Signs of Half-Life 2: Episode 3

Mike Bantick
Sunday, 09 August 2009 10:36

Your IT - Entertainment

To further extend the background characterisation in the highly anticipated Half-Life 2: Episode 3 it looks as if Valve is injecting a little sign language?

During a focus group discussing issues of the hearing impaired, Valve’s Gabe Newell discusses communication and the possibility of exploring frustrations and techniques experienced by the hearing impaired into Valve software.

Specifically he discussed the back-story of Alyx Vance, the pivotal female character in the Half-Life 2 series of games.

Newell touches on the idea during part two of the focus group video :"[Alyx] had a crush on someone who was hearing impaired, so she taught Dog how to sign so she could practice. Something happened, maybe, the person is off fighting the Combine someplace else, but that's why she and Dog would start signing with each other when they wanted to communicate without making noise, or communicate without other people knowing ... It gave us the excuse to build the technology for signing."

How this could possibly manifest itself in-game is not discussed, but he goes on to discuss how sign language and facial expressions can be used together to get a message or emotion across. 

When Half-Life 2 (2004) was originally released, the realistic facial expression of characters encountered by Gordon Freeman (the player character) was a marquee piece of defining technology for the game.

With the Alyx back-story, and some development time under its belt, Valve is sure to be exploring ways to enhance this franchise reputation.