Eh? Far, far before Half-Life.inFAMOUSCowZ said:
Marathon: 1994
Marathon: Durandal: 1995
Marathon: Infinity: 1996
Half Life: 1998.
Poll: possibility that halo was based on half-life
- Thread starter Hamish Durie
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Marathon: 1994
Marathon: Durandal: 1995
Marathon: Infinity: 1996
Half Life: 1998.
I don't really see any major similarity other than both the games having more than 2 sides that don't like any of the other sides.
Halo has the Marines and Spartans, the Covenant, the Flood and the Covenant "Heretics" or rebels. (At least that's how it was in Halo 2)
Half life has the Resistance and Vorigaunts, the Combine, the Zombies and the Antlions.
Halo has the Marines and Spartans, the Covenant, the Flood and the Covenant "Heretics" or rebels. (At least that's how it was in Halo 2)
Half life has the Resistance and Vorigaunts, the Combine, the Zombies and the Antlions.
Agree. This is way the heck to similar to HL it's just ludicrous. Although in Halo they tend to be alot less scary since they just evaporate upon hitting your shields.jackpipsam said:
Aliens are common antagonists in alot of games, because when they need a badguy-army, but don't want to have to consider throwing in real world politics or label a country and their army as "evil". I mean, you can only make a game about WWII so many times, and it's mostly the same every time. Aliens though? Heck, you have carte-blanche to make them into whatever you want.
Half life can't claim shooting through things, or powered space marine armor as it's own innovation(after all, Gordon was a physicist, MC's a marine). Doom? Maybe. As for the NPCs, well, if your main character doesn't talk, you need someone who does to advance the story. Only thing is, MC DOES talk.
Not to mention, whenever a cut-scene occurs, Halo is smart enough to take control of the camera away from the player to focus in on where they want to show us. One thing that bugged me about HL2 is that if you weren't constantly pointing Gordon in the direction of, and keeping your eyes on the characters when they were talking, I would miss something just off to the side of my screen every time, and have to replay the section to see what the buggering hell just made a loud clunking noise off to my right when I was paying attention to the NPC character talking to me. Then do it about two or three more times. [/rant]
First off: "power armour" is pretty much everywhere in the gaming universe (metroid, halo, crysis, haze. Just to name a few) so that doesnt count since its so generic.
Head-crabs/flood are the only two things that share a similarity and even then you're pushing it. There are no stronger references to half-life in Halo and so no way of really knowing if they based it off half-life.
My guess is that Bungie have played Half-life (then again who hasnt?) at some point in the past and then they made their own game.
Head-crabs/flood are the only two things that share a similarity and even then you're pushing it. There are no stronger references to half-life in Halo and so no way of really knowing if they based it off half-life.
My guess is that Bungie have played Half-life (then again who hasnt?) at some point in the past and then they made their own game.
To an extent, all contemporary story-driven science fiction FPS games are influenced by Halflife. I think it's very difficult to overstate how revolutionary the original Halflife was when it first came out.
If you want an example of what I'm talking about, go play something like Quake or the original Unreal, and imagine comparing those to Halo.
This is not to say there weren't bold, innovative shooters before Halflife (System Shock, Thief: The Dark Project - though that was kind of in development at the same time). But it was definitely the 'breakout' for the genre. It was the first time a commercially successful shooter ever had a significant focus on plot as opposed to just killing your way from one side of the brown castle to the other, and to that extent all such games nowadays owe it some kind of debt of influence.
If you want an example of what I'm talking about, go play something like Quake or the original Unreal, and imagine comparing those to Halo.
This is not to say there weren't bold, innovative shooters before Halflife (System Shock, Thief: The Dark Project - though that was kind of in development at the same time). But it was definitely the 'breakout' for the genre. It was the first time a commercially successful shooter ever had a significant focus on plot as opposed to just killing your way from one side of the brown castle to the other, and to that extent all such games nowadays owe it some kind of debt of influence.
Ad .1 - Power armor was pretty much Heinlein's invention, first appearing in Starship Troopers book from 1959Hamish Durie said:
Ad. 2 - Alien invasion trope is very old, there is 1892 book about aliens that take human form to infect people with some virus, and there of course is quite famous The War of The Worlds from 1898.
Ad. 3 - Uh, friendly secondary characters appear in majority of stories throughout history of mankind?
Ad. 4 - You mean small parasitic alien organisms that attacks people? I don't exactly recall where it first appeared but most known example is facehuggers from Aliens.
The inspirations are much older than either of those games. Just like with every work of fantasy the inspiration's go way back in time, modern fantasy is based greatly on Tolkien, who was building his story based on folklore mythos and pagan beliefs.
No. The mark VI Armour isn't the Hev suit, and the flood/headcrab concept wasn't especially original back in 1998
I don't really think it takes very much from Half Life, and borrows from Bungie's other games. In Oni I believe the human team was called the "UESC" as opposed to Halo's "UNSC," In halo there's also a group called the Office of Naval Inteligence, abbreviated to ONI.
Pardon me, but could I have a "Don't really care" vote please? I feel that there are probably quite alot of people who are satisfied with those games at a level where they really aren't concerned over it. Especially the Halo fans.
I'd say the roots are more "FPS with intelligent enemy AI" than any particular SF trappings they both share.
