Developer Library: "invisible" tutorial in Half Life 2

What is good about the Half-Life 2 tutorial – as part of the Game Maker’s Toolkit video cycle, Mark Brown, an indie developer and editor of the Pocket Gamer resource, told. With the author’s permission, we have prepared a printed version of the material. We share.

Let’s say you’re developing a game where the most effective way to kill an enemy is to chop it into cabbage. How to convey this to the player? Well, if you are the author of Dead Space, then you just take and write in blood on the wall: “TEAR OFF THEIR LIMBS.” Then let a screen appear where it says: “To inflict additional damage, shoot off the enemy’s limbs.” After that, let the player listen to the audio, in which he will be told: “Don’t even think about shooting at the body. It is necessary to shoot off the limbs.” Then let another character call the hero and say, “It seems to be useless to shoot at the body. Aim for the limbs! Dismember them. It should help.” And finally, show the screen with the inscription “To quickly kill the enemy, tear off his limbs.”

By this point, the player may have figured out what you’re talking about. Well, or he will feel that he is being coddled like a baby.

Two years before the release of Dead Space, Half-Life 2 was able to explain the same thing with just two techniques and without a single word.

When you first come to Ravenholm, you see a zombie cut in half with a circular saw. Then you notice that the entrance to the other room is blocked by a table and blades. You extract the blade from the wall with a gravity gun, and at that moment a zombie appears in the field of view. Instinctively you press the button, and – tydysch! – you cut the bastard in half. That’s it! In just 10 seconds, Valve taught the player that circular saws are great against zombies. At the same time, I didn’t have to read anything, and no one coddled you.

It is this elegant approach to game design that has earned Half-Life 2 undying fame among fans. Throughout the game, Valve deftly guides the player and, without ever intercepting the camera control, allows him to experience the whole gamut of emotions. makes you jump in horror or laugh.

But let’s talk about how the game designers of Half-Life 2, without stuffing the player with pop-up screens, teach him to interact with the mechanics of the game, wield weapons, defeat enemies and solve riddles.

From the very beginning, they tell you how to play without obvious tutorials. For example, to escape from the room where Barney takes you, you learn to pick up and throw objects.

Throughout the game, Valve trains the player in the same ways. Take Barnacles, for example. These are monsters that cling to you with a huge tongue and drag you up to tear you into small pieces. But they don’t tell you this – they show it to you. After learning exactly what barnacles do, you will most likely start avoiding them in the future.

A little later, squeezing through a narrow gap, you will knock down several barrels. Those will roll down the hill, barnacles will catch them, and that’s how you’ll know that you can use objects to get past the enemy.

And then right around the next corner you will come across several exploding barrels and a whole flock of barnacles. And you’ll wonder – what if the barrel explodes when Barnacle catches it? That’s how you learn to avoid barnacles and fight them.

Barnacles, like other enemies, are shown to the player for the first time in a safe environment. The first zombie you meet on your way is behind a fence, so you learn that zombies can throw objects, but you don’t suffer. And when you first encounter a zombie, they show you that he can blow himself up with a grenade. But you can see it from behind bulletproof glass.

They teach you to kill, too. You approach the first sniper from behind, so you get the opportunity to blow him up with a grenade without engaging in a real fight. Even before the battle with the helicopter in Episode Two, you have to use a gravity cannon to remove the mine. This should eventually help you figure out how to fight a helicopter. And when you see ball mines along the seashore, you may remember throwing a mechanical ball to a Dog in the Eastern Black Mesa. This happens when Alex and the Dog explain how to use the gravity gun.

So, yes, there are no traditional tutorials in Half-Life 2. You will learn about sand traps, radar, rocket launcher, Magnusson devices from the characters. They tell you how to handle all these things, and sometimes they give you practice. All this happens within the boundaries of the game world and in such a way that you believe it. Such scenes bring humor and variety to the game, make the characters more voluminous.

Valve helps the player solve puzzles in a variety of ways. But at the same time it never prompts in the traditional sense of the word. And it does not give a ready-made solution either. For example, let’s take a physics-based puzzle where the player has to lower the bar down. Perhaps he will remember the children’s swing in City 17, next to which similar cinder blocks are lying around. This simple puzzle teaches the player how to handle counterweights, which will be needed later in the game, and also that a piece of rope or wire often leads to the missing piece of the puzzle.

Solving other puzzles helps game design. For example, there is one location where you need to detonate a grenade so that you are thrown onto the balcony. There’s an ammunition crate in the corner, a wire leads to the green button, there’s a scorch mark on the floor, and there’s even a dead body hanging from the ceiling.

And sometimes the mechanics that help solve puzzles are superimposed on one another. At the beginning of Episode One, there is a very simple task: you need to throw energy balls into connectors. You do it again, and again, and again – this time to pass the obstacle. Throughout the entire location, the same task is repeated, but the difficulty increases slightly each time – so as not to overload the player. Valve uses the same training system in Portal.

Half-Life 2, of course, is not the only game that teaches the player without resorting to tutorials. The tutorials simply didn’t fit on cartridges with classic games, so all the rules had to be explained through gameplay.

These days, games like Resident Evil 4 and Super Mario Galaxy do a great job with tutorials – they teach players in a natural and elegant way.

Nevertheless, such an approach is rarely found, and modern games too often follow the beaten path – they are taught in such a way that it either prevents the player from immersing himself in the gameplay, or puts pressure on him.

Some games are too complex or non-linear, and therefore the Valve method does not suit them. And not every developer can afford to spend years on a play test. But I would like to hope that many will be inspired by the example of Valve. And it’s not just about physics-based puzzles, but also about the dystopian world of the future, and those damn intros where they show a train ride.

Source: Mark Brown’s YouTube Blog