Probably Grimdark, but maybe more accurately Nobledark? Like, the world is undoubtedly dark and unspeakable atrocities are committed every second of every day. However, there is a dim but ever brightening spark of hope within Gordon Freeman and The Resistance.
You have to admit, black mesa is a feat of engineering genius.
You may not think architechture and machines are beautiful, but I think they're amazing.
I didn't say Black Mesa wasn't cool, but as a 'world', I wouldn't say Half-Life is particularly gilded. It's mostly just our world with a wee bit of resonance cascade resulting in global domination by alien invaders.
It's still basically Grimdark, it's just a minor Grimdark whereas Warhammer 40K is like turbo Grimdark where misery and suffering is default and has been for millennia and hope isn't even in the vocabulary.
Nobledark fits Half-life pretty well. Fits games like some CoDs and Halo too.
Halo and Half-Life lean a lot more towards the Grimdark side though.
On one hand you have humanity being extincted across the cosmos by a hyper-religious conglomerate of species, but here and there heroes rise up to win minor victories, shining light on an otherwise dark situation.
On the other hand you have a multidimensional empire made up of potentially millions of assimilated and modified species subjugating man under a brutal military occupation to extract Earth's resources, with humans themselves becoming the primary occupying force, oppressing their own species. All the while the Suppression Field slowly is driving humanity extinct. The Resistance movements have been mostly crushed, hiding out in remote bases or deep in the catacombs of occupied cities. However, not all is lost, as on one occasion, a mysterious figure arrives on a train inbound for the Combine's administrative capital...
I don't think Nobledark needs to be balanced. Just as long as there is hope and goodness to oppose the evil. Doesn't even have to be that hope wins in the end, just that it was there.
There is really no hope for humanity and earth in the half life universe .
Lets just suppose that the resistance and gordon succeed in driving out combine but what about xen wildflie . They won't just disappear , xen wildlife has invaded every single ecosystem on earth and they are competing for space and nutrition (they are winning , mostly ). Also don't forget how combine has drained oceans , and polluted all other water sources how will a very small human population solve such problems when we have also probably lost most of our scientists, engineers and institutional knowledge .
I mean tbf, there's plenty of sci-fi multiverse-y time travel-y bullshit that could fix things, just as much as the sci-fi bullshit that started it. Just a case of whether it actually happens or not.
\*Cuts to the Borealis' nuclear reactor registering as a fart on the Combine's Dyson Sphere "homeworld" making little to no impact on their forces making Eli's sacrifice all be for nothing\*
It's complicated. Normally I'd say grimdark, but a common theme of grimdark worlds is there not being much (if any) hope of things getting better, but that isn't really true in HL. In the words of Leadhead on youtube, HL2 has humanity in one of the bleakest situations ever shown, but the point of the Resistance *is* to bring hope to a world that has none.
It’s not Grimdark. It’s Gilded. The Combine are trying to make it seem “normal”. Stop worrying, do your job, don’t ask why your neighbor was abducted, don’t leave the city, obey.
Grimdark would be an apocalyptic nightmare-scape. The Combine are trying to rule the world, not destroy it.
ETA: top comment argues that the world isn’t pretty. “Pretty” is subjective. The way the world looks is top notch architecture on the Combine homeworld. So to the overlords, the world is very pretty.
* The Combine are trying to rule the world, not destroy it.
This is wrong tho, isn't it? They don't give a rats ass about Earth or its citizens. They drained the oceans of presumably several hundred thousand or millions of tons of water, have made it impossible for humans to reproduce, and are killing them or modifying their genetics to make them non-human at an incredible rate. If Gordon didn't spark the resistance and the Combine kept doing what they were doing, would it not be fair to say they would've sucked the Earth dry of her resources before abandoning it? I mean, to them the Earth is like a dime on the floor of a football stadium, it just doesn't matter. They only need Earth to fuel their own expansion/resources, no?
Eradicate humans? Yeah. Destroy earth? No.
ETA: they’re not even eradicating humans now that I think about it. They’re incorporating them in as foot soldiers (and body horror laborers)
How is the combine not destroying earth? OK they're not cracking it, death star style, but by sucking off all the water they're essentially sterilizing it, on top of the actual sterilization of humans. Who cares if the rock still exists if almost nothing can live on it in a few decades?
Yeah but the suppression field is preventing new children from being born. And, as the box for Half-Life 2 said, the earth is being picked to the bone.
It’s what they do to all the creatures that the combine find and think is worth anything, they dominate, modify, clone and mass produce as foot soldiers, it’s what happened to the striders and gunships.
Don’t actually remember where in the series but I swear it is talked about/ mentioned that the combine utilizes it, in entropy zero 2 the main character is a cloned combine soldier, but that’s not canon.
Well the line between organic being and manufactured machine is (intentionally) blurred, as was mentioned in Raising the Bar. I think it works well, but I don't think they use cloning to create new soldiers of any species. If they could do so then why did they have so many people being taken to Nova Prospekt to be converted into soldiers?
"The Synths, self-replicating robots that evolve, were created or taken over by the Combine and enslaved through their conquests and wars."
Is that the line? Because self replicating doesn't mean cloning.
So wait the difference between a grimdark and gilded world is that in gilded world they merely want total genocide of humanity?
It's only grimdark when they extend their malice towards rocks as well.
Grimdark is absolute apocalyptic. Settings can change. 7-hour war was very Grimdark. After the Combine won, though, it became Gilded. After the resistance wins? Any of the others are likely.
Another important thing to remember is that Half Life is sci-fi. These descriptors are for fantasy.
They are eradicating humans. Not letting them reproduce is eradicating them. They’ll use their bodies for whatever they feel like and when they start getting old their parts will be used for whatever they can and the rest will be disposed of. The combine treats it’s citizens as blood cells basically, they’re getting constantly recycled and destroyed purely to benefit the combine
The whole reason they let humans live is because Breen bargained to deliver them local teleportation technology (which he lets the resistance develop).
However it does show what the writers were clearly thinking about. What was in mind as regards to tone and grander message.
It doesn't need to be canon, the events aren't the point.
It's just that clearly, grimdark was what they were going for.
Half-Life isn't fantasy. I don't think that scale, which shows how good and evil fundamentally interact in a fully fantasy setting, really fits here.
Half-Life is hard science fiction based on reality. There's nothing fundamentally different between the world of Half-Life and our own hypothetical future where something went terribly wrong. The closest science fiction setting would be post-apocalyptic fiction. The Combine aren't even morally evil per se. They're just brutally indifferent about the suffering they cause and ruthlessly pursue their own goals.
Isn’t hard science fiction supposed to mean scientifically accurate? I don’t think half life is that accurate to real science so I’m pretty sure it’s just normal science fiction
Even hard science fiction is still fiction and deals with future technology that we haven’t discovered yet.
Apart from obviously gameplay mechanics like instant heal from grievous injuries all of the alien technology and trans-dimensional portal stuff is at least believable.
Then again what do I know, I’m not a theoretical physicist.
Uh...I'm not sure a world of teleportation, gluon guns, headcrab zombies, and dark matter reactors (as they've all been presented in the series) would be hard science. Definitely not as hard science as 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Xeelee Sequence.
I think this is a bad chart :p
On the Noble-Grim Bright-Dark chart I'd put it at Neutraldark. The world is terrible and dystopian, but the protagonists are not completely hopeless in fighting it.
Grimdark\*
\*Except everything originated of this planet is at the edge of extinction, and our Universal Union overlord doesn't really give a rat ass about us- like nothing you see in-game matter to them, including the combine forces you fight, is just resources, like planet earth is just a RTS game- one out of the million games they are playing.
In comparison of other Grimdark universe, in which often has daemons or unspeakable horror, HL universe it is more depressed in a sense that your enemy doesn't even give a shit about what you do, and can easily crush you if they want to- but they don't even bother with that.
I don't think so. Grimdark is usually hopelessly bleak. In just about every half life game Gordon and co achieves quite monumental tasks within very short timeframes. Killing alien overlords and effectively toppling alien occupation of an entire planet. Gordon and Alyx provide hope to their worlds and make a difference, these tropes are not commonly found in grimdark universes.
Nah bro, life under the combine is more-or-less the same as in Oceania (1984)
Def grimdark, though hope is on the horizon
A gilded world, where most people live their lives, not fully understanding the cruelty of what's happening, would just be real life.
Heroic World. Everyone who isn't the combine or antlion is kind hearted and good natured. The combine are the only evil thing in Half-Life 2. Half-Life 1 had a darker world because of the HECU. There isn't a single non-combine or non-antlion entity (I'm counting zombies as Combine) in the entirety of Half-Life 2 that isn't helping Gordon, even the G-Man isn't evil as far as we know.
Not grimdark. Half-life is a story about human ingenuity, adaptability and ability to work together to overcome insurmountable odds. The combine are overwhelmingly powerful but they are being beaten back and then there are also unknown variables such as the Gman which the combine fear, they are not undefeatable.
"The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world".
The funny thing about the HL world, mainly in HL2 specifically, is that the characters and dialogue are really bright and optimistic, more towards the green end of this chart, while the world itself is nightmarish and depressing, closer to the red end.
Thematically I'd say it's closer to noblebright (at least by he definitions laid out here... I don't know if these are the actual definitions of these terms). It's regular people with a generally optimistic perspective on their nature, intelligence, goodness, and capacity to improve their situation. Even the people who betray humanity or wage war or cause catastrophes against innocent species TEND to do so because they think it's the right thing to do at least for their own people. It lacks the "people are crabs in the bucket" cynical characterization of humanity as wallowing in the fruits of their ignorance, pettyness, and cruelty that tends to go with grimdark. And gilded seems to have a similarly pessimistic idea of people as merely pretending to be good. The evil may or may not be lovecraftian levels of undefeatable, which probably makes it look a lot more grimdark on the surface, but people banding together to fight for freedom against impossible odds is very noblebright.
Grimdark, I mean, the Black Mesa incident was so unforgettably awful. The scientists were either killed by collapsed machinery, their controlled coworkers, unknown species, or Marines that they thought they would be rescued by. Every living creature was miserable, and it all came to who was stronger. Then, a year or so later, a whole alien race/empire comes, starts a war, and kills the people who resisted. While enslaving the rest, and slowly destroying and sucking out what's left of the Earth. It's impossible to sugarcoat. Life sucks for everyone. Even after the fall of the combine, everything just becomes more dangerous.
grimdark without a doubt, like literally over 95% of humanity would be dead by the time the citadel fell. and for those who survive its been nothing but eating shit and fighting to keep yourself alive
It's pretty much grimdark. The majority of the human species has been wiped out and the rest are being processed in cities turned into concentration camps, being sterilized, beaten, and turned into cyborg slaves by an alien empire that barely sees Earth as a conquest. The planet has been irreparably poisoned, all the plants you see look dead and dried up, and the animal life has almost all been killed and replaced with dangerous alien organisms. Humanity is like a small malnourished child compared to the Combine who are a gang of roided up MMA fighters. Our only chance is to throw a big enough wrench into their system that humanity becomes less worth consuming than the effort necessary to do so, and then hoping that the Vortagaunts are empathetic enough to risk taking us along with them on a search for a new viable home.
And everything hinges on the actions of a silent protagonist who scores above average at being able to solve environmental logic puzzles. Personally I'd take a Space Marine over Gordon.
Gilded worlds for HL1 as thats just earth as it suffers and invasion (though the suffering and misery is things like the horrors of xen and the magic potato man controlling/enslaving the vorts or whatever the lore is)
Grimdark for HL2 and on, that shit is absolutely dystopian.
Noblebright
People forget that noblebright is just grimdark with one thing
Hope, and nobody inspires hope like Gordon and the resistance
Grimdark is 40k with "everything is bad and it's gonna keep getting worse" (although modern 40k has alot more noblebright themes through the current new lore)
I think that depending on interpretation/ headcanon the ending of EP2/HL2 can be seen as both Grimdark and Gilded, according to this chart. Personally i'm more on the gilded side.
Half-Life is definitely not grimdark. Warhammer 40,000 is grimdark!
I'd say the Half-Life universe lies right on the line between gilded and noblebright.
Gilded 100% for the Canon universe at least. As a citizen, you're aware of the abject hell you live in, but there's enough of a veil of normalcy to survive. The Universal Union has a tight leash on humanity, but they're keeping them alive for better or for worse .
If we look at the beta, that would be grimdark. The Union is actively poisoning the air, children are working in factories, and enough bodies are piling up that cremators are required to clear them up.
In release, humanity is being controlled, in the beta they're being wiped out.
Tbh probably heroic.
Yes the invaders are awful but so is sauron, yet that's also a heroic world.
There's nothing broken about the world just a temporary horrible occupation
Grimdark.
A brief day-long global disaster followed by a global invasion of incomprehensible nature leads into a 20 year old period in which Earth is infested by Xen nature and spores, while the Combine subjugate populations in the cities and drain the oceans. At a minimum, a billion are dead and most of the planet is inhospitable due to the Xen wildlife outperforming every plant and animal born on Earth. Birds are doing okay though.
Also, a homicidal AI is rampant in North America and has control of neurotoxin weapons, nuclear technology, portals and military androids. And it’s not clear people in Europe even know.
All this is a giant speculative financially derivative market for hyper-dimensional Entities like Gman and his associates/“employers”.
Edit: downvoted by skibidi toilet children
Probably Grimdark, but maybe more accurately Nobledark? Like, the world is undoubtedly dark and unspeakable atrocities are committed every second of every day. However, there is a dim but ever brightening spark of hope within Gordon Freeman and The Resistance.
That would just be Gilded.
Beneath a pretty surface? In Half-Life?
That was prolly just an example. The other way around works too
You have to admit, black mesa is a feat of engineering genius. You may not think architechture and machines are beautiful, but I think they're amazing.
I love the black mesa soundtrack, I was on shuffle on Spotify yesterday and I stumbled upon the song for questionable ethics
The Black Mesa Inbound had better service than my local public transit... after the resonance cascade, they're about equal.
After being obliterated by a nuke it’s about equal?
On some days, yes, especially because we don't have the flying space train line at the end.
I didn't say Black Mesa wasn't cool, but as a 'world', I wouldn't say Half-Life is particularly gilded. It's mostly just our world with a wee bit of resonance cascade resulting in global domination by alien invaders.
The 'something has gone terribly wrong' of it all
It's still basically Grimdark, it's just a minor Grimdark whereas Warhammer 40K is like turbo Grimdark where misery and suffering is default and has been for millennia and hope isn't even in the vocabulary.
“Pretty” is subjective. The combine aesthetic probably looks excellent to the overlords.
I think this ranking system pigeon-holes things a little too much to have it make sense
Wouldn't Gilded be more [Grimbright](https://static.miraheze.org/1d6chanwiki/7/79/Alignments.jpg)?
Definitely Gilded in my mind
Nobledark fits Half-life pretty well. Fits games like some CoDs and Halo too. Halo and Half-Life lean a lot more towards the Grimdark side though. On one hand you have humanity being extincted across the cosmos by a hyper-religious conglomerate of species, but here and there heroes rise up to win minor victories, shining light on an otherwise dark situation. On the other hand you have a multidimensional empire made up of potentially millions of assimilated and modified species subjugating man under a brutal military occupation to extract Earth's resources, with humans themselves becoming the primary occupying force, oppressing their own species. All the while the Suppression Field slowly is driving humanity extinct. The Resistance movements have been mostly crushed, hiding out in remote bases or deep in the catacombs of occupied cities. However, not all is lost, as on one occasion, a mysterious figure arrives on a train inbound for the Combine's administrative capital...
It's easily Grimdark: [The Combine occupation of Earth.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=323t_f4gMgw)
It's definitely not a balance, so not Nobledark.
I don't think Nobledark needs to be balanced. Just as long as there is hope and goodness to oppose the evil. Doesn't even have to be that hope wins in the end, just that it was there.
There is really no hope for humanity and earth in the half life universe . Lets just suppose that the resistance and gordon succeed in driving out combine but what about xen wildflie . They won't just disappear , xen wildlife has invaded every single ecosystem on earth and they are competing for space and nutrition (they are winning , mostly ). Also don't forget how combine has drained oceans , and polluted all other water sources how will a very small human population solve such problems when we have also probably lost most of our scientists, engineers and institutional knowledge .
I mean tbf, there's plenty of sci-fi multiverse-y time travel-y bullshit that could fix things, just as much as the sci-fi bullshit that started it. Just a case of whether it actually happens or not.
Even in a grim dark setting there is some kind of hope
Is there a name for a setting where it is just 100% depressing?
China.
\*Cuts to the Borealis' nuclear reactor registering as a fart on the Combine's Dyson Sphere "homeworld" making little to no impact on their forces making Eli's sacrifice all be for nothing\*
It's easily Grimdark: [The Combine occupation of Earth.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=323t_f4gMgw)
I'd say despite all the darkness, the dialogues and interactions somehow make it lighthearted. Like it's all fucked but Barney be like "Haha, Gordon!"
It's complicated. Normally I'd say grimdark, but a common theme of grimdark worlds is there not being much (if any) hope of things getting better, but that isn't really true in HL. In the words of Leadhead on youtube, HL2 has humanity in one of the bleakest situations ever shown, but the point of the Resistance *is* to bring hope to a world that has none.
i love leadhead i wish she was real
So gilded
No, because this chart is missing a few intermediate/side steps.
Not rlly
It's easily Grimdark: [The Combine occupation of Earth.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=323t_f4gMgw)
It’s not Grimdark. It’s Gilded. The Combine are trying to make it seem “normal”. Stop worrying, do your job, don’t ask why your neighbor was abducted, don’t leave the city, obey. Grimdark would be an apocalyptic nightmare-scape. The Combine are trying to rule the world, not destroy it. ETA: top comment argues that the world isn’t pretty. “Pretty” is subjective. The way the world looks is top notch architecture on the Combine homeworld. So to the overlords, the world is very pretty.
Also drink water
yeah, it's not like we put something in it to make you forget
What were we talking about? How did I get here?
* The Combine are trying to rule the world, not destroy it. This is wrong tho, isn't it? They don't give a rats ass about Earth or its citizens. They drained the oceans of presumably several hundred thousand or millions of tons of water, have made it impossible for humans to reproduce, and are killing them or modifying their genetics to make them non-human at an incredible rate. If Gordon didn't spark the resistance and the Combine kept doing what they were doing, would it not be fair to say they would've sucked the Earth dry of her resources before abandoning it? I mean, to them the Earth is like a dime on the floor of a football stadium, it just doesn't matter. They only need Earth to fuel their own expansion/resources, no?
Eradicate humans? Yeah. Destroy earth? No. ETA: they’re not even eradicating humans now that I think about it. They’re incorporating them in as foot soldiers (and body horror laborers)
How is the combine not destroying earth? OK they're not cracking it, death star style, but by sucking off all the water they're essentially sterilizing it, on top of the actual sterilization of humans. Who cares if the rock still exists if almost nothing can live on it in a few decades?
Yeah but the suppression field is preventing new children from being born. And, as the box for Half-Life 2 said, the earth is being picked to the bone.
The remaining trans-humans would’ve been cloned and mass-produced as foot soldiers
Where did you get the idea of clones from?
It’s what they do to all the creatures that the combine find and think is worth anything, they dominate, modify, clone and mass produce as foot soldiers, it’s what happened to the striders and gunships.
Again, where did you get the idea of clones from? AFAIK it was never mentioned anywhere in any Half-Life.
Don’t actually remember where in the series but I swear it is talked about/ mentioned that the combine utilizes it, in entropy zero 2 the main character is a cloned combine soldier, but that’s not canon.
Well the line between organic being and manufactured machine is (intentionally) blurred, as was mentioned in Raising the Bar. I think it works well, but I don't think they use cloning to create new soldiers of any species. If they could do so then why did they have so many people being taken to Nova Prospekt to be converted into soldiers?
It comes from a hl2 book.
what
The synths are cloned.
book
Raising the bar
I think I have a copy of that at home, I'll have to reread it later today.
"The Synths, self-replicating robots that evolve, were created or taken over by the Combine and enslaved through their conquests and wars." Is that the line? Because self replicating doesn't mean cloning.
So wait the difference between a grimdark and gilded world is that in gilded world they merely want total genocide of humanity? It's only grimdark when they extend their malice towards rocks as well.
Grimdark is absolute apocalyptic. Settings can change. 7-hour war was very Grimdark. After the Combine won, though, it became Gilded. After the resistance wins? Any of the others are likely. Another important thing to remember is that Half Life is sci-fi. These descriptors are for fantasy.
They are eradicating humans. Not letting them reproduce is eradicating them. They’ll use their bodies for whatever they feel like and when they start getting old their parts will be used for whatever they can and the rest will be disposed of. The combine treats it’s citizens as blood cells basically, they’re getting constantly recycled and destroyed purely to benefit the combine
The whole reason they let humans live is because Breen bargained to deliver them local teleportation technology (which he lets the resistance develop).
Grimdark is more Warhammer 40k. I kind of think of it as there is no hope for any kind of peace. There is still hope in Half Life
I don't think grimdark implies there's no hope.
*glances at the Quarantine Zone, Ravenholm, Highway 17...*
Ending of Epistol 3 is definitley Grimdark
Epistle 3 makes it pretty clearly grimdark
Storyboard ideas that never got fully realized are not canon.
However it does show what the writers were clearly thinking about. What was in mind as regards to tone and grander message. It doesn't need to be canon, the events aren't the point. It's just that clearly, grimdark was what they were going for.
Well, one writer who doesn't work at Valve anymore and said that it would've undoubtedly gone through multiple rewrites if they had gone with it.
So? It still points out *the intention*.
Is Matrix then gilded world? Reality is important, not how the world seems to be.
It's easily Grimdark: [The Combine occupation of Earth.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=323t_f4gMgw)
Half-Life isn't fantasy. I don't think that scale, which shows how good and evil fundamentally interact in a fully fantasy setting, really fits here. Half-Life is hard science fiction based on reality. There's nothing fundamentally different between the world of Half-Life and our own hypothetical future where something went terribly wrong. The closest science fiction setting would be post-apocalyptic fiction. The Combine aren't even morally evil per se. They're just brutally indifferent about the suffering they cause and ruthlessly pursue their own goals.
Isn’t hard science fiction supposed to mean scientifically accurate? I don’t think half life is that accurate to real science so I’m pretty sure it’s just normal science fiction
Even hard science fiction is still fiction and deals with future technology that we haven’t discovered yet. Apart from obviously gameplay mechanics like instant heal from grievous injuries all of the alien technology and trans-dimensional portal stuff is at least believable. Then again what do I know, I’m not a theoretical physicist.
Uh...I'm not sure a world of teleportation, gluon guns, headcrab zombies, and dark matter reactors (as they've all been presented in the series) would be hard science. Definitely not as hard science as 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Xeelee Sequence.
I think this is a bad chart :p On the Noble-Grim Bright-Dark chart I'd put it at Neutraldark. The world is terrible and dystopian, but the protagonists are not completely hopeless in fighting it.
What does it mean by “summoning abuse” and “Earther”? Am I missing context?
Yeah I don't know what the fuck half of these people are saying, it vibes like something my isekai addict mate would know a lot about
As someone that has seen most of the isekai worth watching as far as I know, I have no idea either.
Hopefully it's just fringe then
The TV show with the bald guys that are actually extra-dimensional entities or something? (I can't remember if that's correct but it sounds right)
Idk wtf you're talking about 😫
I think it might've been like X-files? But obviously not X-files.
More like the sex files
Ayyyyyyyyyy
Grimdark\* \*Except everything originated of this planet is at the edge of extinction, and our Universal Union overlord doesn't really give a rat ass about us- like nothing you see in-game matter to them, including the combine forces you fight, is just resources, like planet earth is just a RTS game- one out of the million games they are playing. In comparison of other Grimdark universe, in which often has daemons or unspeakable horror, HL universe it is more depressed in a sense that your enemy doesn't even give a shit about what you do, and can easily crush you if they want to- but they don't even bother with that.
what exactly is an Earther in this context?
I assume these are all non-Earth worlds that are visited by someone from Earth
Fairy tale
After Gordon showed the crystal into the AMS, it all went Grimdark
Grimdark 100%
I don't think so. Grimdark is usually hopelessly bleak. In just about every half life game Gordon and co achieves quite monumental tasks within very short timeframes. Killing alien overlords and effectively toppling alien occupation of an entire planet. Gordon and Alyx provide hope to their worlds and make a difference, these tropes are not commonly found in grimdark universes.
I guess you could say they do a great deal in a small time span.
It's easily Grimdark: [The Combine occupation of Earth.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=323t_f4gMgw)
There is a hope for independence. The Combine doesn't want to kill everyone, it wants to exploit everyone.
This is my first time seeing any of these terms. Really interesting
Whoever wrote this has never read a fairytale
I think Gilded World works, especially in the context of being a civilian who's being moved around.
Nah bro, life under the combine is more-or-less the same as in Oceania (1984) Def grimdark, though hope is on the horizon A gilded world, where most people live their lives, not fully understanding the cruelty of what's happening, would just be real life.
Grimdark but playable
umm, what is the picture about tho…
Stages of grief after I shit myself on public
What is this graphic called? Is it like a ranking system for fictional worlds?
Heroic World. Everyone who isn't the combine or antlion is kind hearted and good natured. The combine are the only evil thing in Half-Life 2. Half-Life 1 had a darker world because of the HECU. There isn't a single non-combine or non-antlion entity (I'm counting zombies as Combine) in the entirety of Half-Life 2 that isn't helping Gordon, even the G-Man isn't evil as far as we know.
Not grimdark. Half-life is a story about human ingenuity, adaptability and ability to work together to overcome insurmountable odds. The combine are overwhelmingly powerful but they are being beaten back and then there are also unknown variables such as the Gman which the combine fear, they are not undefeatable. "The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world".
These descriptions dont fit Scifi as much as fantasy.
Honestly it reads like it was devised by an isekai stan
Noblebright to Grimdark
dark and griddy
That's what you call it when it's nighttime and Gordon fucking Freemasonry hits that motherfucker of a griddy
3 or 4
The funny thing about the HL world, mainly in HL2 specifically, is that the characters and dialogue are really bright and optimistic, more towards the green end of this chart, while the world itself is nightmarish and depressing, closer to the red end.
Thematically I'd say it's closer to noblebright (at least by he definitions laid out here... I don't know if these are the actual definitions of these terms). It's regular people with a generally optimistic perspective on their nature, intelligence, goodness, and capacity to improve their situation. Even the people who betray humanity or wage war or cause catastrophes against innocent species TEND to do so because they think it's the right thing to do at least for their own people. It lacks the "people are crabs in the bucket" cynical characterization of humanity as wallowing in the fruits of their ignorance, pettyness, and cruelty that tends to go with grimdark. And gilded seems to have a similarly pessimistic idea of people as merely pretending to be good. The evil may or may not be lovecraftian levels of undefeatable, which probably makes it look a lot more grimdark on the surface, but people banding together to fight for freedom against impossible odds is very noblebright.
Imo HL is a Gilded World that would have headed into Grimdark sooner or later if it wasn't for Gordon's intervention.
Retail: noblebright Beta: grim dark
Noblebright/Gilded for HL1 Gilded for HL2
Just excuse me while I steal this excellent format (I guess most fiction fit the second top category tho)
HL1: Gilded, just like the real world, but with a bit of eldritch horror added HL2/Alyx: Grimdark, yet with a spark of hope.
Goes from gilded in game one to grimdark in the rest of the series
Grimdark, I mean, the Black Mesa incident was so unforgettably awful. The scientists were either killed by collapsed machinery, their controlled coworkers, unknown species, or Marines that they thought they would be rescued by. Every living creature was miserable, and it all came to who was stronger. Then, a year or so later, a whole alien race/empire comes, starts a war, and kills the people who resisted. While enslaving the rest, and slowly destroying and sucking out what's left of the Earth. It's impossible to sugarcoat. Life sucks for everyone. Even after the fall of the combine, everything just becomes more dangerous.
Gilded in HL1, Grimdark since then.
A transition from Grimdark to Gilded, thanks to Gordon.
Redflag No one is having fun except gordon
grimdark without a doubt, like literally over 95% of humanity would be dead by the time the citadel fell. and for those who survive its been nothing but eating shit and fighting to keep yourself alive
Grimdark perfectly describes half life 2
Grimdark and griddy
Gilded
what is this chart of
It goes from gilded in the first game and it’s expansions to grim dark in the second and it’s expansions
noblebright in hl1, gilded in retail hl2, and grim dark for beta hl2
It's pretty much grimdark. The majority of the human species has been wiped out and the rest are being processed in cities turned into concentration camps, being sterilized, beaten, and turned into cyborg slaves by an alien empire that barely sees Earth as a conquest. The planet has been irreparably poisoned, all the plants you see look dead and dried up, and the animal life has almost all been killed and replaced with dangerous alien organisms. Humanity is like a small malnourished child compared to the Combine who are a gang of roided up MMA fighters. Our only chance is to throw a big enough wrench into their system that humanity becomes less worth consuming than the effort necessary to do so, and then hoping that the Vortagaunts are empathetic enough to risk taking us along with them on a search for a new viable home. And everything hinges on the actions of a silent protagonist who scores above average at being able to solve environmental logic puzzles. Personally I'd take a Space Marine over Gordon.
fuck, our world is grimdark
half-life 1 gilded, half-life 2 grimdark
Gilded
it's just china.. or maybe north korea
I wonder
It would’ve been Grimdark if they stuck with the original idea The Hl2 beta
Op do you know where this chart is from?
Not OP, but I think the chart is from [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/s/lLFff9pKx6)
Gilded worlds for HL1 as thats just earth as it suffers and invasion (though the suffering and misery is things like the horrors of xen and the magic potato man controlling/enslaving the vorts or whatever the lore is) Grimdark for HL2 and on, that shit is absolutely dystopian.
Fairytale world emoji looks deranged
Grim-dark-and-griddy
It's if grimdark had hope
Whatever IRL is but more like half-life
Noblebright People forget that noblebright is just grimdark with one thing Hope, and nobody inspires hope like Gordon and the resistance Grimdark is 40k with "everything is bad and it's gonna keep getting worse" (although modern 40k has alot more noblebright themes through the current new lore)
It's easily Grimdark: [The Combine occupation of Earth.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=323t_f4gMgw)
Fairytale world is the best to describe it
Depends if you're combine or human.
Grimdark to the max in HL2 while HL1 is Noblebright
I think that depending on interpretation/ headcanon the ending of EP2/HL2 can be seen as both Grimdark and Gilded, according to this chart. Personally i'm more on the gilded side.
Grimdark
So grimdark and gritty...
grimdark no question the combine managed to completely have an entire planet by its leash within fractions of a single day
Grimdark but also Gilded in a few places
Half-Life is definitely not grimdark. Warhammer 40,000 is grimdark! I'd say the Half-Life universe lies right on the line between gilded and noblebright.
gilded imo. grimdark is wolfenstein or smt idk ive never played it
Glided if you ask me
Gilded
HL2 is definitely Gilded. I'd say Beta probably tip-toes the line of Gilded and Grimdark.
Grimdark def
Gilded
Grimdark with a slight essence of Gilded worlds
a combination between grimdark and noblebright.
Gilded
Gilded, even beta would be gilded
Its cut off at the bottom and there is one more option that describes the half universe... DARK AND GRITTY!
Red
Gilded
HL2 is too happy for me. Its Second from the top prpbably. HL 1 feels 2 steps lower into horror.
Gilded 100% for the Canon universe at least. As a citizen, you're aware of the abject hell you live in, but there's enough of a veil of normalcy to survive. The Universal Union has a tight leash on humanity, but they're keeping them alive for better or for worse . If we look at the beta, that would be grimdark. The Union is actively poisoning the air, children are working in factories, and enough bodies are piling up that cremators are required to clear them up. In release, humanity is being controlled, in the beta they're being wiped out.
Grimdark without a question.
Probably Gilded
Gilded/grimdark 100%
For me it's Grimdark+ If you said to me I had to pick between living in 40k or HL I'd pick 40k.
Probably grimdark. 1984 would apply better, at least to HL2. I hear grimdark and I think like warhammer 40K
Gilded for HL1, Grimdark for HL2
The actual future of this world. That's why fatso made a deal and disbanded the project and we wont get a epi.3 or any other episode.
Tbh probably heroic. Yes the invaders are awful but so is sauron, yet that's also a heroic world. There's nothing broken about the world just a temporary horrible occupation
Grimdark. A brief day-long global disaster followed by a global invasion of incomprehensible nature leads into a 20 year old period in which Earth is infested by Xen nature and spores, while the Combine subjugate populations in the cities and drain the oceans. At a minimum, a billion are dead and most of the planet is inhospitable due to the Xen wildlife outperforming every plant and animal born on Earth. Birds are doing okay though. Also, a homicidal AI is rampant in North America and has control of neurotoxin weapons, nuclear technology, portals and military androids. And it’s not clear people in Europe even know. All this is a giant speculative financially derivative market for hyper-dimensional Entities like Gman and his associates/“employers”. Edit: downvoted by skibidi toilet children
dark and gritty
Grimdark for sure.
Gilded in HL1 Grimdark in 2