Retrospective Half-Life 2

How Valve cracked open the FPS formula and then put it back together in Half-Life 2.

- Matthew Clapham

Gordon Freeman has nothing to say. Well, not verbally anyway. As one of gaming’s best-known silent protagonists, he has no syllables to utter and no quips to dispense. Freeman’s lack of chat is a deliberate black hole of meaning. And yet that’s exactly what Valve needed to craft an FPS renowned for storytelling as much as shooting.

Freeman, you see, is the perfectly engineered observer and vessel. Here is a character so flimsy that his silhouette slips away from your mental grasp like soap in the bath, leaving behind only a crowbar, a pair of glasses and a HEV suit. Even his face is a disturbingly literal interpretation of the everyman, based on a recombination of male Valve employees (he has no full in-game model). He is silent so that Valve’s world can speak. He is transparent so that your immersion in its action and its story remain uninterrupted.

And what a scenario you are drawn into. Freeman is brought out of stasis after his take-it-or-leave-it job offer at the end of the first game to find that Portal storms have ravaged the planet and Earth has surrendered to the otherworldly Combine following total defeat in the Seven Hour War. Humanity’s reign is done, as you can clearly see etched into the faces of the cowed peons that filter through the dilapidated train station you alight into. All that’s left is to stick one in the fat folds of your new telepathic slug oppressors.

Points insertion