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Half-Life 2 mini-series blows minds on a dime

by Griffin McElroy on Feb 13th 2009 1:31PM

We've found some fairly unwise applications for $500 in the past, including (but not limited to) a few pyramid scheme investments and a number of unused gym memberships -- if only we'd followed the example of the upstart indie filmographers at Purchase Brothers, who recently spent five Benjamins on an extremely worthwhile cause: Producing the first two episodes of a Half-Life 2-inspired miniseries, titled Escape from City 17.

The Purchase Brothers recently dropped the first episode onto an unsuspecting internet -- we've got it posted after the jump. If you've played the series (we find it difficult to believe there are people who haven't, at this point), you really need to check it out. A touch of naughty language and a healthy dose of gunshootery might make it a bit NSFW, but we think you'll agree -- it's worth risking your employment to watch this video with all available haste.

[Via DailyGamesNews]

Source

Tags: escape-from-city-17, half-life, half-life-2, purchase-brothers, valve

Reader Comments (77)

It's all good Nega. My wife wanted to watch the season 1 finale on our wedding night. I hadn't even heard of it, sounded kinda silly from her description. We didn't watch it, but she finally got me to see the mini-series and it just sorta grew on me. I'm not usually the scifi type.

Hell no. Battlestar Galactica as is has too much High School angst.

Did anyone else catch the burning eye of Sauron? I'm just now playing Halflife 2 on the original Xbox (I'm a generation behind, I can't afford the new stuff my friend gave me the console and I was fortunate enough to find the game used), so I don't know what the backstory or references are that might require said tower of Sauron. I just thought it was funny.

That's the Citadel, which you see near the beginning of Half Life 2.
Aw man! I don't want to spoil anything, but.. you really need to play the episodes.. but they're only on the current gen and PC. :|

GAAAAAHHH!!! I wish people would put this stuff on Mac! It'd work, and it can't be that hard! Either that or people need to raise money to buy me current gen consoles and games, and a TV bigger than 15" so that I can play stuff enjoyably! NYAAAAARGH!

That was really cool. Don't know where it was shot, but the locations were a great match for the City 17 as seen in the game. The effects, editing, and direction were all pretty good too.

The only problem is I'm gonna have to replay Half Life, Half Life 2, HL2: Episode One and Episode Two now. And I've already got a stack of other games waiting to get through on the PS3 and Wii, dammit.

Looked pretty cool but the acting was horrible. Probably some of the worst i've ever seen

That was wild. Very cool.

And here I was expecting some crappy, poorly directed, horribly animated fan-gasm clip! Bravo to the guys at Purchase Brothers, you can tell this is a labor of love and a very well produced one at that.

Valve needs to jump on this shit and gives these guys some funding; I smell a potential web series on Steam.

Looks better than the professionally-made Halo shorts.

So good... Episode can't come soon enough... I'll keep on replaying the old ones till that fateful day in, December of 2009? January of 2010? Never?

Awesome episode! They really took the time with the cinematography to nail the look and feel of City 17! Can't wait for the next ep.

That's why Ross left Joystiq, HE'S GOING TO PLAY GORDON FREEMAN.

wow that was 100x better than 90% of the crap that the sci-fi channel makes.

the acting was a bit bad though, just a bit unnatural and dialogue was low but other than that great.

Bad acting really ruins what looks like a well-done representation of City 17.

Would love to see more from these guys, though. They did a good job blending the CGI and effects in for such a low-budget production, though I doubt it only cost $500; maybe the costumes/props only cost that, I would believe.

I don't think the kinda bad acting makes this any less great. They got the feeling of City 17 down perfect in my opinion. The CG is really good too. I wanna see more. Hopefully the episodes will be longer whenever they put them out. I already wanted to go back and play Half-Life 2 again to get all the Lambda caches, but this makes me want to play it even more.

This video contains incomprehensible amounts of win.

I really liked it, and I think they did a fantastic job for ~500$. This really is a good indie development, and look forward to watching more. YAY
BTW, a chick who can run AND shoot? YAY

So freak'n awesome! This makes all my nerd bones happy.

That was really awesome. I look forward to the next part.

Also, Looks like their site went down. Site probably went over their bandwidth

Best. Video. Ever.

Not bad. Some sound effects from the game worked well, some didn't. The sound didn't sound like it was coming from a source half the time. The guy without the hat was fairly bad at acting. The special effects were done fairly well, as were the costumes.

Overall it was excellent for an indie webisode. It was better than 99% of webisodes made by professional studios with bigger budgets that $500. Props to them and to Valve for not suing them. :)

That vid was very well done for an indie webisode. The only flaw I noticed was the asian guy's acting. The burning Citadel looked like the Eye of Sauron.

This 5 minute $500 video has completely shat on every other motion picture based on a video game. It makes me so mad that multimillion dollar movies pump out worst shit than a REAL director with half a grand.

Fuck you Max Payne movie.

the views went from 50000 to 650000, thats effing amazing, i saw it when valve twittered about it

A quick note about the budget - the $500 price tag probably is misleading as to the true cost when equipment is factored in, but also keep in mind how much money was saved by them on effects by pretty much entirely using CG assets from the Source engine edited straight into the film. :D
Who knows, maybe it was actually very prudently spent.

Damn I cant Wait for This, Best game ever btw

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Half-Life 2 mini-series blows minds on a dime

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