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Originally posted by boot2theface
The first game that I ever played that made me realize that gaming was and would continue to be a very important medium for storytelling was the original Half-Life. I bought it in 2000 and beat it in like two days if my memory suits me well. I remember being absolutely blown away by the atmosphere the game provided and the story it told. Up until that point the games that had the best stories were IMO the great RPGs like Chrono Trigger and Xenogears, but I never thought that a FPS could be anything more than just a fragfest. I had bought and devoured Quake and Unreal Tournament and loved the gameplay of FPS's, but when I played Half-Life that all changed. The story wasn't just told to you like in the rpgs. You had to actually LOOK for the story within the game itself; all while trying to survive against an alien invasion you, yourself caused. It changed not only my perceptions of video games, but games themselves were changed.
Then Half-Life 2 came out, and completely took every thing that was great from the original and made it bigger and better. It was based upon a game engine that was completely revolutionary as far as graphics power and machine scalability goes. I could play HL2 on a machine that for all intents and purposed was broken. The narrative of the game also expanded to a universe that was massive yet still maintained the "search for the story yourself" attitude.
It is my opinion that the Half Life games themselves were the harbingers of major shifts in gameplay and technology. I feel that the series itself is directly tied to the industry. That is why I believe it is taking so long for Half-Life 3 to be released. When it is finally released it will be just as revolutionary as the first two. Be it new technology or just a new engine, It will be the best that has been up until this point.
With that being said... How does the ATS community feel about Half-Life 3?