Where is City 17? | Half-Life 2
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- Опубліковано 26 сер 2024
- SUPPORT MY PATREON: / nfkrz
Twitter ► / roman_nfkrz
City 17 from Half-Life 2 is one of the most interesting and unique settings in video game history. I've always wondered what exactly inspired the world of Half-Life 2 and what real city City 17 is based on. Today we're diving in and talking about it. Smash like and sub for more thx xoxo
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Music:
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Outro music ► MajorLeagueWobs/Holder - D I S T A N T
as a bulgarian i can confirm we have headcrabs, zombies and combine metrocops here
Yeah its called Lulin
Just the wrong kind of headgrabs and zombies
Да , they are an endangered species
Да их у нас дахуя
Хисаря is fine
I think there is an in-game explanation why multiple Eastern European languages can be seen. When the Combine won the war, they displaced many people to different megacities around the world to cause confusion in the populations. That's why there are many Americans present in City 17. In the development it was also planned that the Overwatch and citizens would also speak in different languages from around the globe, but it was sadly cut.
I figured America had fallen to Xen growths from the portal storms in the aftermath of the Resonance Cascade
@@jess648 as far as i can remenber ther is a map gñove in Alyx where ther is a big X on América
@@accelerator8558 I can remember it too! Probably because it was shown and talked about in this video. : )
Roman: Soviet buildings
Bald: That's what I'm talking about
"Look at that Soviet headcrab!" -Bald
Can you stop following everyone in every comment section? FOR 5 MINUTES!?!
lol
Soviet combine 😂
A Soviet peanut butter sandwich
NFKRZ being Russian Pyrocynical again.
I like it.
Except Roman is actually funny
pyros channel is dogshit now
@@GoAway9463 nah
Nah Roman has actually quality
@@senzanyers8622 nah man pyro is a soyboy now
I think this is the whole point. The city just represents the devs vision of an eastern European country, while avoiding pinpointing the exact location. If it was a specific city, there's gonna be thousands of videos pointing out how incorrect it is.
But i feel it's just a simple matter of the artists involved, wanted to represent the places they grew in, cause it fits the theme of the game, and also those are places that are usually never represented in western media, so it makes it more interesting to explore, and gives you an unsettling vibe. Let's not forget that besides Viktor Antonov that you mentioned, Daniel Dociu was very involved in the art for the game. He's from Romania, and also makes a cameo appearance as Father Grigori.
On the loading screen of Alyx, they have a section of city that matches up really closely with a real town in eastern europe. There's also a globe that points to a specific location that matches up to the same town. Can't remember what it was.
@@Josh-gp9up wow... what a backhanded reply. Do you not realize that purplecolonel probably made that reply before even watching the video? They were replying to the top comment lmao. asshole
@@askmeaboutsugma he shouldve watched it first
Like Liberty City in GTA it's not New York you can't say it's not the same but we all know it's new York
@@askmeaboutsugma That's a really bad excuse.
being bulgarian makes me love hl2 even more
Булгар булгар
Поздрав за всички маняци
🇧🇬
Нали
Da
The way you said "Bucharest" would have probably given my grandpa WW2 flashbacks
may God have mercy upon our fallen
I am Lithuanian, and I literally had dreams of locations like these and even Ravenholm before I ever played the game. I think a lot of the dreams were inspired by cs: source which has a lot of similar assets
The fact that he said something in Bulgarian at the end with the thicc Russian accent made my day.
Браво Роман! Харесвам видеата ти and i oop
Поздрав за всички маняци
Мислех си, че съм единственият българин, който го гледа, ама явно не е така! Поздрави братя!
@@simeon031 Няма как да си единствен, прекалено сме много! ;D
Тряя накараме този бай хуй да се пусне до България
@@user-uj8bd1lo5w Да дойде с оня плешивия да джурнат една шкембе чорбица и мешана скара и да се нажулят с ракия :D :D
I was just crying. Thank you Roman, you made me happy.
Hope you're feeling better. Was having a shitty day too but this vid definitely cheered me up
Man... I had a super shit day too and acctually cried, I got rejected and failed math... Hope you'l have a great day on!
It’ll be okay in the end.
There’s just a surplus of shit now a days.
The sun will shine on us again.
Made US happy
Thank you so much. There are some lovely strangers out there
I played this game and i was always having these strange moments where i would know how to get to a certain place on the map based on the main streets, because i live in Sofia 😂
*Bulgarians when they see their country being the inspiration behind any game: .o.*
Best is that I absolutely LOVE Dishonored. A big dream for me is to work for arkane studios.
As well as serbia lol, I was like bruh. and one of our cars were in it too
@@moistsp00n98 Looks like variation of Fiat-12X or Soviet Zhiguli(LADA-2001) which is carbon copy of that Fiat.
@@errorone937 because viktor antonov worked on dishonored. alot of his work from half life and dishonored are shared
I totally agree with you on that, as a Ukrainian, I feel the same way about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
It was really cute when you congratulated us in the end! Love to all slavs :)
Това име обаче 😂😂😂
@BNL Особено ти с тая шльокавица.
Great video, Roman!
By the way, Bulgarian also used the "pre-revolutionary Russian orthography", which consisted of ъ after the end of a word with consonant, and included the letters ѣ and ѫ, which were literally said to be too bourgeois. This change was made by ("surprisingly") the comminists in 1945. Now there has even been a trend of traditional Bulgarian resturants putting ъ after their names.
Still, that poster is in Russian.
Cool. Didn't know about that. Would that be like Романъ or Стоянъ?
@@xXxLLIaMaHxXx Yes
Me a Bulgarian: I see this as a absolute win!
Fun fact lászlo the finest mind of his generation is hungarian
as a bulgarian i confirm that
Also the phone at 10:32 is identical to the public phones we had in Romania untill 2000s-2010s, when Romtelecom, the national operator was sold out and the cabins removed. It appears that the phones were made by a company called Intrarom (ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrarom) which also sold them to Bulgaria.
I'm Romanian and I did not expect to see Romanian in such a loved game,wow
:)
what is with romania, I see in many game credits lot of people working from there...
@@effexon tbh,i rlly don't know,i guess foreign countries start to realise that there are other countries out there lol.
Im too
e smecher mai ales ca in hl alyx poti sa gasesti telefoane d-alea de strada (nu stiu ce nume aveau) facute in romania. oricum, ce a zis roman despre semne si d-astea, semnul ala galben nu are sens. zici ca a incercat cineva sa scrie in romana dar nu prea.
Fun fact, the gas station pumps in episode 2 have prices listed in Swedish kroner, of all things
It's summer and I'm choosing to learn about a city...
next city you should read about is Bruh city
i recommend learning russian instead
@@TheXenomorphGuySMSE i recommend learning bulgarian too eggsdee
You should hl2 is such a great game with years and years of work put into it
Notice how politically correct was the Sevastopol part
Not Ukraine, not Russia, just Crimea and Black Sea
it would be really politically correct to point out Sevastopol to Ukraine.
Ukraine isn't real
@@cageybee7221 Eurasia doesn't exist.
I don't know if I'd call that political correctness, more just skirting a point of contention among potential viewers. No need to antagonize people for no reason.
@@cageybee7221 bruh
Im suprised how few bulgarian comments are there. Most of the times when bulgaria is mentioned somewhere we hype way to much. Btw you pronunced Sofia wrong but its quite common.
Is it "sof-ya"?
@@nikki8104 sOfiya
I think he pronounced it the russian way.
Yeah well there arent THAT many bulgarians in the world.....
It’s a Russian pronounce. And for our language it’s completely correct
I think it's better for the game overall to have it set in a vague "Eastern Europe" location, allows them to play with more themes and visuals that way. In Half-Life 1, there's a section where you discover that the Black Mesa Research Facility is literally built into a mesa, or at least somewhere with a very steep cliff in the middle of new mexico. Makes no sense, but the cliff section is very memorable and fun.
a
Man, I'm from Sofia, Bulgaria and I'm simply mindblown of the amount of research for this video. Congradulations!
It's honestly inspiring seeing a game feature Bulgarian, it's the same realization as when you actually realize your idol is a normal human. I've felt the same way about people from other countries as most people feel about famous people. Like they're not quite on the same page and it technically is correct, I think, but seeing a fellow Bulgarian accomplishing something in a similar area that you're interested and therefore having a pretty big influence on some project as huge (in scale to what is seen in Bulgaria) as Half Life and my all time favorite game franchise Dishonored, is quite inspiring and amazing.
2:52 Ok as a Bulgarian I was shocked to see this, how tf I didn't know that the main design guy was а fellow countryman of mine... 1 more reason to be proud of. Thank you for showing me this fact Roman! Amazing quality as always!
P. S: First things first... 13:13 Спосибо мой друг! Secondly it has to be завършваМ (завършва is in 3rd... Лице (I don't know how it is in Eng, so I hope it's the same in Russian) ? Like it's used for He, She, It. Good old Google translate, trashy as always... :D
(завършва is in third person)*
yeah лице is correct
I love how you haven't changed your intro in years, always gives me nostalgia now
You mean outro?
How’s Kim doing ?
@@jakupi1304 That's beside the point. HE DEFECATED THROUGH A SUNROOF
Bulgaria!!!♥️🇧🇬
Half-Life 2 was and remains my most favorite game I ever played. I played it like 100 times and still have it installed on my old laptop 17 years later
Btw the fuel pumps in Half-Life 2 have Swedish writing on them. It says Summa (sum/amount), kron (short for kronor/krona, the swedish currency), volym (volume) and liter (litres).
Thanks, my Russian friend!
I'm so glad that you made this video, very well researched too! Sofia is the main inspiration, but Valve intentionally combined many eastern european cities so all of us can see our homes in the games. As a Bulgarian from Sofia I can tell you that sofians joke that you dont need to spend money on VR for HL Alyx when looking through the window is free. Even the modern buildings look like the Citadel.
Поздрави!
In HL:Alex the vodka distillery[a late level] 's name is 'Златен лъв' witch in bulgarian in translated to 'Golden lion'.
Greetings from Sofia, Bulgaria, Roman! Awesome video, bro!
I live in Saint-Petersburg, Russia and Half-Life 2 is literally my favorite game of all time. Now I absolutely clearly see why it is so. Nevertheless, this is one of the greatest games ever, in fact. Roman, thank you so much for this video, you are amazing! :)
My headcanon (or possible explanation?) is that the amount of things written in Russian and other Cyrillic languages despite the game being supposedly set in Bulgaria is due to the constant Combine relocation (as we see in the beginning of HL2), spreading out all the nations in Eastern Europe
What do you think?
I swear there is a Russian equivalent of everything,there might be opposite version of captain america called captain russia but instead of having problems catching up to modern times he has serious vodka addiction,probably can't even afford rent for a apartment
Actually yes, there is a Soviet captain america
too drunk to follow the modern times
There is actually a comic about what if captain america landed to soviet russia
@@user-ro1cc8tz6d Isn't that one about Superman, though? (Superman: Red Son)
Actually, there IS a team of russian superheroes named 'Guardians'. The franchise was not really successful and movie itself is kinda meh, but when you pay attention to certain details, it becomes really funny. You can check it in google typing 'guardians 2017'.
City 17 is basically the avengers endgame of all soviet countries.
Along with a winning Bulgarian, I am also one very amused by your terrible proninciation, Roman.
Post-communist depression ftw!
The map of city-17 is actually the map of sofia. There are a couple of images that show it. And if you search "city-17 sofia" i nthe HL wiki it shows is.
I from Half Life 2 :D
Поздрави на всички Българи!
I'm actually really happy you made this video. Half Life 2 is one of my favorite games too. This is something I've known for a while. The whole feel of City 17 and even some of the areas around it is pretty much Eastern Europe. There's even Cyrillic on some of the signs. So yeah...great video man.
Hah a Bulgarian here thx for the victory 😂
victory for russia bulgaria and romania :D
@@lambda2657 Brothers forever 🇷🇺🇧🇬🇷🇴🤜🤛💪❤️❤️❤️
10:09 "Which says _shajtarpabeli imiñipidisistiletjie_ which isn't even gramatically correct or makes that much sense 'cause I think they were trying to say _shajtimiñipitistiletjie pavede_ but whatever, regardless, is pretty damn Russian"
Me, an Spaniard: Jaja, sí.
Shahta pobedi im 50-i letiya
I like when games base there maps in Easter Europe cuz it makes me feel like home
_✨English lessons with Aurinkomakkara✨_
There = answers the question "where?"
Their = _they_ own something
They're = they are
@@aurin_komak genius
The fact that city 17 is finally confirmed to be my home-city of Sofia makes me even happier to be a Half-Life 2 modder. And from the very little that I've seen of hl: alyx, the street design really hits home.
I remember playing hl2 during vacation when i was a kid and even tho i have never played it before the city felt so damn nostalgic to me as i live in east europe
Wow I didn"t know that there were signs written in Romanian in Half Life 2!! 😮😮😮 Also hello from Romania!
Yee pretty cool
im a really old fan 😍 greetings from romania
Romania gang, salut frate
Nu sunteti singurii
am murit la "costantza and bucariest"
@@s_hunt4218 lol da a zis cum se zice in rusa lol, "Kanstantza and buhariest" lol mor de ras frate ))
a pronuntat ok cam tot mai putin orasele noastre =))) nush, mi se pare un youtube-er foarte misto, poate viziteaza si romania, daca vine in bucuresti ii fac un tur al orasului 😂😂
Eastern Europe gang💪🇧🇬🇷🇺🇷🇸🇷🇴🇺🇦🇲🇰🇦🇱🇧🇾🥰
and i oop 🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰
The people of the baltics want to be in northern europe, but because they were in the ussr for so long, they are technically eastern european.
hell yeah brother!
albania
🇧🇬🇷🇺🇸🇰🇷🇴🇺🇦🇲🇰🇦🇱🇧🇾
*Lives practically in city 17*
Valve: *interesting*
Nice video, dude! I'm from Romania and Half-Life is one of my favorite series in gaming but I never noticed the Romanian text in HL2 before, so kudos for pointing that out (even though it has a lot of spelling errors, lol)! It would be awesome to see a Romania themed video on your channel (I think there's a lot of source material ranging from Ceausescu to high-speed internet). Peace!
Man i remeber doing a history project on stalin, and i searched google in russian. I found the wiki page and i only realized that the article was in bulgarian after reading 2 paragraphs. Slavic languages are so similar yet so different.
damn all this time i played hl2 and didnt realise im in my home city...
PS Nice bulgarian Roman, I appreciate it :D
Fun fact: Seattle which they originally wanted set it in since you mentioned that, is Also the hometown of our favorite silent crowbar swinging protagonist dr Gordon freeman
Bulgaria gets the love for once ❤
Само нащеее 😂😂
Айдее!!
No. Valve just wanted to find a city to put City 17 in.
@@southcarolinianentertainment България на 3 морета, бе, момче! 😊
@@AnthonyWaboYou expect me to know every language on earth? Pathetic. Speak English!
Hi Roman, please make video for us Bulgarians and our connection with you guys.
Finally a famous youtuber who mentioned latvia for once
never would expect this kind of a video from this channel
Hey Roman,I have an idea for your next video.
Either a video about Jirinovsky aka “The Russian Trump”,or a video about our defense minister Shoigu(all his medals,women-generals,his villa etc.)Idk what you think about it but I think westerners should know something about them.
Some commie-block parts of City-17 also reminded me of Lasnamäe and Õismäe parts of Tallinn. Also a fun little detail I found was that in Highway-17 chapter there is a petrol station on the road and from the pumps you can read that the currency is in EEK. EEK stands for EEsti Kroon which was Estonian currency before we started using Euro.
Holy this upload schedule is getting better and better thanks so much Roman
The best story game ever
12:31 Im fluent in Russian and reading the Bulgarian text cracks me up. Sorry Bulgaria
Ты главное не пипай там :Р
"I also really like City 17 because I practically live in it" I think you could make that case for a lot of cities in the former eastern block.
He joked about the "overwatch" voice
Wow as a bulgarian I didn't know this! So awesome! Thank you for the video товарищ Roman
The vodka distillery in HL:Alyx is also Bulgarian, with all the signs inside, the boxes and the bottles.
Hey Roman! I'd just like to let you know that you are by far my favourite youtuber because when i watch your videos i can just let my mind rest and enjoy a nice video, You are everything a real youtuber should be the videos are really just fun and teach cool things. And the production and editing is great and not overdone like it is on TV and some tryhard youtubers now. Anyways really thank you for being here and youre by far my favourite Russian!
Honestly Roman has been exposing so much Eastern trivia to the internet at this point, he should be hired as Russia's spokesperson for culture and tour guides.
Holy shit, this video came from ideas that must be floating around in the air. I was watching your video on Russian alphabet the other evening and my friend asks me "why learn Russian?". So I told him even since Half Life 2, I've always been interested in Cyrillic. What an amazing game that was.
I think you’re probably right in that they just included everything because western people would think it’s the same and maybe to blur the line so no one could claim it. It does remind me of the time I was trying to read something in Cyrillic and I couldn’t understand it at all. And I was like wtf have I just forgotten literally everything I’ve learned in Russian. None of this is familiar. Then I realized it was Bulgarian lmao.
0:38 "Attention, ground units, evidence of uncivil activity in this community"
Dooood, this means that I live in city 17?? Gotdamn I never would've guessed. BTW roman keep up the amazing work, I really love your new type of content compared to the old one from 1-2 years ago
Yeah and with the corona hysteria curfew it gets to close HL2 in real life for my comfort lol.
12:26 Now you know what I feel as a Japanese person each time there is a confusing mix between Japanese and Chinese in a video game environment just because the devs didn't want to do research lol
I was arguing in the comment section of Half-Life:ALyx video, whether or not City17 has something to do with Bulgaria.
P.s. Thank you for acknowledging Sofia, and Bulgaria.
STALKER has been in development before we knew Half Life 2's setting. Metro is based on the Metro 2033 books, Half Life 2 has a LOT to do with its gameplay, but not its art design.
^^^^
It's both art design and gameplay, even a lot of things in Stalker was inspired from Half-Life 2, they even had Gordon Freeman easter egg in their game. Btw Half-Life 2 was development since after 1998. But i understand what you said.
@ I know HL 2's has been in development since 1998, my point is that we didnt know its setting back then :P
Also, gas station pumps in hl2 are in swedish, even showing price of purchase in kroner, the Swedish currency. On top of that, if you look at a wall in the haunted playground after exiting the train station, you'll see "VEIKKO INDUSTRIES", Veikko being an old Finnish mens first name, literally translating to "guy, buddy, fellow."
I think muddying the waters about where the location officially was with all the different languages was a great choice for sci-fi/fantasy game. It allows more creative freedom and variety of source material, not being locked to using a single city as a reference point.
Personally I remember sleuthing online as a child trying to find an answer to this very question, and I do recall thinking the driving section was propably along the Black Sea coast.
Cool vid! More stuff like this please! Maybe talk about the origins/politics of the Metro series?
Dude this was super well done! I've started playing HL2 a few days ago and I always wondered where it took place. Of course, I knew it had to take place somewhere in eastern Europe but now I know which city it is based on. Thanks!
I live in Siberia, but I used to often visit Ukraine and when I played half life I constantly caught myself thinking that the city reminds me of Odessa
While NFKRZ is deciding between Russia and Sofia basically, I'm just happy to see Vilnius in the vid :D
i remember how much it mystified me that cars in HL2 had Cyrillic plates, I even wrote emails to HL people about that (nobody answered). I thought it was a plot thing, but i guess it was just a dude capturing his soviet childhood memories :) anyway, so good of nfkrz to make a video about this, was fun to watch
really interesting video. its not as popular as your most recent video but i feel like it gives your channel more spice. keep up the good work and love from america
I know right! It’s proof gamers are OPPRESSED!! But seriously this video is awesome,Thank you for commenting
@@adamlittlejohn888 where are u from buddy?
България на 3 епизода
There is romanian text scattered around the city :D
Proud to be Romanian
That's why City 17 felt so depressing.
You also forgot that in the Lost Coast tech demo (which was an update of the source engine I think) there's a place called St Olga,
pretty sure named after Olga of Kiev, and by the looks of it, it's definitely in Crimea, or somewhere around the northern black sea coast.
"Уз маршала Тита јуначкога сина нас неће ни пакао смест" друже Тито један човек што је успео да цела Југославија живела у мир слава нашег друга Тита да види шта се све десило плако би😔
12:39 well fuck
I honestly love seeing how eastern Europeans just awe over how Half-Life 2 takes place where they live, seeing them be proud of it and comparing it to things they're familiar with, because it draws a direct comparison to myself and how I obsess over the original Half-Life and mainly its remake, Black Mesa for taking place in my home state of New Mexico. Besides Breaking Bad and Green Chile, we aren't exactly known for very much, which makes me smile from ear to ear when I see direct inspiration from the Sandia Labs, references to the Rio Grande and Santa Fe, NM flags, and most importantly just getting any recognition at all
I can confirm that;)From Racibórz, Poland.Commie blocks, churches, the whole architecture...
Never have I clicked so fast
Me to
gud for you
Wow! I never heard of this game! : )
Roman killed the flex by not using the new camera
Kinda reminds me of the history of CD Project Red how Poland’s only way of gaming back then was piracy so they started their game company as a way to sell translated versions of those western games
Ukraine now looks like Half life 2 after the combine invasion.
I guess that's Half Life 3
Notice he put Crimea and not Ukraine. Cause he could be Put in... a cell if he says it's not part of Russia.
No wonder the Half-Life series are loved to hell here in Bulgaria!
12:39 this aged well. fuckin valve, look what you did.
This is a proper and good upload
C17's wall always freaked me out, in early concept art it looked like it was melting through the city while expanding itself
Ору, споры о Крыме сменили споры о Сити-17
Крым - Россия; Сити-17 - Болгария; Косово - Сербия
"Which says sachtabalavalibilibilimilibiliievebabelenilibilibii which isn't even grammatically correct."
This gave me a different view & feel to the game, coolios Roman!
Great video Roman. Half life 2's sense of scale and the atmosphere the buildings and canals create make it such a replayable game and knowing the architectural and historical background to these maps we know and love makes it even cooler
Indeed City17 is Bulgaria.I live in this wonderful place for all of my life and its not so funny after the first 15 years.