HL2 Commercial

What would you agree on as being the best commercial valve should introduce for Half-Life 2.

I mean that most games have these really great commercials that represent the game in comical or psycological terms. Like the Rainbow six patriotic comercial.

They could say they're going to release it on day X of the X th month, and then not, and get in all the news for free. Or have their game stolen again, that did pretty well for publicity Why bother with commercials?!

My idea for a teaser would be a bent up sign from Black Mesa sitting half buried in the sand. Wind would blow the sand aside revealing the decaying Lambda logo, of which the screen fades out and the logo forms into its new symbol. Then the words, "The adventure continues."

Also, I have the idea of a scene in city 17. A small family frightend by the conqurers and the alliens. All of the sudden, they become cornered by one of the two. Trigger related action of either conqurers our aliens. Suddenly breaking through a wooden door, :ar15firing: Gordon Freeman bursts through the door with his trusty shotgun, or better yet gravity gun. Waves the gravity gun with some box at the thugs, of which shatters and blocks our view with the symbol of HL2. The screen then reads, "Freeman's back", or, "He's Back". And maybe add, "His quest continues."

What ever it is, I believe Valve will make a great commercial.

Any kind of commercial would be good. Just tell us something. I kinda think that Valve getting hacked might just have been all the commercial they need (or just a publicty stunt for more advertising).

I'd just go for the black screen, the typical Crowbar-against the wall-sound, and then pieces of wall breaking away. (like Gordon is cutting out the HL2 logo in the wall !) :razz:

Shots of various action scenes, cuts of dialogue and impressive set-pieces (all in-game), set to increasingly tense music. It hits a cresendo, and the screen goes black.

SFX: Wind blowing

Almost instantly fade (give the viewer a bit of breathing time) into a shot of the combine fortress. Viewpoint starts from the bottom of the tower (the large pincers in the ground), and turns upwards so the top is visible, stretching into the sky. A voice over starts when it starts to fade in:

G-MAN (voice-over): Well, well. Isn't this just like --

The shot of the G-man at the end of the E3 video is now shown in sync with the dialogue

G-MAN: -- old times...

Instantly moves to next shot before last word can be finished. A shot of the strider crouching down and firing at the archway is shown, causing a huge explosion.

The game box is then shown on a ground covered in rubble and dirt, with more entering the scene from ther side, as if the explosion has just occured out of view. RRP, Valve logo etc. are displayed beside it on the screen. a final shot of the Valve, Sierra and Vivendi-Universal logos on a black screen. Shouldn't last more than about 15 seconds.

Also, seeing a lot of commercials tend to have shorter versions of themselves, then the G-man can voice-over the intitial action sequences and just cut out the combine fortress bit altogether, as well as the strider crouching down. Around 8 seconds long.

You would write it in this much detail too if it was as vivid as it suddenly became in my head. :razz:

/me goes to get reliable video editing software

Rather than start a new thread about this (to make up for my poll spamming incident), did anybody see that Valve has admited that without the source code theft, they would not have made the announced release date - i.e. it would still have been delayed without said leek?

http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1084127255.html

scary_jeff said:
Rather than start a new thread about this (to make up for my poll spamming incident), did anybody see that Valve has admited that without the source code theft, they would not have made the announced release date - i.e. it would still have been delayed without said leek?

http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1084127255.html

Myes, read that ... not a big surprise, imho.

Valve had already admitted that like October of last year. Hell, Valve had said that the source code leak had happened after 30th September (they reported seeing suspicious activity on 3rd October or something, or at least after they announced the delay). Besides, I don't think anyone even cares anymore.

I dont care for a commercial (HL1 didn't get a commercial...did it?), I just want to know when the game is comming out!! And I mean FOR SURE THIS TIME!

Yeah but keep in mind HL1 wasn't a sequel to a hugely successful game :biggrin:

Seriously though, I don't think it will get a TV advert, very few games do, and I can barely recall any that were PC games...

Y2kBen_2000's suggestion is good if it didn't screw with people's emotions so much. :smile: Then again, I want Freeman to bust down my door if there're antlions molesting Zowie, because for a stuffed gorilla, he's pretty passive.

I don't think they need any advertising. I think only licensed crap or B-grade moneymaking games that piggyback off the success of other games (i.e. True Crime: Streets of LA) generally need advertising. I mean, plenty of people know what Counter-Strike is; that will naturally lead to Half-Life 2 and CS 2, I suppose.

I like most games that don't have a commercial, or the commercial is a rarity. I've seen commercials for many FF games, but only once for each. I like not being assaulted with the stuff, just once for "completion" damn...I'm so hooked on RPGs and FF

I just beat the three end bosses of FFVII the other day without equipping any materia, and using each character's worst weapons. I didn't even have a single character KO'd. I've played that game TOO much :sad:

I love VII. I could listen to my OST anyday.

(I have the game and music for most of them. Probably a 75% collection of the 'major' titles.)

I have a few mp3s of orchestrated versions of FF songs - are the OST's made up of the midis from the game, or orchestrated versions? I'm not much of a classical music fan but some of the FF songs are great - particularly "Shinra wages a full scale attack", "One winged angel" and "Liberi Fatali" :smile:

The OSTs are the exact music from the game, usually 4 discs for VII and up. There are a few Orchestral albums, but they're special ones.

Yeah but keep in mind HL1 wasn't a sequel to a hugely successful game :biggrin:

Seriously though, I don't think it will get a TV advert, very few games do, and I can barely recall any that were PC games...

PC Only games don't have commercials. Since the consumer is using a computer, they flood the internet with flash ads and news on the product, not to mention demos and such.

Console games get TV ads. (And usually they're available for PC too, so it says that as well).

It's called audience targeting

But...if there was an ad for HL2 ... I'd want it to be live action.

The screen would start with the valve logo (White on black).

The sound of water trickling and splattering against concrete, with hard breathing heard (from a worn down Freeman (Charlie Sheen)).
Fade in to show midshot of a battered and bruised Freeman with fresh cuts across his forehead, glasses slightly foggy.

Pounding on the ground from a not too distant location is heard while the fragile building Freeman is standing in shakes, dust, concrete, and wood fall from the broken in ceiling.

Faint orchestrated music begins to play.

The camera slowly backs out from its midshot of Freeman, to show a dead ant-lion in front of him. All the while faint battle cries can be heard from outside.

The ground violently shakes and all that is heard is a rumble from beneath the ground. Antlions come creeping in through the shadows. A strider can be heard outside the building charging up it weapon.

Faint (good) techno begins to mold into the orchestrated music, while the camera slowly goes to a close up of Freeman's face.

Quickly cutting to bad ass videos of the game after the techno and orchestrated music meet some sort of climax, lasting for about 10 seconds and quickly cutting to black with the techno fading out leaving a single violin playing as the circled Lambda fades in on the screen soon followed by "Half - Life 2" below it.

Then all that other crap, like "PC-CDROM" and "Rated M for mature" and all that garbage.

I think that would be badass ... but anyway.