Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The handsome fellows at PC Gamer have posted my interview with David Speyrer – project lead on Half-Life 2: Episode Two – up on their website. You may remember a few weeks back we posted the bits that were left over. Well, here’s the cream of the interview for your eye-based enjoyment.

Illustrative excerpt:

That seems like quite an achievement. Companions tend to be infuriating. How did you avoid this with Alyx?

Speyrer: Alyx doesn’t generally dictate the pace of your forward progress through the game. When she does that, it feels like she’s playing the game and you’re the tag-along. We learned this in Episode One, and applied it in Ep Two as well. The player should dictate the pace of moving through the game.

Read the rest here.

Coming up in December’s PC Gamer is my interview with Half-Life 2 Episode 2’s project lead, David Speyrer. And as is often the case with interviews, there was a lot more said than could fit in the magazine. As a teaser for next month’s Gamer content, here’s some bonus discussion about what it’s like working for Valve, how play-testing impacts on the games development, DX9 vs DX10, and the role of consoles. Spoilers a-go-go.

RPS: Could you talk about your role in the Half-Life universe?

David Speyrer: I interviewed on the day that HL1 went Gold, and started early in the year in ’99, at the very beginning of HL2. I was on the project for the whole duration. Towards the middle of the project, we formed into four cabals – mini design teams – for design and production, and each team was responsible for building a section of the game. I ended up as the cabal leader of the team which made Canals and the Citadel. I was a programmer. I worked on the air-boat, the poisoned zombie and a bunch of other things. Then on Episode Two I’ve been on it from the start as the project lead and programmer. I did specific work on the Hunter AI and some of the car stuff.

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