Half-Life 2 has just received a miniature update, mainly intended to fix a long-standing music bug. But hiding in the patch notes is an apology of sorts and a nod to that most enduring bunny: Half-Life 2’s speedrunner. It appears that the classic first-person shooter’s recent 20th anniversary update has messed with some beginner speedrunning strategies, introducing an hidden wall to a huge sewer pipe. Valve has now fixed this, removing the offending block and restoring order to the universe. Well, almost.
“The collision with the underwater pipe that runners like has been removed,” the developers write update postwith Valve’s conventional impenetrable mystery. They talk about a huge pipe in the sewers of the Route Kanal sequence that must be filled with water to pass (you can see the pipe in question in this game). It appears that Valve always intended for there to be a huge “player clip” above this pipe – an hidden wall that can be seen in the map editor image below. The clip will disappear once you solve the puzzle by turning a nearby valve to flood the room.
However, for some reason, this hidden wall was previously only present in the Xbox 360 version of the game, according to speedrunners at SourceRuns who closely following the latest changes to play. PC gamers have always been able to indulge in a quick puzzle skip, let’s say climbing the wall with a barrel. Oh, you clever little speedsters.
However, the Anniversary Update from two weeks ago “fixed” the original oversight by including the wall in the PC version as well. As you can imagine, this made it impossible to perform the usual speedrun trick.
This is just one example of many changes that make the Anniversary Update unacceptable to the most rabid fastbois. Many other bug fixes have effectively confiscated the arsenal of glitches that speedrunners exploit to speed through the game. One such nerfed trick is called the “Item Save Bug”, which I won’t explain in detail, but basically allows the player to jump over solid surfaces using a cursed object to get through closed gates like a messed up playdough man. This doesn’t work in the shiny fresh version of the game, and many grave speedrunners just stick with older versions of the game anyway.
“We mainly use older builds, most often from 2012-2013, especially at the highest level,” says speedrunner “Peng”, who currently holds a world record for completing Half-Life 2 in less than 38 minutes. “But at least I think it’s unfortunate that we’re leaving out some of the new changes because some of them actually benefit speedrunners…”
Ultimately, Valve felt that at least this one pipe should remain open for quick business, and yesterday’s brief patch fixed the issue by simply disabling collision in the player’s clip. That won’t be enough to encourage record holders to switch to the fresh version, Peng says. But it’s a decent gesture towards aspiring speedrunners.
“We still likely won’t be able to run the latest version even if the pipeline reopens, as the update appears to have made the item saving bug… more challenging and, for some people, seemingly impossible (we don’t know for sure). This reversal makes the latest version viable at least for beginners, which is a good thing.
OK, if you really want to know, “item save error” is explained in this (very good) video which gives a complete overview of the shooter’s speedrunner strategy and features Peng performing many tricks of the trade.
Meanwhile, for casual gamers, the Half-Life 2 Anniversary Update was essentially good news, as it added Steam Workshop support and developer commentary for the decades-old first-person shooter. It happened too some minor changes at various levels including bug fixes, texture fixes and lighting fixes. It’s a little crazy that Gordon’s great galumph continues to undergo such minor changes, but it’s also a testament to the enduring appeal of the shooter.
