Gentlemens Dame 883: The Half-Life logo is a Lambda... But the lambda is for Decay Constant. Half-life is a "T" with a subscript "1/2". Does that fall under a branch of
Did Not Do The Research, or was it deliberate and is there a source for that?
- Narvi: In-universe, I believe it refers to Lambda team, which were either the folks who sent Freeman to Xen or the team which caused the resonance cascade, I can't remember which.
- Both, I believe.
- Technically they were the team handling the teleportation experiments - everyone in the lambda complex and all the corpses in Xen were from the lambda team. The resonance cascade was actually caused by the researchers in anomalous materials - the section Gordon, Kleiner and Eli were working in at the start of the game. They were examining a specimine retrieved by lambda, but weren't members of lambda itself.
- Aside from in-universe concerns, it makes a pretty substitution for the "A" in "Half" and is never used a replacement for the title itself, and it is at least related to the title. All the titles of HL 1 expansions are physics references too.
Also: since when could ANY pistol anywhere the HL games do a charge attack? Some of them do have secondary fire modes, but that's not the same thing.
- There was a glitch that allowed HL 2's basic pistol to fire many bullets at once, allowing for one-hit KO's. This was removed from DM but kept in the singleplayer.
The antlions are named as a Captain Ersatz of the insect like aliens in Starship Troopers. The two things to note here are that the antlions are in no way alien (read: not from another planet) and do not possess humanoid characteristics or exhibit human level or superior intelligence; they're just big bugs. Incidentally, the ST alien enemy is likely itself a spiritual successor to the the bug like aliens (described as looking like chiggers) in the TV show Space: Above and Beyond, which aired two years beforehand.
Studiode Kadent: I argued that Half-Life can be read as a
deconstruction of Doom's plot. An anonymous troper deleted this and said that it was not a deconstruction because it neither successfully attacked Doom nor did Doom play itself for fun.
I disagree. First, a
deconstruction doesn't necessarily have to be
correct (i.e. successful) in order to be a deconstruction.
BioShock arguably deconstructs the idea of "Galt's Gulch" from
Atlas Shrugged, but the deconstruction only holds up if you assume that
Humans Are Flawed; Ryan betrayed his own principles on numerous occasions because (according to the game) he, as a human, is inevitably a hypocrite. If you do
not assume that humans cannot stick to their principles, then the deconstruction is not correct. This does not mean that Bioshock is any less a deconstruction.
The same can be said about
Watchmen. Alan Moore assumed that moral absolutism is inevitably sociopathic. Now, Immanuel Kant would disagree, but on the basis of Moore's view of human psychology, it is true. So yes, whether or not Rorschach is a
correct deconstruction of morally absolutist superheroes is legitimately debateable. But that does not mean he is not a deconstruction.
Deconstruction is basically the argumentative technique
Reductio Ad Absurdum. Argumentative techniques can be performed correctly or incorrectly, but if someone attempts to use a technique and botches the application that does not mean they did not use the technique per se. They simply made a mistake when doing it.
The point is that the deconstruction does not have to be
successful to be a deconstruction. So whether or not the criticism was successful is irrelevant.
Secondly, Doom quite clearly did play itself somewhat unseriously. The campy music, lack of seriously terrifying atmosphere, over the top gore... Technological limitations are not the issue here,
System Shock was dead serious and legitimately frightening and still is, wheras Doom is not, and both were made around the same time.
Thus, I believe it is at least
plausible to read
Half Life 1 as a deconstruction of the plot of the original Doom. Given that it is arguable Valve's intent was not critical, it may be fair to call it an
Indecisive Deconstruction, however.
