Y’know, between Valve’s Half-Life 1 and the sequel I think HL1 was the superior genre-defining product. In HL1 you weren’t slowed down, there were no inescapable cutscenes of people talking for several minutes at a time. It’s not that HL2 was a step backwards, but maybe a sort of.. sidestep? They broke innovative new ground with all the storytelling and interesting characters, but it came at a big cost to interactivity.
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Someone needs to come up with a more interesting way to tell a game story than locking your character in a room with people obliviously talking to you even when you run around in circles at full speed. I think in that regard HL1 did good because it let you just run forward and see new shit all the time.
I do love HL2 though, even if I think the design is a tiny bit flawed.