on North America (Mexico included) have been exhausted, and the citizens are then moved on to work at City 17. Perhaps the local inhabitants being absent explain the large amount of expendable Metrocops.

Oh, and Eli and the other Black Mesa scientists are all in City 17 because they chose to be there, Breen has made it his home and they are trying to take Breen down, so it would only make sense that they work from nearby.

Of course, it has no real effect on the gameplay or the plot so I really never saw it as an issue myself. I'd much rather play a fun, engaging, well designed, paced and thought out game with incorrect accents than a 2nd rate shooter with perfect geographical accuracy.


EDIT: Good comic by the way, glad you are running out a series of these.

 

[Doug]

I always thought they just pretended it was a completely new survivor who happened to be hiding in the closet, who coincidentally looks and acts exactly like the dead survivor. Not such a stretch for the company that attempted to cover up the plot hole that in the entirety of Eastern Europe, everybody speaks with a North American accent.

Combine relocation to break up existing social networks?

 

[Shamus Young]

The language thing could also simply be hand-waved by saying the ARE speaking some European language, which is simply depicted as English so the game doesn't need to be subtitled. For example, the movie Enemy at the Gates is about Russians in WWII, but rather than have Jude Law and the entire cast try to act while speaking horribly accented, mangled, and subtitled Russian, they just show everyone speaking English and trust the audience to realize they're really speaking Russian.

Although this conceit is put under some stress by the fact that there are a LOT of different languages in Europe.

Additional: Enemy at the Gates was awesome.

 

[Scarlet Knight]

I agree that C17 is an interesting setting. If nothing else, I'm glad we finally have a game which ISN'T based around the aliens taking over (sigh) New York or LA. Nothing against NY, but they've had their share of alien subjugation / destruction. Save some for the rest of us.

Well, Tokyo had the monopoly on movie destruction....

 

[Random Argument Man]

The Zombies in Left 4 Dead go with the 28 Days Later,Rage Virus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later... They cannot do normal functions such as eating.

Umm...
A.In 28 Days later, they are infected*. A human with a disease that makes them ape-shit.
B.They are based on both Romero's zombies and 28 days later's infected..
C. Sheesh.

 

[Jsnoopy]

good. i like l4d, and these past SP's have been enjoyable and funny.

 

[samsonguy920]

And there is still lots of material left. I can't wait til a witch shows up!

 

[Professor Idle]

You're not clever for doing that.