In general, one modification was recently released here, and what to hide, not just one. I won’t describe much, because everything will be below. Wow. And according to tradition (for the second time, what’s there):
No less than eight years have passed since the release of the second Half-Life. During this time, many mod makers were able to not only master all the intricacies of the game engine, but also create quite worthy projects.
Among them, oddly enough, there are quite a few creations from domestic manufacturers, which in terms of performance do not lag behind their Western counterparts. For example, the recent year-long development product Silent Escape, the promising Lost Story, and also a series of games from the company AASC. The latter are especially noteworthy, as the developers went much further than just creating a few maps and connecting them with a couple of plot lines. They created a whole universe. But let’s take it in order.
/It looks simple, but don’t forget that the logo was made many years ago/
Several years ago, even before the announcement of the second Portal, a developer under the nickname E-40, impressed by the movie Cube, decided to create his own modification, which supposedly continued the plot of the first part of the game. This was decided because the story of Aperture Science was unfinished, and gave great scope for imagination. The author tried, came up with a plot, puzzles, even slowly began to draw new models of cubes. But then SUDDENLY they announced Portal 2.
It was a crash. Not only was the plot now in no way consistent with Velve’s canon, but the author was also bombarded with accusations of plagiarism from the first gameplay videos. However, E-40 did not despair, but continued to look for a way out of the situation into which the announcement of the second part of the portal adventure had driven him. Aperture Science’s involvement in the creation of the Cube was immediately discarded and it was assigned to a new, third organization. But the main question was how to make this third organization fit organically into the Half-Life universe, because a huge corporation capable of building the Cube cannot just take it and go unnoticed. JJ Abrams came to the author’s aid with his series “Beyond”, and specifically, his embodiment of parallel universes on the screens.
/As you can see, the https://cloudbetcasino.co.uk/ influence of Sarma, which was originally a small corporation, has now grown by leaps and bounds/
This is how a universe parallel to Half-Life was created – Other Life. Everything in it was exactly the same as in the first universe – there was Gordon Freeman, the Alliance, Black Mesa, City 17, the rebels, in general, everything. But there were also changes. Thus, the USSR did not collapse in 1991, but continued to exist until the Alliance invasion. Thanks to this, in the era of confrontation between Black Mesa and Aperture Science, a new global organization emerged – the Sarma Initiative. Soviet organization on a global scale. And she also had her secrets, even before the invasion began. One of these secrets was the Cube.
Around this stage, several people were already working on the mod, organizing the company AASC, also known as AweAndScumCompany. The Cube itself had a rather banal, at first glance, premise – the player, a certain Test Subject No. 23, finds himself in the Cube test complex, built by the Sarma Initiative. The subject must pass several tests prepared for people like him. However, here’s the problem – the complex is empty. Information is transmitted to the player via text messages, and the motivation of those who placed the subject in the Cube is unclear.
Along the way, the player finds a device that is actually the same gravity gun, but with a shorter range and a different texture. With its help, he passes test after test, and eventually ends up in the backstage of the complex, where the most interesting things happen. What exactly – play and find out for yourself.
/One of the optional places, towards the end of the mod. And no, they won’t let us enter anything here/
In general, the plot could have been very banal if not for the way it was presented and the atmosphere.
In Portal you don’t feel tense. A cute voice constantly talks to you, promising you a cake, the only enemies are cute turrets, with no less cute voices. And even at the end, when the truth is revealed, you don’t feel the horror that befell the complex.
Everything is different here. Here, you immediately understand that nothing good awaits you in this complex. At least if you’ve seen the movie.
In the Portal, you are immediately told that you are in a portal research laboratory. In Cube, you still can’t understand what Sarma was doing after all. Why was this huge complex built?? Why is it empty? Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that along the way the player experiences strange hallucinations – blood on the floor and walls, disappearing doors, breaking the laws of physics. Something is wrong in this complex. Something is wrong with the main character.
And these hallucinations, to put it mildly, make you tremble in your knees. Even if you remove the video sequence, the looping clippings of audio files taken from the House of Nightmare 2 mod are still scary.
But most importantly, the mod especially encourages those who decide to explore every meter. The behind-the-scenes rooms of the Cube contain a lot of interesting information, but I’m generally silent about the opportunity to get to the secret Island, which, oddly enough, is also a testing ground for Sarma Initiative experiments.
And the last five minutes of fashion, although quite crumpled, manage to make an impression that can be described as follows: WHAT THE HELL DID THAT JUST HAPPEN?! and also leave a whole bunch of questions.
/What’s wrong with that??/
However, no matter how large the mod is, and its completion takes several hours, no matter how elaborate and steeped in mystery it may seem, AASC asks us to accept what is due – the Cube, just a small cog, a grain of history that awaits us in the future. This decision appears to have been made during the development of the Cube, and while much of the story has already been agreed upon, there is still some work to be done. And all this despite the fact that players can only guess; AASC is preparing the same for us.
/Despite the fact that the Cube test chambers consist, oddly enough, of cubes, the design of the mod itself is hard to call bad/
By the way, they cook very successfully. The first of three chapters of the prelude to the tastiest piece of the cake in the person of Other-Life, called Bunker 18, has already been released. The Bunker takes place 37 days before Gordon Freeman arrives in City 17. The player takes on the role of a nameless prisoner who is being transported from City 24 to City 17.
On the way, the train crashes and the hero loses consciousness. After he comes to his senses, he has no choice but to flee from a detachment of combine harvesters into an abandoned Soviet bunker, which turned out to be nearby. There it turns out that the upper levels of this bunker were the local base of the rebels who evacuated after the crash, at the same time picking up all the prisoners from the train. Everyone except the main character. The prisoner contacts the rebel radio operator Murphy, who briefly tells him about the place where he ended up. This place turns out to be an abandoned bunker of the Sarma Initiative, sealed before the war. And also that the train crash was not planned by the rebels, but happened for another, unknown reason. After several attempts to get out, the prisoner realizes that the harvesters have surrounded him, and the only way to stay alive is to descend into a sealed bunker. But why was it sealed?? To prevent unauthorized guests from entering? Or in order not to release everything that is hidden in its depths?
This is what we have to find out, and something tells me that what was happening inside the Cube is just flowers in comparison with this.
/One of the biggest difficulties that authors experience in developing a storyline is dates/
By the way, it was said about flowers not only regarding the storyline. The level of the mod itself has increased significantly compared to the Cube. This is expressed literally in everything – from design to atmosphere.
AASC again confirmed that Source Engine will look great for another year or two. The level design, especially the rooms, just makes you drool. All rooms are furnished with objects, giving everything its own charm. There are signs with instructions hanging on the walls, cracks in the floor are overgrown with moss, tools and boxes of ammunition are carelessly scattered on a cabinet in the corner, but in the armory everything is neatly laid out on shelves. And all this is illuminated by the warm, soothing light of a dim light bulb. And as soon as you go outside, under the starry sky, the player’s gaze is attracted by antennas in the distance, the purpose of which can only be guessed at, a statue of Lenin in the center of the square, a broken and rusted Kamaz truck near the road. And all this delight fades when you descend lower and lower, into the rooms shrouded in mystery, untouched by the war, but having seen much more terrible events. When only a flashlight beam cuts through the darkness, causing goosebumps to crawl across your skin in herds. It was at the moment when you were huddled in the corner of the room, with a weapon at your advantage, waiting for the desired message from Murphy, but it didn’t come. When darkness creeps into the depths of the mind and no weapon can save you from what you’ve just gotten yourself into.
/If it weren’t for the hole in the ceiling behind us, it would be very cozy here/
The developers have done what you sometimes appreciate most in games. They made you believe. To believe that no human has set foot in this place for more than ten years. Believe that these messages are sent to you by a real, living person, and not by a bot whose task is to die from the first bullet of a sniper. A person on whom your life depends no less than on yourself, and God forbid that harvesters get to him. So that you wait with bated breath for the next message, knowing deep in your soul that it may not come. That there is no way out of a place called Bunker 18. And all this is supported by the appearance of its own soundtrack, which, although not a masterpiece, but coupled with what is happening on the screen chills to the bones. And it all ends in the most interesting place.
To understand how awesome it all is, you need to play the mod yourself. And then, literally counting the days, wait for the release of the remaining two chapters.
And in this regard, I decide to make a small announcement – there is currently a shortage of staff in the AASC studio. Now about six people work there on a permanent basis – a newly arrived composer, a mapmaker and part-time head of the studio, a screenwriter, a text editor, a model operator and a second screenwriter who tests maps.
/Inscriptions on holographic screens are a simple but very stylish solution/
Specifically, we need people who know how to create and import different models, a person who knows how to write scripts, an animator of models and, in fact, a person to voice Murphy is critically important.
If you think that you fit the description of at least one of them, and you are not indifferent to this mod, I highly recommend, and even ask you to contact the authors on the ModDB website. After all, no matter how it turns out, now everything looks like the birth of a series of mods that would not be a shame to call masterpieces. And Freeman213 was with you. Thank you everyone for reading. good luck everyone, bye everyone.
P.S. I didn’t do it for personal profit, but I just wanted to help the authors somehow, because they were having a hard time with things (they promise to release the mod at all, almost at the beginning of next year, but this is only a “prologue”). And since my hands grow from the same place, I decided to find out if there are people here who can really help. And the preview – because without any proof to contact someone in the style of “hey guy, can you help me do some shit”?"somehow not comme il faut.
I hope at least someone will respond.