Hunting Down the Freeman: The Seven Hour Chore

I nearly worked on this game as an animator. I come back to this video every now and then to remind myself that I dodged a massive fucking bullet

Mitchell is the ultimate stereotypical mary sue character designed by an edgy 11 year old. He's Adrian Shepherd's brother, and he survived the Black Mesa Incident, and took part in the Seven Hour War, and survived fighting Gordon Freeman, and fought the Combine, and joined the Combine to fight the Rebels, and got to meet G-Man, and...

This game makes me feel like I just booted up Gmod, got into a big ass map and just spawned some enemies while imagining a story as I roam around.

Actually, that battle scene with weird combines early on letting you shoot combines is intentional, you just have to kill the entire combine army and then you'll get the secret ending where peace has returned to Earth and Luigi will be unlocked as a playable character

You’re ordered to gun down civilians, scientists and security guards at a DoD contracted research facility... for some reason instead of mounting a rescue. You encounter a scientist in an armored suit desperately running for his life and killing the same hostile aliens you’re fighting. Instead of killing you in self-defense, he knocks you unconscious and keeps running. “That evil bastard, how could he do this?! I’ll have my totally justified revenge!” 10/10 script

To expand on the "G-Man isn't supposed to be this omniscient" point from a better informed angle: If you look past his cryptic wording and behaviour, G-Man is a pretty straightforward employer in the official games. When he defrosts Gordon for HL2, his plan amounts to "Hey, Gordon? I need you kill Dr. Breen by the end of the week. Here's a few contacts to hit up if you need more weapons." Simple as that. Furthermore, we know he can't account for everything, otherwise he would've been able to see the Vortigaunts overpowering him and freeing Gordon coming and made countermeasures. He's clever, but he isn't Tzeentch.

I love how the Colonel immediately identifies Adam as a "black ops" like it's just another branch of the military and not a top secret deep state death squad.

The combat in this game feels like if you installed a bunch of combat mods into garrys mod, then spawned in a bunch of half life 2 enemies in a hall, and started shooting.

Good vid!

It's true that the crowbar beatdown scene is needlessly dramatic and drawn-out, but it occurred to me that I've actually gone out of my way to kill HECUs with just the crowbar before out of boredom, so this isn't even the most unfaithful part of the story to Half-Life.

Framing this whole thing around the concept of the game signposting falling rocks that never appear is so fitting

I love that the entire basis of this plot and Mitchell’s angst is Mitchell is salty he got beaten by a Black Mesa scientist who dared to defend himself. And that Gman somehow knew that Mitchell was such a petulant egotist that he could use this to manipulate him.

Valve thought that this was so bad that they made Half- Life Alyx.

"Think of the people that Gordon Freeman kills" Yeah, it's not like he killed soldiers who were purposefully killing innocent Black Mesa scientist or two different alien races, one invading black mesa and the other taking over earth

Here's how you fix the HDTF story; Mitchell initially believes that Gordon Freeman intentionally Unleashed hell and doomed the world for no obvious reason. Mitchell slowly but surely pieces together that Gordon is guilty of nothing more than being late to work and by the time he's fully realized that, the G-Man calls in the favor and points out that his crew will certainly die if he does not risk them in war hunting down the Freeman. It will at least be a little bit less stupid, if not fix pretty much everything.

Took me two years to realize how the title is a reference to the 7 hour war, not that this game can take up to 7 hours to complete and that it feels more like a chore than an actual game LOL

Let's be honest, "Hunt Down The Freeman" sounds like a Garry's Mod game mode, not a serious production.

Do you know how a bunch of people say that Valve doesn't want to make Half Life 3 because they're afraid that if it isn't perfect, Half Life fans will go nuts and send death threats and commit terrorist attacks in the name of Gordon Freeman or whatever? I think Hunt Down The Freeman was made to tell Valve "Y'know, however bad you decide to make Half Life 3, it couldn't be as bad as this even if you tried."

>Special thanks to Hideo Kojima, Robert Zemeckis this guy was really under the impression he was creating some groundbreaking narrative, lmfao

"JUST LIKE HALF LIFE, WE NEVER TELL YOU WHERE TO GO," but in half life, I know where I'm supposed to go