Whilst my mind is empty of any real content, thought I’d let slip on a couple of stupid things I put into ETC2. I’m a firm believer in putting silly things in games, but only when they don’t detract from the actual game or require actual effort to find. Much of the time it’s just for personal entertainment (why call a zombie ‘Zombie1’ if you can call it Kathy?)
The first actually happens within the first few seconds of the game. As soon as you escape from the cell and get through the office window, if you listen very carefully, you can hear the scientist that just rescued you shout, “Use the force, Gordon! Use the Force!”. I think he’s called Simon, or something.
Half-way through the game, in the garage that the G-Man disappears into is a message reading ‘Go away’. This was originally meant for people who couldn’t resist noclipping through to see where the G-Man went, but I forgot to disable the door properly, so players were able to walk up to it and simply open it again to find a big black mass of nothing (plus that message).
Lots of the scripted creatures also have silly descriptions, or names of my friends and family. The two scientists near the end of the game are called Mike and Pete, a reference to the guys who did the custom scientist speech and added their own humour to the voice scripts. I’m also fairly sure there’s a zombie called Gabe somewhere…
There are probably several more, but it’s been a few years.
Also, it occurred to me a I broke a fundamental HL backstory rule a few times in ETC2. There are several places where alien slaves and headcrabs teleport in. That’s all fine - they exist on Xen, so it makes sense they’ll be randomly transported to Earth. When I played it through the other day, a couple of zombies teleported in. Zombie scientists. What was I thinking? I doubt anyone noticed (nor cared), but it was a huge blow to me. It’s just not right.
Ok, that’s your lot for today. It’s too hot to write anything less menial.