The Faces of Half-Life 2

good evening halflife 2's characters are iconic they all have instantly recognizable designs and memorable personalities and they have all been put into some of the most deranged situations imaginable on a global stage thanks to Gmod but did you know that these ragd dolls you've been taking out your Twisted impulses and Fantasies on are actually based on real people every character you see in halflife 2 as well as some of valve's other titles like left for dead was made using 3D wireframe scans of real people's heads and faces you can even find these people's names listed in the credits of the game if you look hard enough by now you've probably seen at least a few of the original reference images for these characters online whether in memes or just as little factoid posts on Reddit or whatever but have you ever stopped to ask yourself who these people actually were how did they end up being put in halflife too and what are they up to nowadays today I'm going to talk about the untold stories of these very real people who despite knowing next to nothing about them you would almost certainly recognize if you spotted them walking down the street there will be some funny and heart Waring stories in this video there will be some Mysteries and there will also be some tragedy as well so be ready for all of that let's start out with the most iconic character of all the Gman is half-life's biggest mystery you know him when you see him the Gman may not be a human but he sure looks a lot like one his face was modeled after a teacher/ performance coach from Seattle named Frank Sheldon who back then also worked part-time as a janitor at valve's offices Frank Sheldon ended up becoming a part of halflife 2 through a friendch with the game's lead animator Bill van beran Bill initially imagined Frank is a good fit for Dr Breen and approached him to ask for permission to use his likeness however the team eventually decided that Frank's face would be a better fit for the elusive Gman in order to create an uncanny appearance for the not quite human character valve opted to put Frank's face on a body type that was taller and more slender than his own and even asked him to suck his cheeks in during the scanning process in order to make him appear more gaun the rest is history nowadays Frank runs a photograph graphy business with his wife and he writes novels in his spare time if you care to learn more about him he's still somewhat active online and has even done a couple of interviews with people from the halflife community which is kind of heartwarming meanwhile Wallace Breen the Earth's well-spoken administrator ended up taking on the likeness of a man named Roger guay it looks like Roger was the director of a company called Tanner Electric Cooperative in Northbend Washington and the combine overwiki he states that the clothes that Dr Breen wears in the game were directly inspired by his real world outfit but other than that I really can't find much information on him unfortunately so moving on the absent-minded genius Dr Kleiner actually had two different face actors at different points in the game's development for those who don't know this is what his original design looked like a much older and honestly much more serious looking man however the team ended up completely redesigning the character after an awkward and unexpected encounter with a stranger we thought we had Dr Kleiner in the bag until we laid eyes on Ted Court we were in the elevator and we said oh my God that's Dr Kleiner we spoke with him and he was happy to let us use his face as his two teenage boys were both halflife fans it was always fun to run into him at Starbucks with team members that didn't know where we got kleiner's face from they just start staring at him trying to figure out why he looks so familiar the final face of Kleiner is Ted Court an accountant who worked above valve's offices half-life's writer Mark lad law was particularly amused by Ted's name because he had actually previously considered naming the Dr Kleiner character Dr core the original version of Kleiner was reused as a hostage and Counter-Strike source and early versions of csgo and nowadays most people just refer to him as the court model however his face actor seems to have never been properly credited or identified by V themselves so we actually have no idea who he is or what he's up to now given his visible age it is unfortunately very possible that he may no longer be with us but if this LinkedIn page is anything to go by it looks like Ted court is still around at least he's in his 60s now and he appears to still be doing tax work on the west coast moving on the casting of the lovely Alex Vance was one valve considered to be very important the team wanted Alex to be attractive and a clear love interest to the player so they actually put out a real casting call for multi-racial female models and of the hundreds who showed up valve eventually narrowed their selection down to a single actor from New York city named J Higley Jam had started her modeling career as early as in elementary school appearing in generic TV commercials before eventually becoming a Public Access TV host however she ended up staying near valve's headquarters in Seattle for a while after deciding she needed a break from New York during the brief getaway her modeling agency brought her to valve's doorstep and she actually ended up not only providing Alex's face but also recording her motion capture animations now Alex's face mesh was actually edited a little bit throughout development I guess to try to make her even more photogenic and you can actually kind of spot these small changes in her face if you compare shots between some of the game's trailers but the final character is still definitely very recognizable as Jam just like the g man's face actor Jam is actually still around doing interviews still looks a lot like Alex Vance and seems to be a very sweet lady nowadays she fancies herself as a former actress an emotional intelligence coach a gamer Advocate and a mother of four I think it's safe to say that the face of Alex has gone on to have a pretty happy life good for her just like old times hey Gordon Barney Calhoun is the freedom fighting resistance cop who takes the role of Gordon's best friend and his face is modeled after Val's Chief Operating Officer Scott Lynch Scott seems to be a pretty business oriented guy from what I can tell he has a background in accounting much like Ted court and was actually the senior vice president of the Publishing Company behind the original halflife he seems to have jumped shipped to work for valve themselves just two years after halflife came out I guess he knew they were destined for great things 23 years later Scott still works at valve and even seems to enjoy greeting people who take tours of the company headquarters he's definitely a bit older now but he's still pretty recognizable as the friendly face of Barney Calhoun moving on to a less friendly face the priest of Raven Holm father gregori is a Shifty odd and unstable character valve wanted someone with a fittingly suspicious appearance to play him and they for some reason decided that the mug of Daniel dosio who is the father of one of the games artists horia dosio was the perfect fit that's kind of mean funnily enough Daniel dosio himself is actually part of the games industry as well being the head art director for a game development company called NC soft that worked on games like Guild Wars that means that the face of father gregori is actually still around and could even be behind you right now Arie Magnus is the foil to Dr Kleiner and he's a character that sometimes gets forgotten given that he's unfortunately ever only appeared in a single game being halflife 2 episode 2 magnuson's Face is actually based on an Australian actor named Paul ehorn Paul is known best for his roles in indie films like this is Martin boner and land Ho unfortunately both Paul ehorn and magnus's voice actor John award died just months apart in mid 2022 that means that both talents behind this character died before valve could reprise him in another game which is just a crushing blow especially because in my opinion Magnuson is one of the series best characters speaking of underrated characters the triple agent Judith Mossman is modeled after Donna vanan the wife of halflife 2's lead animator Bill vanan who we mentioned earlier there is unfortunately pretty much no information about her anywhere since she's for the most part just a random private woman but given the success her husband has had in the games industry I don't imagine she's doing poorly nowadays in half-life's community Mossman has always been kind of overlooked as a character despite her importance to The Game's plot so I'd expect some of you are going to be happy to hear that I'm now moving on to the ever iconic City 17 citizens yeah ask yourself what would halflife 2 be without its downtrod and Underdog NPCs it'd be a lot less memorable I'd say despite being consider generic characters compared to most common NPCs in the gaming World these lovable guys are anything but now now unfortunately despite the citizen face actors names and reference photos being readily available the stories of how they were inducted into the game are both much less well documented and much less interesting than those of the real characters for most male NPCs people that valve pretty much just approach strangers in public like restaurant waiters and newspaper salesmen and asked them if they wanted to be in a video game while most of the female NPCs are also just random wives of valve employees or former actresses but there are some interesting exceptions for example Melo 2 and Melo four are Ted bman and Eric kirchmer both concept artists for valve Ted bman is actually Infamous for creating most of the weird sexual penis horror you see throughout the series and seems to have fully retired in 2015 meanwhile Eric kirchmer created most of the game's vehicles and debris and still works rev valve to this day he also provided the face of the stripped combine Soldier M O3 is Larry herd an 80s deep house producer who is apparently important enough to have his own Wikipedia page I'm not going to pretend to be knowledgeable about house music but I listen listen to some of his stuff and it's actually not that bad so if you're into that genre maybe go check it out Meo 8 is Joe Cairo a basketball strength and conditioning coach and the creator of an athletic training camp called Beast Camp it's kind of hilarious to me that the oldest looking guy in the entire game was also probably the most physically capable and active I know if I don't address it I'll get comments about it so I'm very sad to report that the only information I can find online about melo7 is that his actor is named Michael Smith which is one of the most generic names I've ever heard and basically makes him impossible to track down sorry Chapel the low poly performance- saving model who only appears a couple times in the entire game is modeled after a man named Warren slow who is the brother of Ted Bachman's wife Warren passed away at just 33 years old on July 3rd 2006 and while there's no cause of death listed anywhere it seems to have been a horrible and tragic Affair based on what I've read I don't want to talk too much more about Warren because his death at a young age clearly still troubles his family and I don't want to risk offending them in fact if you're one of the people spamming his memorial page with stuff about halflife 2 you should probably stop doing that it's weird and in my opinion kind of in poor taste the face used for the Goofy and lovable Odessa cubbage was that of Travis Dunlap a martial arts instructor that one of valve's employees really liked he sadly also passed away just a month after Warren did in August of 2006 at the age of 73 I honestly didn't mean for this video to get so sad but there's one main character I've actually yet to talk about and that's because his story is what I honestly think might be the most interesting and messed up one of all of them Eli Vance is a very important character not just to halflife too but to halflife as a whole his character is very unique and it's honestly impossible to imagine the game without him and obviously his significance in the story cannot be understated so you might be wondering how exactly did valve go about casting this pivotal role well one day Randy lundine a graphic designer at valve was out in public and spotted a man on the side of the road holding up a sign saying he was was looking for work Randy thought the man had a quote incredible face and approached him to ask if he would be willing to come back to Val's offices and get his head scanned into the game for some cash the man obviously agreed now some sites online credit Eli's face as Larry heard from earlier but this is completely wrong Eli's face actor has actually never been credited at all in any of the games the character appears in and nobody online has ever been able to track down his name either I hate to say this I really do but the unfortunate truth is that this old guy is probably dead by now as well but unlike the others we've talked about nobody will ever know for sure because he was never credited for his highly important roles in for of the most popular video games of all time on top of that we have no idea how much this guy was even paid he probably wasn't really aware of halflife or how popular it and its sequel would become it honestly gets more messed up the more you think about it in my opinion this story might be more interesting and sad than them basing the corpse model on a yet identified real dead body I don't really know what to think of it so to wrap things up it is insane to imagine that these people walked into a random photography studio with the promise of maybe a few hundred bucks only to Now 23 years later be iconic to millions of people and regularly rigged up in [ __ ] like Five Nights at Freddy's sfm animations there is really nothing comparable and it helps remind me how new the phenomenon of the internet and digital media is in the grand scheme of humanity I also think it's really funny that valve's part-time janitor ended up becoming the face of an otherworldly Godlike being in one of the most important mysteries in gaming history just by being at the right place at the right time I hope you enjoyed this video and learned something from it subscribe to my video page and Discord for more sloppy goooo and have a good day shoot you in the head like the black guy from The Matrix has a facelift with some gay chicks just face it I'm a Bas kid I'm awesome Tyler MCC playing dead like aome

Channel: Richter Overtime

Views: 888,934

Keywords: gaming, source, valve, tf2, gmod, hl2, half-life, team fortress 2, garry's mod, counter strike, half-life 2, faces, mystery, gaming mystery

Id: xOijnEZjb0s

Length: 12min 58sec (778 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 20 2023