I WOULD HAVE asked whether I was in the right place, but the 20 tubs full of free, brightly-coloured junk food had pretty much given the game away. Any lingering doubt had faded by the time I'd seen the crowbars on the wall and the giant wheeled valve in the middle of the room. The staff wearing Half-Life T-shirts in the lift had also provided a strong clue. Then, minutes after a warm handshake and invitation to dive into the 18 different varieties of coronary represented in the snack bar, I'm due back in the barren lands of Half-Life 2 with only a capsule of orange Tic Tacs for comfort.
"Episode Two picks up right where Episode One left off, with you and Alyx on the train escaping the city before the Citadel blows up," explains project lead David Speyrer as we stalk through the winding halls of Valve HQ and I fiddle with the exit hatch on my plundered bounty. "You're racing to deliver the information packet that you stole from the Citadel to an enclave of scientists who are up in the wilderness north of City 17. The Combine are in disarray - they're scattered, so are regrouping and moving in your direction."
Then, in a corner office of Valve's high-rise abode I come across exactly what will be chasing you through the rural valleys, forests and wide-open spaces of Valve's futuro-Eastern Europe - the Hunter. "We wanted something that was like the Strider in that it's a synthetic Combine thing," explains Valve creature creator Ted Backman as he waves his hands over a clay rendition of the latest addition to the alien menagerie. "It can do lots of cool non-human movements, it can be dynamic and fight you in ways that a soldier couldn't, but also it's a lot smaller scale than an actual Strider - entering into buildings, chasing you through tighter terrain and relating to you in more of a intimidating, in-your-face, large way."
HAVE FEELINGS TOO Designed to sniff you out, hunt you down and generally terrify, one of the Hunter's key features is the way that Valve are working out ways for you to read its emotions through the animation of its wild roving eyes, much in the way that Dog's feelings could be told through the dilation of his pupil or the flapping of his flappy bits. If they're inquisitive then you'll know, if they're angry then you'll definitely know - and if they're frightened (which you won't see that often), then their gaping evil optics will be all aflutter in the knowledge of their impending doom. Clever stuff for something that doesn't have a face.
I'm then whisked into the presence of Dario Casali, Half-Life level designer and surprisingly the most British man on earth, to admire the chase. Hunters work in a similar way to the raptors in the less shit Jurassic Park movies, constantly in communication with each other through a series of odd hoots and relentlessly galloping after you through field, outhouse and dinosaur-theme-park kitchen.
"They're really fast-moving and they work as a pack," picks up Speyrer as Casali hurls physics items at them. "There are generally three Hunters to a pack, and they quickly divide up into two that try to flank and catch you in the crossfire with their plasma beams, and a third that will run up and try to melee attack you." Meanwhile, an embattled Casali picks up the leg of a recently deceased Strider with his gravity gun and knocks seven shades out of his pursuer with it, all to a delighted chorus of: "Yeah! Kill it with mum's legs!" They're a lovely bunch are Valve.
YOU'RE BUSTED Said Strider, more to the point, had been taken out by the latest entry in the long list of Half-Life combustibles: the Strider Buster. Not entirely a new weapon, in that it's picked up and lobbed by the trusty gravity gun, it's a way of getting down and dirty among the Striders - the aim being to attach it to a lumbering tripod's forehead before slotting a bullet deep within it and watching the Striders legs cartwheel away from its burning shell. In its present placeholder state, the Strider Buster looks like a pumpkin, another sign perhaps of Episode Two's rural connections, but it's quite an appetising battle dynamic - especially since its presence means that battles with a large number of Striders (rather than vanilla HL2's maximum of a paltry two) can now be brought into play.
SMASH 'N' GRAB But there's more to be seen, even if a dash down to destruction bod Gray Horsfield's office (the man previously charged with the more tumbly parts of The Lord Of The Rings flicks) is unfortunately rainchecked due to his computer's stubborn refusal to turn itself on. Casali's machine is thereby re-commandeered to demonstrate the new cinematic physics tech that the ex-WETA man has brought to the Freemanian fold.
Casali wanders around inside a typical HL2 dwelling smashing the windows, before calling in a scripted Strider to blow it into constituent smithereens. Now normally, the CPU cost of so many physics lumps flying and colliding would render this impressive scene impossible, but now the initial blast (the most engine-shredding part of the whole shebang) can been pre-simulated - with fracture lines painted onto models and simulated force placed in the applicable areas. The result, in Horsfield's cunning Kiwi hands, are some superbly kinetic-scripted destruction sequences.
FRESH AIR The most intriguing prospect of Ep Two though is the setting - since forests, farmland and countryside generally aren't quite as constricting as the linear paths through barricaded streets and murky industrial complexes in which Freeman has made his name. Clearly, there'll still be a lot of this, chiefly an underground journey through mines and Antlion burrows, but much of this new instalment will take place in a far broader arena. You'll be really encouraged to get to know the lay of the land that you're covering, journeying back and forth between action hotspots as opposed to relentlessly pushing forward as you did in the Coast and Water Hazard sections of HL2; making decisions about which skirmishes to take on first and which places to make your stand.
To aid you in this, you're being given a new toy to play with - the creator of which, a youngish cheery chap called Josh Weier, I now perch next to atop a wobbly stool. What I see is essentially a cobbled-together Eastern European Hot Rod, complete with belching engine and a fridge strapped to the back to act as a boot and keep your saw-blades in. But what do you need in a countryside riddled with pan-dimensional villainy?
"Well clearly a cow-catcher to run over zombies is a big important issue for that," nods Weier seriously. "And there's also a little eight-track player sitting in here with some speakers." You can play music as you drive then? "We'll see..." OK, so how will the beasties react to you being in a car?
SWINGERS "Well we've made it so that the fast zombie can jump onto the front and latch onto the vehicle and attack you, and when he's on there he's actually physically simulated. It's like in those old action flicks with the guy on the hood - if you're swing back and forth, then he's swinging back and forth."
What's more, any NPC with the right animation will be able to ride shotgun with you, leaping over the bonnet Starsky & Hutch-style if they're not on the passenger side, but your main companion will be a humble Vortigaunt. "We don't just want him to feel like Alyx has been remodelled, as that's not very exciting," continues Weier, also in charge of the little chap's AI, as he boots up a video of the emancipated Combine slave using a cool dispel attack on a crowd of Antlions and leaving them lying prostrate and confused on their invertebrate backs.
"We wanted him to have this mastery of Antlions, because he's from the same place and we wanted him to feel like he knows what he's doing."
Also equipped with a series of wise words, his HL1 beam attack and the ability to recharge your suit just in the nick of time death-wise, and you've got quite the alien companion in the Vort - very much a Mac and Me for the 21st century, with less corporate sponsorship. And then, as soon as it began, I find myself back at the snack station. And it's from this that I think that I have the remnants of an American corn-based snack stuck on my teeth when I meet Gabe Newell...
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