The little bladed attack drones in CDDA are a direct reference to Halflife 2. This is fine, people who have played the game immediately understand what it’s referring to, and anyone who hasn’t can figure it out quickly enough.
That said, the various “grenade hacks” extend the reference a bit too far IMO, as they are a new (if not entirely original) creation rather than a reference to anything within Half Life, so there is no reason to refer to them as “hacks”. Just call them Drones or Monorotors, or better yet some lore-friendly military lingo. Either way, the current names really feel out of place.
As a person who last played Half-life two over a decade ago, that reference was totally lost on me, and changing the names of the other types of hacks doesn’t meaningfully impact anybody but you or a die-hard fan of another game that thinks this game should conform to that games standards.
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a high priority issue. I just feel like there’s no real point to naming them hacks, as you not getting the reference only serves to support. I’m not “imposing standards” on the game, I just think calling them something that actually describes them is better than a dated reference that never really worked to begin with.
If people would prefer them to be called hacks for whatever reason, I’m fine with that, but as someone who finds it a bit silly I’m at least going to raise the question.
That’s a fair enough point.
I actually agree, I didn’t understand the reference until much later after I first played this game, and it never made much sense to me that the grenade hacks were still called that when they didn’t actually do any hacking.
I guess “grenade hacks” would be classified as precision-guided munitions.
So, how about simply adding ‘PG’ (precision-guided) before the name of the base explosive when it’s turned into a drone? So: PG grenade, PG EMP (description mentions an internal war before the Cataclysm over whether to pronounce it ‘P-jemp’ or ‘P-gemp’ for short), PG flashbang, PG C-4, PG tear gas, and PG mininuke.
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I’m not totally against coining a name like “PG67 fragmentation drone”, but it doesnt do much to improve the situation.
It does make it more consistent with other military munitions, which is a plus.
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Oh me gersh! I totally didn’t notice the reference at first, I can’t help but always love things like that games. Whether they are small, subtle things, or somewhat more obvious ones. That said, I totally forgot many of the names of each creature/robot despite me finishing half-life 2 (and the corresponding episodes) less than a month ago. Yay for Christmas presents!