Was Half-Life 2 Better on Day 1?

Yo! I still occasionally get comments about this vid, so I wanna leave a statement here: This video isn't great. It's a rushed upload I made when I only had a few thousand subscribers, and I never thought it would wind up getting as many views and as much attention as it has. There's definitely a few things I would go back and do differently. For one, I flubbed and said that the Vortigaunts and shotgunner were introduced in Episode one, when they were actually introduced in episode two. for two, There is a weirdly lazy and dismissive tone to this video, where I repeatedly say "I'll look into X later" or "Y feels different but I'm not sure if it is". Obviously, this is weird, as I should have looked into these topics while researching the video instead of putting them off for a future date for no real reason. And finally, the video would have greatly benefited from more side-by-side comparisons. I don't know why I didn't do more of them. That's all. Thanks 4 your time!

The reason the SMG sounds different, in my opinion, is that it's fire rate actually got changed in episode 2. You can see that on the wiki. It sounds different because the sounds kind of cut off each other

Fun fact: if you hold m2 on the 9mm while shooting with it, you can store shots, when you let go of m2, it releases all of the at once, turning the pistol into a shotgun. This is known as pistol charging. Edit: fuck I should probably clarify that this is only possible in the day 1 build, in the latest version of the game you can’t do it.

The Day One experience includes downloading a 16 Mb Update via Steam that has to be downloaded with an ISDN or a 56k Modem from a massively overclocked server since everyone worldwide wanted to do the same. This needs to be included as well.

I think the reason the atmosphere in some areas feels different is due to the lighting changes made after Lost Coast and its HDR lighting technology. Also, assets in new versions aren’t really encrypted - just compressed and packed into lots of larger files, which was/is a thing done to make things load faster from storage on HDDs.

3:48 from what i understand, the Scout Car is intentionally programmed with a pre-disposition to drift to one side (i forget which side), simulating an unbalanced wheel axel and thus adding a bit to the personality that its a very rustic and haphazardly-put together vehicle, and in the past this drifting may have been stronger. 4:11 -it sounds like to me that this much older version of the game did not have direct/raw mouse input, which sounds like it could make sense as doing such a thing back in 2004 was a really tricky and annoying thing to do even if you weren't trying to make it cross-platform compatible- EDIT: read replies for more details

Metrocops with old shiny shading makes them look really nostalgic, like those from pre-release promos or Concerned webcomic

Fun fact: those like alien transport pod things that the combine used at the light tower level, where you park the scout car and fight with some rebels, the gun on the pod didn’t move around to shoot at you unlike in the older builds, but because they optimized half life 2 for steam deck they patched the bug and now the gun swivels around again

The Day 1 vortigaunt textures look more like the Half-Life 1 vortigaunts

6:54 Holy crap, the AI is acting like real people!

one very minor detail i feel like no one ever talks about is that in launch HL2, ammo pickups are displayed with the ammo type, like pistol ammo shows a pistol caliber, RPG ammo shows a rocket, etc. In current HL2, it shows a number next to the weapon for the ammo you picked up.

All I can really say is, there's something about playing these games on a 4:3 ratio that feels so comfortable and nostalgic to me. especially after school, on an autumn night, booting up the game with the last bit of sunlight. your book bag and homework sprawled across your bed and the autumn leaves crunching in the distance. booting up that crappy old computer you got from your uncle after he upgraded to a modern laptop, memories. I'm not even that old and I just have great memories associated with just a simple 4:3 CRT monitor.

The graphical errors in Half Life 2 might occur because of the newer graphics drivers which the old version wasn't built for.

I think node graph rebuilding only happens when they are not on the disk or do not match the version of the map youre playing. After it was generated on your computer once it shouldn't appear anymore. Steam version ships with them already to save time

What would have been cooler was if people had the Day 1 Source SDK Base. But we have 2006 only.

As for the boxes that are visible at around 5:20: Please take into consideration, that HL2 was originally released on WinXP, had different graphic cards and shaders and graphics driver support. It just might be the case, that the issue is a result of new tech not being compatible.

Valve should add the Day one build as an opt-in version to select in the game settings, like selecting a beta version

I'm not sure if this is true but apparently in HL2 the weird visual bug of blood stains on Ragdolls disappearing when you shine the flashlight on them isn't present in the day 1 build, though I saw a video a long time ago showing that but I don't remember if it's true

The old ragdolls somewhat fixed in Steam HL2 in Steam Deck update Both Vortigaunt and Combine Shotgunner current textures were added in EP2 not EP1 infact, Shotgunners did had EP1 in development At the time it was called Aftermath I don't really recommend Day 1 build due to map glitches you shown us, So I might recommend the launch build/release build which is same as Day 1 build but idk Also the blood particles were nice, I didn't like the current ones, They seem to fit with Brutal Half-Life 2

I’ve only ever played through Hl2 properly on the Original Xbox (uses the original 04 port as a base), and honestly I think this hits home on a good few of the reasons why. Very interesting to watch. Just felt meatier to play.