FREEMAN'S MIND: EPISODE 62

[Mr Nutt]

Ok, so I can start freaking out about the idea of no more FM now?

OHMYGODWHATAREWEGOINGTODO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

is hl2 still up for discussion? maybe starting 2016 or so to have a nice break, maybe full dedication to the movie?

Yes, I am freaking out. I always get emotional when series ends

 

anyway, thank you for all of these years *goes to prepare the crying corner*

I guess for now, all we've got is this from the FAQ.

Q: Are you going to continue Freeman’s Mind all the way through Half-Life and Half-Life 2?

A: Maybe. Freeman’s Mind is sort of a runaway experiment that’s turned out more popular than I anticipated. There are projects I would prefer to work on instead, but nothing I could create in a similar timeframe. As long as there’s a continued interest in more episodes, I can’t see a reason not to make more of them. I just don’t want to promise I’ll complete the entire series in case people grow tired of it in the future.

I also remember him saying in a few other places that he might do Half-Life 2 if the interest is still there.

[PapaFrita]

I also remember him saying in a few other places that he might do Half-Life 2 if the interest is still there.

I think the interest is there, a lot of people would want it. But there's some folks who are saying that because of the different structure that is hl2 (specially the dialogs and how everything is better explained than in hl1) doing a FM2 wouldnt be as funny :/

Anyways, if Ross would like to shoot a couple of episodes and show them to some "beta watchers" I think we woudnt mind *wink wink*

[kingkolton9]

"That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Anyone that doesn't like that can eat my shorts. Oh God, I'm so hungry. Wonder if I can eat my shorts."

 

Or something.

 

The follow up line would probably be "Nah, there's too much blood on me. That, and I don't think whatever this suit is made of will be easy to cut, let alone digest."

[Will]

I think the interest is there, a lot of people would want it. But there's some folks who are saying that because of the different structure that is hl2 (specially the dialogs and how everything is better explained than in hl1) doing a FM2 wouldnt be as funny :/

 

I think with it being set up in Half-Life 2, there could be some opportunity to give Mike and Dave a cameo or two.

[Box Tactics]

I would certainly be delighted to see Freeman's Mind continue to HL2. But it's up to Ross whether to do so or not.

[phollox]

I wonder, from a Technical point of view, Doing Freeman's Mind in HL2 would be harder or easier for Ross? Does he still need to dump the frame footage in raw format, using his SSD, or Source Filmaker could help?

[ElFreakazoide]

I believe that alternatievely to just being another universe it has been implied in HL and in HL2 in very subtle ways that Xen is not a full universe on its own, hence why it is called "the borderworld", plus Breen spoke in HL2 about "worlds streched thin across the membranes where the dimensions intersect" which makes me believe that if this is Xen then this might be a weird space created out of space-time distortions from intersecting wormholes between two or maybe many more universes, this DOES invoke brane cosmology and string theory (Gordon will become mad again if he figures this out). Under those circunstances I think gravity could behave in that way if space-time curvatures are so weird that it affects not only the gravitational pull towards any particular direction that curvature might be in but also the entire view of the place. The rest is outworld physics beyond the reach of gravity.

 

However I think Gordon needs to cool down from his initial reactions before sorting any of this out. This episode has been FANTASTIC, although no Nihilanth is sort of a let down, the freaking out bit compensates very well that aspect.

 

Next episode is going to be awesome!

[kingkolton9]

I've been watching Freeman's mind for years, and I want to give back, somehow. So, I tried my hand at subtitling. I had a bit of trouble with the sounds that aren't words ("Aah!," "Oomph," "Euuh!," "Wooh ah ho!," etc), and I think they fall under hearing-impaired subtitles, so I didn't add them. The way I typed them just doesn't feel right to me. However, I can easily add them, if you so wish, as I have them all typed out. Please tell me what you think, as I've never attempted subtitling before.

 

I keep getting an "The extension .srt is not allowed" error, so here's a link to it on Mediafire. I hope that's allowed.

[Box Tactics]

Maybe Gordon was too busy hallucinating episode 61.5 to hear the Nihilanth?

[Descriptor]

I also remember him saying in a few other places that he might do Half-Life 2 if the interest is still there.

I think the interest is there, a lot of people would want it. But there's some folks who are saying that because of the different structure that is hl2 (specially the dialogs and how everything is better explained than in hl1) doing a FM2 wouldnt be as funny :/

Anyways, if Ross would like to shoot a couple of episodes and show them to some "beta watchers" I think we woudnt mind *wink wink*

See, I always like FM more as a character study of Freeman stuck in an insane circumstance than necessarily as a pure comedy. While HL2 has less crazy Black Mesa BS, it still offers so much more for how Freeman interacts with other human beings (who aren't just carbon copies of each other spouting the same line repeatedly). Plus, since it does better to actually present some story, it gives Freeman more food for thought.

Really, the only big problem I see is how much the tone will have to switch gears so as to be coherent. That said, I think it could still be pretty great, if not even better.

[Box Tactics]

While HL2 has less crazy Black Mesa BS, it still offers so much more for how Freeman interacts with other human beings (who aren't just carbon copies of each other spouting the same line repeatedly). Plus, since it does better to actually present some story, it gives Freeman more food for thought.

People keep saying shit like this, and it always strikes me as a relative underestimate of Half-Life's storytelling quality and an overestimate of Half-Life 2's.

[Descriptor]

While HL2 has less crazy Black Mesa BS, it still offers so much more for how Freeman interacts with other human beings (who aren't just carbon copies of each other spouting the same line repeatedly). Plus, since it does better to actually present some story, it gives Freeman more food for thought.

People keep saying shit like this, and it always strikes me as a relative underestimate of Half-Life's storytelling quality and an overestimate of Half-Life 2's.

Well, the key to what I said was "present story". As in, the characters and events actually lay a lot of it out for you. HL1's story is one that is much more something that you piece together after the fact, like some crazy conspiracy theory in a movie. It's all really deep and convoluted, but only looking back at it. This is something that became even more apparent after HL2 came out, since you could then look at how HL fit into a larger narrative, making a lot of the subtleties a little more obvious. But that said, for a very "in-Freeman's-perspective" sort of format seen in FM, most of the details are pretty easily lost, with most of your motivation being "go to the only place you can next". Even though you do get told that you have to go to the Lambda Labs reasonably early on, you aren't really given much explanation as to why, other than "because you have to". That, and you never really are told what it is, or how to get there since you are never able to get an appreciation for where anything is in Black Mesa.

 

HL2 does suffer from this as well, but it does much better at giving you better reasons for your actions along the way, as well as giving you ideas of where to go and why. This is largely helped by the game being above ground, as well as by the assortment of maps you are given in the more travely parts, such as Water Hazard and Highway 17. On top of that, the Citadel acts very well to help give you a relatively consistent landmark to work off of. In Black Mesa, it's just meandering around a giant labyrinth, and while I love that feeling of an incredibly complex facility, it doesn't really contribute to the actual plot as well once you get past the "escape the facility phase. Throughout the game, your actual motivation still remains "keep going forward to get more game" rather than "man, gotta figure out how to get to the Lambda Labs". When your objective early on is to just leave, it's fairly straightforward how to do that. Go up. But once it gets to the "get to a specific part of the facility" section, it just becomes total wandering, since you never get any sort of clue how to accomplish that, except for endless meandering forwards. I feel like a lot of that could have been much more alleviated if the lambda complex had some obvious landmark seen from the surface, so that during the rare times you were above ground, you could get an idea of how far away you are. Also, if there was better signage indicating how your wondering actually ended up leading to the Lambda complex. Stuff like high level tram maps and better indicated waypoints would go a long way towards that. The scientists along the way do at least try to accomplish that, but I don't feel like it was all that appreciable at the end of the day.

 

Blargh, I got on a huge tangent there, sorry about that.

Basically, what I'm getting at is, HL1's story was told much more passively than HL2's. HL1 revealed the larger plot through very subtle details that simply wouldn't be obvious in the FM playthrough, especially since they require extensive contemplation and hindsight. HL2's story, by comparison, is very actively told, with more concrete characters and events. That's more what I was getting at in my comment than anything.

[ScottD.Betson]

Freeman Screaming when the soldiers did the looney tunes crap was too damn hilarious a few episodes back so this made me think of that and laugh my ass off........Ross thank you for making me love Half life alot more than I did when i was a kid

that was ages ago that episode. Even before Freeman being knocked out i think

Still was fucking hilarious!

[BTGBullseye]

Excellent episode.

[Bindal]

You would think that, at least at this point, Freeman would try to somewhat think "movie logic" (if not "video game logic") and not "real life logic" with a lot of things he encounters - or at least with his continues luck of running into dead ends and puzzles required to continue.

 

Also, SECOND worst apparement? I don't want to know how you could be worse than "a cave in Xen with a single room, lacking a bathroom, with no food, no electricity or no nearby store"

[BTGBullseye]

Also, SECOND worst apparement? I don't want to know how you could be worse than "a cave in Xen with a single room, lacking a bathroom, with no food, no electricity or no nearby store"

Anywhere in Arkansas...

 

Arkansas is one of the worst places to be a renter in America. It is the only state in the US where tenants are treated as criminals for paying rent late and landlords are not required by law to maintain their properties. Its failure-to-vacate law lets landlords give tenants a 10-day eviction notice if they are even one day overdue. Tenants who can't or won't leave within that span face fines for every day they remain on the property and up to 90 days in jail. This makes things difficult for the third of Arkansas's residents who are renters and have legitimate concerns about the properties they are occupying.

 

The combination of failure-to-vacate and the lack of warranty of habitability make it almost impossible for tenants to challenge their landlords for legitimate reasons. It's estimated that criminal evictions occur everyday in Arkansas, resulting in over 2000 failure-to-vacate cases being filed each year.

[Lord Sinister]

Freeman's already tenuous mental state deteriorates further...

[urcousinvinnie5]

I was/am really hoping to see freeman assess the workings of xen for it's environment and flora/fauna like him saying something like "If all of these islands are floating in the deep void of space, why don't they move in perpetual motion? They can't be held by a gravitational force if they are all just islands without a base." or "Why am i still breathing if all this is is just a void in space?" There are many interesting things about Xen that COULD make sense, for instance, if you look at the animated freeman's mind movies the creator depicts Xen as being an actual planet but the islands we see are just small chunks of the whole planet which has somehow been almost completely destroyed. The gas giant below and all of the chunks of the planet orbiting the remaining half like moons.

[akira]

Great episode Ross, my only and biggest question so far is how worse was Freeman's room than this one?

[Artlav]

In accordance with human habit of stating the obvious, i therefore state that this was a great episode.

Excitement overload detected.

Overriding to default action "get back to work".

 

he might do Half-Life 2 if the interest is still there.

If?

IF?!

There is no f-ing if about it.