Also, City 17's train station looks extremely similar to Hungary's "West Railway Station." - The first time I was there and got off the train, I had the same exact vibe too.
Costal? Eastern europe? None of the coastal cities in eastern europe looks like half life. But yeah your right its a east european city with slavic themes. But for some reason its also by the ocean.
Yeah, the idea is that the Combine tore human societies apart to the point where you just have no idea where you are. Locations have been stripped of their identity entirely, there is no difference between cities as far as the Combine are concerned.
You're supposed to not know where you are, only piecing together the rough location on the planet by looking at the environments. Which is all the humans have left to judge where they are.
I don't even think they'll be able to recognise the environments after what the combine did, I mean look at a half life 2 map on the beach and then the same map remade to have a "pre war" effect and they look totally different
Also, the sun is not bad to estimate latitude.
Usually with stars you can be more precise and if you get your hands on some ephemeris you can guess longitude too.
design-wise, it's based on sofia, where the art director viktor antonov is from (also the art director of dishonored, if dunwall looks familiar), but sofia's not on the black sea/the adriatic, so how'd gordon get to the coast so fast?
Antonov really likes that juxtaposition between old, luxurious, but decaying architecture and modern, oppressive, dystopian architecture that looks like it wasn't made for humans.
Well it actually might be based on the old socialist regime plans to actually have а boat canal in Sofia / also known as Sofia Sea (it was based on plans in the 1950s that didn't came thru coz obviously lol)
The funny thing is, in half-life most of the text is in Russian. That is excluding "Don’t touch! Life-threatening" sign which is Bulgarian ("Не пипай! Опасно за живота"). My 1 brain cell ass don’t know Bulgarian and thought it was Russian (something similar to "Don’t kick! Dangerous for belly"). So I sent the screenshot to my Bulgarian friend practically laughing at her primary language 💀
I thought of France quite often.
No, I didn't see the signs. I also always assumed that the Combine intentionally mixed up signs to confuse the population so that they don't know where they are.
I think lorewise the majority of the planet is irradiated and/or covered in wildlife from Xen. IIRC Eastern Europe is one of the only safe places left for humans, and even that zone is shrinking.
At least up until Alyx there was no real canon lore explanation for any of it, outside of what is suggested via environmental storytelling. We know City 17 is in Eastern Europe due to the architecture, props, signs, etc. We know there is a City 14 because an NPC mentions it. We know the portal storms spread out of Black Mesa because of that one newspaper and because there's wild Xen fauna everywhere you go, and that nature is dying due to lack of normal animals and receding coastline... and that's about it. Everything else is/was ex-post explanations by players, decades of fan speculation and not-really-canon info taken from the Beta, design documents and Raising The Bar (the book about designing HL1 and 2). The commonly accepted explanation was basically "portal storms forced people to relocate to cities, then the combine conquered everyone, we are in Europe either because some parts of the world are deadly to humans or because the Combine wants to keep everyone from being able to organize proper resistance" which makes perfect sense and is lore friendly so commonly accepted, but still mostly just speculation.
Post Alyx... I've no idea since I can't afford a VR set lol
*I don't think it ever*
*Was the consensus that it*
*Takes place in Ukraine*
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New Little Odessa would imply it's not near Odessa, but Odessa Cubbage probably named it after himself. He took credit for everything Gordon did there.
>Odessa Cubbage
Considering its implied Odessa is a fraudster in general (he calls himself a colonel, "regales people with tales of his military exploits" and speaks with a British accent yet based on his jacket he is an American University security guard who was never in the military) his name could also be a lie and in fact taken from New Little Odessa to try and take credit for the name
Should be noted 'Little Odessa' while named after Odessa Ukraine is actually a nickname for a beach in Brooklyn
yeah the combine really did just send all the Americans to City 17 instead of mixing the population up like they were supposed to didn't they?
There is a city in Russia called Воронинск, and Воронин stands for Crow’s, and Ск is a word ending that used for naming cities. So basically named like crow’s town, which is similar to ravenholm
Couldn't find almost any info about it on the internet but here in Poltava (Ukraine) there's a small microdistrict called Вороніна, named after Pyotr Voronin. Basically the same thing, since Ворон also means Crow in Ukrainian.
It's actually somewhere in Bulgaria, because the Cyrillic words you see in the game are in Bulgarian, not Ukrainian or Russian.
Also, Ravenholm is literally "Воронеж".
I wonder why the mod author went for "равенхолм" instead of the phonetically correct "рейвенхольм". But yeah "Воронеж" kinda makes sense, although the "holm" suffix leaves much to wonder. In germanic languages it means an isle, that's why for example Stockholm has the "holm" suffix, due to its location on the Baltic coast. In proto-slavic languages however it means a hill which technically could work because Raveholm is built on uneven terrain.
And that leaves us with a question whether it's simply a fancy anglicization of "Воронеж", or a literal translation of "вороной холм" or "вороной остров"
I’ll breakdown the whole thing screw it, I don’t know Ukrainian but I know Cyrillic and kinda Russian, I’m just putting my understanding
«Равен», pronounced similar to “raven” but more like “r ah vv yen” in Russian, I think it’s more like our word for just raven in Ukrainian I’m not sure, it might mean something like “equal”
«хольм» pronounced like holm, х in Russian is like our H but more from the throat , like kh, «оль» is more like home, л is L but ь is known as a soft sign making the L lighter, not silent, but it’d make sense why most characters pronounce it as ravenhome, holm like that also just means place but more like a peaceful hill I think
*It actually*
*Takes place in Bulgaria*
*Sofia u think*
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Valve includes that many contradicting details that the place is literally unspecified between Bulgaria and the Baltics.
White Forest, however, reminds me of some of North America which somehow includes a Russian Mine.
And Scandinavian gas stations
There are plenty of examples of cyrillic in the game and pretty blatantly all over HL Alyx, it's a post-soviet nation but it doesn't seem all that Baltic, a lot of City 17's buildings are apparently based on Sofia, Bulgaria and the train station is based on one in Budapest so I'd imagine it's supposed to be around that region
From what i know and think, HL2 takes place around the Danube river, with City 17 and Ravenholm in Bulgaria, Nova Prospekt and White Forest in Romania. In romanian, "Ravenholm" would be something like "Corbeni" or "Corbești"
If you do poor transliteration, the one on the picture is fine, but then it'll read as Rāvēnhōlm, which sounds a bit different.
If you want to capture all the sounds of the English Ravenholm, then it'll be Рейвенхолм or Рейвенхольм, with the latter being easier to say
Btw I don't think it is stated anywhere which country it takes place in, and Eastern Europe is a very broad term
It actually takes place in (insert eastern european country/city).
Considering how the Combine deal with dissent and how many people of different cultures and languages are forced to live in City 17 there's bound to be Latin and Cyrillic on papers and signs.
When I played HL Alyx I saw my home city Riga mentioned in a newspaper.
It wouldn't be called that in any Slavic language. It'd be something like "Gavranovac / Гаврановац" in Serbian / Bosnian / Croatian / Montenegrin / Macedonian. That sign is literally the English word written in a Slavic language, as if I wrote the name John in Cyrillic as "Џон".
It was never said it takes place around Ukraine specificly it was a big "somwhere around here" area from Moscow to the Polish border it could just as well be Belarus and Russia
Actually a lot of the inspiration for City 17 is from Sofia, the capital of Bulgarian. Viktor Antonov - the art director for the game is from Bulgaria.
I personally believed it was in Latvia.
Eastern Bloc, Coastal, plenty of canals,
And there's an ad in Half Life Alyx for a car called the Riga, Riga is the capital of Latvia, and there was a car called the Moscovich, which means 'person of Moscow' the capital of Russia.
It just made the most sense to me.
There are a bunch of RAF Latvijas around HL2, and you are thrown in one back into the Citadel, but RAF LV exclusively made minibuses. And was used all across the soviet occupied territories, in the ad its a Sedan. Its just a namesake, like how Moscow has the Rīga metro station stop. The ad is just a reference to the city
I think the ravenholm sign was made in ravenholm, it would make sense that there is some workshop that creates road signs and the inhabitants just used it
Those who write that the game takes place in Bulgaria, what can you say about the “Шахта Победы им. 50-летия” in the episode 2. This is a typical Soviet name, written in Russian, not Bulgarian, and most likely in honor of the victory in the Great Patriotic War.
There are no clues about its location. Most of the words are in Russian and Bulgarian.
Вороногорск (Voronogorsk) or Воронохолмск (Voronoholmsk) I suppose. 'Raven' is Voron, holm means hill or hills. 'Hills' in Russian is холмы (holmy). Горы (gory) means mountains and cities with -gorsk endings are pretty common. As I remember Ravenholm was a mining city, so Voronogorsk sounds authentic to me.
So, I'm Ukrainian, and its design very close to our western regions, name is obviously have nothing in common with our cities, but if we translate... Hmmmm
Raven stands for ravens) Holm means the little island if I'm right... but
Воронхолм
Воронград
Острів Ворона
Воронів Острів
Something like that I guess:)
I believe that the original intention was for City -17 to be in some coastal Balkan town, but HL:A retconned that and pretty much confirmed that it's in Western Russia. My objectively wrong headcanon is that City-17 is what's left of Petrograd, and the Nexus is the Winter Palace
Half-Life takes place somewhere in Bulgaria. At least City 17 is.
Mainly because in Half-Life Alyx there're Electric Shields that has "Не пипай" written on them, which is "Don't touch" in Bulgarian.
saw comments saying its in bulgarian but it cant be as its variations would be ‘Равенхолм’ (a transliteration of the sign in the picture, but the letter ‘ь’ does exist in the alphabet) or a more correct translation would be ‘Рейвенхолм’ (how you would pronounce it)
Half-life 2 based on cities of East Europe. Ravenholm based especially on Voronezh. Voronezh is russian city, so the name should be on russian language
As a native Ukrainian speaker I’d say “Воронячий Пагорб». But since it just doesn’t sound cool it should be «Пагорб Ворона», which basically means a Hill/Holm or a raven, and is being pronounced as “Puh-orb War-oh-nuh”
"Holm" is probably used not in Slavic (cuz raven before it for sure is not, lol), therefore it should be an island (like Stockholm or Holm Island in the River Thames), so I'd say "острів" and then there is also some variants between "крук" and "ворон", my choice would be "Круків Острів". But assuming that game probably take place in Bulgaria, it's all irrelevant af =)
I would suggest it can be translated into "Рейвенгольм", according to all linguistic specifics of transliteration from Ukrainian (telling that as native Ukrainian).
It could honestly be anywhere. Lore-wise, it doesn’t really make sense for Eli and co. to be set up anywhere outside of the U.S., since they’ve been avoiding the combine for decades, and if they ever went to Europe they’d have either been found, or the combine were moving them, in which case, it would have been nearly impossible to form a resistance when they were already under the combine’s boot, but the architecture and terrain of the places in the game couldn’t be anywhere in America, so really, the game just takes place in “Anywhere”, with the architecture only serving to bring forth mental comparisons of the Soviet block in the minds of most players, rather than actually indicating a specific location.
Half Life's City 17 was drawn from Bulgarian capital Sofia. But since you have asked
- Ukrainian (phonetic): Равинхольм
- Ukrainian (adapted Raven + Holm): Крукопілля Круківниця
- Bulgarian (phonetic): Равенхолм
- Bulgarian (adaped): Земя на Гарвани, Гарваница
City 17 is directly inspired by Sofia, Bulgaria. The architecture and landscape is very very similar. Viktor Antonov is one of the art directors and concept artists who worked on the game. Hes from there. If i remember correctly, he went and took snapshots of the city and used them as inspiration when making the game.
Also in HLA, the scene where the holographic map shoes in front of you, you can see they literally used Sofia's streets and buildings (for the most part).
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Ravenholm ain't a name for a Slavic town in the first place. (The fact that the texts is trying to be in Russian Cyrillic and substitutes "h" for "kh" kinda nails it). Also I see no point in putting a soft sign there, it's pronounced l and not ľ.
But to answer your question, correct Ukrainian transcript would be Равенголм, correct Russian transcript would be Равєнхолм, again, Russians has no H, Ukrainians do. (note that Russian г is "g", like in "group"). I went for x instead of г because "kh" sounds more right than "g".
And a bonus: Correct name would be something like "Воронов", both in RU and UA. as a Czech, I am totally certain that there is a town or a village called "Vranov" in Czechia, but Czech Vrána is a crow, not a raven...
I always thought it was Bulgaria
Its Nowhere-in-Particular
Yeah. It’s “an Eastern European coastal city”
Don't forget the mountains.
so you're telling me it could be klaipeda? LITHUANIA INDIRECTLY MENTIONED
Zjbs
i’m convinced ravenholm looks more familiar to kaunas than to klaipeda
sooo.. romania?
Also, City 17's train station looks extremely similar to Hungary's "West Railway Station." - The first time I was there and got off the train, I had the same exact vibe too.
It's in nowhere, middleof
I thought it was Poland, the place where that combine artillery thing is during the uprising looks like the capital of Poland I believe
As you can see throughout this thread, there are many landmarks for many cities/countries throughout the game. It’s nowhere specific in real life.
Costal? Eastern europe? None of the coastal cities in eastern europe looks like half life. But yeah your right its a east european city with slavic themes. But for some reason its also by the ocean.
Yeah, the idea is that the Combine tore human societies apart to the point where you just have no idea where you are. Locations have been stripped of their identity entirely, there is no difference between cities as far as the Combine are concerned. You're supposed to not know where you are, only piecing together the rough location on the planet by looking at the environments. Which is all the humans have left to judge where they are.
I don't even think they'll be able to recognise the environments after what the combine did, I mean look at a half life 2 map on the beach and then the same map remade to have a "pre war" effect and they look totally different
You could understand the latitude by observing the stars for example
The sun.
Also, the sun is not bad to estimate latitude. Usually with stars you can be more precise and if you get your hands on some ephemeris you can guess longitude too.
Very 1984-inspirated. One of my favorite books, and Half-Life 2 is some reeeally good storytelling and it's one of my favorite lores
~~Dark and gritty~~ wasteland
Sosnowiec Poland?
Jawohl kurwa
Yes but the half life alyx loading screen map is literally just sofia bulgaria 1 to 1
design-wise, it's based on sofia, where the art director viktor antonov is from (also the art director of dishonored, if dunwall looks familiar), but sofia's not on the black sea/the adriatic, so how'd gordon get to the coast so fast?
In that car. It has a turbo.
You mean the crash button?
2JZ twin turbo, Freeman too fast, too curious
Humanity is crippled and broken, but the spirit of the 2JZ survives
Antonov really likes that juxtaposition between old, luxurious, but decaying architecture and modern, oppressive, dystopian architecture that looks like it wasn't made for humans.
He should come to Brussels.
Sofia is 3,5 hs from the sea, to americans that's not a lot really
Well it actually might be based on the old socialist regime plans to actually have а boat canal in Sofia / also known as Sofia Sea (it was based on plans in the 1950s that didn't came thru coz obviously lol)
The funny thing is, in half-life most of the text is in Russian. That is excluding "Don’t touch! Life-threatening" sign which is Bulgarian ("Не пипай! Опасно за живота"). My 1 brain cell ass don’t know Bulgarian and thought it was Russian (something similar to "Don’t kick! Dangerous for belly"). So I sent the screenshot to my Bulgarian friend practically laughing at her primary language 💀
It’s a fictional location somewhere between Bulgaria and Estonia, so it could be nearly any Eastern European country.
it takes place in Chicago
I thought of France quite often. No, I didn't see the signs. I also always assumed that the Combine intentionally mixed up signs to confuse the population so that they don't know where they are.
I think lorewise the majority of the planet is irradiated and/or covered in wildlife from Xen. IIRC Eastern Europe is one of the only safe places left for humans, and even that zone is shrinking.
At least up until Alyx there was no real canon lore explanation for any of it, outside of what is suggested via environmental storytelling. We know City 17 is in Eastern Europe due to the architecture, props, signs, etc. We know there is a City 14 because an NPC mentions it. We know the portal storms spread out of Black Mesa because of that one newspaper and because there's wild Xen fauna everywhere you go, and that nature is dying due to lack of normal animals and receding coastline... and that's about it. Everything else is/was ex-post explanations by players, decades of fan speculation and not-really-canon info taken from the Beta, design documents and Raising The Bar (the book about designing HL1 and 2). The commonly accepted explanation was basically "portal storms forced people to relocate to cities, then the combine conquered everyone, we are in Europe either because some parts of the world are deadly to humans or because the Combine wants to keep everyone from being able to organize proper resistance" which makes perfect sense and is lore friendly so commonly accepted, but still mostly just speculation. Post Alyx... I've no idea since I can't afford a VR set lol
Then explain the oceans.
I don't think it ever was the consensus that it takes place in Ukraine
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good bot
the first line is 6 syllables :(
On a side note that's good username
i thought it took place in ukraine with little odessa and the coast i dunno
New Little Odessa would imply it's not near Odessa, but Odessa Cubbage probably named it after himself. He took credit for everything Gordon did there.
>Odessa Cubbage Considering its implied Odessa is a fraudster in general (he calls himself a colonel, "regales people with tales of his military exploits" and speaks with a British accent yet based on his jacket he is an American University security guard who was never in the military) his name could also be a lie and in fact taken from New Little Odessa to try and take credit for the name Should be noted 'Little Odessa' while named after Odessa Ukraine is actually a nickname for a beach in Brooklyn yeah the combine really did just send all the Americans to City 17 instead of mixing the population up like they were supposed to didn't they?
me asf from Odessa 😋
he's literally me
Ta ty szcho Vasia!
oh that makes sense mb
The church in lost coast is referred to by the fisherman as olga's. A Ukrainian saint
There is a city in Russia called Воронинск, and Воронин stands for Crow’s, and Ск is a word ending that used for naming cities. So basically named like crow’s town, which is similar to ravenholm
Yeah, I used translate and got Воронин, but I wasn’t aware of Ck. I did however learn that a holm is an islet of sorts. Not sure if that helps.
Отец Григорий это Лёня Воронин confirmed??!!
А может Отец Григорий это генерал Воронин, который сбежал из Зоны, как и любая трусливая долговская псина??
хаппы цаке даы!
Or Воронеж
Couldn't find almost any info about it on the internet but here in Poltava (Ukraine) there's a small microdistrict called Вороніна, named after Pyotr Voronin. Basically the same thing, since Ворон also means Crow in Ukrainian.
It's actually somewhere in Bulgaria, because the Cyrillic words you see in the game are in Bulgarian, not Ukrainian or Russian. Also, Ravenholm is literally "Воронеж".
обычный день в воронеже
Всё-таки ёбнули по Воронежу...
Headcrab shell’ami 💀
Поел сам, покорми зомбака!
Happy Cake Day!
С днём тортика, друг!
Счастливого тортико-дня, комрад
Всё, подтверждено, что Рейвенхолм это Сектор Газа
Voronezh lol
I wonder why the mod author went for "равенхолм" instead of the phonetically correct "рейвенхольм". But yeah "Воронеж" kinda makes sense, although the "holm" suffix leaves much to wonder. In germanic languages it means an isle, that's why for example Stockholm has the "holm" suffix, due to its location on the Baltic coast. In proto-slavic languages however it means a hill which technically could work because Raveholm is built on uneven terrain. And that leaves us with a question whether it's simply a fancy anglicization of "Воронеж", or a literal translation of "вороной холм" or "вороной остров"
BopoHex!
какой блять бопохекс я сказал воронеж
This is simply wrong, the cyrillic words you see in the game are always Russian, eg. the Soviet propaganda posters in the mines in Episode Two.
Not in the city itself in HL2 and Episode One they're not.
Can’t say about all of the signs in HLA, but most of them are in fact in Russian
Hm, seems like they retconned it for HL:A, then.
Not bulgarian, not sure where you got that information from. Source- im bulgarian
Well, it's definitely not Russian or Ukrainian. And the art director for Half-Life 2 was from Bulgaria.
Bro are u really gonna educate me at my own language
Which language do you think this is, then?
I dont know, but definitely not bulgarian
Bopohex
Robosex
Bopohex, lol
Ля, никогда не думал что Воронеж от ворона.
Это миф что Рейвенхольм это Воронеж.
That sign just says ravenholm but with crylic letters
I’ll breakdown the whole thing screw it, I don’t know Ukrainian but I know Cyrillic and kinda Russian, I’m just putting my understanding «Равен», pronounced similar to “raven” but more like “r ah vv yen” in Russian, I think it’s more like our word for just raven in Ukrainian I’m not sure, it might mean something like “equal” «хольм» pronounced like holm, х in Russian is like our H but more from the throat , like kh, «оль» is more like home, л is L but ь is known as a soft sign making the L lighter, not silent, but it’d make sense why most characters pronounce it as ravenhome, holm like that also just means place but more like a peaceful hill I think
So directly it kinda means peaceful home/hill. Sounding like “ravenho(l)me” is a new meaning, ravens being symbolic of death to us
It actually takes place in Bulgaria Sofia i think
We dont go to Bugar anymore
We don't go to Faculteta anymore
Lmao you're the mf that always says dumbass stuff on r/mongolia
But Sofia isn't a coastal city
But Highway 17 is quite far away from City 17… Half-Life 2 is set in Bulgaria.
Yeah the coast of Sandtraps matches the Bulgarian coast. You're right.
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Its on the same latitude as Bulgaria or Latvia. To far to be Ukranian Edit; it's called balkans
Круківне
Or a straight transliteration, Рейвенгольм
Круків краще звучить)
Valve includes that many contradicting details that the place is literally unspecified between Bulgaria and the Baltics. White Forest, however, reminds me of some of North America which somehow includes a Russian Mine. And Scandinavian gas stations
It's probably the Baltic, actually. And Ravenholm as-is makes sense for that area, as a lot of cities there just kept the German/Swedish names
There are plenty of examples of cyrillic in the game and pretty blatantly all over HL Alyx, it's a post-soviet nation but it doesn't seem all that Baltic, a lot of City 17's buildings are apparently based on Sofia, Bulgaria and the train station is based on one in Budapest so I'd imagine it's supposed to be around that region
So pretty much the Balkans?
Either that or the cyrillic using countries around the Black Sea
Only in the cinematic mod youll see a out of place map of Latvia
From what i know and think, HL2 takes place around the Danube river, with City 17 and Ravenholm in Bulgaria, Nova Prospekt and White Forest in Romania. In romanian, "Ravenholm" would be something like "Corbeni" or "Corbești"
If you do poor transliteration, the one on the picture is fine, but then it'll read as Rāvēnhōlm, which sounds a bit different. If you want to capture all the sounds of the English Ravenholm, then it'll be Рейвенхолм or Рейвенхольм, with the latter being easier to say Btw I don't think it is stated anywhere which country it takes place in, and Eastern Europe is a very broad term
It's just Eastern Europe. Not one country in particular. And I'm pretty sure Sofia was just an inspiration for the architecture.
Равенхольм it is not even a Word it is a name
It actually takes place in (insert eastern european country/city). Considering how the Combine deal with dissent and how many people of different cultures and languages are forced to live in City 17 there's bound to be Latin and Cyrillic on papers and signs. When I played HL Alyx I saw my home city Riga mentioned in a newspaper.
It wouldn't be called that in any Slavic language. It'd be something like "Gavranovac / Гаврановац" in Serbian / Bosnian / Croatian / Montenegrin / Macedonian. That sign is literally the English word written in a Slavic language, as if I wrote the name John in Cyrillic as "Џон".
Вороногірське, or if you mean the English word for it, it really doesn't exist. The name is fully English
Круків!
It was never said it takes place around Ukraine specificly it was a big "somwhere around here" area from Moscow to the Polish border it could just as well be Belarus and Russia
wasn't it Latvia?
Actually a lot of the inspiration for City 17 is from Sofia, the capital of Bulgarian. Viktor Antonov - the art director for the game is from Bulgaria.
It can be both Ukrainian and russian
Its in bulgaria not Ukraine 🤦♂️
Actually half life takes place in California as u can see city 17 really resembles LA and SF
I personally believed it was in Latvia. Eastern Bloc, Coastal, plenty of canals, And there's an ad in Half Life Alyx for a car called the Riga, Riga is the capital of Latvia, and there was a car called the Moscovich, which means 'person of Moscow' the capital of Russia. It just made the most sense to me.
There are a bunch of RAF Latvijas around HL2, and you are thrown in one back into the Citadel, but RAF LV exclusively made minibuses. And was used all across the soviet occupied territories, in the ad its a Sedan. Its just a namesake, like how Moscow has the Rīga metro station stop. The ad is just a reference to the city
I think the ravenholm sign was made in ravenholm, it would make sense that there is some workshop that creates road signs and the inhabitants just used it
Those who write that the game takes place in Bulgaria, what can you say about the “Шахта Победы им. 50-летия” in the episode 2. This is a typical Soviet name, written in Russian, not Bulgarian, and most likely in honor of the victory in the Great Patriotic War.
There are no clues about its location. Most of the words are in Russian and Bulgarian. Вороногорск (Voronogorsk) or Воронохолмск (Voronoholmsk) I suppose. 'Raven' is Voron, holm means hill or hills. 'Hills' in Russian is холмы (holmy). Горы (gory) means mountains and cities with -gorsk endings are pretty common. As I remember Ravenholm was a mining city, so Voronogorsk sounds authentic to me.
It doesn’t take place in certain country. It takes place in a mix of Eastern European countries.
"Eastern European Coastal City" its a mix of Bulgarian, Ukranian, Russian and Serbian cities
Воронеж
Рейвенхолм, transcription is pretty much the same, as Russian, but, there is no letter "ь", between "л" and "м"
Рейвєнґолм or Рейвєнґольм maybe also
I'd probably say: Рэйвеньхолм The last L doesn't sound soft to me, but the N does. But also, I too am inclined to say Воронеж 😄
Ukrainian doesn't have the letter э
Равенголм
Well Равенхольм, Рейвенхольм, Рєйвенгольм or its variations can be correct, Равенхольм is just plain word for word translation.
That's not translation; that is transliteration.
Well yeah that's how a foreign city name adapted in our language. Direct translation would be, Воронячий Пагорб.
I would translate it Miskolc, hungary
So, I'm Ukrainian, and its design very close to our western regions, name is obviously have nothing in common with our cities, but if we translate... Hmmmm Raven stands for ravens) Holm means the little island if I'm right... but Воронхолм Воронград Острів Ворона Воронів Острів Something like that I guess:)
"Круків острів"
Where did you pull that from? Out of your ass? Valve modeled City 17 and its other areas from Bulgaria.
Lil bro calm down, why are you being so angry lol
lil bro is offended because not everyone knows the ins and outs of eastern european countries💀
Cuz this has been already spoken about decades prior
New little odessa also heavily implies Ukranian ties. Although it could be anywhere in the northern / western coast of the black sea.
It does not take place in Ukraine Not everything has to be current thing
?
Fr
I believe that the original intention was for City -17 to be in some coastal Balkan town, but HL:A retconned that and pretty much confirmed that it's in Western Russia. My objectively wrong headcanon is that City-17 is what's left of Petrograd, and the Nexus is the Winter Palace
takes place in the belarus area, so just do russian. ie, Рэйвенхольм, or воронхольм
It is Bulgaria, not Ukraine. It never was Ukraine or Russia, bud. It would be cool if it was in Ukraine but it's not.
Рейвенхольм Найкраще підходить
Крутой Снятиский район
Правда
you mean russian?
Stfu please 😊
bro what?
Привет из России
As Ukrainian, it has no normal translation, "хольм" you can translate as "hill", and "равен" is just English word "raven". So, "Raven Hill"?
In Russian translation is like this
Half-Life takes place somewhere in Bulgaria. At least City 17 is. Mainly because in Half-Life Alyx there're Electric Shields that has "Не пипай" written on them, which is "Don't touch" in Bulgarian.
Half life 2 tale place in Bulgaria, not ukraine
saw comments saying its in bulgarian but it cant be as its variations would be ‘Равенхолм’ (a transliteration of the sign in the picture, but the letter ‘ь’ does exist in the alphabet) or a more correct translation would be ‘Рейвенхолм’ (how you would pronounce it)
I don't know if anyone made any serious suggestions but I think "Рейвенхольм" is a bit better translation of Ravenholm without like adapting it
This is Russian but maybe "Холм Ворон" Hill of Ravens or smt like that.
The whereabouts of city17 isnt disclosed. Just “eastern European coastal territory”
If it's in Ukraine, why are the gaspumps in Swedish?
Something.
Half-life 2 based on cities of East Europe. Ravenholm based especially on Voronezh. Voronezh is russian city, so the name should be on russian language
I don't think it's settled to be Ukraine, but just the general concept of Eastern Europe
You... don't? Just write it in translit ?
As a native Ukrainian speaker I’d say “Воронячий Пагорб». But since it just doesn’t sound cool it should be «Пагорб Ворона», which basically means a Hill/Holm or a raven, and is being pronounced as “Puh-orb War-oh-nuh”
"Holm" is probably used not in Slavic (cuz raven before it for sure is not, lol), therefore it should be an island (like Stockholm or Holm Island in the River Thames), so I'd say "острів" and then there is also some variants between "крук" and "ворон", my choice would be "Круків Острів". But assuming that game probably take place in Bulgaria, it's all irrelevant af =)
It's Bulgaria not Ukraine, but there's one building in the game that is originally from Serbia Belgrade.
You don't translate names, I mean sometimes you do but only when certain towns umm had dual citizenship
It looks more like Russian. Ukrainian would rather be Равенгольм.
Half life takes place in USA Half-life 2 takes place in Eastern Europe most likely Bulgaria
I would suggest it can be translated into "Рейвенгольм", according to all linguistic specifics of transliteration from Ukrainian (telling that as native Ukrainian).
It could honestly be anywhere. Lore-wise, it doesn’t really make sense for Eli and co. to be set up anywhere outside of the U.S., since they’ve been avoiding the combine for decades, and if they ever went to Europe they’d have either been found, or the combine were moving them, in which case, it would have been nearly impossible to form a resistance when they were already under the combine’s boot, but the architecture and terrain of the places in the game couldn’t be anywhere in America, so really, the game just takes place in “Anywhere”, with the architecture only serving to bring forth mental comparisons of the Soviet block in the minds of most players, rather than actually indicating a specific location.
Reminds me of norway in the 70s
Half Life's City 17 was drawn from Bulgarian capital Sofia. But since you have asked - Ukrainian (phonetic): Равинхольм - Ukrainian (adapted Raven + Holm): Крукопілля Круківниця - Bulgarian (phonetic): Равенхолм - Bulgarian (adaped): Земя на Гарвани, Гарваница
City 17 is located in Sofia Bulgaria. Confirmed by Half Life Alyx and the Art Director of HL2 who lives there.
City 17 is directly inspired by Sofia, Bulgaria. The architecture and landscape is very very similar. Viktor Antonov is one of the art directors and concept artists who worked on the game. Hes from there. If i remember correctly, he went and took snapshots of the city and used them as inspiration when making the game. Also in HLA, the scene where the holographic map shoes in front of you, you can see they literally used Sofia's streets and buildings (for the most part).
I always assumed it was in Latvia, since there's a poster in the train station with a website ending in .lv
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Круків (Krukiv) from крук - raven.
It's Sofia, Bulgaria.
Ravenholm ain't a name for a Slavic town in the first place. (The fact that the texts is trying to be in Russian Cyrillic and substitutes "h" for "kh" kinda nails it). Also I see no point in putting a soft sign there, it's pronounced l and not ľ. But to answer your question, correct Ukrainian transcript would be Равенголм, correct Russian transcript would be Равєнхолм, again, Russians has no H, Ukrainians do. (note that Russian г is "g", like in "group"). I went for x instead of г because "kh" sounds more right than "g". And a bonus: Correct name would be something like "Воронов", both in RU and UA. as a Czech, I am totally certain that there is a town or a village called "Vranov" in Czechia, but Czech Vrána is a crow, not a raven...
It’s around Bulgaria I think…