@colinstu
Hmm, they definitely have the empty isolation that a lot of 90s 3D games have, probably because Half-Life 2 was in development since the 90s and since that feeling ties in with its themes they didn't see a reason to change it (it's not necessarily inherent to just art and level design, because there are new games with a similar abandoned and run-down setting that don't have that feeling as strong as upbeat and cheerful 90s games do). And it ties into what they were going for with Portal too (and it was made by a small team and as such deriving as much as possible from HL2).
https://tilde.zone/@nytpu/113637302279520185
@nytpu like, I wanna blame all FPS, but there's lots of FPS (both before HL2, during it, and after) where I don't get that feeling.
There's a handful of articles and vids about it.
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