ORANGE BOX
Orange Box is a collection of three (technically five) Valve games - Half-life 2 (along with it's two episodes), Portal and TF2 - aka the Two Box of Five; released in 2007. Will you believe that it costed only 60 USD? The bundle was universally praised (except for the people who played it on PS3 where it had quite a lot of annoying bugs before the patch), some critics even giving it a 10/10 score. This webpage is dedicated to these three Valve games, specifically to fun facts about the games and their delevoper.
Along with the games the bundle included all the soundtracks including the OB exclusive remix of Still Alive - which is honestly such a banger. At the end of the day I prefer Want You Gone (which you can listen to while scrolling this page) but the Orange Box came out before Portal 2 did. I will still include fun facts about that game tho because, besides HL:Alyx, it's the only one missing from the series here.
Did you know? In Germany Orange Box was sold in a famours or infamous "violence free" version. All the blood was either removed or made homestuck-grey and in TF2 guts were replaced with "silligibs" - such as candy and rubber ducks (depending on a wasted merc).
Games
What? I think putting three "2" game covers here is funnier.
Portal 1&2
Portal is a single-player puzzle-based video game developed by Valve and released as part of The Orange Box on October 9, 2007 for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360; the PlayStation 3 version released at the later date of December 11, 2007. The game received critical acclaim, winning several Game of the Year awards and accolades for its innovative design. Players must create linked portals on flat surfaces and use momentum and physics to solve puzzles, adding a layer of complexity and creativity to the gameplay.
In Portal we met only GLaDOS and Chell (with Rattman's presence being just sorta implied) but we already get to know their personalities pretty well.
Portal was the first Valve game I've ever played and I loved it! It's cheep and short and, being from 2007, you can play in on basically anything.
Did you know? The game's concept originated from a project called Narbacular Drop, created by students at DigiPen Institute of Technology. Valve hired the team to develop what would become Portal. Funnily enough the original concept didn't even involve portals.
Both Portal games contain unused content, such as an unused red portal in the first game and a second portal gun texture. Early in development, the co-op mode featured Chell and a reskin model named Mel, with unique gels.
The cake in Portal is based on a real cake from a bakery near Valve's offices called the Black Forest cake from the Regent Bakery and Cafe.
In Portal 2 the Space Core was voiced by Nolan North, the same actor who voiced Ghost in Destiny 2.
Liminal spaces of Aparature Sciences
The bare white spaces of the offices; left alone and in disaray
Dirty never-ending techical corridors
Sterile test chambers
Decrepid test chambers
Freedom
Cara Mia, Addio (Turret Opera)
Cara bella, cara mia bella!
Mia bambina, O Ciel! (Chell!)
Que lastima!
Que lastima!
O cara mia, addio!
La mia bambina cara...
perche non passi lontana?
'Si lontana da Scienza!
Cara, cara mia bambina...
Ah, mia bella!
Ah, mia cara!
Ah, mia cara!
Ah, mia bambina!
O cara, cara mia...
Did you know? These lyrics are for the most part improvised with the voice actress not being the best Italian speaker. The lyric "Que lastima!" was long speculated to be Italian "Ch'ella stima" ("I esteem her") but is in fact "What a pity" in ...Spanish.
The opera contains two unique turrets - the Animal King and Wife Turret. At some point of the development there was supposed to be an event where the Animal King would marry that turret to Chell.
Half-life series
Half-Life 2 is a science fiction first-person shooter developed by Valve Corporation, and the sequel to the acclaimed Half-Life. It was released on November 16, 2004,[1] following an extended development period of five years. The game garnered near unanimous positive reviews and received critical acclaim, winning over 35 Game of the Year awards for 2005. It is included in The Orange Box for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC.
Taking place in and around City 17 almost twenty years after the events of Half-Life. After 20 years in stasis Gordon is thrust into an unfamiliar environment by the G-Man, in which the aftermath of the Black Mesa Incident has come to bear fully upon human society. Freeman is forced to battle against increasingly unfavorable odds in order to free Mankind from interdimensional invaders known as the Combine. In his struggle, he is joined by various allies, including fellow scientists, rebels, friends (such as Alyx Vance and Barney Calhoun), and even Vortigaunts, all of whom are surprised to see him alive.
It was critically acclaimed for advances in computer animation, sound, narration, computer graphics, enemy AI and physics.
Did you know? There is only one voice actor each for all male and female citizens and rebels. Any time two same-sex citizens or rebels have a conversation, it's with the same voice, respectively John Patrick Lowrie for men and Mary Kae Irvin for women.
An incomplete version of the game and the engine's source code was stolen from Valve and leaked online shortly after its delay in 2003. It was bad enough to almost derail the entire game's release.
In "Black Mesa East", the head of a Cremator, a cut enemy, can be seen on a table in Eli's lab. He mentions that no one is sure what it does and remarks on how Alyx "brings the strangest things".
Half-life 2 beta
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Half-Life 2 Beta is an infamous build of Half-Life 2 that was stolen from Valve's internal network by hackers in 2003. In 2004, not long after Half-Life 2 hit the retail shelves, a book - named Raising the Bar - was released by Prima Games. This book contained a lot of information about the history of the game; cut locations, cut characters, cut plot devices, and hundreds of illustrations and concept art pieces produced for Half-Life 2 during it's development.
You can read about the beta on this fan website.
While the game we got was quite grounded and gritty, what we were supposed to get was even darker. Half-Life 2 was also originally intended to be much more diverse in settings, and the original journey was extremely long (to the extent that the game felt almost overblown, with little time being spent on developing existing characters; one of the key reasons for it being cut). Here are some of my personal highlights from it.
Did you know? As with HL1, the were many, many changes to the HL2 story and lore during it's development. Parts of the book Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar and the leaked files detail how Gordon would fight alongside characters such as Odell in the Borealis (or Hyperborea), as well as fighting together with Captain Vance and Vance's forces, the Conscripts, in the Air Exchange, the Weather Control and the rooftops of City 17. Originally, Eli and Alyx Vance had no relation, and Eli's lab was located in a cave in a scrapyard and was much rougher than the better-equipped laboratory within a hydroelectric power station in the retail version (the scrapyard area where the Gravity Gun tutorial takes place, being an auxiliary area as opposed to the bulk of the lab, is reminiscent of the original concept). The Citadel also looked very different, it was more round than the bulky Citadel from the final version.
Many enemies were cut, icluding Bullsquids and Houndeyes from HL1. Other cut enemies include aforementioned Cremators (presumably responsive for all the burned bodies that remained in the final version), Combine Guards (armed with a portable version of Striders' lasers) or quick-moving Alien Assasins, later recucled into Fast Zombies. Their designs still bear the more grim, body horror oriented look.
Ravenholm was originally located at the end of the canals and before Eli's lab. It featured a lake at its foot, with at least one Ichthyosaur. This lake and the small docks were somehow kept for Black Mesa East when the chapter order was reversed, and the Ichthyosaur makes its only appearance during the teleportation failure at the start of Half-Life 2.
Half-Life 2 originally featured friendly fire, as with Half-Life. Valve found this to be annoying to playtesters, as they would often accidentally kill their team-mates, and was therefore changed so the weapons do no damage to team-mates.
Team Fortress 2
Team Fortress 2 is a class-based first-person and third-person shooter game developed by Valve, and the sequel to Team Fortress Classic. There are two playable teams, RED and BLU, which players can enter and complete objectives in different game modes. Players can choose nine classes which are Scout, Soldier, Pyro, Demoman, Heavy, Engineer, Medic, Sniper, and Spy.
Although Team Fortress 2 is designed as an open-ended multiplayer experience without an active storyline, the game and additional material feature a wider narrative centered around Mann Co. The main player-versus-player gamemodes are set during the "Gravel Wars", a conflict between the rival heirs Redmond and Blutarch Mann for which the nine playable characters were hired as mercenaries. Gray Mann later emerges as the third competitor, killing his two brothers and forcing Saxton Hale to rehire the mercenaries to protect Mann Co. from Gray's robot army in the Mann vs Machine cooperative horde-shooter mode.
TF2 is well known for it's original cartoony art style. Despite the game having supposed to have a realistic (at the time) style, just like TF1. Valve's president, Gabe Newell, said that the team's goal was to create "the best-looking and best-playing class-based multiplayer game". And some would say the suceeded.
Did you know? Team Fortress 2's mercenaries are the third generation of mercenaries hired by Blutarch and Redmond Mann.
The eye color of bots indicates their difficulty. Easy and normal bots have blue eyes, hard and expert bots have yellow eyes.
It costs $400,000 to fire Heavy's gun for 12 seconds... That would be equal to $3,600,000.00 in 2024. In the Meet the Heavy video Heavy fires his minigun for exactly 12 seconds.
Spy has an English accent when the game is played in French.
According to the comic, Death of a Salesbot, the President of the United States in 1999 is a Pomeranian.
Bonus: Garry's Mod
Garry's Mod (aka Gmod), released in November 26, 2006, and is a non-linear sandbox game. There are no preset objectives; it is only limited by the user's creative ability. Other game modes must be downloaded separately and most of them are player-made. Using the "physics gun", ragdolls and props can be picked up, rotated, and frozen in place. The individual limbs of ragdolls can also be manipulated. The "tool gun" is a multi-purpose item for tasks such as welding and constraining props together, and altering the facial expressions of ragdolls.
Garry's Mod was initially a mod for Half-Life 2. It started as a simple modification before evolving into a standalone game.
Did you know? The game has spawned several spin-off mods such as DarkRP, which focuses on roleplaying within an urban city environment; Trouble In Terrorist Town, which focuses on team-based objective-oriented gameplay; Prop Hunt, which is hide & seek with props; Sandbox which gives players access to all of the tools available in Garry's Mod; and Spacebuild which allows players to create their own space stations within a 3D environment filled with asteroids, planets, stars, etc.
Back in 2014 there was an exploit which allowed a user to inject a virus known as the coughing virus. This virus spread server to server and it was very annoying too as it played a cough sound effect and wrote in chat *cough*.
