Todesangst 1: Story

Todesangst is a new single player episode for Half-life. You must have Half-life version 1.1.0.4 or higher in order to install and play Todesangst. It will not work on older versions due to changes Valve made to key entities like monster_generic and trigger_camera. You can upgrade any version of Half-Life to the latest point release by downloading the patches here.

Todesangst introduces the new sinister character Dr. Jack Newell, expert chaos theory mathematician and Director of Black Mesa R&D. Gordon Freeman and Dr. Newell have always had an adversarial relationship at best, and Gordon's hero status following the containment of Xen only served to inflame Dr. Newell's hatred and jealousy of him.

The story is set shortly after Gordon Freeman's successful return from Xen. The episode opens with a cut-scene of Mr. Blackstone (a.k.a. the G-man) arriving at Dr. Newell's office. As we soon discover, Dr. Newell has had Mr. Blackstone in his control all along, and has his own intentions for the exploitation of Xen's biological uniqueness. . .

Its up to you, Gordon, to stop your evil colleague from unleashing the horror of Xen on humanity. . . if its not too late. . .

FEATURES
The scope of Todesangst was to make a new single player episode that felt like a natural extension of the original game. This was made much easier by Valve's inclusion of so many different textures, sounds, and entity definitions within the game that developing a mod like this did not require a steep learning curve or lots of programming or graphic arts experience.

That said, I did manage to exploit the game's characteristics in creative ways. For instance, some of the features of Todesangst that I consider most significant include:

• Introductory and intermission cut-scenes, which enrich the plot progression of the episode

• Extensive use of scripted sequences for character interations.

• New character voiceovers and face textures.

• Useable heavy weapons including a tank rocket launcher and double barrel gatling gun.

• Multiple component entities (ie: elevators with moving doors and grate floors that you can see through).

• No jumping or arcade style puzzles to detract from the game flow.

I also spent considerable time refining the architecture and lighting dispersion in each map to obtain the best realism possible and to keep the frame rates high (ie r_speeds low).

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