"The True Genious of Freeman's Mind"

[Alyxx Thorne]

This video is a bit of a praise and interesting look at what makes Freeman's Mind work so well

 

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[Selous Templar]

Saw it. Whoever made it is a legend, and deserves an Ice Cream Cake

[Diem]

I don't think the video does full justice, though, especially for claiming to be the full "TRUTH." A few other things that make Freeman's Mind so exceptional:

 

- The humor is genuinely clever and unique. So much humor throughout the past couple decades relies solely on vulgarity as opposed to actual comedy. You get actual interesting and unique jokes instead of just your stock sex jokes and curse words that make up 99% of humor nowadays. If the series was done by someone else on YouTube, you can bet that most of the jokes would be of that nature instead of what we have now.

 

- Consistency. The original series spanned 7 years and still remained consistent from beginning to end. Compare that to many other shows that change dramatically over time, or even just from year to year. Red Vs Blue's first five seasons were pretty consistent, but after that it transforms into a different show over time. Watch an episode of the Angry Video Game Nerd from 2009 compared to 2016 and you'll see major differences. But watch an episode of Freeman's Mind from 2008 vs. 2014, and the quality is still there. Although I will say that I think the quality subtly goes up over time, especially past Episode 20 or so and definitely by the 40's to 60's, but that's a good thing.

 

Of course, it helps that the show is technically the same thing over time. Commentary placed over the gameplay of a single campaign, so there's a solid sense of where things are going, unlike other shows that are written from absolute scratch one episode at a time, like AVGN. But even then, keeping that consistent--or even improving its quality--across 7 whole years of production is a huge accomplishment, and Freeman's Mind 2 is much the same in that regard.

 

- Voice acting. I never really got into the other "Master Minds" like Barney's or Shepherd's because the voice acting just wasn't as good. I don't think the writing was as good, either, but the voice acting is more noticeably amateur. Ross is a talented voice actor and really brings the character to life, speaking the lines with conviction as opposed to sounding like he's just reading off a script. There's a reason why so many people now associate his voice with Gordon Freeman.

[Kaiosama TLJ]

One thing that makes Freeman's Mind what it is, in my opinion, is that it's a parody of the "right man in the wrong place" theme the Half Life series is famous for.

 

I don't think Ross choose a self-centered and paranoid personality for Gordom Freeman just for comedic purposes. Think about it for a second, if you, a "regular joe" with a "regular job", and NEITHER a soldier or security guard, ended up in the same situation as Gordon Freeman did, how would you fair? I would say badly, unless you already had a sociopathic tendency.

 

The same logic could be applied to a zombie apocalypse. Zombies are not human anymore, but they still resemble one, and who's better to kill then that a guy/gal that didn't have much regards to others even before the whole thing began? (aside from someone with military training/discipline of course) Bonus points if the zombie was someone he/she hated before. The only thing that you can hope is that said sociopath has it's own stardards (which is not uncommon, believe it or not), and that you are one of "rare" types of people he doesn't like to kill.

[dashofweak]

What I REALLY like about Freeman's Mind, besides everything that has been already mentioned, is the fact that Freeman feels like a real CHARACTER. He has flaws (which he is oblivious to), charm, personality, a backstory, but within the context of the half-life series it's totally possible this IS a version of Gordan Freeman.

 

It feels (while incredible) believable. He reacts like a human being, not just some Hollywood trope of a "Mad Scientist". Plus, the humour really is unique, has just the right combination of weird, unexpected, and punchy to just WORK. It's fantastic.