Where is City 17 really located?

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

[apex]

as a bulgarian i can confirm we have headcrabs, zombies and combine metrocops here

[generalbergfruhling]

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.

[AverytheCubanAmerican]

Roman: Soviet buildings
Bald: That's what I'm talking about

[HarmonicVector]

NFKRZ being Russian Pyrocynical again.

I like it.

[thereisnospoon]

Fun fact, the gas station pumps in episode 2 have prices listed in Swedish kroner, of all things

[dunka]

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.

[supersoaker]

being bulgarian makes me love hl2 even more

[yd]

*Bulgarians when they see their country being the inspiration behind any game: .o.*

[nikolauscitiridis]

It was really cute when you congratulated us in the end! Love to all slavs :)

[dranelemakol]

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

[rizzeh]

The way you said "Bucharest" would have probably given my grandpa WW2 flashbacks

[preslav]

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.

[crimsonfirewill]

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

[jess]

I was just crying. Thank you Roman, you made me happy.

[time.dealer]

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 😂

[mainatoons]

Me a Bulgarian: I see this as a absolute win!

[ЦветанГанчев-уп]

Man, I'm from Sofia, Bulgaria and I'm simply mindblown of the amount of research for this video. Congradulations!

[unknownseizure]

It's summer and I'm choosing to learn about a city...

[viktormilkov]

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

[cactusjacky]

I'm Romanian and I did not expect to see Romanian in such a loved game, wow