10 Things You Didn't Know About Half-Life

10. The PA System Uses Only Single Words To Create Sentences

In Half-Life, there are sometimes announcements over the PA system as you wander around. What you may not know about them is that these PA messages are all constructed by developers using someone speaking a single line of dialogue.

Known as the Black Mesa PA system, incredibly every single line is recorded separately, then the developers spliced them together afterwards to create full sentences.

Why was this done? It allowed the developers to create messages on the fly without relying on someone coming in to record new dialogue. They simply accessed the bank of pre-recorded sounds they had, meshed them together, and formed a sentence. Given the PA system is likely an AI, any distortions or weird sounding takes on a word more than likely added to the foreboding atmosphere of the original Half-Life, rather than detract from it.

The developers have a huge amount of sound files recorded for the game, many of which are never actually heard as they weren't needed.

A full list of the sounds has been ripped off the disc and uploaded to Youtube.