I don’t want to fold my laundry right now, so here’s a review of Half-Life 2.
I kinda miss those opening moments when the only discrepancy I cared about was my ability to huck physics objects halfway across a given room without being regarded as a psychopath by anxious bystanders. The state of the world is conveyed instantly, and we’re forced to live under the squalor of this totalitarian regime alongside everyone else. A lot of us probably stood there and listened to Breen’s entire self-serving speech before advancing past the first area, his face filling those massive screens and lording over the train station. It’s chilling. And then, the game remembers that it’s a sequel to a New York Times Bestseller, and it’s time for a family reunion. What’s that? The Combine are beating people in their homes? They’re rounding up the humans? Nonsense, we have headcrab merchandise to sell! Remember the HEV suit? Remember Barney from Blue Shift? Oh, don’t forget your trusty crowbar! We love you, Gordon Freeman!
THE LONG VERSION:
Half-Life was all about making the player feel like this horribly outmatched scientist hurled into an unmitigated disaster, to the point where I called the player’s success tantamount to a non-canon “what-if” scenario. The Gordon Freeman of Half-Life 2 is a monster. You know that dinky crowbar from the first game, the one you found lying around on the floor? It might as well be Excalibur. Stormtroopers fall by the dozen. I never found myself without a surplus of bullets. Why does everyone know who we are? Why does everyone have intimate knowledge of what we did in that top-secret government facility? Why are we suddenly so nostalgic for the alleged greatness of Black Mesa? Weren’t they up to some extremely questionable stuff back there, or was that just my imagination? Why do we suddenly have a fawning girlfriend, and why are we playing fetch with her robot dog? Aren’t we just some guy? Why aren’t we just some guy?
The game’s at it’s best when it’s treating you like just some guy. We enter Ravenholm, and it might as well have nothing to do with anything going on in the rest of the game. There’s a man facing off against a horde of zombified villagers, and there’s intrigue surrounding his identity, his sanity. Eventually, he tosses us a shotgun at an opportune moment, and we work together to drive back the beasts. We snake through the winding architecture of this ruined town, we activate physics traps which feel naturally integrated into the situation, we panic when a poisonous freak knocks us down to a single hit point. This was more “Half-Life” than anything we’d been doing, iconography be damned. I cared more about this one guy than any of the returning characters for his direct involvement and cooperation. I knew Valve had it in ‘em. Everyone else made me feel like I was in the Truman Show.
Characters act more like tour guides than residents of this world, even walking backwards to gently usher the player from place to place (and show off that facial animation, I guess). The push toward “realism” was only natural, but I didn’t anticipate just how far Valve would go in removing them from the context of the gameplay. Half-Life’s NPCs weren’t compelling because they were “believable,” but because they were as vulnerable as the player. Some of them could fend for themselves (somewhat), while others needed the player’s assistance. If you weren’t careful (and sometimes if you were), you might’ve found yourself responsible for the death of a fellow scientist. They wanted key characters and development this time, so that’s not gonna happen. Can’t jeopardize our award-winning plot. Not our precious Alyx. I know they were striving for emotional range here, and that’s a worthy cause, but I might’ve cared a whole lot more about these people if I was worried something might happen to them. Heck, I’d have cared more about them if I had to personally press the “interact” button while facing them to receive their dialogue.
Maybe it’s worth sifting through some thoughts about narrative design. This is sort of tangential, but why not — The best games in the JRPG genre use its gameplay conventions, its mechanical language, in ways which feel congruent with the story. “Talking” is a major verb, it’s only natural that some of that talking would be dramatic. Combat takes place in a separate mode of play, so there’s no expectation that everyone will be involved with it (and in many games, we don’t directly initiate fights in the first place). In that way, Dragon Quest’s mechanics feel congruent with its storytelling. I’d describe Half-Life 1 similarly. Its mechanics are mostly congruent with its story and characterization. The “plot” is happening all around the player in real-time, and all of that stuff has direct ramifications on their forward progress. Why give games like Zelda and Sekiro a pass? Maybe it’s simply that we choose to talk to NPCs, that’s our method of agency in that situation. The characters can respond to us, just not in every possible way (because Link and Wolf wouldn’t kill those people, but they would talk to them). In Half-Life 2, characters talk at us, and don’t acknowledge our agency in the setting. It pains me to say it, but many of Half-Life 2’s character interactions would work better as cutscenes. The benefit of the persistent game state is that the core mechanics are always or could always be relevant, but that’s rarely the case here. If I’m not in a mode of play where interactivity is expected, I suppose I don’t groan as hard when I have to sit through it. Something to consider.
Oy, talking about this game makes me feel like a petulant child (there’s so much attention to detail, but you can still look around when you’re dead). I can’t think of too many games which have outright disappointed me. I mean, if I don’t like it, I can just…do something else. Maybe refund the game. Who cares? Still, I can’t help feeling that Half-Life 2 represented such a fascinating opportunity. That first game is right on the cusp of something incredible. A bit sloppy, a bit janky, but with a clear vision for the future of experiential game narratives. I was hoping to see its Super Mario Bros. 3, a deeper and richer iteration on that original idea. This one doubles down on the first game’s contrivance-filled pathfinding. Half-Life wasn’t lacking in realistic physics puzzles or jet-ski sequences or monologuing holograms, but interesting risks and alternate paths and weightier character interactions. I’m glad that so many people found what they were looking for in Half-Life 2, though maybe I’m better off checking out Deus Ex than waiting another decade for that third installment. Something tells me Valve won’t be looking back.
I kinda miss those opening moments when the only discrepancy I cared about was my ability to huck physics objects halfway across a given room without being regarded as a psychopath by anxious bystanders. The state of the world is conveyed instantly, and we’re forced to live under the squalor of this totalitarian regime alongside everyone else. A lot of us probably stood there and listened to Breen’s entire self-serving speech before advancing past the first area, his face filling those massive screens and lording over the train station. It’s chilling. And then, the game remembers that it’s a sequel to a New York Times Bestseller, and it’s time for a family reunion. What’s that? The Combine are beating people in their homes? They’re rounding up the humans? Nonsense, we have headcrab merchandise to sell! Remember the HEV suit? Remember Barney from Blue Shift? Oh, don’t forget your trusty crowbar! We love you, Gordon Freeman!
THE LONG VERSION:
Half-Life was all about making the player feel like this horribly outmatched scientist hurled into an unmitigated disaster, to the point where I called the player’s success tantamount to a non-canon “what-if” scenario. The Gordon Freeman of Half-Life 2 is a monster. You know that dinky crowbar from the first game, the one you found lying around on the floor? It might as well be Excalibur. Stormtroopers fall by the dozen. I never found myself without a surplus of bullets. Why does everyone know who we are? Why does everyone have intimate knowledge of what we did in that top-secret government facility? Why are we suddenly so nostalgic for the alleged greatness of Black Mesa? Weren’t they up to some extremely questionable stuff back there, or was that just my imagination? Why do we suddenly have a fawning girlfriend, and why are we playing fetch with her robot dog? Aren’t we just some guy? Why aren’t we just some guy?
The game’s at it’s best when it’s treating you like just some guy. We enter Ravenholm, and it might as well have nothing to do with anything going on in the rest of the game. There’s a man facing off against a horde of zombified villagers, and there’s intrigue surrounding his identity, his sanity. Eventually, he tosses us a shotgun at an opportune moment, and we work together to drive back the beasts. We snake through the winding architecture of this ruined town, we activate physics traps which feel naturally integrated into the situation, we panic when a poisonous freak knocks us down to a single hit point. This was more “Half-Life” than anything we’d been doing, iconography be damned. I cared more about this one guy than any of the returning characters for his direct involvement and cooperation. I knew Valve had it in ‘em. Everyone else made me feel like I was in the Truman Show.
Characters act more like tour guides than residents of this world, even walking backwards to gently usher the player from place to place (and show off that facial animation, I guess). The push toward “realism” was only natural, but I didn’t anticipate just how far Valve would go in removing them from the context of the gameplay. Half-Life’s NPCs weren’t compelling because they were “believable,” but because they were as vulnerable as the player. Some of them could fend for themselves (somewhat), while others needed the player’s assistance. If you weren’t careful (and sometimes if you were), you might’ve found yourself responsible for the death of a fellow scientist. They wanted key characters and development this time, so that’s not gonna happen. Can’t jeopardize our award-winning plot. Not our precious Alyx. I know they were striving for emotional range here, and that’s a worthy cause, but I might’ve cared a whole lot more about these people if I was worried something might happen to them. Heck, I’d have cared more about them if I had to personally press the “interact” button while facing them to receive their dialogue.
Maybe it’s worth sifting through some thoughts about narrative design. This is sort of tangential, but why not — The best games in the JRPG genre use its gameplay conventions, its mechanical language, in ways which feel congruent with the story. “Talking” is a major verb, it’s only natural that some of that talking would be dramatic. Combat takes place in a separate mode of play, so there’s no expectation that everyone will be involved with it (and in many games, we don’t directly initiate fights in the first place). In that way, Dragon Quest’s mechanics feel congruent with its storytelling. I’d describe Half-Life 1 similarly. Its mechanics are mostly congruent with its story and characterization. The “plot” is happening all around the player in real-time, and all of that stuff has direct ramifications on their forward progress. Why give games like Zelda and Sekiro a pass? Maybe it’s simply that we choose to talk to NPCs, that’s our method of agency in that situation. The characters can respond to us, just not in every possible way (because Link and Wolf wouldn’t kill those people, but they would talk to them). In Half-Life 2, characters talk at us, and don’t acknowledge our agency in the setting. It pains me to say it, but many of Half-Life 2’s character interactions would work better as cutscenes. The benefit of the persistent game state is that the core mechanics are always or could always be relevant, but that’s rarely the case here. If I’m not in a mode of play where interactivity is expected, I suppose I don’t groan as hard when I have to sit through it. Something to consider.
Oy, talking about this game makes me feel like a petulant child (there’s so much attention to detail, but you can still look around when you’re dead). I can’t think of too many games which have outright disappointed me. I mean, if I don’t like it, I can just…do something else. Maybe refund the game. Who cares? Still, I can’t help feeling that Half-Life 2 represented such a fascinating opportunity. That first game is right on the cusp of something incredible. A bit sloppy, a bit janky, but with a clear vision for the future of experiential game narratives. I was hoping to see its Super Mario Bros. 3, a deeper and richer iteration on that original idea. This one doubles down on the first game’s contrivance-filled pathfinding. Half-Life wasn’t lacking in realistic physics puzzles or jet-ski sequences or monologuing holograms, but interesting risks and alternate paths and weightier character interactions. I’m glad that so many people found what they were looking for in Half-Life 2, though maybe I’m better off checking out Deus Ex than waiting another decade for that third installment. Something tells me Valve won’t be looking back.
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JetSetSet
1 year ago