The Faces of Half-Life 2
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- čas přidán 19. 02. 2023
- Half-Life 2's characters are iconic, but they are also REAL. Let's talk about it.
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OUTRO SONG: open.spotify.com/album/0BhS17...
Footage Credit:
Gorgeous Freeman by Delak (Beautiful classic)
IGN (Half-Life Alyx footage)
The VOC Podcast (Cheers for the work y'all do)
Harry101UK (Valve tour footage)
Into the Pixel Interview with ArenaNet's Daniel Dociu
Garry's Mod Steam Trailer
This Is Martin Bonner! (Film Trailer)
Land Ho! (Film Trailer)
Music Credit:
Various tracks from Half-Life + Half-Life 2
Various tracks from Donkey Kong Country 2
Various tracks from ISS 2000
Super Mario Sunshine - Welcome to Isle Delfino
Team Fortress 2 - MVM Shop Theme
Resident Evil 4 - Save Theme
Postal 2 - Map Muzak
Pink Guy - Ronald McDonald Instrumental
Shook - Within - Hry
From skibidi toilet not half life 2
rel
oh hell no
oh hell *yes*
The day has come.
half life stiole the gman toilet and give him suit ripoff!!!1
Imagine walking down the street, completely minding your own business, and bumping into G Man.
"I've been looking for you, Dr. Freeman."
They really modified his look in hl2, I probably wouldn't recognize him unless I was looking
i would shit myself
totally mind fucked
Then he sends you into the shadow realm and you wake up in an alien universe afterwards lmao
A random Janitor becoming an eldritch god-like G-man just for being at a right place and right time is the most G-man thing he could do.
Sounds kinda like Ahti from Control 2019
Hello
"The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world"
the gman: “the right man in the wrong place, can make aLL the dif-ference in the world.”
"Dr freeman I'm going to make you my discord kitten"-gman
I don't know where I heard it, but Gmans face actor, when they asked him to come back for HL:A, turned up with a full suit and briefcase. He knows at least a little bit of the legacy he created
Absolute legend
I've been looking for you, dr freeman...
The right man at the right place
Imagine being Michael Smith walking in the street and being attacked by some random ass kid screaming "THE SKIBIDI GUY! ITS THE SKIBI TOILET FACE MAN!"
💀
Lmao there is no way this is original
Rip
"I'm hurt!"
Me: Good bye little Timmy *sends to zen*
imagine being an avid half life fan and buy half life 2 on release, just for one of the main characters to be your dad.
and he has a pet headcrab
(i deleted my original comment because I now know that Ted Cohrt has kids who were half life fans)
@Cleminite About that beer I owe ya
I like to think that Kleiner's VA bought the game for them and watched them play until they got to the Kleiner part, as a surprise
@@creepersammyb2926 he mentioned it in the video lol
@Benny sure but this is not the place
It's really sad that the face actor for Eli Vance goes unrecognized. IMO he is one of the most comforting characters in video games
im glad they bought him back in half life alyx i would love him to be a companion when hl3 comes out soon
@@char7490 I don't know. In Alyx Eli just feels... somehow not right to me. Don't know what it is, but something is off about him, like they used a different person's face entirely.
@@GlamStacheessnostalgialounge it's probably just that he looks younger
@@GlamStacheessnostalgialoungeit could also be because of the voice actor, the voice just doesnt work
@@goti4no820 hes protective of his daughter, that is something he would say
Larry Heard is not just a house DJ, he almost single handily created the modern incarnation of House music. If you listen to "Can You Feel It" it's produced in 1984 and could be a house track you'd hear today in a nightclub. It was also in GTA5. Really cool guy, I'm amazed he's a HL2 character, I didn't know that!
TRUTH. I had no idea he was in HL2. As a deep house fanatic and DJ/producer myself, it's hard to overstate Larry's contributions to the genre. He is literally the progenitor of the darker, jazz-infused dance sounds of today (Fred P, Ron Trent, Chez Damier, Space Ghost, and countless others are clearly influenced by his work)
dude my fucking shock when i found out HE'S MR FINGERS!??!
It's a different larry heard, unfortunately. It was a homeless guy in Seattle named Larry "The Count" Heard. Had to fact check this one because it just seemed too unlikely as Larry Heard the DJ is from Chicago and lives in Nashville.
@@ar_xiv A letdown if it's true but would definitely make sense. I'm gonna rename my DJ act to The Other Larry Heard
I heard that in San Andreas. The song was stuck in my brain ever since.
I went to Warrens obituary page and started to cry. His parents would go and leave comment's wishing him happy birthdays and Christmases. Rest in Peace Warren.
I think the best 'actor to character" design Valve made was Nick from L4D2
They did a fantastic job at making Nick look like a playable Taymour Ghazi without making him uncanny or clay-faced
I will never forget seeing his face IRL, I thought the actor was a 3D render haha
Tbh man they did such a good job with nicks face I can’t look at Taymour Ghazi’s face without automatically recognizing him as nick from l4d2, I think I might have a problem
@@oldman4443 Its perfect. I don't know how they done it, but it feels like they took Tay Ghazi and literally put in the game. I can't describe it right now, but it's done perfect. It feels more like "Nick was so popular they made him an actual person" joke. But man, Taymour Ghazi is really handsome and charismatic, no wonder why they chose him for Nick.
i was in one of a taymour's acting classes and he told us he was nick from left 4 dead and i honestly cant unsee it now, they did a brilliant job
Nah, the best 'actor to character' valve made was the Holy Mackarel from Team Fortress 2
Anyone who is curious about gordon's face, he is referenced by half life 2's sound designer, kelly bailey!
Kailey Bailey also likely recorded gordon breathing from HL1, he is Freeman
Not entirely true as three other people's likeness were also used to compose Gordon's face.
Among others, including Eric Kirchner.
This might not hold true for HL2 and HLA Gordon, but as far as I know his face is an amalgamation of everyone that worked at Valve at the time of HL1.
Not just a sound designer, but a whole composer who made a banger of the OST for Half-Life and Portal
Imagine booting up half-life 2 after you bought it excited to play, then you see your dad as one of the main characters
yea lmao
Kinda wholesome ngl
G-Man's quote in the beginning of HL2, "The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world," sums up Frank Sheldon's opportunity perfectly. If Valve cast him as Dr. Breen then the world would not have gotten such an iconic face as G-Man.
A janitor's role is to be at the right place in the right time, and if he is in the wrong place at the right time, stuff may go around interestingly.
A janitor's role is to be at the right place in the right time, and if he is in the wrong place at the right time, stuff may go around interestingly.
I really hope Eli's face actor is okay.
I highly doubt he's in any horrible situation because honestly I think he might be long dead now.
We gotta face the truth, he's probably not alive anymore. If he is, I wish him all the best.
@@unoriginalperson72 Wow bro.. you REALLY made it sounds so Fcking Dark.. jeez
He'd probably be in his 90s by now.
@@unoriginalperson72 people are really good at dying.. saddening
Wow! Half Life 2 was so popular they made all the characters in real life!
It'd be cool to see all their models in Source 2 with 3D hair/facial hair.
@Benny what the fuck are you talking about
@Benny cultist
@benny7569 why are u spouting jesus shit on like every comment on a half life video like bro what are u doing with ur life, aint no one reading this and going "omg bro i need to be a Christian"
@@Freemelon07gman
So. my uncle is Paul Eenhoorn (yes, two O's but you nailed the pronunciation which barely no one does!). I had asked him about this, and he had no idea that the scan he did ended up in any thing until I told him about it. The scan was done quite a long time before the actual release of Ep2. Anyway. I had no idea either, until actually playing... now that was one hell of a surprise!
Rest In Peace uncle Paul.
eli?
It's always interesting how Valve bases their characters off of real people. The actress they modeled Chell from Portal after is Alesia Glidewell, who's also known for being the voice of Zero Suit Samus in Super Smash Brothers, and Carmelita Fox/Neyla in Sly 2: Band of Thieves
The Half Life universe sure does have a weird story with female actors who played furry characters huh?
@@thinkingboi9508 How so?
@@LordVader1094 A voice actor who voiced a character in Star Fox, which has a cast composed of entirely of anthro animals, came out of retirement to voice a character that was modded into the game
Alesia was also the original face model for Zoey from Left 4 Dead, and provided the voice acting for Alma Wade in FEAR 2.
@@mattmedrala1947damnit i now know why Zoey and Chell looked so similar
I think it’s okay that they used a random guy’s face for Eli and compensated him for it, but they really should have credited him for it. That’s kind of messed up that they didn’t
It's possible they just never got his name or he didn't want to be credited.
@@VinVonVoom Even if either of those was the case, I wish they’d made it more clear in an interview or when the story of his face actor was actually brought up. Because it seems like whatever info Richter could get, it wasn’t conclusive
Maybe he forgot his name, didn't have ID or a social security. It happens sadly being homeless.
@@kennnnny That would require Valve to communicate with the public and you know how much they hate doing that lol
credits: Eli Vance - a random hobo on the street
Eli's face being based on a homeless man they picked from the streets for a only couple of bucks to run his face under some strange device without any further recognition kinda hits different when you remember *they made a joke about using hobos and bums as test subjects of almost-lethal experiments for $60 in Portal 2*
For as great value has been stuff like thise goes to remind you that they do some of the fucked up things that disney or Netflix or google do they are a company at the end of the day
Yeah it's fucking sad man
I really would like to hope they didn't use someone like that and payed him well.
But I feel like that's far more likely...
Imagine if that line is actually based on how much money they gave him
They use astronauts, war heros, and Olympians
Larry Heard (aka Mr. Fingers) is actually one of the Godfathers of House music and really important figure for electronic music history in general. It's kind of amusing to see him being somehow present in game series which soundtrack is really inspired by music that he paved way for.
Imagine if the homeless man who provided Eli's face was both credited and well compensated with Half Life 2's success and actually had his life changed for the better.
It would've been one heartwarming story.
Wow I originally remember hearing some rumors about Eli’s Face actor was a homeless dude but this just confirmed it. The sad thing is he probably wasn’t paid a lot for how pivotal and recognizable he is in gaming. The horrible truth is that he is likely dead. That one hurt the most out of them all. 😢
Makes Ep2 even sadder.
it's not that sad bro. honestly
It's not like he did a lot of work to be paid a lot. You literally just get your face scanned and that's it
You just repeated verbatim the video
@@cluckendip Lmao true.
The use of scans of real people is just another reason why Half Life 2 was so ahead of its time. Using random people from the streets of Seattle for civilians really captures the feeling of being amongst the remnants of a downtrodden urban populace.
By the time HL2 released this was already the common practice in the industry. As far as I know Goldeneye 64 in 1997 was the first game to use photography of real people on 3D meshes, and this method became only more common since then.
and they based the metrocops personalities on the metropolice of seattle!
come back to g10 please
@@omegatrion7139 I don't wanna.
So did Postal 2, which came out in 2003
The fact we know absolutely nothing about the man behind one of the most loveable video game characters in existence bugs me. The guy literally had the "perfect face" for Eli, and he gets no credit? At this point we're doing a disservice not to find more information on him. He's likely already gone, but damn he deserves more recognition than just "that poor guy who needed money." He is literally an icon.
And by find more information, I'm not saying we should track him down or anything crazy like that. Just his name is more than enough credit wise. The guy deserved his privacy just like anyone else.
They may have offered to credit him and he refused, given his situation.
maybe this exactly why, some creep on the internet will want to find out where he lives to give him shit he didnt ask for, like you
The eli vance one is such a sad case, unfortunate that someone won’t ever get to see their legacy in a way, he’s forever immortalized by this game yet nobody will ever know his name.
#RescueEli
He won't be forgotten... no matter how unknown he is. That man is someone I'd want to fight alongside.
been a fan of Larry Heards music casually so learning he's been the face of male_03 this whole time is so weirdly specific thats its mindblowing to me.
Heh, same. I've been listening to Larry Heard for a while now, and I just played HL2 for the first time a couple of months ago. When I saw his name in the HL2 credits, I thought, "there's no way that's *the* Larry Heard." I looked it up and was shocked to learn that, in fact, it was *the* Larry Heard.
Would love to have heard how he got into the game as by hl2 wouldn't he have been quite a famous guy?
Some guys at valve probably loved his music. There’s quite a lot of techno beats and sounds in the half life series.
Mr fingers
Richter, this is a great video! We'd love to see you make one about the voices as well! About Donna Van Buren, we did manage to contact and talk to her - while she was not interested in coming on for an interview because as she says - she likes to stay behind the scenes. She did work as a make-up artist for Valve specifically on the face models for HL2, on Frank Sheldon for sure. She also added the following - "Truthfully, I was only a placeholder head for Dr. Judith Mossman that never got replaced."
so judith would have looked wayyy different had a dev not forgotten or didnt like the model now used ingame
Imagine giving your face to a new game and all long time later you see yourself in a toilet singing animation
I tend to forget that the face of Father Grigori is a guy named Daniel Dociu that was born in Cluj, Romania. It's cool to think we have a romanian guy forever in our hearts :)
Nu mă mira are fata de ardelean ngl 😂
Finally, a video which shows all of the face in HL2. I've been looking for something like this for ages! Awesome job Richter!
you didn't even watch the video when you commented this, how can you know whether if it's an "awesome job" or not?
@@nnikitov57 and who are you to assume this person doesn't just have an ability to hear important info from videos quickly?
@@nnikitov57 The title....
He didn't include gordons face...
Yeah fr@@doughboywhine
7:13 He also appeared in the first Half-Life as the scientist who shouts at you for destroying his cassourole.
That was indeed his casserole but it's not Magnusson who's watching over it.
@@VinVonVoom Oh I see
@@hebbocake he might not have been in the same room his casserole was in
It's a retcon...
Valve does this in every Half Life sequels, retcons everywhere.
@@-Zakhiel- and they're very based for doing that and expanding the world and the games.
Well aside from the Alyx retcon
2:17 Imagine calling or having to visit Tanner Electric for some reason and trying to resist the urge to say, "Barney said to tell you this: FUCK YOU!"
A quote from the G-man himself is perfectly fitting for how his face actor got the role: “The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.”
0:36 You know you've made it when you're a brief mention in a Richter Overtime video.
you
Maniac Hat you've officially hit stardom
Omg is that THE Maniac Hat?!
Absolute legend!!!
you're still a nobody
3:31 Bro thinks he's Walter White.
Whoever Eli's look alike is, I hope he had passed through this world peacefully. His face lives on and will be remembered for time beyond now.
honestly i always found interesting to use as reference real people faces on like a game
I always thought that the faces of Alyx was too peculiar to have been created from nothing, sometimes uncanny valley-peculiar.
Hi G-man!
@@Freemelon07 hello mr...uh freemelon
Most realistic characters in valve games are in fact, based on real people. In the Left 4 Dead series, every survivor has their face modeled after an actual person, and the face references are well known among people who know that they are modeled after people.
and after all these years barney still owes gorden a beer
Imagine seeing your face 20 years later pop out of a toilet
Really smart from Valve to do this in the developement, because this makes the game more immersive and the faces are iconic another thing why hl2 was and is so great.
We need to bring back the face scan process for video game development.
@@horriblechronicdiseases Capcom already did that
Wait til you realize every triple A game does this...
@@horriblechronicdiseases Literally every game does this...
@@friendofp.24 not really and at the time HL2 was the first to do this
3:04 those kids are lucky like imagine seeing the faces of them seeing there father in half life 2 :)
Woah, trippy. I was just looking up the face actors for Half-life 2 yesterday, and all of a sudden you made a video about it.
12:05 Maybe the guy didn’t want to be credited
He probably didn't want to be famous
honestly im happy for Eli's model, hes going to live on for far longer than most of us people watching this video thanks to that chance encounter
7:27 "What are you waiting for freeman, a hug?"
RIP
This is actually surprisingly wholesome. It's like you're just checking in on some old, estranged friends to see how they're doing.
The janitor after the toilet gets clogged: "prepare for...unforeseen consequences"
12:52 “The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.”
No way they made half life real
Gabe Newell liked these people so much he hired and contracted them to make a game about them.
the amount of stuff taken from real life makes the game half real heh
hlfaf lifbe twoo 😱😱
Male03 being Larry Heard is absolutely insane! He is one of the most important figures of electronic music, maybe just short of the likes of Kraftwerk. Both were essential to my younger years.
dude, imagine your dad being used as a facescan in one of your favorite games. that'd be crazy!
I'd love to see a Half-Life 2 movie with all the people who were the characters for the game.
except for the fact that most of them are dead...
Fun Fact : During development on a project intended as a potential Half-Life 3, Valve brought back in Frank Sheldon to re-scan his face for the Source 2 engine. The developers were very surprised when Sheldon, obviously familiar with the character his face had been used for, showed up to the photoshoot complete with a suit and tie. This project was ultimately cancelled due to the Source 2 engine's unfinished state, but the scans were re-used for Half-Life: Alyx.
The original scans look more like Frank, until they morphed it to make it younger and look like his HL2 Counterpart.
I love how half life's ties with eastern europe go beyond just city 17 looking like it (and its confirmed to actually be sofia, bulgaria) into father grigori as well, as daniel dociu is romanian
The circle is complete
this is such a good video for people who are fans of the series, the title alone intrigued me and the video definitely delivered, good job Richter keep doing what you're doing. Very few youtubers do what you do, and do it right.
making fun of a man on the phone call was uncalled for, he answered your question
Imagine being the guy behind male_07 and you see your face being plastered on a toilet just to rot the brains of millions of children
It's kind of bittersweet to think about the guy who Eli was modelled after. He was probably just a down-on-his-luck, homeless guy, desperate for any work that came his way. After that day he might not have ever remembered taking that job. We don't even know his name. For all we know, he's long since died, from one way or another. But he's always going to be remembered. In taking that job, he became Eli Vance, one of the most iconic characters in videogame history. And in that way, he's immortal.
Incredible that someone who’s face has been seen tens of millions of times could simply vanish into the pages of history so effortlessly
I hope Eli’s face actor gets to learn how famous half life 2 and his character became, or at least got to learn.
Litterally i see the thumbnail and it Comes to my mind
"its starts with"
Thank the heavens that you addressed the nasty misinformation about Eli's face actor being Larry Heard. I'm so sick of having to correct people on it so frequently. And you *know* damn well that the only reason people think Heard was Eli is because he was the only bearded black man in the "thanks for letting us use your face" section of the credits despite the obvious differences between the two.
They don't even look the same!
It takes 2 seconds to Google "hl2 faces" for a chart of the main character's faces and their references to show up.
Unfortunately it's double misinformation because it's a totally different Larry Heard to begin with lol
@@ar_xiv As in male_03's face?
thank you for making the video because i always had this thought and i never bothered to check until this video
Incredibly well made video. You deserve more recognition :)
Thank you :) I appreciate you saying that more than you know
wow what the hell. i thought i didnt read it right when i saw larry heard was a character. big 80s / 90s house fan and this guy is a damn legend. his stuff as mister fingers is legendary in the scene.
9:30 Larry's music was on GTA: San Andreas!
San Fierro Underground Radio (SF-UR) :)
That game also used real people's faces
Amazing video, throughly enjoyed it. Thank you.
The Eli fact always makes me so sad, I really hope his face actor got to see the impact his likeness set for an entire industry
Use normal people that you can casually see on the street as the faces of some of the most popular and beloved characters in videogame history is genius.
It just makes the game much more realistic and grounded than using big actors with hundreds of movies.
Also, it costs almost nothing $
very informative video. awesome stuff man keep it up!
Fascinating. Great work!
Wait the characters faces are based on real people? So do most valve games actually use real faces? But this is actually really cool to know and I probably wouldn't never known and it's nice to know who these people are and what they're probably doing these days. Getting so used to half life it's like kinda uncanny seeing this people irl and I'd probably would mistaken them for their character lol.
Yeah, Chell in Portal 2 (not sure about the first game) is actually modeled after the same person who voices Samus in Smash Bros
Hey its you!
Most game characters' faces are based on real faces. More and more companies are starting to use the same person for the face, voice, and mocap captures.
Even the burned corpse is a real person
@@CAMSLAYER13 Old news bro, nobody cares anymore
I still remember the time when I found out that the hl2 models were actual people, I was scared of that fact because I thought actual people were trapped in the game and I was killing them just for my enjoyment while they were being tortured...
Anyways I had a good childhood!
1:07 you are wrong, the most iconic character is Male07
12:12 it literally says in the end of half life Alex that he died may you RIP (insert unknown name here)
the guy who became the G-man was "the right man, in the right place" we could say
I find it more surprising that the old man citizen is the most athletic I was not actually expecting that.
you should do a video on half life's voice actors. i think there's some pretty cool trivia to be found there (such as how barney's va also voiced mczee from microsoft 3d movie maker or how little amount of voice actors there are for hl1)
6:33 someone said father grigori?
*HOLY CRAP HO- OMG ITS THE MAD MAN HIMSELF*
9:57 low key thought that was Trent Reznor
Male 07 is skibidi toilet
Imagine your teacher being g-man. Time...to submit your assignments doctor freeman.
I know it's not really the focus of the channel, but I'd love to see a video like this about the l4d characters!
Just finished watching, and I gotta say, the situation with Eli's face actor really is quite an injustice... Even outside of in-game lore, half life has an... Interesting history.
12:28 "The right man in the wrong place can make ALL the differrrenccccce in the world."
I feel bad for the ones who get seen by kids as skibidi toilets people
1:51 I thought he was about to say something else here
Shoutout Mr Fingers! I never knew he was the face of that NPC, that’s bloody amazing! Mr Fingers is such a pivotal producer in electronic music especially acid house. Can’t beat the amnesia compilation, bit dated but damn it’s fuckin great at where the squelchy, chunky house sound originates from
THE FACE OF THE MALE RESISTANCE FIGHTER IS LARRY FUCKING HEARD?? LEGENDARY DEEP HOUSE PRODUCER???
They shouldve gotten them together and made a movie.
Also i can't imagine how i'd feel if i saw Dr. Kleiner on the street lol
I had many hours many valve games and yet this channel teaches me new things every video
new richter video lets go
0:09 perfect wording for gorgeous freeman
oh god seeing the faces of the characters alongside the real faces feels so.... uncanny....
but AWESOME AT THE SAME TIME.
they're all just so..... *accurate.*
I'd immediately recognize the people whose faces were used for G-Man, Eli Vance, and Kleiner.
It's insane!
its probably been said a million times but just the thought of a half life fan getting his dad in hl2 is amazing
as much as I think Ted Cohrt is probably a swell guy, that photo of him is just deeply unsettling for some reason.
9:22 YO THIS IS THE GUY THAT MADE THAT "Can You Feel It?" SONG IN GTA SAN ANDREAS LOL
After all these years I can finally see the complete material about this interesting piece of our gaming lives ! Thanks!
5:56 What? Considering the situation, Father Grigori seemed very well balanced and friendly; I trusted him immediately.
"lets start with most iconic character of all"
so who is the real male_07
"the g-man-"
Rip to a real one😔✊️
imagine walking down the street in 2006 and being asked to get you face scanned and put into a video game and then 18 years later you are in skbidi toilet