What inspired Half-Life? Created 11 years ago2012-12-06 19:04:05 UTC by Skals

I know what Half-Life's main inspiration was Quake, to the extent that Half-Life was even based off Quakes engine, but is there an article where anyone confirms that Quake did in fact influence Half-Life, and what other games inspired Half-Life?
In case any one is wondering, I'm doing an assignment on Half-Life, and I need this for it.

http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Quiver#Development

Have you read this?

Read the "Development" part

Edit : http://www.whoinspired.com/wiki/Half-Life

Thanks a lot Lajron, first one was a good read, and second was exactly what I was searching for

Pick up a copy of Raising the Bar and read it some time.

I remember watching The Mist movie and relating a few things back to Half-Life. I learned afterwards that the novel inspired Half-Life.

Is this it: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0884328/ ? Might have to watch it.

That's the one.

Film isn't that great, but the ending is killer. The book is very different, I hear, you'd probably find way more similarities to Half-Life in that.

I read The Mist before the movie was ever released, and I wouldn't call it "very different" from the theatrical version. I mean the plot and everything is the same, they changed some details, but you get the basic idea of everything that happened in the book. Even after reading it I'm not sure I'd relate it a whole lot to Half-Life. Sure it's got nasty tentacle monsters and stuff, which might have been the source of some inspiration, but 90% of the story has the main characters being trapped inside a grocery store. It's not what I'd call an actioner, it's mostly about interpersonal relations as people struggle to survive in a cramped area. A nearby military base is only hinted at, but the basic idea is that somebody there opened up a door to another dimension and now there are baddies flooding out. I guess you could call it Half-Life from another perspective, or something.

If you look around though, the whole setup is a pretty common thematic element in the science fiction/horror genre. Stephen King wrote another more recent book, From a Buick 8, which explored the idea of alternate dimensions in a way that I personally found more intriguing - and in some ways comparable to Half-Life.

The movie was amazing, highly underrated, Well I haven't read the book, but the story was very good. Srry, it's already been established that Half-Life was based upon the story from 'The Mist'.

I loved the book, as King is one of my favorite authors. As for the movie I don't remember much but I do remember liking it. I can surely see the connection between it and Half-Life, maybe not the actual story but the situation is very similar.

I also would very much recommend Raising the Bar, it was a great read that'd I recommend to any HL fan.

Yeah Mr. King is amazing.. i don't really like his writing style, but man what a great storyteller. And while i didn't really like the movie, i'm totally gonna get the book tomorrow =)

steven king books are great for reading on the can =)

Reading SK on the can is probably the safest option.

I saw the movie the night before last. It's good, although I got a weird impression that they had filmed the scenes in reverse order, and had been gradually running out of a budget as they went on or something. Like the effects and acting near the beginning of the movie weren't great, but they seemed to get better as it went on.
I did like it though, and it kind of makes me want to do a map set on the surface of Black Mesa, or in a nearby town during the resonance cascade.
I would probably have to base it of Rachel, Nevada, which is near Groom Lake Air Force Base.