AnKor

Haven't seen a comment explaining why edges of some objects make other objects disappear. Image you have 3 layers trying to cover the same pixel: a skybox, a distant object and an object near you. Now, if alpha blending is involved, the proper way to render these would be from far to near. So that objects closer to the player are blended on top of a more distant "background" that has been rendered before. However, sorting by distance may slow in some cases or just impossible in others (like if two objects intersect). And here's what may happen without sorting: - Skybox is always rendered first (true for most old games). - Then a semi-transparent object near you is rendered and writes its position into Z buffer (unless a texel is completely transparent and discarded). - And then a distant object cannot be rendered anymore, because Z buffer tells that there's already something else in front of it.

Long time viewer here. Just registered to comment that IMO this is indeed a much better episode than most HL2 ones. I don't blame Ross though, it is just HL2 being much more action and script heavy is not very suitable for FM-style narration. The game just doesn't give Freeman any time to express his thoughts. As for Gordon's reaction to NPCs. I would love him to be more cooperative, this could have added some variety, but Freeman is one man army and I just don't see why he would bother cooperating with such "rebels". I haven't played HL2 in a decade, but I remember even back then they looked silly.