The bleakness of both Half Life 2 and Dishonored's really resonated with me. I can't overstate how much I appreciated both of these games, and in no small part thanks to the art direction.
This is really sad news, but it's amazing how much of a profound impact he left on so many players, and without a doubt on so many past, current, and future artists.
Not long ago I had to visit this town in Slovakia, and immediately upon arrival I thought “damn this is City 17”. Fun place though. No striders or anything.
Or almost all of the former USSR up to this day, excluding a few cities here and there. The place I'm living in basically hasn't changed in the last 30-40 years.
A lot of American urban neighbourhoods are quite impoverished too though. Probably more so than eastern Europe was, for the terrible Soviet architecture was functional, cheap and ugly but not necessarily bad. And eastern Europe didn't have the large divide between rich and poor that the US has.
With Half-Life and Dishonored, the bleakness always felt somewhat self-contained. Which those games can't really do anything about because they have levels and they're linear. Metro gets to escape that because the entire game is bleak.
I don't think any game has made me feel more like "this really is a forsaken desolate place" like Velen in The Witcher 3.
I've done SL1 runs in all three, but yes those are also great examples! They very aptly pull of that whole "lost in the seas of time" vibe, with hollowification and all the bits of lore attached to random NPCs, items and locations, plus the subsurface cross-game references.
Sometimes I'd just hang out in either Firelink Shrine or Majula just for the music. And Majula's daily twilight moments are beautiful.
Well it seems I played almost all of his games recently. I have an Half Life 2 game in progress and finished Dishonored for the 4th time last december.
Half-life 2 is imo still the most important and impactful game of our generation — from gameplay to art-style to game mechanics and so on, it’s still exceptional and I struggle to come up with another single player game that blew me away like HL2 - Dead Space comes close but it was less revolutionary imo
For me it was the trash blowing around on the ground when you step off of the train. I immediately picked up the trash and started throwing it around myself. My mind was blown.
That said I still prefer HL1 overall. Its more high impact and brutal. There's nothing in HL2 that's quite like accidentally blowing away a black mesa scientist and having gore spray everywhere. HL1 is just viscerally more violent, and also I dislike how NPCs in HL2 have basically deified Gordon and constantly suck him off. In HL1 the security guards are bros but the scientists treat you with annoyance. I get the whole subplot of freed vortegants turning you into a heroic figure, but I think that's just a thin plot excuse for Valve's decision to make the player feel like a special person. Also all of the "girlfriend simulator" stuff is cringe that aged poorly.
> I get the whole subplot of freed vortegants turning you into a heroic figure
That's not really it at all, it's the G-man's machinations that turn him into a "heroic figure". If anything he's more comparable to Paul Atreides. The Vorteguants just temporarily release him from the G-man's grasp in HL2:E1, but that barely lasts to the next episode.
He's a pawn of whatever game the G-Man is playing, and was unleashed as sort of an unwitying agent of chaos on Breen and the Combine ("the right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world").
> Also all of the "girlfriend simulator" stuff is cringe that aged poorly
I'm talking about HL2, not the episodes. I don't judge HL1 by what was written into HL2 years later, nor do I judge HL2 by what was written into the episodes or Alyx years later. Not least because it's common knowledge that the writers have been following the "Lost" philosophy of writing, making up shit as they go, creating mysteries they themselves don't know the answer to, punting that down the road to their future selves.
In Half Life 1 you start with a dogshit reputation and insofar as you gain any reputation with the NPCs its because you've progressed through the game to earn it. The scientists treat you like base labor in the beginning, then come to see you as useful, as a fighter, after you prove it. The soldiers start without knowing who you are, but after you tear your way through their ranks they start hating you by name.
In Half Life 2, all the NPCs you meet act like you're already a famous hero and there's really no indication in the game that this comes from g-man propaganda rather the vortegants and/or the black mesa scientists. In HL2 both the vorts and the scientists make a point of saying they owe Gordon a lot. The natural read on this, given the context of the first two games and not any later retcons, is that the scientists or vorts have basically deified you. Mossman talks about how she wishes she could have worked with you at Black Mesa as though you were not just a war hero but also a legendary scientist. What scientific achievements did Gordon have at Black Mesa? He pushed samples around and showed up late for work. What kind of stories were the other scientists telling her about you? Also Alyx starts hitting on you right away.
Whatever the plot justifications for it, clearly there was a commercial motivation of pandering to the player. It aged poorly.
I don't think I ever felt as if Alyx was hitting on Gordon when I played the game. Fangirling, sure, but that's it. I can fully imagine Gordon's legend building up over time, however justified it might be. It didn't feel like pandering, just that you're amongst a bunch of very desperate people who've built up a myth around what happened in Black Mesa to help them keep going.
Gordon’s actions in HL1 is why there’s even a resistance, I think Gordon’s legendary status isn't from Gman propaganda but more from the resistance itself needing/wanting an icon/martyr/founder. It’s an interesting contrast from the first game where you’re a nobody and expectations are at rock bottom for you, versus in HL2+ everyone expects you to be a messiah, but the odds are so stacked against you it’s hard to see how you can live up to the expectation.
I always felt embarrassed by the attention in HL2, more than ego-stroked. It’s awkward in-game but intentionally so, in my mind. Like with that Mossman line, Gordon is a nobody scientifically and famous for other reasons so that line says more about Mossman’s vanity and ego than anything about Gordon.
Red Faction's destructible maps lend themselves to a lot of creative gameplay, but the (late) game was far to linear. The engine made a lot possible, but to explore using explosives you had to exploit item duplication glitches or cheats. In the end it felt like an engine demo posing as a complete game.
HL2 on Steam had an achievement called "flushed" if you killed a combine with a gravity gun toilet.
I was about 15, HL2 was my first "real" video game that I bought with money, the xbox did not exist in my country and I've never heard of game achievements before. In the second last act of the game, in the push towards the citadel through waves and waves of combine, I was low on ammo, and stresses out. I picked up my gravity gun and started lobbing junk to the enemies to get away from them. I picked up a toilet and chucked it into a whole pile of combine. As I paused to have a brief chuckle about the absurdity, Steam chimed with that achievement.
It was as if GabeN Himself looked over my shoulder and went "heh, nice" when I did it. Truly magical and a gaming highlight for me.
>The first time you saw a scripted sequence, like wtf am I playing, this is amazing.
Ye. It is hard to remember how stale games used to be with "story parts" and "game play parts".
Small things like "two scientist runs towards you. One is eaten by head crab zombie unless you save him really fast" -- all these kind of small scripted events added so much. And fluently playing the whole mess up experiment and then try to escape overarching story.
I think everyone was, and they never did deliver on their episodic content promise. Valve pivoted from a game developer to a publisher / self-publishing platform at that time which made it and its owner a multi-billion company and over time revived the PC gaming market.
They could have done it for almost free too. Just placeholder levels with story fragments, let the community create the maps, scripts and art to fill the void.
It's easily "higher resolution" than HL2, but some things just aren't very well done. Some of the sound effects are weak and enemy behavior is less fun to play against across the board.
I sadly was too young to truly appreciate hl1 (or maybe was forbidden to pay it not sure) - for me the first game that blew me away was Dungeon Keeper and HoMM3 - I still play them from time to time…
Agree. I recently played HL2 again with the new commentary (added because of the 20th anniversary) and it really shows why the level design is so good: a lot of play testing and iterative design. They really did the work.
Now I'm playing the Halo franchise and the difference in how boring and uninspired the levels are is really striking.
Mm. Halo 3 felt really open and expansive the first time I played it. Second time, I tried to explore outside the normal path and rapidly discovered that it was a very well disguised rails shooter.
But I've also gone back further than that in Bungie's back catalogue, having recently been playing Marathon 2 and Marathon ∞ (winner of the MacFormat(?) magazine award for "largest version number increase between successive releases") on Steam, and… well, 2 has still-interesting levels, but Infinity's levels are a spatially confusing mess.
when i played HL2 in 2006 or whatever, i had no idea that there would never be anything like that again. we all thought that HL2 was just the beginning... but it was the opposite. i think that we all assumed that the game was made great by its technology. but the more i think about it, the more i realize that it was the people, the sensibilities of those people and that time, and the character of valve at that time, everything besides the technology, that made HL2 so good. and that also explains why it has never been reproduced. if i were going to be sent to another planet in another galaxy to seed another colony of humanity... and i could only bring 2 video games for that entire branch of humanity to know and appreciate... it would be HL2 and MGS2.
I loved HL2 so much. Not at the 1st place in my list because, well, the Mass Effect story line brings that one to another level, but HL2 for the time was unbeatable. I wonder why they didn't continue the franchise with a proper HL3; the entire world of gamers was (and probably still is) begging for it.
HL2 is one of the top 5 most influential games. I think Duke Nukem 3D was one (first good multiplayer), Witcher 3 is another (one of the most immersive, story driven), the Elder Scrolls series and I am finding it very difficult to name the 5th, but HL series was great for its time.
Absolutely agree. I just replayed all the Half Life series with my kids and they love it. It's a game that's just so well done and I think it held well after all these years.
Level design is something that is often there as a way to simply service the gameplay. You make sections that enable to game loop. Half Life 1 is designed this way: set pieces for aliens and marines to have interesting encounters.
Viktor designed levels that felt part of worlds that are lived in. City 17, where Half Life 2 takes place, feels like a believable dystopia. With evil guards and propaganda and a looming techno tower of Sauron.
Dishonored pushed this even further, with levels that not only are equally well presented, but can be traversed in so many creative ways. It’s a sandbox for the mind.
I remember listening to HL2 in-game commentary from the game devs. One that stuck to me was something along the lines "It really pains me that we put so much effort in all these connecting hallways and the players just run past them at mach 3 speeds, but you got to do it anyway otherwise the hallway looks out of place" (paraphrasing, not direct quote)
It’s the tension between narrative storytelling and content creation. Also why so many indie developers end up making games that are a couple rooms with changing details (12 minutes, etc)!
I didn't know the same person was involved in shaping both projects, but as soon as I read that, the personality that connected both those beautiful games was immediately clear. What an amazing legacy to leave despite a sadly shortened life.
I loved the first one and its dlcs and had the second on my steam queue for 8 years while life got in the way. This year I've 100% completed the game (3 playthroughs) and I'm currently thoroughly enjoying Death of the Outsider.
These games are the amazing product of talented people who love their crafts and Viktor was one of them.
Do yourself a favor and play Thief if you haven't!
Dishonored is kind of a spiritual successor to the Thief series, several team members from Looking Glass went on to work at Arkane. It's one of those rare times I've felt like I was playing a video game, yet still fully immersed. Every feature surprised or delighted me, nothing felt out of place. It felt very polished and ahead of its time despite its raw nature. The gameplay of the first two titles holds up very well. Make sure to consult PCGamingWiki for critical compatibility patches
Fellow taffer here. Some things to consider for a thief first-timer:
If you have experience with games, play on expert, seriously. Thief makes the game harder by adding objectives and constraints, not just stat scaling. There’s a couple levels that have bullshit secrets to find or loot requirements, but overall it encourages exploration. I played expert my first time based on a post like this one and I was so so glad I did.
The controls and mechanics feel cumbersome at first because it’s such a different game than the usual halo/cod/unreal-influenced FPS. Until you get used to them and the mechanics don’t feel bad about save scumming.
Play with original graphics, don’t use texture mods (at least for a first playthrough). Once you get used to the old graphics, the art direction really comes together, and IMO it’s right up there with Dishonored.
The gameplay pitch is thus: LG wanted to make a mechanics-based DnD-like class based RPG videogame. Elder-scrolls is stat-based RPG: your character levels up in-game and their stats go up. If you go to your friend’s place, you don’t take any of that with you, it’s tied to the digital save file/avatar/character. Contrast this with fighting games, which are mechanics based: the characters are consistent and do not change. You get better at the game and accomplish more by learning the mechanics.
So as you get good at thief, you are leveling up. You can go to your friend’s house, take over playing and say “watch this shit” and pull some crazy stunt.
LG started building the mechanics for a thief class and realized they had nowhere near enough capital to make all the other classes. But they already had a pretty fun game. This is why Thief 1 has tons of different environments and locales and thief 2 is more focused on places a thief would be likely to go.
> If you have experience with games, play on expert, seriously. Thief makes the game harder by adding objectives and constraints, not just stat scaling.
Thanks for that tip, will definitely remember it when I get around to playing it
The 2014 reboot is a pretty big letdown because it largely avoids all the strong aspects of the original game in favor ip recognition.
The original Thief would largely be considered an immersive sim whereas Dishonored is a very well fleshed out stealth game with masterful vertical level design. Prey (2017) feels like a great mash-up of both games. I'd put the original Deus Ex and Human Revolution in there as well, though they also include rpg elements.
RIP. For those who haven't seen it yet, he was interviewed in the HL2 20th Anniversary Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCjNT9qGjh4 (intro and chapter 1 at 13:40)
Wait, he is the art lead of both Half Life 2 and Dishonored series? No wonder why Dishonored and Dishonored 2 looks so much like Half Life 2 with its dark and "wet" environment, especially when I was looking at the underground and underwater segments, and how it looks to incorporate a lot like European cyberpunk elements in Half Life 2 (it was set in East Europe tho), and then some steampunk elements with Dishonored
Dishonoured is such a great game, both the art and the music made it so immersive and it really felt like the world was alive. The narrative was raw, and human.
The credits song "Honor for All" was the cherry on top as well, it was like I'd been holding my breath the whole game until that moment when the story closed out so perfectly (spoilers for good ending: https://youtu.be/IM7TBRdferM?t=26).
Little bit spammy so my apologies, but I just love it when a game's narrative, art and music all come together to make some special. Ori makes me bawl my eyes out to this day. And Dishonoured I felt like I was actually living in Dunwall the entire time, all credit to Viktor Antonov.
One of the most prominent artists in games - unfortunate to hear this news. I hope the conditions of the stressful and demanding video game industry didn't contribute to this.
I can’t believe I didn’t make the connection—both of those games are in my top 10. A big part of why I love them is how deeply immersive their worlds are. Dunwall and City 17 don’t just look great; they feel alive, with atmosphere, detail, and storytelling woven into every corner. No other game has quite captured that same level of immersion.
HL2 stuck with me for years and years exactly because of his art direction. It was the first time I ever saw a video game world that somewhat resembled my actual real-world surroundings. Incredibly sad he passed away at only 52...
No matter how brilliant the game mechanics of those games were, they wouldn't have hooked me as they did without Antonov's exceptional vision. City 17 and Dunwall Will forever live in our memory.
Dishonored had such a unique style and setting. Head and shoulders above the usual AAA slop set in generic sci-fi or fantasy (or occasionally western) worlds.
I remember opening a copy of PC Gamer in the early 2000s. I was totally taken aback that they had moved Half-Life from a sci fi New Mexico base, to some sort of weird Eastern European dystopia.
It was all thanks to Antonov. And Half-Life 2 was (aesthetically) so much more memorable than the first game thanks to that influence.
Not only a great artist with a fantastic ability at creating a unified feeling unique for each project, but also designing for the constraints - so much of the combine look was around being low poly and striking.
It was a worthy successor building upon a great first game. The map and world design is top notch. Especially the switching between to interleaved time lines in the now abandoned manor and moving walls in the crazy inventors mansion.
The chaos/karma system also functions as a good counterweight to the "stealth archer" game design problem so player aren't heavily incentivised toward clearing levels by separating enemies and killing them one by one thereby removing all obstacles until the emptied out game is nothing but a boring walking simulator.
The bleakness of both Half Life 2 and Dishonored's really resonated with me. I can't overstate how much I appreciated both of these games, and in no small part thanks to the art direction.
This is really sad news, but it's amazing how much of a profound impact he left on so many players, and without a doubt on so many past, current, and future artists.
>The bleakness of both Half Life 2
Its just Eastern Europe in the 80s and 90s.
Not long ago I had to visit this town in Slovakia, and immediately upon arrival I thought “damn this is City 17”. Fun place though. No striders or anything.
Which town?
Watch Viktor talk about Austerlitz station he used as inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCjNT9qGjh4
Imagine a hl2 theme park
The Half-Life Wiki has a list of candidate cities that more or less capture this: https://breezewiki.com/half-life/wiki/City_17#Background_and...
Or almost all of the former USSR up to this day, excluding a few cities here and there. The place I'm living in basically hasn't changed in the last 30-40 years.
For this setting, there is even more depressive game - Belong Nowhere[1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P4-4nK4RR0
might be preferable to modern Los Angeles ?
Different beasts. Eastern Europe was impoverished, the malaise that is hurting the US cities is disorder.
A lot of American urban neighbourhoods are quite impoverished too though. Probably more so than eastern Europe was, for the terrible Soviet architecture was functional, cheap and ugly but not necessarily bad. And eastern Europe didn't have the large divide between rich and poor that the US has.
We had the divide between the nomenklatura and the rest, instead.
And in the 2020s too.
> The bleakness of both Half Life 2 and Dishonored's really resonated with me.
You'll really resonate with Remedy's Control and the Metro series if you haven't already played them.
With Half-Life and Dishonored, the bleakness always felt somewhat self-contained. Which those games can't really do anything about because they have levels and they're linear. Metro gets to escape that because the entire game is bleak.
I don't think any game has made me feel more like "this really is a forsaken desolate place" like Velen in The Witcher 3.
If you're looking for more of that type of experience, you should try dark souls.
I've done SL1 runs in all three, but yes those are also great examples! They very aptly pull of that whole "lost in the seas of time" vibe, with hollowification and all the bits of lore attached to random NPCs, items and locations, plus the subsurface cross-game references.
Sometimes I'd just hang out in either Firelink Shrine or Majula just for the music. And Majula's daily twilight moments are beautiful.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane haha!
I never got into control, the weirdness supernatural stuff was too much for me. I dropped it after the first hour.
The metro games are amazing though. Especially awakening in VR.
“The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.” -G-man
Thanks for making all the difference, Viktor.
Aww man I wasn’t gonna cry but you got me tearin up now.
I remember quitting HL2 at times because "man this is depressing".
A lot of it is quite beautiful.
My favorite spot is the final area of Water Hazard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJpGHDZSSt4
I love how each area has the color of the sky change to simulate the passage of time getting closer to sunset as you progress.
Yeah I especially liked the section along the coast. Beautiful, but hauntingly beautiful for a lot of it.
I never noticed on my own that the sea level at the coasts is visibly much lower than it should be, because the Combine have been stealing the water.
Such an interesting detail and I totally missed it!
You clearly didn't reach Ravenholm because throwing the saws into zombies never been that fun.
Somewhat related: That Creepy Feeling - What is it with Source games? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=03yL_JCeQBI
Well it seems I played almost all of his games recently. I have an Half Life 2 game in progress and finished Dishonored for the 4th time last december.
Half-life 2 is imo still the most important and impactful game of our generation — from gameplay to art-style to game mechanics and so on, it’s still exceptional and I struggle to come up with another single player game that blew me away like HL2 - Dead Space comes close but it was less revolutionary imo
>I struggle to come up with another single player game that blew me away like HL2
The original? I thought the first person story telling mode of HL1 was really mind blowing.
Exactly, so many first of its kind moments in HL1. The first time you saw a scripted sequence, like wtf am I playing, this is amazing.
HL2 was more refined, and the art style did help elevate the story telling.
The gravity gun in hl2 was absolutely mind-blowing
Every game up until then had been full of 100% static assets and suddenly you could just pick up and throw anything with realistic physics
For me it was the trash blowing around on the ground when you step off of the train. I immediately picked up the trash and started throwing it around myself. My mind was blown.
That said I still prefer HL1 overall. Its more high impact and brutal. There's nothing in HL2 that's quite like accidentally blowing away a black mesa scientist and having gore spray everywhere. HL1 is just viscerally more violent, and also I dislike how NPCs in HL2 have basically deified Gordon and constantly suck him off. In HL1 the security guards are bros but the scientists treat you with annoyance. I get the whole subplot of freed vortegants turning you into a heroic figure, but I think that's just a thin plot excuse for Valve's decision to make the player feel like a special person. Also all of the "girlfriend simulator" stuff is cringe that aged poorly.
> I get the whole subplot of freed vortegants turning you into a heroic figure
That's not really it at all, it's the G-man's machinations that turn him into a "heroic figure". If anything he's more comparable to Paul Atreides. The Vorteguants just temporarily release him from the G-man's grasp in HL2:E1, but that barely lasts to the next episode.
He's a pawn of whatever game the G-Man is playing, and was unleashed as sort of an unwitying agent of chaos on Breen and the Combine ("the right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world").
> Also all of the "girlfriend simulator" stuff is cringe that aged poorly
Huh?
I'm talking about HL2, not the episodes. I don't judge HL1 by what was written into HL2 years later, nor do I judge HL2 by what was written into the episodes or Alyx years later. Not least because it's common knowledge that the writers have been following the "Lost" philosophy of writing, making up shit as they go, creating mysteries they themselves don't know the answer to, punting that down the road to their future selves.
In Half Life 1 you start with a dogshit reputation and insofar as you gain any reputation with the NPCs its because you've progressed through the game to earn it. The scientists treat you like base labor in the beginning, then come to see you as useful, as a fighter, after you prove it. The soldiers start without knowing who you are, but after you tear your way through their ranks they start hating you by name.
In Half Life 2, all the NPCs you meet act like you're already a famous hero and there's really no indication in the game that this comes from g-man propaganda rather the vortegants and/or the black mesa scientists. In HL2 both the vorts and the scientists make a point of saying they owe Gordon a lot. The natural read on this, given the context of the first two games and not any later retcons, is that the scientists or vorts have basically deified you. Mossman talks about how she wishes she could have worked with you at Black Mesa as though you were not just a war hero but also a legendary scientist. What scientific achievements did Gordon have at Black Mesa? He pushed samples around and showed up late for work. What kind of stories were the other scientists telling her about you? Also Alyx starts hitting on you right away.
Whatever the plot justifications for it, clearly there was a commercial motivation of pandering to the player. It aged poorly.
I don't think I ever felt as if Alyx was hitting on Gordon when I played the game. Fangirling, sure, but that's it. I can fully imagine Gordon's legend building up over time, however justified it might be. It didn't feel like pandering, just that you're amongst a bunch of very desperate people who've built up a myth around what happened in Black Mesa to help them keep going.
Gordon’s actions in HL1 is why there’s even a resistance, I think Gordon’s legendary status isn't from Gman propaganda but more from the resistance itself needing/wanting an icon/martyr/founder. It’s an interesting contrast from the first game where you’re a nobody and expectations are at rock bottom for you, versus in HL2+ everyone expects you to be a messiah, but the odds are so stacked against you it’s hard to see how you can live up to the expectation.
I always felt embarrassed by the attention in HL2, more than ego-stroked. It’s awkward in-game but intentionally so, in my mind. Like with that Mossman line, Gordon is a nobody scientifically and famous for other reasons so that line says more about Mossman’s vanity and ego than anything about Gordon.
Not quite static. Hitman and Red Faction comes to mind, years before Half-Life 2. Still, it was groundbreaking.
Red Faction's destructible maps lend themselves to a lot of creative gameplay, but the (late) game was far to linear. The engine made a lot possible, but to explore using explosives you had to exploit item duplication glitches or cheats. In the end it felt like an engine demo posing as a complete game.
There was also that crossbow that shoots red hot rebar, let’s you pin things (and enemies) to walls. I had so much fun with that
The mix of good open landscape and good indoor maps were also quite impressive for the time if I remember correctly.
I remember throwing toilets at each other in HL2 at LAN parties. Such a magical experience.
HL2 on Steam had an achievement called "flushed" if you killed a combine with a gravity gun toilet.
I was about 15, HL2 was my first "real" video game that I bought with money, the xbox did not exist in my country and I've never heard of game achievements before. In the second last act of the game, in the push towards the citadel through waves and waves of combine, I was low on ammo, and stresses out. I picked up my gravity gun and started lobbing junk to the enemies to get away from them. I picked up a toilet and chucked it into a whole pile of combine. As I paused to have a brief chuckle about the absurdity, Steam chimed with that achievement.
It was as if GabeN Himself looked over my shoulder and went "heh, nice" when I did it. Truly magical and a gaming highlight for me.
>The first time you saw a scripted sequence, like wtf am I playing, this is amazing.
Ye. It is hard to remember how stale games used to be with "story parts" and "game play parts".
Small things like "two scientist runs towards you. One is eaten by head crab zombie unless you save him really fast" -- all these kind of small scripted events added so much. And fluently playing the whole mess up experiment and then try to escape overarching story.
The first time you see the tentacle in Half Life 1 has stuck with me for decades.
HL1 was huge too. I was disappointed with how short HL2 is in comparison.
I think everyone was, and they never did deliver on their episodic content promise. Valve pivoted from a game developer to a publisher / self-publishing platform at that time which made it and its owner a multi-billion company and over time revived the PC gaming market.
They could have done it for almost free too. Just placeholder levels with story fragments, let the community create the maps, scripts and art to fill the void.
Black Mesa is a great way to re-experience HL1 too.
I picked it up the other day and honestly I'm disappointed, I was expecting modern-day graphics but it's barely on par with HL2.
It's easily "higher resolution" than HL2, but some things just aren't very well done. Some of the sound effects are weak and enemy behavior is less fun to play against across the board.
I think that is harsch on a fan mod?
I sadly was too young to truly appreciate hl1 (or maybe was forbidden to pay it not sure) - for me the first game that blew me away was Dungeon Keeper and HoMM3 - I still play them from time to time…
Agree. I recently played HL2 again with the new commentary (added because of the 20th anniversary) and it really shows why the level design is so good: a lot of play testing and iterative design. They really did the work. Now I'm playing the Halo franchise and the difference in how boring and uninspired the levels are is really striking.
Mm. Halo 3 felt really open and expansive the first time I played it. Second time, I tried to explore outside the normal path and rapidly discovered that it was a very well disguised rails shooter.
But I've also gone back further than that in Bungie's back catalogue, having recently been playing Marathon 2 and Marathon ∞ (winner of the MacFormat(?) magazine award for "largest version number increase between successive releases") on Steam, and… well, 2 has still-interesting levels, but Infinity's levels are a spatially confusing mess.
> Now I'm playing the Halo franchise and the difference in how boring and uninspired the levels are is really striking.
Relevant PA: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/11/28/the-rest-of-th...
Halo: ODST is the one for me with the best storytelling and ambiance.
when i played HL2 in 2006 or whatever, i had no idea that there would never be anything like that again. we all thought that HL2 was just the beginning... but it was the opposite. i think that we all assumed that the game was made great by its technology. but the more i think about it, the more i realize that it was the people, the sensibilities of those people and that time, and the character of valve at that time, everything besides the technology, that made HL2 so good. and that also explains why it has never been reproduced. if i were going to be sent to another planet in another galaxy to seed another colony of humanity... and i could only bring 2 video games for that entire branch of humanity to know and appreciate... it would be HL2 and MGS2.
> I struggle to come up with another single player game that blew me away like HL2
I feel the same, but incidentally one of the ones that blew my away like HL2 was Dishonored.
Prey was really good too, if not quite up to the level of HL and Dishonored.
Dishonored, Prey, Deus Ex. Relics of a lost era: I don't know if we'll ever see big budget "immersive sims" like them again.
I'd recommend Death Stranding and Control.
Control, while fun, was too much of an action game for me.
I can understand that. I'm no good at action games, but it was great playing on easy! Well worth it.
I never played it, gotta try it out soon!
I loved HL2 so much. Not at the 1st place in my list because, well, the Mass Effect story line brings that one to another level, but HL2 for the time was unbeatable. I wonder why they didn't continue the franchise with a proper HL3; the entire world of gamers was (and probably still is) begging for it.
HL2 is one of the top 5 most influential games. I think Duke Nukem 3D was one (first good multiplayer), Witcher 3 is another (one of the most immersive, story driven), the Elder Scrolls series and I am finding it very difficult to name the 5th, but HL series was great for its time.
Dark souls for sure now
Absolutely agree. I just replayed all the Half Life series with my kids and they love it. It's a game that's just so well done and I think it held well after all these years.
half life alyx with the Jeff level
Rest in peace. His work was monumental.
Level design is something that is often there as a way to simply service the gameplay. You make sections that enable to game loop. Half Life 1 is designed this way: set pieces for aliens and marines to have interesting encounters.
Viktor designed levels that felt part of worlds that are lived in. City 17, where Half Life 2 takes place, feels like a believable dystopia. With evil guards and propaganda and a looming techno tower of Sauron.
Dishonored pushed this even further, with levels that not only are equally well presented, but can be traversed in so many creative ways. It’s a sandbox for the mind.
Rip, your work was brilliant and inspiring.
I remember listening to HL2 in-game commentary from the game devs. One that stuck to me was something along the lines "It really pains me that we put so much effort in all these connecting hallways and the players just run past them at mach 3 speeds, but you got to do it anyway otherwise the hallway looks out of place" (paraphrasing, not direct quote)
It’s the tension between narrative storytelling and content creation. Also why so many indie developers end up making games that are a couple rooms with changing details (12 minutes, etc)!
Not everyone does. My play style is much more touristy :)
I didn't know the same person was involved in shaping both projects, but as soon as I read that, the personality that connected both those beautiful games was immediately clear. What an amazing legacy to leave despite a sadly shortened life.
The man loves spikey metal walls in European cities, especially with an overhang. He couldn't help himself!
Dishonored and its sequel were two of the most memorable games I've played.
I loved the first one and its dlcs and had the second on my steam queue for 8 years while life got in the way. This year I've 100% completed the game (3 playthroughs) and I'm currently thoroughly enjoying Death of the Outsider. These games are the amazing product of talented people who love their crafts and Viktor was one of them.
Do yourself a favor and play Thief if you haven't!
Dishonored is kind of a spiritual successor to the Thief series, several team members from Looking Glass went on to work at Arkane. It's one of those rare times I've felt like I was playing a video game, yet still fully immersed. Every feature surprised or delighted me, nothing felt out of place. It felt very polished and ahead of its time despite its raw nature. The gameplay of the first two titles holds up very well. Make sure to consult PCGamingWiki for critical compatibility patches
I'll look into it, thank you for the recommendation!
Fellow taffer here. Some things to consider for a thief first-timer:
If you have experience with games, play on expert, seriously. Thief makes the game harder by adding objectives and constraints, not just stat scaling. There’s a couple levels that have bullshit secrets to find or loot requirements, but overall it encourages exploration. I played expert my first time based on a post like this one and I was so so glad I did.
The controls and mechanics feel cumbersome at first because it’s such a different game than the usual halo/cod/unreal-influenced FPS. Until you get used to them and the mechanics don’t feel bad about save scumming.
Play with original graphics, don’t use texture mods (at least for a first playthrough). Once you get used to the old graphics, the art direction really comes together, and IMO it’s right up there with Dishonored.
The gameplay pitch is thus: LG wanted to make a mechanics-based DnD-like class based RPG videogame. Elder-scrolls is stat-based RPG: your character levels up in-game and their stats go up. If you go to your friend’s place, you don’t take any of that with you, it’s tied to the digital save file/avatar/character. Contrast this with fighting games, which are mechanics based: the characters are consistent and do not change. You get better at the game and accomplish more by learning the mechanics.
So as you get good at thief, you are leveling up. You can go to your friend’s house, take over playing and say “watch this shit” and pull some crazy stunt.
LG started building the mechanics for a thief class and realized they had nowhere near enough capital to make all the other classes. But they already had a pretty fun game. This is why Thief 1 has tons of different environments and locales and thief 2 is more focused on places a thief would be likely to go.
> If you have experience with games, play on expert, seriously. Thief makes the game harder by adding objectives and constraints, not just stat scaling.
Thanks for that tip, will definitely remember it when I get around to playing it
thanks!
gloomwood, while not released yet, looks like a potentially worthy successor.
Does your recommendation also include the 2014 reboot?
The 2014 reboot is a pretty big letdown because it largely avoids all the strong aspects of the original game in favor ip recognition.
The original Thief would largely be considered an immersive sim whereas Dishonored is a very well fleshed out stealth game with masterful vertical level design. Prey (2017) feels like a great mash-up of both games. I'd put the original Deus Ex and Human Revolution in there as well, though they also include rpg elements.
Prey’s closest ancestor, by a mile, is System Shock, I’d say.
Prey was so good too!
Hell no, that’s not a Thief game.
Pagans amirite?
Agreed. Two of the best games ever created, and I'm not sure we'll ever see anything like them ever again. The art design played a huge role in that.
Let's gather for whiskey and cigars tonight, in honor of Viktor.
Indeed. I believe so.
Chances are very good.
I loved dishonored so much I played it for several months.
Only game I ever did that with in my life.
RIP. For those who haven't seen it yet, he was interviewed in the HL2 20th Anniversary Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCjNT9qGjh4 (intro and chapter 1 at 13:40)
Wait, he is the art lead of both Half Life 2 and Dishonored series? No wonder why Dishonored and Dishonored 2 looks so much like Half Life 2 with its dark and "wet" environment, especially when I was looking at the underground and underwater segments, and how it looks to incorporate a lot like European cyberpunk elements in Half Life 2 (it was set in East Europe tho), and then some steampunk elements with Dishonored
Art direction is the part of HL2 that has aged the least imho. Still would be a surprising setting and tone if done today.
The latest game in the franchise is Alyx, which is the same setting and tone and done today~ish (...2020)
I still yearn for a riff on Ravenholm
Arkane (Dishonoured) were making a Ravenholm based game, it was canned towards the end of development.
Really sad to hear about this. He was only 52. It's a safe bet that his brilliant art direction was deeply impactful to a lot of HN readers.
O wow, the architecture in Dishonored gave me always combine vibes, now I do understand why
RIP. Dishonored was a beautiful game with a surprisingly deep world. Sad to read this. I was hoping to see more
Dishonoured is such a great game, both the art and the music made it so immersive and it really felt like the world was alive. The narrative was raw, and human.
The credits song "Honor for All" was the cherry on top as well, it was like I'd been holding my breath the whole game until that moment when the story closed out so perfectly (spoilers for good ending: https://youtu.be/IM7TBRdferM?t=26).
I got the same feeling from GW2's ending song/credits "Fear not this Night" (https://youtu.be/HuwXaAIenJw?t=28).
The Ori games also have such amazing narrative/music, too. (Ending spoilers for the first game: https://youtu.be/Kx9DPTIDB_0?t=232).
Little bit spammy so my apologies, but I just love it when a game's narrative, art and music all come together to make some special. Ori makes me bawl my eyes out to this day. And Dishonoured I felt like I was actually living in Dunwall the entire time, all credit to Viktor Antonov.
"Shall we gather for whisky and cigars tonight?"
One of the most prominent artists in games - unfortunate to hear this news. I hope the conditions of the stressful and demanding video game industry didn't contribute to this.
I can’t believe I didn’t make the connection—both of those games are in my top 10. A big part of why I love them is how deeply immersive their worlds are. Dunwall and City 17 don’t just look great; they feel alive, with atmosphere, detail, and storytelling woven into every corner. No other game has quite captured that same level of immersion.
HL2 stuck with me for years and years exactly because of his art direction. It was the first time I ever saw a video game world that somewhat resembled my actual real-world surroundings. Incredibly sad he passed away at only 52...
I was going through a rough time in my life when i got the orange box as a freshman in high school.
half life 2 and team fortress 2 and the subsequent intro into the source engine... i really needed them at that time.
Viktor dying makes me sad
No matter how brilliant the game mechanics of those games were, they wouldn't have hooked me as they did without Antonov's exceptional vision. City 17 and Dunwall Will forever live in our memory.
Dishonored had such a unique style and setting. Head and shoulders above the usual AAA slop set in generic sci-fi or fantasy (or occasionally western) worlds.
I remember opening a copy of PC Gamer in the early 2000s. I was totally taken aback that they had moved Half-Life from a sci fi New Mexico base, to some sort of weird Eastern European dystopia.
It was all thanks to Antonov. And Half-Life 2 was (aesthetically) so much more memorable than the first game thanks to that influence.
RIP: He left a trail of things to behold- and you knew he was involved, long before the credits rolled.
Not only a great artist with a fantastic ability at creating a unified feeling unique for each project, but also designing for the constraints - so much of the combine look was around being low poly and striking.
HL2 is a masterpiece. RIP.
That's sad. Dishonored 2 is one of the greatest games of all time and there's truly nothing like that on the market anymore.
It was a worthy successor building upon a great first game. The map and world design is top notch. Especially the switching between to interleaved time lines in the now abandoned manor and moving walls in the crazy inventors mansion.
The chaos/karma system also functions as a good counterweight to the "stealth archer" game design problem so player aren't heavily incentivised toward clearing levels by separating enemies and killing them one by one thereby removing all obstacles until the emptied out game is nothing but a boring walking simulator.
He was great, he deserves, in death, no dishonor
This is sad news, I was aware of his work on Half Life 2 through art books, and I bought the first Dishonored game because of it
Rest in peace, Viktor. Your influence and design greatly affected the way I viewed and experienced video games.
He made true art! He made games for the ages. His work will be enjoyed for hundreds of years.
His work and impact on both games is still fresh in my mind. You'll be missed, Viktor. RIP.
Good man thank you for your work
:_( What key should I press to pay respect? I think it might get jammed though...
RIP, truly a legend, very creative guy, thanks for all the good times!
Did he work on D2 or DOTO? Regardless, too soon. I feel this one.
He's on the Borealis now, farewell o/